"Six Days in October" -- Game Time Is...

[Cyrano]

Game Time Is: 1500 Hours, 13th October 1806!

My goodness what a (game) day this has been.

And, to remind, three hours of daylight remain.

[JasonPratt]

Just remember, Prussians. Things could still be worse!  >:D

(I feel like somehow this will now become a Spiderman thread after saying that...)

[Barthheart]

Hey! Cheese eating surrender monkeys! They are going to get very much worse for you very soon.  ^-^

[Cyrano]

Game Time Is:  1600 Hours, 13th October 1806!

Forgot to post this earlier.  Student project from a Thuringian university.  Jealous I never had a chance to create such an undergraduate project!

I disagree with some of its conclusions, but it's generally well done and, let's face it, close to one-of-a-kind.

[Cyrano]

Game Time Is:  1700 Hours, 13th October 1806!

Clipping along now.

Another reminder:  One hour until dusk.  Two hours until darkness.

[JasonPratt]

Prussians for supper?

...I mean over for supper?  >:D

[Cyrano]

Game Time Is: 1800 Hours, 13th October 1806!

One hour until...

[Cyrano]

Game Time Is: 1900 Hours, 13th October 1806!

It is again night.

My foot will be off the gas a bit as I prepare:

a.  Night time dispositions

b.  Final fatigue numbers

I will call for 0600 14th October orders in a couple days.

Best,

Jim

[Cyrano]

Game Time Is: 2000 Hours, 13th October 1806!

[JasonPratt]

Ride little couriers, ride! 

[Cyrano]

Game Time Is: 2100 Hours, 13th October 1806!

And there are a lot of couriers about this evening.  Small wonder those buggers don't get lost in the dark more often.  Very much looking forward to walking and driving some of this ground and seeing just how "easy" that would have been.

[panzerde]

I've been thinking about just how difficult that must have been. Never mind that the roads are generally crap, and that these guys are riding at night. For the most part they don't even know where the recipient of the dispatches that they're carry are! Can you imagine being given critical messages and told to ride, at night, across bad roads, fields, forests and streams, in the general direction of where your boss thinks the guy he wants to communicate with might be?


Meanwhile, you're really hoping that the firelight that you're riding toward is a group of friendlies that can give you directions and not a bunch of bad guys that are going to try and kill you. Not easy at all!

[Cyrano]

To your point, there's been a couple occasions where the "crow flies" path for a courier would have chopped several hours off of his route, but:

1.  Particularly for the French, they've got no idea where they are -- not in detail.  Heck, Napoleon regularly kidnapped locals to show him around.  Maps were not what they are today.

2.  As you say, any haystack could hold a German peasant with a knife and a bad attitude about the hussar who seduced his daughter.

3.  This is the Thuringian Forest.  I'm in no way certain that the road wouldn't be the only choice, much less the preferable one.

[panzerde]

And even is they had maps - which they often didn't, lower echelon leaders and certainly couriers wouldn't. Nor were there road signs everywhere, or helpful places to ask directions.


OTOH, all parties involved had fought over this same territory almost constantly for the last century or so. A lot of officers and veterans had likely been through the area before. The current area of operations saw action by both of these armies in the Nine Year's War, The War of Spanish Succession, The War of Austrian Succession, The Seven Years War, and the French Revolutionary Wars, as well as a variety of lesser conflicts. So, it wasn't like they were marching into the complete unknown - that would have to wait for the campaigns in Poland and Russia.

[Cyrano]

Game Time Is: 2300 Hours, 13th October 1806!

YES! Two hour jump...

VdL 3ed. brings in such considerations.  Enjoying the read and the link between it, The Eagle Fights (tactical system), and a hypothetical grand strategic game for which they even designed a map has all the proper seductive attraction of madness.