Marshals and Generals

FRENCH MARSHAL

Jean-Baptiste Jourdan

Born: 29 April 1762 France

Died: 23 November 1833 France

Rank: Marshal of France
 

Jourdan was born in Limoges, France into a surgeon’s family. He enlisted in the French royal army in 1778 as a private just before his sixteenth birthday.

Assigned to the Regiment of Auxerrois, he took part in the ill-fated assault at the Siege of Savannah on 9^th October 1779 during the American War of Independence.
In 1782 Jourdan sick with fever, returned home from the West Indes, where he was serving. Bouts of illness with malaria gave him great trouble for the rest of his life.

In 1784 he was discharged from the army and set up a shop in the haberdashery business in his home town of Limoges. In 1788 he married a dressmaker in which they had five daughters.

When the National Assembly asked for volunteers, Jourdan was elected Chef de bataillon of the 2^nd Haute-Vienne Battalion. He led his troops in the French victory at the Battle of Jemappes on 6^th November 1792 and in defeat at the Battle of Neerwinden on the 18^th March in the following year. Jourdan’s leadership skills were beginning to be noticed and it led to his promotion to general of brigade on 27^th May 1973 and then to general of division two months later.

On 8^th September at the Battle of Hondshoote, he led his division in which he was wounded in the chest. On 22^nd September he was named to lead the Army of the North.

His first assignment was to relieve General of Division Jacques Ferrand’s 20, 000 troops in the garrison of Maubeuge, which was besieged by an Austrian-Dutch army commanded by Prince Josias of Coburg. This Jourdan archived on 15-16^th October at the Battle of Wattignies and broke the siege.

In May 1794, Jourdan lead the Army of the Moselle north. This force was combined with the Army of the Ardennes and the right wing of the Army of the North to form an army which did not officially become the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse until 29^th June 1794. With 70,000 men of the new army, Jourdan laid siege to Charleroi on 12^th June. The 41,000 Austrian-Dutch army under William V Prince of Orange, defeated the French at Lambusart on 16^th June and drove them south of the Sambre River.

Casualties numbered 3,000 for each army. Undeterred, Jourdan immediately marched on Namur to the east-northeast of Charleroi. Instead of attacking Namur, he suddenly swung west and appeared to the north of Charleroi. After a quick siege, the 3,000 Austrian garrison of Charleroi surrendered on 25^th June. Too late to save Charleroi, Coburg’s 46,000 men attacked Jourdan’s 75,000 French the next day. The Battle of Fleurus proved to be a decisive French victory when Coburg called off his attacks and retreated

After Fleurus, the Allied position in the Austrian Netherlands collapsed. The Austrian army evacuated Belgium and the Dutch Republic was extinguished by the advancing French armies in 1795. On 7^th June 1795, Jourdan’s army concluded the long but successful Siege of Luxembourg. Operations east of the Rhine were less successful that year, with the French capturing, then losing Mannheim.

In 1796 Jourdan’s Army of Sambre-et-Meuse formed the left wing of the advance into Bavaria. The whole of the French forces were ordered to advance on Vienna, Jourdan on the extreme left and MG Jean Moreau in the centre by the Danube valley, MG Napoleon Bonaparte on the right in Italy. The campaign began brilliantly, the Austrians under Archduke Charles being driven back by Moreau and Jourdan almost to the Austrian frontier. But the archduke, slipping away from Moreau, threw his whole weight on Jourdan, who was defeated at the Battle of Amberg in August.

Jourdan failed to retrieve the situation at the Battle of Wurzburg and was forced over the Rhine after a severe rear-guard action, which cost the life of MG Francois Marceau. Moreau had to fall back in turn, and the operations of the year in Germany were a failure.
The chief cause of the defeat was the plan of campaign imposed upon the generals by their government. Jourdan was nevertheless made the scapegoat and was not employed for two years. In those years he became prominent as a politician and above all as the brains behind the famous conscription law of 1798, which came to be known as the Jourdan Law.

When the War of the Second Coalition broke out in 1799, Jourdan was at the head of the army on the Rhine, but again underwent defeat at the hands of the Archduke Charles at the battles of Ostrach and Stockach in late March of that year.

Disappointed and broken in health, he handed over the command to MG Andre Massena. Jourdan went back to his political duties, and was a prominent opponent of the coup d’etat of 18 Brumaire, after which he was expelled from Council of the Five Hundred. However, he became formally reconciled to the new regime and accepted from Napoleon fresh military and civil employment.

In 1800 he became inspector-general of cavalry and infantry and representative of French interests in the Cisalpine Republic.

In 1804, Napoleon appointed Jourdan a marshal of France. He remained in the new kingdom of Italy until 1806, when Joseph Bonaparte, whom his brother Napoleon, made him king of Naples in that year, selected Jourdan as his military adviser.
In 1808, Jourdan followed Joseph into Spain, but Joseph’s throne had to be maintained by the French army, and throughout the Peninsular War the other marshals, who depended directly upon Napoleon, pain little attention either to Joseph or Jourdan.
Jourdan was blamed for the defeat at the Battle of Talavera in 1809 and was replaced by Marshal Soult. He was reinstated as Joseph’s chief of staff in September 1811, but was given few troops. After the disastrous French defeat at the Battle of Salamanca in July 1812, Joseph and Jourdan were forced to abandon Madrid and retreat to Valencia. Joined by Soult’s army, which evacuated Andalusia, the French were able to recapture Madrid during the Siege of Burgos campaign and push Wellington’s Anglo-Portuguese army back to Portugal.

In 1813, Wellington advanced again with a large, well-organized army. Repeatedly outmanoeuvring the French, the Anglo-Allied army forced Joseph and Jourdan to fight at the Battle of Vitoria on 21^st June.

After the decisive French defeat, Jourdan held no important command up to the fall of the Empire. He adhered to the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, and though he re-joined Napoleon in the Hundred Days and commanded a minor army, he submitted to the Bourbons again after the Battle of Waterloo.

When Marshal Nay was sentenced to death, to give Jourdan credit, he refused to be a member of the court. He was made a count, a peer of France in 1819, and governor of Grenoble in 1816. In politics he was a prominent opponent of the royalist reactionaries and supported the revolution of 1830. After this event he was then to become governor of the Invalides, where his last years were spent. Jourdan died in Paris on 23^rd November 1833 and was buried in Les Invalides.

Napoleon while in exile on Saint Helena he wrote,

I certainly used that man very ill, I have learned with pleasure that since my fall he invariably acted in the best manner. He has thus afforded an example of that praiseworthy elevation of mind which distinguished men one from another. Jourdan is a true patriot and that is the answer to many things that have been said of him.

UPDATE

I thought that I would give you an update to what I have been doing. Well I have nearly finished painting the first batch of 12 Prussian Landwehr figures, but I have not touched them for two weeks now.

The reason for this is that Spring is here and the garden beckons me with some DIY at the weekends.

At the moment there are no new figures for me to buy as HAT have still not said when the Brunswick cavalry or the Prussian Hussars will be in production. I hope that these might be out by the end of this year.That helps me a bit being late on the painting front and making room for the new arrivals. But I hope to get them Prussians done very soon.

This month I will put another general on the Marshal and General page, with some much needed photos of my painted figures.I would like to thank all those who have taken time to look at this blog but stay with us as I hope that I can improve on what I have at the moment.

Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun

Published by Lulu.com

Pages 171 plus covers

Originally published in 1980 and written by Paddy Griffith’s, this book has now been re-printed back in 2008. It is just one of a series of books being published through History of Wargaming. I got quite excited when I brought this book at SELWG last year, although I did not get my hands on it till Christmas from my partner. But I was just a little disappointed with it when I finally sat down and started to read it. This book includes no less than seven sets of rules, which is great. All of the rules are designed by Paddy Griffiths a well-known military historian. The book contains a wide collection of wargames for the Napoleonic period for newcomers and for the experienced wargamer.The sets of rules are for

SKIRMISH GAME

DIVISIONAL GAME

BRIGADE GAME

ARMY LEVEL GAME

GENERALSHIP GAME

A MAP KRIEGSSPIEL

A TACTICAL EXERCISE WITHOUT TROOPS

For every game, in the book, there is a brief historical introduction with a complete set of rules for each. There is also a detailed explanation for playing the game with a play sheet at the back of the book. So the Skirmish game starts off the feel very well but then it starts to get a bit complicated with each set of rules from then on until the Generalship game where it could get you into a right old pickle trying to sort out orders to the whole army. I think that this book does need to be read again and to play each game as it comes, but at the end of the day, I think that I shall stick with my own set of rules.

Although the book has some updated contents, it is a shame that the picture are not. There are a total of 13 picture and diagrams in the book and they are all in black and white. That’s fair enough as it is a re-print of a book but surely with today’s technology the picture could be made to look better as most of them seem to be very black in print as you can not see what they are showing. The only colour picture is the front cover.

News from the Front

Today, Hat has updated their set for the Napoleonic British Command set.
At this stage the set is still being put together and at the moment it contains a Sapper, Standard Bearer, Foot and Mounted officer with horse, Drummer and NCO.
They will all have interchangeable heads with Stovepipe, Belgic Shako and Bicorne for the officers. We still do not know what size this will first be made in or how many of each figure we will get in the set. The set looks fantastic and gives me something to look forward to in the future.

Marshals and Generals

PRUSSIAN

Friedrich Wilhelm Baron von Bulow, Count von Dennewitz

Born: 16 February 1755 Prussia

Died: 25 February 1816 Prussia

Rank: General

Bulow was born in Falkenberg (Wische) in the Altmark and was the elder brother of two to Freiherr Dietrich von Bulow. He received and excellent education and then entered the Prussian army in 1768, becoming ensign in 1722. Bulow was then made second lieutenant in 1755.
He took part in the Potato War of 1778 and subsequently devoted himself to the study of his profession and of the sciences and arts.
Throughout his life Bulow was devoted to music, his great musical ability bringing him to the notice of King Frederick William II of Prussian he then became well known in fashionable circles of Berlin. During this period he never neglected his military studies, and in 1792 he was made military instructor to the young Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, becoming at the same time full captain.

Bulow took part in the campaigns of 1792-94 on the Rhine, and received for signal courage during the siege of Mainz the order Pour le Merite and promotion to the rank of major. After his promotion, Bulow went to garrison duty at Soldau.
In 1802 he married the daughter of Colonel von Auer, and in the following year he became lieutenant-colonel, remaining at Soldau with his corps.
With the misfortunes of his younger brother Dietrich, Bulow’s fortune and happiness was in turmoil. With the loss of two of his children was then followed by the death of his wife in 1806, and a further source of disappointment was the exclusion of his regiment from the field army sent against Napoleon in the same year.
The disasters of the campaign aroused his energies. He did excellent service under Anton Wilhelm von L’Estocq’s command in the latter part of the war, was wounded in action, and finally designated for a brigade command in Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher’s force.

In 1808 Bulow married the younger sister of his first wife, a girl of eighteen. He was made a major-general in the same year, and he then devoted himself wholly to the regeneration of Prussia. The intensity of his patriotism threw him into conflict even with Blucher and led to his temporary retirement in 1811, however, he was again employed.
In the build up to the War of Liberation, Bulow kept his troops in hand without committing himself to any irrevocable step until the decision was made. On 14 March 1813 he was made lieutenant-general. He fought against Oudinot in defence of Berlin, and in the summer came under the command of Bernadotte, crown prince of Sweden.
At the head of an army corps Bulow distinguished himself greatly in the Battle of Grossbeeren, a victory which was attributed almost entirely to his leadership. Later he won another victory at the Battle of Dennewitz, which for the second time checked Napoleon’s army in their advance to Berlin. This inspired the greatest enthusiasm in Prussia, as being won by mainly Prussian forces, and rendered Bulow’s popularity almost equal to that of Blucher. Bulow’s corps played a conspicuous part in the final overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig, and he was then entrusted with the task of evicting the French from Holland and Belgium.
In an successful campaign he won a signal victory at Hoogstraten although he was fortunate to be supported, often very significantly, by the British General Thomas Graham, second in command to Wellington.

In the campaign of 1814 he invaded France from the north-west to join Blucher, and took part in the brilliant victory of Laon in March. He was made general of infantry and received the title of Count Bulow von Dennewitz. He also took part in the Allied sovereigns’ visit to England in June 1814.
For a short time, from 1814-1815, there was peace in Europe. Bulow was at Konigsberg as commander-in-chief in Prussia proper. He was soon called to the field again, and in the Waterloo campaign commanded the IV Corps of Blucher’s army.
He was not present at Lingny, but his corps headed the flank attack upon Napoleon Guard at the Battle of Waterloo, and bore the heaviest part in the fighting of the Prussian troops around Plancenoit which he captured. He took part in the invasion of France once again, but died suddenly on 25 February 1816, a month after returning to the Konigsberg command.
The King declared that the generals and officers would observe 3 days of mourning for Bulow. A statue of the victor of Dennewitz was erected in Berlin in 1822.

“Bulow was a stubborn and defiant man with a ferocious temper”.