A Review of
Osprey Campaign Series

Waterloo, Austerlitz
Jena, Leipzig

by John Cook. U.K.

Waterloo

The Osprey 'Campaign Series', now numbers 27 titles, 4 of which, Austerlitz 1805, Waterloo 1815, Jena 1806 and, most recently, Leipzig 1813 deal with Napoleonic subjects. Bearing in mind the mountain of material on Waterloo, one wonders why Osprey bothered to produce yet another book on the subject. What on earth could one possibly say within 100 or so pages that has not already been said before? The answer is quite simply, nothing whatsoever. Frankly there are far better, and certainly more comprehensive, accounts. This shallow and repetitive version has nothing new to say and is just not worth the £ 10 or thereabouts one is asked to pay for it.

Austerlitz

The other three are a different matter, for very little is avail-able on the Central and Eastern European campaigns in the English language. David Chandler's account of Austerlitz is a case in point and worth having, particularly if you don't have Christo-pher Duffy's. It is, however, the least substantial of the three although it is hard to identify what is missing exactly. Nevertheless, I did find it very useful whilst visiting the battle site recently and can vouch for the Czech savoury dumplings that David Chandler recommends and which seem to come with most meals. I can also recommend Czech beer; real Budweiser, not the insipid American drink of the same name but the genuine article from Budvar, is almost worth the trip by itself, especially at approximately a quarter the price you will pay for it in your local Tesco. How do they justify the price in UK?

To return to the point, however, it is unfortunate that the de-scriptions of the battlefields as they are today vary from volume to volume and are not as comprehensive as they might be, an after-thought almost rather than forming the valuable part of the book that they might.

Jena

Be that as it may the same author's Jena is much stronger and goes a long way to righting the myths surrounding the Prussian army of the period, which was not unlike the British in many respects, whilst at the same time explaining the reasons for the uniqueness of the Grande Armée during this campaign. One gets the impression of a degree of enthusiasm not present in the earlier title, at least that is how it comes across to me, al-though I would question the appropriateness of at least one of the illustrations of French types. The Fusilier-Grenadier of the Imperial Guard illustrated on page 62 belonged to a regiment not even authorised by Decree until 13th September 1806, which for-mally raised on 19th of that month did not leave Paris for Mainz until 21st December 1806 and, thus, could hardly have taken part in any of the battles in October 1806. Indeed the Fusilier- Grenadiers did not join the main army until April 1807.

This, you may say is being petty but I would take the view that a mistake so fundamental, brings an entire title into question. Furthermore, lifting illustrations from the 'Men at Arms' series is an easy, though undoubtedly cheaper option for the publishers, but, bearing in mind the wealth of available material, is also selling the purchaser short.

Even if you have F.L.Petre's account, however, this Osprey is a very useful addition, one error with an illustration notwith-standing, and anyone visiting the battle sites of this campaign will find it a useful companion. The only other English account I am aware of is Col. F.N.Maude's but this has not been in print for very many years, a pity because it is the best there is in this language.

Leipzig

The impossibility of including very much of substance within a mere 100 pages is obvious in all titles and is very evident in Peter Hofschröer's attempt to cover the entire post-armistice phase of the 1813 campaign in his Leipzig title, from Grossbeeren through to the climax at the Battle of the Nations. Within the pages of this modest little book no less than nine major battles, each of which might warrant a book of their own, in addition to Leipzig itself, are dealt with. In itself an astonishing exercise in squeezing a quart into a pint pot.

Even before the first blows are struck the armies of the five major protagonists, and two minor contingents, are described in varying detail, followed by a discussion of the aims and objectives of the Allies and French respectively, the whole accompanied by complementary illustrations, orders of battle and the usual '3D' and campaign maps. Unusually, the illustrations for Leipzig 1813 have not been lifted from the 'Men at Arms' series and in that respect this title is much better value than its predecessors.

The book finishes with a cursory description of the battlefield today, but too brief to be useful, a guide to further reading and notes for wargamers in the usual fashion of this series which, in my view, are not particularly valuable and my advice would be to drop them from future titles in their current form. I doubt that many will be influenced much by these Wargaming chapters which are too generalised, and take up approximately eight pages in most titles which could be put to better use.

If the series is really aimed at the wargaming market, which they seem to be, these pages would be far more useful if they described some individual scenarios in greater detail, with orders of battle down to battalion level, including unit strengths, maps showing unit dispositions, assessments of formation commanders' abilities and analysis of the relative qualities of the respective troop types together with something on tactical practice. In summary, all the information the wargamer needs to translate the scenario to the wargames table and precisely the sort of thing one finds in better articles in the pages of the wargaming press.

In the guide to further reading in the Leipzig title, it is again only too apparent that there is very little indeed to be had on the subject in English. Essentially two accounts, both written some 80 years ago by the same familiar authors, namely Col. F.N. Maude and F.L. Petre, both of which are in print now.

Judging these booklets is difficult because not only is there little else in the English language but, more importantly, there is also nothing of their kind to compare them with. Together with David Chandler's Jena 1806, however, Leipzig 1813 by Peter Hofschöer is one of the best Napoleonic titles in the Osprey Cam-paign Series but there is no avoiding the fact that a mere 100 pages is always going to be very insubstantial diet and it must have been frustratingly difficult to condense the accounts into so few pages. Because of this they are never going to amount to very much except in the context of wargamers' guides but, in my view, for the reasons I have already given they fall, in my opinion, very wide of this mark and end up as nothing more than overly concise potted histories.

It is a great pity that the Osprey Campaign Series could not have been done in the same fashion as the Macmillan Company's Special Campaign Series, published more than 80 years ago, of which Col. F.N. Maude was a principal author, and which remain a model of their kind to this day. Leipzig, however, is a useful little book written by an author who, given the opportunity, could undoubtedly produce the definitive modern account. Leipzig 1813 in the Osprey Campaign Series is certainly not it.

More Reviews

Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #18
Back to First Empire List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1994 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