Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Having now worked through the Fall.oob I think the quality values are solid except the Saxon foot units.
Be it historical descriptions or the notes of the scenario designer all seem to point out that the Saxons were rather decent or even good, at least in the Berlin campaigns there is no doubt about their quality being at least average but more likely above average. So rating them equally like comparable French or French allied units seems the way to go. But in game all the Saxons foot units, even the artillery, are one level below average in quality while the Saxons horse units are rated equally to others and some even above the average. Usually this below average rating is reserved for shaky nations like the Bavarians.
Just wonder if this was only done because of the Saxons division going over to the Allies at the Battle of Leipzig or if there are reasons I just didn't find.

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Traitors aren't average quality warriors. The Saxons and Wurttembergers horse and foot should be C/D I think. Particularly that they would backstab their allies amid battle is telling of their combat reliability. This is not in consideration that even C quality units shouldn't be considered as reliable given the morale check system modifiers and effect.

The in-game moral values have nothing to do with the "reliability" of a side or if a unit is backstabbing you.
It's about combat performance and I don't see signs that even at Leipzig the Saxons performed below average. Yes they went over and I admit that Reynier seems to have thought about them as being unreliable, but likely that came from the time after the failed Berlin campaign as in this campaigns they seem to have been rather enthusiastic about marching on Berlin.
The current levels are maybe justified for Leipzig but not before it.

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The Saxon horse had to be totally rebuilt (for all practical purposes) after the 1812 campaign. Read up a bit on the kind of horses they were mounted on AND the quality of the trooper. Most of their veteran troopers perished in Russia except for what was in the cadres in the depots.

I used Nafziger and many others as my source for the Saxons. Anyway if you dont like the values copy the OB file and change them.

That is the beauty of these games .. you can edit the OB files. Unlike the ACW series where we are patiently waiting for the OB files to be unlocked in each game the Nap Battles series OBs can be copied and edited. Go for it!

I wont be updating the Saxon morale values. I have FIVE games total that I will work on for JTS. Two of them are in progress and three more are mine to work on. I need to forge ahead and do more work to make a living.

The Leipzig team and I discussed the morale values back in the Spring of 2009. We spent over a month deciding on the ratings for the units. Some I had to work on later (like the Prussian "Frewillige Jagers").

If you disagree with the ratings - well I understand. I dont agree with the entire Waterloo OB for the French (morale ratings). They are way too high. And people complained when I raised the French morale ratings in the first Jena update too. Where is the outcry for Waterloo? Not to be found.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Horse had to be rebuild?
In that case I wonder if the quality ratings were mixed up because it's the foot that is below average, only the foot and even the foot artillery. All Saxon horse units are rated average on the level of most of the other countries, and the 8 sq. of Saxon Cuirassiers rated at A+ are the best cuirassiers in the OOB.

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For perspective would you rate the Finns in the summer of 1944 as C quality units? I say no way because they were fanatic veterans for the most part and struggling against overwhelming odds. Would you rate the Finns in the autumn of of 1944 as C quality units? Hell no, they were wasted in total retreat, surrendered and immediately turned on their allies. These are intrinsic changes in the Finnish army's performance. Combat performance has alot more to do with morale and politic than you let on.
Warfighting requires high army morale. Every Franco-Nordic alliance since Charlemagne has been plauged with enmity between those ethnic competitors. If thousands of Saxons defect in the middle of a battle it can be safely assumed they did not have reliable quality to their former command. It wasn't the horses fault that German folk were tired of seeing their lands reduced to burning ruins by the non-German empires surrounding them again. If scenarios were designed with the fanatical unit trait as a basic attribute then Saxon forces could be modelled for both moderate to good combat performance and lower morale by not giving them that trait.

Again, at some point it might by justified but not in general, or did the Finns suck all of 1944?
And the Saxons performed well before Leipzig, or not?
You don't really think because someone at some point betrayals you his performance sucked all the time or do you?

Besides this after your logic I would have to rate the Saxon cavalry also down but it's on the level of most other French Allies if not higher.

In the end it's about combat performance and comparability.
If Bill's statement is correct from his notes:
"Once the Saxons declared for Napoleon they fought decently and acquitted themselves well at Großbeeren and Dennewitz concerning the situation they were placed in."
Fun fact, look at the Grossbeeren scenario, there the Saxons are rated higher. And these values should be used at Dennewitz too.
If not in Lepzig it's maybe OK but before Leipzig I see no reasons, not from a historical perspective nor from a gaming perspective.


Anyhow I checked were that Fall.oob gets used and its only in:
T4-Elsterwerda_HTH.scn
T5-Meridian_HTH.scn
T6-Clash_of_the_Titans_HTH.scn
z_M15-T4-Elsterwerda_HTH.scn
z_M15-T5-Meridian_HTH.scn
z_M15-T6-Clash_of_the_Titans_HTH.scn

So the problem is not really there as these are Hypothetical, What-If and Tournament scenarios.

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Fall.oob is also cited in the Fall 1813 and Battle of Leipzig campaign scenarios.

In case of the Fall campaign is pretty bad , especially if the campaign goes well for the French there is no reason for Saxon foot units having below average quality values at any point in the campaign.

The Leipzig campaign seems to be based on the previous action running historical so maybe lower values can be justified as the Saxons went over at Leipzig.

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From Napoleon's German Allies (3): Saxony 1806-15:
On 9 October Napoleon reviewed the VII Corps near Eilenburg, and delivered the following address:
"Soldiers of the VII Corps! You French and Saxons! You have been very unfortunate in the last affair. I have come to put myself at your head and to give you revenge! It is nothing new to see the French eagle and the Saxon flag together, as this alliance has existed since the Seven Years' War! You should remember that you are the same soldiers as at Friedland and Wagram! I have not made peace so that the enemy can extend his frontiers to the Elbe. The king, who is your father has given his army into my hand; he who cannot serve his king faithfully can go!"
Describing the mood of the Saxons on hearing Napoleon's address to the VII Corps, a Saxon officer wrote:
"It must have been obvious to any bystander of this scene that the Saxon reaction was not rehearsed but spontaneous. This mood was not solely the result of their recent battle losses but certainly of the time spent in Torgau [APR,MAY] fortress during which hopes ran high that they would soon join their German brothers in the common fight against their arrogant French oppressors. Fate had decreed otherwise, but there was certainly no Saxon soldier there that day who followed the French eagles with a light heart. Their discontent had grown throughout 1813 as they had seen their homeland desolated, plundered and burnt by their French "allies". It cost the officers immense trouble to maintain order in their units."

The very first action after the armistice in the autumn of 1813 leaves the Saxons combat ineffective. Yet they are still fronted against repeated Allied attacks afterwards. I realize you can't agree but, for anyone else, yeah Game Over they weren't fighting for L'Empereur or das Konig anymore.

The morale of the cuirassiers - they were untouched the by events in 1812. This was a regiment that was based on a cadre left in Saxony. Thus the better morale grade. Remember that cuirassiers at this point are largely men that were either nobility or were gentry class. The Saxon cavalry was usually the best in Europe. One of the reasons why Napoleon courted the Saxon king so much was that their cavalry helped the cause. The infantry - not so.

There is French lower class infantry in 1813 as well. Like the Saxons they were rushed into new units and it showed. The Saxon regiments were not the men of 1812. They were newly raised built around a depot company.

The VII Corps was not an average corps in the French army. Marmont's VI Corps, Bertrand's IV Corps could be rated average with the French Marin troops being above average. Ney's (and later Souham) III Corps was never the same after Lutzen and Katzbach. See my ratings for them in the Fall OB File. C (4) for the French Legere (usually B - 5) and D (3) for the French Ligne infantry. The foreign contingent Hesse-Darmstadt was still of decent quality. I rated them rather highly I thought.

So all in all I thought it was fair. The officers of the Saxon army were not exactly excited about more combat in the name of France. Had the Saxon king remained neutral he would have been chastised by Napoleon on one hand for not upholding his agreement and then chastised by the Allies on the other for siding with Nappy. I think you can see his point of view but the average foot soldier was not excited about fighting for France at all by this point.

So there you have it. Fair in that the French have bad morale in certain places and the German troops are mixed as well. Some of the contingents have average morale, some good, some not so good.

Our team hashed out the morale values long ago. I wont go back over this ground again with any of the morale values of this trilogy of games (1813-14).

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Ok that quote is from early October and likely explains the situation at that time, nonetheless it doesn't explain the Saxons good combat performance at Grossbeeren & Dennewitz.
- At Grossbeeren Bulow had to throw 2 brigades at the Saxon division Sahr that were likely twice the size of the Saxon division. And the French Division Durett for comparision came in to replace the division Sahr and was thrown back, its troops reached the edge of the forest even before the Saxons, a statement of how "good" the French were at Grossbeeren.
Overall about 35k Prussians were needed to drive the VII corps off what was only had about 23k men.
- At Dennewitz the Prussians first failed to get the Saxons out of Gohlsdorf and had to send the fusiliers in and even they had trouble dislodging the Saxons, what made the fight for that village so bloody. That The Saxons later had to retreat isn't any sign of weakness or unwillingness to fight. The Allies had build up strength on that wing more and more over the course of the battle, so much that the French artillery had to be moved back. Ney didn't have a clue what he was doign when the ordered Oudinot's XII to leave the Saxons alone and march to the right wing to help Bertrand's IV corps.

The Saxons ratings for GB are good enough to recreate history, those at Dennewitz not as the Prussians had to use their fusilier bat. to dislodge the Saxons from Gohlsdorf. In the scenario we have much larger Prussian bat. rated with A/B against Saxons who are much smaller and rated with D mostly. SO even before the Prussian player would even consider to use his fulisier bat. he will have cleaned Gohlsdorf and any Saxon trace.


In general it seems to me that the Saxon "mood" has deteriorated after the 2 failed attempts to reach Berlin. An explanation might be that Napoleons supposedly had ordered to to leave nothing but burned earth behind on the right bank of the Elbe. That kind of devastation surely did deteriorate the Saxons will to fight for France, a prove of this was that on 23rd September the Saxon Battalion König passed over to the enemy. But it was not before Leipzig that this manifested on a greater scale with the whole Saxon 24th infantry division changing sides, it should be noted that other Saxons troops(cavalry for example) did not switch sides at Leipzig. And we shall not forget that even at the end at Leipzig it weren't the soldiers who made the decision but the officers of the 24th division. If they had not done so the division would have surely fought on, maybe not with the performance the Saxons had shown in the 2 attempts to reach Berlin.


So far for consider quality values on a practical approach. On the theoretical quality values one has to acknowledge that the Saxon cavalry that went to Russia was pretty much wiped out, while the Infantry suffered heavy but not nearly as bad as the cavalry. VII corps where the main bulk of the Saxon foot troops were, had on 7th December still 7000 Saxons and 4000 French, it left 1500 at Warsaw were they were captured and had a last battle on 13 February at Kalisch losing heavy casualties. Lets say the Saxons alone were down to 3500, the 2 Saxon divisions in that corps were about 13k men strong in June 1812, that means they still had around 23% of there initial strength, pretty bad but not comparable with the Saxon cavalry that could only form a single under strength squadron of the men coming back from Russia.
So if all this is considered for rating the Saxons quality there are enough reasons to set the Saxons cavalry quality lower than that of its infantry. I don't see a reason why the Saxons should have had greater success than the French in rebuilding their cavalry force, French cuirassier are B in the game, and so the Saxon cavalry quality should mirror that of the French. Only units not to consider for this way of rating would be those left behind on the Russian campaign, these were:
Leib Kürassiere Garde with 4 Squadrons
Leib Grenadier Garde with 2 Battalions
Jäger with 1 Company

In the end this theoretical quality rating is futile and can at best be a starting point but not the end as the main factor, like it seems to have been for the rest of the French forces, has to be the combat performance.
I read reports about the battles of Grossbeeren & Dennewitz and see no reason rating the Saxon below average at Dennewitz or in general below average before the Berlin campaigns are done. The ratings they have for Grossbeeren should be used throughout the Fall campaign except for the Leipzig battle.

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I think you're whitewashing their lackluster performance in all of these battles. No author of these battles would condemn the Saxons and speak bad of the dead. That would just cause a shite storm. Noone really takes an objective point of view of Napoleonic operations and there are few uncorrupted details. I know at Gross Beeren that the Saxons could have easily held out until nightfall. At Dennewitz they should have been rotated but, both actions were lost causes to begin with. It takes an arsehole like me to speak the truth; Saxons were vassal cuckolds used by the Prussians and the French to die in their wars while their own retard King sold their lives for his legitimacy. Worthless mercenaries of a pilfered electorate without any moral cause of war.

Where is it lackluster if a force of 23-24k troops yields to an enemy with 35k troops?
The rain made fire ineffective at Grossbeeren, that is why the Prussians marched forward with bayonets lowered. First smashing the French right with twice as many troops and then driving off the French division, whose performance was the really lackluster at that day, gave the last Saxons division no chance of holding out on its own, especially with its flank wide open as Oudinot was just no where he should have been. That the corps could have "easily held out until nightfall" is a bad joke with such a force ration and under such circumstances.

There is no whitewashing if one realistically judges the troops performance by considering all circumstances. This distorted view simply comes from all the excuses invented over the years for the failure of the fall campaign. Like that of Ney who gave the fault for loosing Denenwitz to the Saxons although he was simply unable to lead an army and conduct a proper battle, he was likely the bravest of the brave but that's seems to be all he was good for. Or that of Napy who contributed the loss at Leipzig to the Saxons switching sides although he had himself simply maneuvered into a bad situation by giving the initiative to the enemy.

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What version of the events at Gross Beeren are you working from? I know there is a decent German internet source that describes times, particular battalions, and specific locations. I cannot relocate it. Bulow's assault into Gross Beeren wasn't so massive. From his position only a Brigade could advance in column into the town. He sent 2 additional battalions as flankers. The assault happened after an hour and a half of artillery exchange. The brigade (1st?) of the Sahr division in opposition at Gross Beeren was steam rolled out of the town. It's second brigade managed to hold off the first Prussian advance on the windmill hill south of the town. It was then ejected by combined infantry and cavalry.

L'Coq's Saxon division also ran away. Durrette didn't have enough men to retake what von Sahr lost. I'm not saying the Saxons were too blame for the failed Berlin campaign. It was an obvious understrengthed feint used to buy time against the strategically insecure position of the grand army stretching to Dresden. The Saxons did manage to fight for awhile (clap, clap, clap) but, they weren't going to stand and die like seasoned soldiers. If they held that excellent position (for the 40 minutes of autumn twilight) then maybe the French corps could have redeployed around it for the next day of rugged defense. Retreat was the better option considering all circumstances though.

I wish I could read "Waffenstillstand und die Schlacht bei Groß-Beeren". It seems to go into minute details even if the reader can assume it's geared towards Prussian propaganda.