Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

This is a question that I have,
The Spanish army under Captain General Castaños defeated French troops in Bailen, great feat though was the only victory, after that were all defeats, Tudela, Ocaña, Medellin, Almunacid, etc. .. ..
And after using "mixed" armies were more victories in the Iberian peninsula, Fuentes de Oñoro, the Arapiles, Talavera, Victoria, etc ...
The question is:
Across Europe, in the Napoleonic era any army defeated Napoleon?, An army formed by a single nation, not as many nations in Leipzig or Waterloo for example.
You who are more aware and see if they know.

Thanks and regards.

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General de Brigada Jose Angel "Trane" Barredo.
Comandante de la Brigada Española.

The Archduke Charles inflicted what most objective observers would have to call a defeat at Aspern-Essling in 1809 that drove him back across the Danube. This setback tends to be forgotten because Napoleon learned from his mistakes, regrouped his forces and won a crushing victory at Wagram a few weeks later that ended the war.

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Every generation gets the Greeks and Romans it deserves.

History is a bad joke played by the living on the dead.

Well, there was the Austrians at Aspern-Essling, although the Bulletin of the Grande Armee states that it was not a loss and later the campaign culminated in Wagram. Then there are the Russians in the 1812 campaign, where although the French prevailed on many fields such as Smolensk and Borodino, the net was a strategic nightmare after Maloyaroslavets led to the Grande Armee retreating over the ground already wasted by war.

Of course, the good thing about these games is that we can try to re-write history on the virtual fields.

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Marechal Jeff Bardon
Duc de Castiglione et Prince de Wagram
Commandant de la Garde Imperiale

Salute!

Good question Trane...

The first battles that leap to my mind are: Eylau - though this was more of a Draw as far as the battle went, with both sides remaining on the field at the close of the fighting, Bennigsen then undertook the calculations of a commander as described in Clausewitz's On War: Darkness brings it to a halt: no one can se, and no one cares to trust himself to chance. The time has come to reckon up how much in the way of serviceable troops is left on either side - troops, that is, which are not yet burned out like dead volcanoes. One estimates how much ground has been won or lost, as well as the degree of security one's rear. The results, along with personal impressions of the bravery and cowardice, intelligence and stupidity that one thinks one has observed in one's own troops and the enemy's, are then combined in an overall impression on which a decision is based: either to quit the field or to renew the fight in the morning.
Bennigsen decided to withdraw, and Napoleon was able to claim the field...

Then there is Heilsberg, in the Spring Campaign the following year, when again Bennigsen was able to withstand the fury of Murat's assault, and remain on the field until the end of the day, before again deciding withdrawal was the best option.

Both of these examples are more of tactical checks on Napoleon's armies, with the opponent's retreating eventually.

And finally, the Battle of Maloyaroslavets in the Russian Campaign.
Again, more of a tactical Draw, but as the Russians withdrew from the fighting range, leaving Napoleon's army (again) upon the field, things took a different turn, of a decidedly decisive nature: Napoleon took part in a reconnaissance (as was his custom) and had a frightful brush with a band of Cossacks.

This alarmed him so much that he let his emotions get in the way of the necessary martial calculations, and called off further scouting efforts - which would have shown the way was clear before him - and instead made the fateful decision that the Grande Armee would retreat back towards Smolensk over the route taken in the fall - and history well records all that followed.

Regards,

Napoleon was a brilliant propagandist and many of the battles that the Bulletins touted as victories were actually draws or, in the case of Aspern-Essling, actual defeats. Maintaining the myth of Napoleon's invincibility was probably worth 20,000 men on the battlefield.

Hard to call an assault across the Danube a victory if you build a bridge, cross the river with your army, get mauled, and then retreat back again.

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Every generation gets the Greeks and Romans it deserves.

History is a bad joke played by the living on the dead.

Salute!

Symbolic slap against the forehead: as a good officer of La Grande Armee I obviously have driven all memory of Aspern-Essling from my mind.

That battle by far should represent the tactical victory of a single nation army against Napoleon.

The thing about this though, and those I mentioned in my previous post was that these checks, Draws, Minor Victory (Aspern-Essling) is that Napoleon recovered from them to go on and defeat the foe - save for Maloyaroslavets which ended up being the ingredient for a strategic withdrawal on Napoleon's part with disastrous results.

In the long list of Napoleon's victories, the net result was often the strategic defeat of the enemy - for that campaign.

Regards,

Very true, although the repulse at Aspern-Essling did only leave the two sides eyeing each other across the Danube for a while.

Eylau could have been a disaster for the French, especially with Lestoq and the small Prussian contingent having led Ney on a merry chase before beating them to the field. Even though it was a small force, that one was multinational as without the Prussians, Napoleon would have had the free use of Ney's corps in the initial deployment.

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Marechal Jeff Bardon
Duc de Castiglione et Prince de Wagram
Commandant de la Garde Imperiale

Marengo was nearly a defeat, you could say Napoleon lost the first battle in the morning and Desaix won the second battle in the evening...Not nearly the great victory portrayed by Napoleon later.

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Field Marshal Sir Edward Blackburn, 1st Duke of Aberdeen K.G.
85th (Buck's Light Volunteers) Regiment of Foot
16th British Brigade
7th Division
III (Peninsular) Corps
2nd Battalion, Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards