Introduction to the Sixth 1813 Campaign

Map of Europe showing campaign areas

 

Aim of the Campaign

This is a fictional campaign, loosely based on the historical 1813 campaign.    This campaign has been chosen because it involves all of the armies of the Napoleonic Wars.   It is also a period when all of the national armies were more or less equal in organisation, morale and combat ability.

The campaign is designed to provide interesting for my wife and I to wargame.   In doing so I wanted to be able to use all of the model soldiers, and model buildings, in my collection.

Organisation of the Campaign

All of the maps have been designed to make it easy to transfer battles from the campaign map to the wargames table, and back again. 

The orders of battle have been designed to make use of all of my model soldiers.   They were bought before the campaign was designed, and the types and quantities were to suit orders of battle from previous rules.    They covered all of the major, and most of the minor, armies of the Napoleonic period.   They consisted of 4 infantry battalions of 30 figures, 1 cavalry squadron of 10 figures and 4 guns and 16 gunners.

The smallest nations, such as the Polish, consisted of 120 infantry, 10 cavalry and 4 guns and crew.   Most nations, such as British, had four such formations.   The largest nation, the French, had 8 such formations (including one to represent the garde.

I wanted to fight multi corps battles, so each corps had to be the same size as one of those formations.   I settled on 4 infantry brigades of 8, 1 cavalry brigade of 4 and 1 gun with crew of 4 to represent each corps.

You will find a full order of battle for each nation in the list of labels opposite.   For example 11 is the French, and 12 the Prussian, for north Germany

Campaign Areas

Europe if divided into five campaign areas, three in Germany and two in Spain

Each of these areas has one French and one Allied army

Each army has four corps

North Germany – 1^st French and Prussian armies

Central Germany – 2^nd French and Russian armies

Southern Germany – 3^rd French (Bavarian) and Austrian armies

North Spain – 5^th French and Anglo-Portuguese armies

South Spain – 6^th French and Spanish armies

Campaign Phases

I wanted to use each of the armies in rotation, and avoid the whole campaign becoming too complicated and confused.   So I decided to introduce a campaign phase, or a mini campaign within the main 1813 campaign.

Each phase would be designed to provide a 6-10 day mini campaign, similar to the Waterloo campaign.   Each should provide 4-6 battles to wargame.   Each would be a stand-alone campaign, starting with each army being full strength and with four days supplies for each corps.

History of the Campaign

The campaign started in April 2009.   Since then it has run nonstop, though it has been amended and redesigned six times.   This was because I improved the maps, or I wanted to run it as a PBEM rather than solo campaign.   Twice I have restarted it because I reached December 1813.

First a solo campaign from April to October 2009, had 3 phases and 14 battles

Second PBEM from October 2009 to July 2013, had 9 phases and 52 battles

Third PBEM from July 2013 to March 2015, had 27 phases and 95 battles

Fourth PBEM from March 2015 to February 2016, had 15 phases and 58 battles

Fifth Solo from February 2016 to May 2020, had 21 phases and 98 battles.

So far the campaign has provided 75 campaigns 321 battles to wargame

All of these campaigns concentrated on each phase, with no attempt to coordinate the overall 1813 campaign.   They worked perfectly well to provide the battles to wargame.   However I now want to introduce an overall strategic element to the campaign, to coordinate all five campaign areas, and to link all phases within each area.

 

Map showing military regions of Europe

To achieve this I have designed a whole new series of maps divided into fictional military districts in place of nations and counties.   Europe has 33 military regions.   Each campaign area has 3 regions.   Each region has nine military district.   Each square on this map is one district.   Each district has nine towns (not shown on this map) and each town is a wargames table.  

Campaign Diary Blog

A complete history of the campaign has been recorded in a series of blogs, starting in October 2009.   Each campaign day has been recorded and each battle has a wargame report with photos and description.   There are 14 blogs, all listed on the right under My Blog List.

This current blog started in February 2015, which was the start of the Fifth campaign

Start of Sixth 1813 Campaign

On 1 February 1813 the allied nations of Austria, England, Prussia, Russia and Spain declare war on France.