Many years ago when a good friend and I were contemplating expanding from naval gaming to land warfare we were discussing what period to start in. We opted for the Napoleonic wars over the American Civil War because the uniforms were more colorful and we felt it would be fun to learn about an area of history we knew literally nothing about. In proof of that ignorance I began collecting the Prussian army. After all they fought at Waterloo so they must have been heavy hitters through the whole thing. Needless to say I felt a lot better when I eventually found out about the 1813 campaign. Recently several good books have come out on this campaign. Osprey released "Leipzig" and "Lutzen and Bautzen" in it's campaign series, Digby Smith came out with "1813: Leipzig" and George Nafziger finished his trilogy on the campaign. Only after reading these books, especially Nafziger's "Napoleon at Dresden" did I realize what fertile soil this campaign was for the wargamer. Consider this, if you like diversity of uniforms on the battlefield, damn near everybody fought in this campaign. The French and their allies, Saxony, Bavaria, Westphalia, Wurzberg, Wurttemberg, Cleve-Berg, Baden, Italy, the Duchy of Warsaw, the Saxon duchies and Denmark. The Allies in comparison were pretty bland. The Austrians wore white, the Russians green and the Prussians blue. A dash of color was added by the Prussian reserve regiments who started with dull gray but exploded in color when uniforms from England started arriving. There weren't that many of any given style, so a battalion-by-battalion breakdown is needed if you want to paint these folks in accurate uniforms. As they became available recycled French uniforms were also used. There were also any number of Freikorps, other privately raised units and Cossacks wandering around the countryside Two of the more interesting units are the Thuringian battalion and the Mecklenburg-Strelitz hussars. The former was a unit raised in the Saxon duchies for service with the French. However they ran into a group of raiding Prussian hussars, decided their interests were more in line with the Allies then the French and went on to fight with distinction through Leipzig. I'm still not sure what kind of uniform they wore. The hussars were raised by the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and fought in his son, Prinz Carl's, Prussian brigade. They captured a French eagle at Leipzig. The siege of Hamburg also offers something different. Davout held Hamburg with XIII Corps and the Danish auxiliary corps. He was opposed by Wallmoden with the Russian German legion, some Swedish units, Hanseatic units, the British 73rd Regiment of foot, a detachment of the King's German Legion and a rocket battery. Besides the uniforms there are other reasons for wargaming the 1813 campaign. First of all the playing field was as level as it was going to get during the Napoleonic wars. The French army had too many conscripts and not enough horses. The Russian had suffered almost as badly as the French during the retreat from Moscow. The Prussian army was untried and also had a large contingent of conscripts, in the form of the Landwehr. The Swedish army was small and Bernadotte was constrained in its use by politics. The Austrians still had organizational, doctrinal and money problems they hadn't completely solved. Napoleon was the wild card and the Allies neutralized him to a certain extent by refusing to fight him after the summer armistice. Another reason that may not appeal to the fans of BIG battles is that many of the battles were corps sized and in some cases division sized. Even Leipzig can be broken down into several component fights. The battle for Mockern in example was essentially fought between Yorck and Marmont. Napoleon apparently didn't know it was fought until it was over. Yet it is considered a major part of the overall battle. Finally there is the opportunity for all those "what if" engagements. What if England had decided that it's interests were best served by marking time in Spain and regaining Hanover? The dispatching of the KGL and the Brunswickers to Northern Europe may have livened things around Hamburg. The disintegration of Napoleon's German alliances could make for some interesting three-way battles. Just because you didn't like being dominated by France didn't mean you were thrilled by the notion of being dominated by Prussia. For a campaign you might try aggressively pursuing the Allies in either the north or south as opposed to waiting passively like Napoleon. If you are interested in learning more about this campaign I would suggest starting with the Osprey books. I'm sure most of you are familiar with them. For a more in depth account I would advise you to go to the George Nafziger's trilogy, Lutzen & Bautzen: Napoleon's Spring Campaign of 1813", "Napoleon at Dresden" and "Napolean at Leipzig". The first book of this series is out of print but I have seen it offered on the used book sites on the web. These books have any number of maps well suited for transfer to the tabletop. Other books of interest would include Smith's mentioned earlier and Petre's "Napoleon's last campaign in Germany" (also out of print). Finally I would like to say that this article is meant to be informational not scholarly. I've noticed a lack of information in many of the general histories of the Napoleonic wars and (trusting a rapidly failing memory) in this journal. I thought I would give Hal some printer fodder to work with and at the same time present what I think is one of the more interesting campaigns of the Napoleonic wars. Back to MWAN #117 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2002 Hal Thinglum 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