Battle of Jena
Combatants: French versus Prussians and Saxons
Date: 14 Oct 1806 - The French Won - Napoleon
Refought: 15 Oct 2006 - The Prussians Won (just) - Hohenloe
Refight Reports
This just the sort of battle I like; the classic encouter engagement with both sides just as surprised as the other. Napoleon thought he was going to be fighting the next day and no one can be sure Hohenloe had any thoughts at all! There are two main problems to refighting this battle working out the actual Orders of Battle and representing the differences between the two Armies.
Differences:
The French were well organised, well commanded at all levels and the troops were not of the highest quality but they were largely Veterans of Austerlitz.
The Prussians/Saxons were poorly organised, poorly commanded at the higher level, the troops were largely good qualityand disciplined but inexperienced in battle
To try and represent these differences on the battlefield we made a number of changes to the rules including, reducing the command radius of Prussian/Saxon Commanders, introduced the concept of Veteran, Seasoned and Raw - giving considerable advantages to Veterans and likewise disadvantages to Raw Troops, upgrading the fire effect of the Prussian/Saxons and there discipline and steadiness underfire; but introducing the possibility of them going out of control under some circumstances.
The Orders Of Battle
There is a general myth surrounding this battle that the French significantly outnumbered the Prussians; this is far from the case. Hohenloe had about 40,000 with about 13,000 more by mid afternoon ; the French attacked with an army rising to 54,000 by lunch with another 18,000 arriving mid afternoon (Soults 2nd & 3rd Divs). A headline figure of 96,000 is often quoted for the French but this figure was not achieved until after 6pm and most of them had forced marched so were in no condition to fight, including most of the Reserve Cavalry. Napoleon was in fact woefully short of Cavalry, only 8 of the 20 regts of the Reserve Cavalry were able to fight at Jena.
Things were particularly confusing when it comes to trying to establish the formations of Hohenloe's 40,000; most OOBs out there will give you the state at least before the Battle of Saalfield and sometimes as per more than a week earlier. The first job is to take off casualties for Saalfield and attrition and then try and construct the formations that were hastily put together by Hohenloe in the early hours of the morning of 14 Oct 1806. This latter can only be done by reading the accounts of the battle to see what units actually fought under whose command and doing some educated gessing; some Prssian Infantry Regiments even have battle honours for both Jena and Auerstadt; they are either being economical with the truth or had batalions sufficiently spread out so the IR could be in two places at once. We eventually settled for the OOB that you can download from the link above. We also broke out the Schutzen from the Saxon battalions because, although this was unusual, their separate use was mentioned in some accounts.
The French OOB was slightly easier as the formations are fairly well known; it was just a case of taking off those units that never arrived or arrived too late, or in no condition to play a part in the battle. The OOB we arrived at can be downloaded from the link above.
Maps
Pictures