Sometime ago (Vol. VII, No. 4) I described some of my travels to the U.K. in which I emphasized places to visit that should interest the military buff/wargamer. Since that time I have lived in Frankfurt, West Germany. Upon my return our esteemed editor asked for another, similar article.
Many European-bound tourists fly into the hub city of Frankfurt. Frankfurt provides a central location from where you can visit some excellent museums housing Napoleonic uniforms, weapons, and related items. While the traveller no doubt will have many reasons forvisiting Europe, I will describe an excursion that can be most rewarding for those interested in the Napoleonic period.
Begin by driving south along the Romantische Strasse (the Romantic Way) to one of the delightful, medieval walled villages that dot the countryside. Consult your guidebook, find lodgings, and relax as you recover from jet lag. Refreshed, continue to Ingolstadt. Napoleon arrived here on 18 April, 1809 on the eve of his memorable Ratisbonne Campaign. Your goal is the excellent Bavarian Army Museum (Bayerisches Armeemuseum, Schloss, Paradeplatz 4). Here you will find many superbly preserved Napoleonic uniforms. Be sure to ascend the endless stairways to the top where there are some wonderful Seven Years War dioramas using flats, including a colossal Leuthen.
From Ingolstadt you face a choice. You can tour scenic Bavaria including the ground of the memorable 1809 Campaign (hopefully armed with my book, Crisis on the Danube: Napoleon's Austrian Campaign of 1809, due out in March, 1990) [a shamless plug!- ED]; you can head east to Vienna where you should visit the Austrian Army Museum (Heeresmuseum) and the well-preserved fields of Aspern-Esslingand Wagram and take a day's excursion to Austerlitz, or head west towards Paris. Be prepared when you visit battlefields. They are not sign-posted like our ACW fields. You will have to work things out for yourself, but this exercise is quite often rewarding.
If you choose the western path, your next stop should be the war museum at Rastatt (south of Karlsruhe), on the fringes of the Black Forest (I'll repeat, you will be travelling through countryside full of historical, scenic, and gastronomic delights; I'm just mentioning some of the Napoleonic museums along the way). Here you will find one of the least visited, yet best, collections of Napoleonic uniforms. Because you are in Wurttemberg, the museum features its national uniforms including some very interesting (and to my knowledge not accurately reproduced in the uniform books) Wurttemberg uniforms. These troops provided some of Napoleon's staunchest allies. Their light infantry in 1809 performed prodigies of valor. Here you can see their uniforms. Take notes and pictures for your painting when you return home and be proud that your figures wear accurate uniforms.
In Paris everyone visits the renowned Musee d'Armee. It is a national treasure and should not be missed. Less frequently visited, but extremely rewarding, is the Musee Napoleonien (88 rue Saint-Honore) in Fontainbleau outside of Paris. The splendid uniforms on display remind one that the standard, basic uniforms endless repeated in most uniform books served as the normal dress, but variations were numerous. The combination of field expedients and man's desire for personalized ornamentation created many unique uniforms that should encourage the miniaturist to be bold in his painting.
Your return to Frankfurt should include enough time for a stop at Kaub, site of Blucher's Rhine crossing in 1814. This presents an opportunity to take a Rhine voyage which passes beneath numerous castles and fortresses and reminds one that this was a much contested border throughout history. If you are encumbered by baggage (wife and kids), leave them to continue the voyage to various downstream scenic sites while you disembark at Kaub. Here you will visit the Blucher museum. This quaint, small museum is full of delights. It has many Prussian uniforms including line, reserve, and landwehr, a very good collection of headgear, and a fair number of French uniforms. Particularly impressive is a French cuirass, penetrated by a canister round with undoubtedly lethal consequences. Blucher's traveling field chest is also on display.
If you have time, one other non-Napoleonic site is well worth a visit. Return to Frankfurt via the Tanus Mountains, where a Roman fort has been reconstructed at Sealburg on the site of the original. You can also walk along the original entrenchments of the Limes, the barrier the Romans built marking their furthest expansion into hostile, barbarian Germany. A recent publication, The Fall of the Roman Empire; The Military Explanation, puts forward the theory that it was the abandonment of these static fortifications that permitted the barbarians to penetrate into the interior and led to the empire's collapse.
UPDATE ON THE UNITED KINGDOM
Many visitors try to see the HMS Victory. No one, including myself, has succeeded in gaining access. Seemingly, tickets are reserved for special school groups and other privileged types. One's only hope is to arrive very early and expect to stand in line. Compensating for this bothersome experience are the adjacent maritime museums. One houses the Mary Rose and another a Royal Navy museum complete with a large Trafalgar display.
As noted in VII #4, the regimental museums are well worth visiting. Also I recommend the formidable earthworks of Maiden Castle. Their rings of towering dirt embankments and clever projections to achieve the flanking fire made the fortress invincible in pre-Roman days. When the Romans landed they took the fortress in something like 30 minutes! A nearby museum ghoulishly displays the consequences for one defender: a skeleton dug up from the castle reveals the point of a pilium resting against the lower spine having penetrated through the stomach.
On a more cheerful note, try to see a battle re-enactment when you visit. They are increasingly popular on the continent (I'm told the Czech government is permitting a large-scale encounter on the original Austerlitz field in the summer of'89) and are held about five times a summer in the UK. I observed a Sealed Knot (ECW) performance that was astonishing. Now, like then, the sides tend to be divided according to class. Thus I watched a working class Parliamentarian pike block work themselves into a frenzy with chants and oaths. Spearheaded by a largist brute, they charged a blue-blood guards unit right in front of the viewing stand. The guards had mistakenly taken up position in front of a deep trench with sharpened stakes (the Brits exceed us in their zeal for realism).
At the shock of contact, pikemen fight very roughly using the pikes as quarter staffs - pushing mightily as in a large rugby scrum - the guards recoiled slightly which caused the rear ranks to worry about impaling themselves on the stakes (these scrums are lively enough that bruises, contusions, and occasional broken bones happen). The wavering morale of the rear infected the entire unit and it broke. Both sides drew off to reform. The attackers chant began, they charged, and the guards broke at first contact! Here I was seeing a fact that Marbot and others have written about throughout military history: once a unit gains morale ascendancy over its opponent, it tends to win out with ease for the remainder of a campaign.
These then are a few of the highlights available for your pleasure if you should travel to Europe. Enjoy!
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