I had an extensive talk with Dr. Duffy at Historicon 93 concerning the Battle of Kolin and Home's account reporting Napoleon's comments on that battle. Dr. Duffy took the time to read Marc Raiff article and my above comments related to the Battle of Kolin. I am going to do my best to report the main points of our conversation: Duffy: (1) Kolin is a battle of extreme complexity, and when Home wrote his book in 1882, the battle had not yet been completely unraveled. (2) What Home reports is only pertinent to the second part of the main body and contrary to what Home claims, the first part of the main body attacked frontally after it was ordered to do so by Frederick in person and not after that commander witnessed the premature engagement of the second part of the main body. (3) It is quite possible that the second part of the main body wheeled into line as reported at the same time the first part of the main body made its frontal attack or shortly after. Note that Marc's overall comments on Kolin, are pertinent. Frederick should have never attacked the Austrians by defiling his troops in the open the way he did. That maneuver gave the Austrians the time to shift troops to face Frederick's attack. At Kolin, Frederick learned his lesson and at Leuthen he made sure that the troops making the oblique attack were hidden from the Austrians. As a matter of fact, he was so successful in doing so, that the initial diversion made on the Austrian left convinced the Austrian commander that the decisive attack was to be on his left. We know the rest. We hope the above will be of interest and shows the readership, how, on occasion, difficult it is to come up with the true picture of a given event. A FURTHER NOTE ON THE OBLIQUE ORDER by Jean Lochet When comparing the Battles of Kolin and Leuthen maps with the Battle of Austerlitz, I was suddenly struck by the similarity of Weyrother's plan of attack in that later battle. Please take a look at the adjacent map taken from Christopher Duffy's Austerlitz, p.94 (reproduced with his kind permission), it can be seen that is simply an oblique order attack similar to that of Kolin and Leuthen. Then, Napoleon comments become very pertinent. Indeed, a flank march was very vulnerable when facing an adversary that could maneuver! On the Reliability of Data: What Happened at Kolin? Back to Empire, Eagles, & Lions Table of Contents Vol. 2 No. 4 Back to EEL List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 by Emperor's Headquarters This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com