One army lost in the Russian winter, Napoleon raised another to keep his grip on Europe. A tired Russian Army and a raw Prussian force marched to meet him. Lutzen and Bautzen is a detailed and masterful study of a misunderstood and little covered campaign. Yet it was a war between titans as Napoleon led his conscripts to crush a foe worthy to face him. From the great battles of Lutzen and Bautzen to the skirmishes with marauding Cossacks, George Nafziger follows the complete campaign in Germany from top to bottom, with a wealth of detail. A great researcher, George Nafziger uncovers the secrets of one of the greatest of Napoleonic campaigns. This new edition incorporates a new set of images, and newly commissioned maps.

Following the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812, Napoleon found himself facing a new coalition of his old enemies. This fully illustrated, detailed account explores two key battles of strategic importance for the emperor. With incredible speed he raised an army of 200,000 men and marched to join the remnants of the old Grande Armee in Germany. However, he no longer faced the brittle enemies of 1805 and 1806 and at Lützen on 2 May the inexperience of his new army began to show. Faulty reconnaissance by raw cavalry allowed Ney's Corps to be surprised by Wittgenstein's Russians. This book describes the last realistic chance Napoleon had to regain his empire by defeating the allies in Germany before Austria stirred and the tide turned even more against him.

Napoleon 1813 describes Napoleon's efforts to recover from the catastrophe of 1812. It dismisses many conventional myths regarding the spring campaign of 1813. Throughout the story of the tumultuous spring days, Napoleon 1813 gives voice to the soldiers who participated in a campaign that proved Napoleon's last, best chance to preserve his dynasty.

The Battle of Lützen, 2 May 1813, was Napoleon's first battle of the 1813 campaign, and was soon followed by Bautzen on 20-21 May. Both were bloody affairs in which Napoleon's newly raised army met the Allied armies of Russia and Prussia, but they were otherwise very different. Lützen was an encounter battle, with troops committed to the fight as they arrived from various directions, and in which neither side had a clear idea of their enemy's strength and location. Bautzen was a set piece battle, fought on ground chosen and prepared for defense by the Allies. The two contrasting battles offer fascinating challenges for wargames commanders. The battles were not symmetrical. For example the French significantly outnumbered the Allies at Bautzen, but were weaker in cavalry. Both battles are generally deemed to have been French victories, albeit indecisive ones because Napoleon lacked the cavalry to carry out a pursuit that could turn a retreat into a rout. An analysis of the casualties however, shows that the results were not so clear cut. After these two 'victories', Napoleon was happy to agree to an armistice in June 1813. A discussion of the historical battles highlights errors made by the commanders on the day. The wargame commanders will have to decide how they deploy their forces (within historical constraints), and time their use of reserves. Will they repeat the mistakes of history, or will they make their own mistakes? This book helps teams of wargamers refight the battles on a table top with model soldiers. They can be fought as independent battles or, given the high level of commonality of the forces present, linked together in a mini-campaign. The guide sets out the strategic and political situation in central Europe and contains a thorough but clear account of the historical battles. It provides detailed orders of battle of the opposing armies, scaled down orders of battle for game purposes, maps of the historical events, stylized maps for laying out wargames tables, and instructions for each battle and for the mini-campaign. Design notes explain the rationale and historical background to the scenario instructions. The scenario maps are set out on square grids for ease of setting up tabletop terrain. Any set of wargames rules for the period is able to be used to play the scenarios. The key points for the game army lists are the number of units and their quality. Given that the sides were unequal, the game victory conditions are based on a comparison with the historical results, rather than the usual outright victory or defeat. This book is the second in a series of guides written by Rohan Saravanamuttu, the first being Leipzig, the Battle of the Nations: A Wargamer's Guide to the Battle of Leipzig 1813, also published by Helion & Co in this series.

This analysis of the world war between Napoleon and the 6th coalition in 1813 covers operations in Europe, Spain and North America. It examines the differences between alliances and coalitions, comparing the long-term international relationships in alliances and the short-term union of coalitions.

This work is the second in a three-volume series on the 1813 campaign; it is the first significant study on the 1813 campaign since Petre. Unlike the other English works on the campaign, it was prepared using French archival and published sources, as well as German, Danish, and Russian published sources. It discusses every battle and significant action in all parts of Germany - including various sieges. Detailed color maps support the major battles and a large collection of orders of battle drawn from the French Archives, as well as period-published documents, support the discussion of the campaign, complemented by a large selection of images. Both images and maps are new to this edition of the work.

This “taut narrative” of the fourteenth-century conflict between England and France offers “a detailed, climactic account of a legendary battle” (Publishers Weekly). The epic fourteenth-century Battle of Poitiers marked a major turn in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Prince Edward, known to all as the Black Prince, not only won a surprising victory in his first campaign as commander, but managed the nearly impossible feat of taking the French monarch, King Jean II, prisoner. In the summer of 1356, Prince Edward drove toward the Loire Valley, deep in French territory. There, he met the full French army led by King Jean and a number of French nobles, including veterans of the defeat at Crécy ten years before. Outnumbered, the Prince fell back, but in September, he turned near the city of Poitiers to make a stand. Historians Witzel and Livingstone provide a day-by-day description of the campaign of July to September 1356, climaxing with a vivid description of the Battle of Poitiers itself. The detailed account and analysis of the battle and the campaigns that led up to it has a strong focus on the people involved in the campaign: ordinary men-at-arms and noncombatants, as well as princes and nobles.