"The entire work is a treat for military specialists and lay readers alike" - Clausewitz 1796 reviewed on H-War

Delighted to see our translation of Clausewitz's history of Napoleon's 1796 Italian Campaign receive this excellent review by Doina Georgeta Harsanyi (Central Michigan University) for H-War. Some quotes from her assessment of the work:

"Military historians and army officers will find much to enjoy in this theoretician’s take on a well-known sequence of events."

"The narrative is rich in perceptive insights"

"excellent critical apparatus"

"Richly researched footnotes"

"The entire work is a treat for military specialists and lay readers alike"

I am very grateful to Dr Harsanyi for her thorough review and generous comments.

Napoleon's 1796 Italian Campaign: "Bravo!"

Dr Konstantinos Travlos has written a nice 'annotated presentation' about the first Clausewitz volume Professor Murray and I translated and edited, 'Napoleon's 1796 Italian Campaign'.

Konstantinos rightly declares his conflict of interest in that he and I are friends and collaborators, notably on his own excellent wargame campaign book on the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, 'Bloody Big Balkan Battles!'.

Nevertheless, he is a serious scholar of military history and his remarks merit attention. I therefore offer some of them here:

'The editorial job and translation are excellent.'

'The decision to include the notes of an earlier French translator (Colin) is brilliant [...]. It also makes reading the text more interesting as it calls on you to compare what Clausewitz wrote with what Colin and the translators/editors think he wrote.'

'Bravo!'

But I encourage you to read the full presentation, as Konstantinos provides a number of perceptive observations of his own on the lessons Clausewitz teaches.

I am grateful to Konstantinos for his kind words and for his thoughtful discussion of our work. I hope he will enjoy our forthcoming translations of the two volumes on the 1799 campaigns in Italy and Switzerland just as much.

(For other reviews of the 1796 book, see here.)

 

JMH rates our Clausewitz 1796 book 'outstanding'

JMH, the Journal of Military History, is really the premier place to get a positive book review, and Professor Frederick Schneid has kindly provided one. Professor Schneid is a great authority on the wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, having published a number of books of his own on this topic.

We were therefore very happy to see his review of our translation of Clausewitz's history of Napoleon's 1796 Italian Campaign in JMH 84/2 (April 2020). He calls it:

'An outstanding example of smooth translating and erudite editing and annotation. Virtually every page contains textual footnotes to help an unfamiliar reader better understand the detail that Clausewitz's contemporary audience would have understood. [...] Murray & Pringle further provide the reader with current interpretation and detail that makes this particular Clausewitzian history more valuable than the original unexpurgated work.'

Our thanks to Professor Schneid for his kind review.

Clausewitz 1796: "three books in one"

The Michigan War Studies Review has published an enthusiastic review of 'Napoleon's 1796 Italian Campaign', our edited and translated edition of Clausewitz's history of the campaign. Choice quotes:

'a valuable contribution to the growing body of work involving the erudite Prussian'

'effectively three books in one [viz., the original German manuscript; analysis from the French general staff edition; and Professor Murray's examination of] subjects and passages that anticipate ideas contained in On War.'

'a fine appendix of orders of battles'

'I applaud Nicholas Murray and Christopher Pringle for their salutary, thought-provoking addition to the literature by and about Clausewitz, who remains the model of how to write operational military history'

My thanks to Professor John T. Kuehn for his generous review.
The review is here.
The book itself is here.

We're doing our best to make further salutary and thought-provoking additions to the Clausewitz literature; our manuscripts for two more Clausewitz volumes on the history of the 1799 campaigns in Italy and Switzerland are in press with the University Press of Kansas now.

Clausewitz at Arcole

Regular readers of this blog will know of my active interest in Clausewitz: specifically, the publication a year ago of my translation (together with Professor Murray) of Clausewitz's history of Napoleon's 1796 campaign, and the series of operational-level scenarios I have written to refight it.

After a bit of a lull, I am back on a Clausewitz kick again, so we tried the latest in the 1796 series, my scenario for Arcole.

There was supposed to be a pic here of Colin's beautiful 6mm Napoleonics,
but he didn't get a photo to me in time. See Colin's own blog here.

The actual battle of Arcole was a rather remarkable action in its own right, lasting three days; having failed with his attack on the first day, Napoleon then repeated it on the second with exactly the same forces, exactly the same plan, and exactly the same result. It wasn't until day three that he executed the outflanking maneuver he should have started with and finally drove off the exhausted Austrians.

My scenario is set at a larger, operational scale, so does not necessarily reproduce the tactical situation of the battle of Arcole, as players' operational-level decisions can produce very different situations. It covers 3 weeks of action in an area about 100x150km. It uses stripped-down BBB mechanisms - no shooting, no formations, units just move and assault like boardgame counters - so the game is pretty swift.

The armies are a splendid contrast of quality vs quantity. Alvinczy's Austrians have 15 units to the French 10, but the Austrians include a number of raw newly raised Landwehr and the garrison of Mantua weakened by sickness; they are also crippled by the usual ponderous Austrian passivity. The French thin blue line is indeed pretty thin - and has to face in two directions, as it is besieging Mantua in its rear - but its units are veteran, they include some tough aggressive grenadiers, and they have Napoleon plus more competent generals than they know what to do with, so their army is very agile and resilient.

At the start, the more defeatist of the two Austrian players thought the game looked rather grim and limited (especially for them). However, as it went on it became more and more interesting, and built to a really tense and exciting climax.

Initially it was difficult for the Austrians to get their forces into action en masse. Once they did arrive in force on the plain around Vicenza and Padua, though, they put the outnumbered French under real pressure. The French responded by bringing one division through the mountains against the Austrian rear (rather like Napoleon's astonishing march through the same terrain that historically led to the battle of Bassano earlier in this campaign); that division swiftly died, but meanwhile the French had also pulled troops away from Mantua, both to strengthen their front line and also to tempt the Mantua garrison to sally and perhaps expose the fortress to an assault.

The Austrians did indeed sally. While their main force ground inexorably southwards, a division of the Mantua garrison came out to threaten the French rear. It was beaten in the field, but with one turn to go it was able to fall back and capture Verona, cutting the French line of communications.

At that point the Austrians were looking good for a draw or even a win, depending what casualties each side might inflict on the last turn. Unfortunately for them, the conquerors of Verona then rolled snake-eyes. In their debilitated state, that meant the unit vacated the city, fled northward (presumably more concerned about their own line of communications than about interrupting the French LOC), and became Spent. The French were able to retake Verona, and the casualty balance was sufficiently in their favour that they claimed victory.

Mark J remarked how playing at this operational level provided insights which we don't usually get from our tabletop wargames. In particular, the interaction of the field operations and the siege was an unusual element that the game brought out well.

The scenario only needs minor tweaking, and will certainly be played again. Meanwhile the (untweaked) version is available in the BBB Yahoo group files as usual.

Al Nofi reviews Clausewitz's history of the 1796 campaign

Quite an honour to get this positive review from Al Nofi, a real luminary of military history, of wargame design, and of the serious professional conflict simulation community, on the influential StrategyPage website:
link
"Napoleon's 1796 Campaign is a valuable book for anyone with an interest in the period or in military theory, and arguably one that should be read twice".

Napoleon's 1796 Italian Campaign (Clausewitz) - it's published!

I am delighted to report that our annotated translation of Clausewitz's history of Napoleon's famous first campaign is now published.

 
University Press of Kansas catalog entry here.

Available from Amazon here.

My previous blog post about the work here.

We are honored and grateful that several eminent historians have written such positive endorsements of the work (though of course, the late General von Clausewitz deserves most of the credit).

I do however take some pride in noting that we delivered the manuscript in good order and in such good time that the book has been published ahead of the originally planned October release date.

I also managed to complete the set of operational-level wargame scenarios that accompanies the book, albeit the last few are not yet playtested. These can all be found in the files of the BBB Yahoo group.

Napoleon crosses the Mincio: Borghetto (1796)

Borghetto is the fourth in the series of operational-level scenarios I have developed to accompany the forthcoming English edition of Clausewitz's history of Napoleon's 1796 campaign. With casualties of under 1,000 on each side, the battle of Borghetto was a minor action in tactical terms, but the crossing of the Mincio was a very significant operation which resulted in the expulsion of the Austrian army from Italy (for three months, anyway).

French grenadiers wade across the Mincio at Borghetto

When I drafted the scenario, I had some doubts about how well it would work, either as a credible simulation of the operation, or even just as an entertaining game. Happily when my allies across the pond, the Corlears Hook Fencibles in New York played this back in March, they evidently enjoyed it and managed two tight games: one draw and one narrow French victory.

Thus encouraged, this week it was our turn to try it at OWS. It kept six of us entertained for 3 hours, in which time we fought it through twice. It was great!

What's really nice about it is that both sides have major choices to make, and very different plans are possible. The low troop density and open terrain gives plenty of room for maneuver. The fact that the Austrians are torn between the fortress of Mantua at the southern edge of the table, and their line of communications to the Tyrol at the northern edge, created a real headache for the Austrian commander Beaulieu (perhaps literally so - he spent the actual battle being too unwell to command); but it also means the action stretches across the full length of the pitch.

In our first game, the Austrian defence was bold and aggressive. This kept Mantua entirely unmolested, but cost so many Austrian casualties that at game end Beaulieu did not have enough of a force left in being: French victory. After swapping sides, the new Austrian team had perhaps learned from their predecessors. Their defence of Mantua was more reticent but no less secure. Meanwhile, they contested the crossings around Valeggio vigorously and in a well-coordinated fashion, forcing some French units back across the river with loss. By game end the Austrians had inevitably been obliged to fall back on Castelnuovo towards the Tyrol; but this time they had inflicted enough casualties on the French, and preserved enough of their own army intact, for it to count as a French defeat. Hurrah for the Kaiser!

The scenario is in the 1796 subfolder, Napoleonic Wars folder, in the group files of the BBB Yahoo group.