Reader's Review
Lutzen and Bautzen:
Napoleon's Spring Campaign
of 1813
reviewed by Richard Partridge
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Author: George Nafziger
Owners or readers of Nafziger's book "Napoleon's Invasion of Russia 1812" may rest assured that this latest offering is up to that standard; unfortunately this observation should not be taken as a sign of approval, since both books are, in my opinion, abysmal. I do not mean that the information is wrong, overly subjective, or wrongly analysed, but rather that it is badly presented, ill written, and, overall, fails in its primary mission to inform sufficiently. I would have expected the book to commence with a description of the French, Russian and Prussian armies, covering such aspects as organisation, training and equipment, but there is nothing at all, with the consequence that someone unfamiliar with the period is unable to get a clear view of how each individual army was organised. Nafziger goes into a reasonable amount of detail on how the French forces were recreated from the National Guard, Departmental Reserve Companies etc, although I preferred his fuller and more detailed description in the three volume series on the "French Infantry, Royal, Republican and Imperial" published by Raider Games in the late 1980s. As a consequence, ownership either of these, or of Scott Bowden's "Grande Armee of 1813" is strongly recommended. In a similar way, looking at the Allied side, there are several references to a third battalion in some Prussian regiments; since a distinction is made to the Fusilier battalions, it was only after checking in some other references that I realised that these were probably the Reserve battalions raised by the Krumper system serving with their parent regiment before being formed into Reserve regiments, but nowhere is this brought out sufficiently strongly. Someone using this as a prime reference source is going to raise some very strange armies. Looking at the book itself, I suspect that whilst it was produced by Desk Top Publishing, I doubt that it was ever edited or proof read by someone in the Emperor's Press. (If it wwas read by someone in Emperor's Press, apologies, but in that case it makes my comments even more pertinent.) Hopefully we are all familiar with Wilde's aphorism, but Nafziger's use of the English language is tortured, and the syntax and sentence construction leave much to be desired. Individual sentences tend to be short, and paragraphs are often only a few lines long, all of which makes it very stilted, and it reads much like a Janet and John book. As a consequence, actually completing it took me far longer than I expected, as I had to keep putting it down and either lie down in a dark room, or read a few pages of Paul Johnson's "Birth of the Modern", a book on the social, cultural and technological changes between 1815 and 1830 which should be on all our bookshelves as an antidote to those devotees of the pornography of violence whose interest in the Napoleonic period begins and ends with gold lace and cavalry charges, and also serves to remind us of how much a proto-fascist (in the strict sense of the word) Napoleon really was. To return to Nafziger; on several occassions, there is an inexact or infelicitous use of language, such as (page 67) "..... a Swedish legation arrived ...... to announce that a Swedish division ..... had landed". Legation is a diplomaticterm, and I suspect that Nafziger was searching for a synonym for a mere messenger. On page 63, we find that the Russian, General Tettenborn, launched a commando raid into Napoleon's rear. Whilst kommando was a recognised German term in the period, it merely meant a unit designated for special duties. Commando proper, designating a lightly equipped raiding force, was a Boer word from what was then Cape Province, and would not enter general military parlance until the 1880s and after; its use is thus incongruous in this context. Careful proof reading could have avoided the striking dichotomy on page 22, where, talking about the battle of Kalisch, we are first told that the "Russians were forced to withdraw ...... as they surrendered the field to the Saxons", and later "As a result of his (Wittgenstein's) victory over Reynier ....". It is possible to resolve the apparent contradiction by a careful reading of the narrative (it was a Russian tactical defeat but a strategic victory), but the author could have assisted by a succinct resum‚. One final example: on page 70, we are informed that ".... Durutte ... found himself facing ... regular cavalry armed with artillery". I look forward to seeing Tony Barton's new Prussian Hussar figure with a 6 pounder tube swinging from his carbine belt! I appreciate that to a lot of readers, inappropriate word usage, even if recognised, will not cause undue dismay, but it is distracting, and should have been picked up. I would however suspect that most people would buy this as a reference work to assist them in researching the Spring 1813 campaign in Germany rather than for the elegancy of its English, and ultimately the test must be if it succeeds in this aim. Like the earlier "Invasion of Russia", there are large numbers of Orders of Battle in the book, but even then problems arise. Depending on how one views it, the battle of Kalisch (13 February 1813) is either the last battle of the Russian campaign, or the first of the War of Liberation. Nafziger gives us the Russian Order of Battle, but no battle map or the opposing French Army. One could assume that this latter omission was due to it not being available in his sources, but since his battle description goes into the exploits of individual brigades and regiments, I would have thought he could have constructed one by emending (or amending) the one in the 1812 volume. However, since there is no map in the new book on which to base a refight, this is academic. Incidentally, Durutte's division was composed primarily of penal regiments, which were taken into the line as 35e and 36e Legere and 131er, 132e and 133e Ligne in 1813; is it correct to call them by their new designations in February?. On the other hand, the next major engagement covered is the Battle of Mockern (5 April 1813), for which there is a map, but no detailed Order of Battle for either side, so they will need to be constructed both from the narrative, and from the other Orders of Battle that are supplied. Unfortunately however, the map is itself flawed, in that it is not scaled, the streams and rivers not named, and there are neither contours nor woods marked. As a further example of a lapse in proof reading, in his description of the battle, Nafziger (page 74) has the Fusilier battalion of the 1st East Prussians advancing West to the town of Gommern, and then pass through Dornburg (or Dornberg, as it is spelt in the text), which was to their right rear, and close to where they commenced their attack; confusing huh? Fortunately, the two main battles of the Spring campaign, Lutzen and Bautzen are supported both by useful maps, complete with a scale and geographical details, as well as full Orders of Battle, although for the Allies in particular, Nafziger's sources leave out some individual unit strengths, so they have to be derived from corps totals, etc.; I am uncomfortable using mean strengths like this, since it obscures the possibility of newly arrived units being up to their TO&E. Nafziger often goes into a quite detailed, mainly clear, narrative of the exploits of individual units, which leads me on to another criticsm of the book. Throughout, we get told that this unit did this, or that unit did that, but when you try to track back via the index, there are no individual entries except for some of the Cossack regiments (named for their commander), or the French penal regiments. Entries for individual units are lumped together as "French", "Prussian" etc; there is an entry for Prussian Jegers (sic), again an example of bad proof reading. Thus,anyone trying to get an idea of even what each corps did in the campaign is going to be forced to wade through each entry to find out what he wants, and as for checking the exploits of individual units! The index itself is very basic, in that, as an example, "Napoleon" is cited 54 times, with no indication of what each individual citation was, such as "at Lutzen" etc. Overall, I cannot recommend this book at this price, due to the deficiencies noted above. If what you want are the Orders of Battle, you would be better off buying them from Nafziger direct and then using them with the maps in Esposito and Elting, or Chandler. Alternatively, you can wait until it comes out in paperback (hopefully in Britain to reduce the cost), hope it gets remaindered at a significant price reduction, get it from your library, or lastly, wait for it to appear on a bring and buy stand at a show, as a disgruntled owner tries to recoup some of his losses. In all fairness, I have to state that the author clearly knows his subject and I would be the first to acknowledge that he is one of the doyens of Napoleonic military history, but he lets himself down by sloppy writing, and is himself let down by either bad or nonexistent editing. One would hope that if this book goes into a second edition, the opportunity is taken to substantially rewrite and revise it, and if Nafziger decides to extend the series to the Leipzig campaign and beyond, he obtains significant editorial assistance, as there is all too little available in English on these climactic battles in 1813. Letter to Editor Response (FE12) Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #11 Back to First Empire List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1992 by First Empire. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com |