Deleted member 117308
POD: After their defeat in the first coaltion war prussia modernized their military earlier like in OTL in 1807.
It still can't match France in the terms of the numbers. Of course, modernized Prussian army could win at Auerstedt (where the main Prussian army was facing a single Davout corps; 60,500 vs 27,000) but at Jena they'd lose anyway (53,000 vs 96,000 led by Napoleon). Plus Nappy had 20,000 more near the battle area (1st corps of Bernadotte) and would be able to deal with the main Prussian army short after Jena. So the defeat would not be as humiliating as in OTL but that's pretty much it.
Prussia's only winning move in a war with Napoleon was a Fabian strategy until Russian numbers could have been brought to bare. If Napoleon's full strength is arrayed against the Prussians in open battle without the Russians they've already lost, reforms or no.
Not necessarily. Prussia could have at least equaled Napoleon's numbers (~200,000) in Thuringa without any reforms; in 1813 they raised even more men (300,000) total from a fraction of the territory (half the population, a third the revenue). With half a million men under arms, led by an energetic general with an efficient staff, they could have driven the dispersed French cantonments over the Rhine, which would have bought more time for the Russians to come into play, and may even have encouraged the Austrians to join. Even if Napoleon was able to cross the Thuringian frontier unmolested and concentrate his army, the Prussians would have a steep numerical advantage over the ~170,000 he was able to bring out of Franconia.
FillyofDelphi
Banned
If you arm them with pointy sticks and feed them dirt, maybe. There's no way Prussia can muster up the guns and ammo to sustain an army of that size for a campaign of reasonable length, to say nothing if the logistical and command and control problems created by the spike, and Nappy's armies would easily out organize and outlast them. Then, of course, it ends with a Prussia rendered even more prostrate, particularly since a France longer tied in Germany is liable to reach a better, less agitating to Russia deal on Poland in an eventual peace.
Admiral Halsey
Banned
If Prussia has reformed the army and is able to fight France to a standstill what's the chances of the German States in Confederation of the Rhine deciding to revolt and join up with Prussia?
Well, to start with, it would be not 200K + 300K but just 300K out of which 120K - Landwehr and approximately 35K reserve and garrisons (Prussian Army in August 1813 ) and only 72,130 regular infantry (90 btns), 11,150 jager and foreign, and in cavalry 13,375 regular and volunteers and 3,060 jager and foreign. Only by 1815 size of their regular infantry increased to 279 infantry battalions.
In 1813 Landwehr suffered from the shortage of qualified officers and its general battle quality was questionable. In AH something can be added from the territories lost after Jena but this is hardly amounts to the six figures.
Then they'd need at least 113,000 muskets (supplies in OTL by the Brits in 1813). Probably something similar goes for artillery.
Now, as far as the earlier period is involved, "During the early period of Empire (1803-1807) Napoleon's army reached its peak. Following the breakdown of the Peace of Amiens Napoleon took the opportunity to assemble an Army of the Ocean Coasts along the English Channel in preparation for an invasion of Great Britain. Approx. 100,000-150,00 troops (of total 450,000) gathered in training camps for 18 months and went through intensive training and maneuvers on large scale. The remaining 300,000 were spread along the long borders, busy with occupying Hanover, Italy etc. These fought in some small engagements like Maida etc." In other words, in OTL Napoleon used against Prussia just the numbers he needed for a victory, not his whole potential. Between 1808 and 1812 French annual conscript calls ranged from 181,000 to 217,000.
So an assumption that knowing about a greater size of the Prussian army Napoleon would not be able to at least match the numbers is not quite convincing. In 1812 (with approximately 200,000 engaged in Spain and a lot of post-Jena fighting) he had approximately 300,000 French deployed for invasion of Russia.
FillyofDelphi
Banned
Exactly. The simple fact of the matter is Prussia just isen't in the same weight class as France, to the point that any (realistic) gap in skill/preformance isen't going to be enough to make a difference for an extended campaign. Napoleon's Army is hardly going to get a collective case of the dumbs, and there's only so much refining Prussia can do with available manpower, material, and technology even with perfect luck, coordination, and all the time in the world (none of which they have). While Prussia can DELAY the French conquest, definately long enough for the Czar to get into the game and allow for a COALITION standstill (At least in the short term... the Russian army will have to forage Eastern Europe out of house and home if they're going into regional winter quarters, and won't be able to operate that far into the continent several years in a row), but you'll hardly come out of that with a Prussian superpower. The damage of getting fought and marched back and forth over and overclocking mobalization year after year with only bankrupt the state and destroy its productive assets and heavily damage her demographically.
Given France would likely respond to such a betryal in the event of regaining the iniative (Which the German princes have no reason to dismiss as unlikely, given France's resent preformance and Napoleon's well known skills) by erasing the defecting state from the map once French troops march back through, it'd be a big gamble. Especially since there's no gurantee your neighbors are going to follow your lead and you may end up alone in your defance and surronded by rival German states eager to be rewarded at your expense. Say Barvaria defect... what happens if Austria decides to stay aligned with Nappy and does a Vinnese Waltz into Munich and strips them of their newly rewarded Kingdom title and bites off territory? The French are far close and have far less of a motivation to throw you under the bus in a compromise negotiation because, as far as the Cohalition has made it clear, there is no acceptable permenant compromise with the Coriscan Ogre.
Of course. Prussia circa 1807 did not have population to match the French resources even if universal conscription is introduced. As far as the leadership is involved, where would pre-Jena Prussia will get the great generals from? There were few “energetic” but none had experience of a modern warfare and, anyway, the older generation was there and well entrenched. Ditto for the officer corps. Clausewitz described his experience at Auerstedt as a complete shock: the Prussians simply could not grasp what is going on.
Then, of course, the French marshals were not going to turn into a bunch of idiots overnight so the quality of a tactical level still higher on the French side.
As far as Russia was involved, it should be remembered that Russian army of that time was relatively small, not up to date in the terms of tactics and organization and short of the good top ranking generals (there was a command crisis at some point and Bennigsen was just “best at the bottom of a barrel”. The OTL campaign close to the Russian border demonstrated a complete inadequacy of the existing supply system. So yes, a delay scenario could get Russian troops into the picture before Prussian army is mostly out of circulation but this did not produce any miracles at Austerlitz and there would be none in Prussia, just a longer campaign with greater losses on both sides.
also @FillyofDelphi
There was a vast amount of untapped energy for the 1806 campaign, which an earlier reform movement would be able to draw on better. If anything, a reformed Prussian army would be comparatively better armed than the army that marched from victory to victory in Fall 1813, owing to the greater prosperity of the state's territory and the greater time available for a modernized general staff to prepare for war; if they spend years planning mobilization and major wartime expansion, they would be able to build up sufficient stocks of arms, whether through domestic manufacture or favorable deals with the British and the Austrians.
In 1806, they had ~177 regular infantry battalions (141k) in the field forces, 36k cavalry, 31k garrison troops, and at least 800 artillery pieces. This represents about 2% of the Prussian population. In 1813, mobilizing under the most dire and improvised circumstances imaginable, they armed about 6% of their much reduced and comparatively impoverished population, reaching 272,000, and later 300,000 men. Applying a similar proportion to 1806, they could have armed 158k~ regular infantry and 344k irregulars. Even if we cap the Prussian army proper at 500,000, they would certainly have enough to match any field army Napoleon could keep under his eye (roughly 250k in his center forces during the invasion of Russia). France has a greater population, but this is balanced by the greater availability of allies to Prussia, its relatively fewer strategic commitments, its ability to mobilize a larger proportion of its population at once, and the practical limits of how many men a single general can efficiently command at once.
Several German states (Saxon dukes, Hesse, Mecklenberg, Brunswick, Anhalt, etc) together could have provided another 50k if actively courted, and of course there's about 100k Russians inbound. Archduke Charles' army from the 1805 campaign had escaped without much serious loss, so if there was a favorable opportunity, the Austrians could contribute another 100k. Once the French in their cantonments are driven out of Franconia, the Austrians could follow them via the Danube to the upper Rhine, while the Prussian main army threatens to cut them off by a parallel route along the Main or vice versa.
Top quality French infantry, trained in the Channel camps and seasoned in victorious campaigns, are a finite quality; while Napoleon could with time concentrate a greater force (though this doesn't seem to have been a concern in 1805 when he was going to take on the purportedly immense combined armies of Russia and Austria), most of them would be of similar quality to the Prussian Landwehr, and would have lost many of his best men to straggling and privation while they rushed to concentrate behind a natural obstacle that would afford them sufficient time to regroup. Furthermore, the German and Polish manpower Napoleon increasingly relied on through his 1807 campaign would become unavailable once the French were forced to reconcentrate their billeted corps behind the Rhine.
So Prussia is instituting the general staff system (the Scharnhorst -Gneisenau reforms) ten years earlier? Why?
Deleted member 117308
[QUOTE = "Galba Otho Vitelius, Post: 18370936, Mitglied: 94201"] Also führt Preußen das allgemeine Personalsystem (die Reformen von Scharnhorst-Gneisenau) zehn Jahre zuvor ein? Warum? [/ QUOTE]
Because of their defeat in the first coalition war.
Because of their defeat in the first coalition war.
Honestly, Prussia's only winning move was not to play - well, assuming Bonaparte would let them not play (in the long run).
unprincipled peter
Donor
didn't the speed of the French troops play a large part? Seems to me I read somewhere that Prussia didn't do any kind of delaying tactics and were caught by surprise.
Maybe winning Jena is far fetched, but do they have to lose so badly? As Comrade said, Spain was gearing up for war, started to mobilize, and were left slack jawed by the speed of the Prussian defeat. They were caught red handed and Nap didn't really buy the shabby excuse Godoy came up with to explain the troop build up.
Maybe winning Jena is far fetched, but do they have to lose so badly? As Comrade said, Spain was gearing up for war, started to mobilize, and were left slack jawed by the speed of the Prussian defeat. They were caught red handed and Nap didn't really buy the shabby excuse Godoy came up with to explain the troop build up.
The obvious problem with the Fabian strategy would be geography: Prussia did not have enough space into which its army could keep retreating. In OTL Russian came into the picture only when only East Prussia had been left. In OTL Prussian part of Poland was liberated by the Polish uprising of 1806 (and almost in no time the Poles managed to create an army over 20,000) so it is reasonable to assume that uprising (no matter how successful) is going to happen anyway as soon as the French are getting close and the Polish territories could not be used to provide a strategic depth.
As far as Russia is involved, in OTL Alexander signed a manifest about renewal of war with France only on November 6th, 1806 in other words after Prussia was beaten and French entered Prussian Poland. The 1st confrontation took place only in December of 1806 (battle at Charnovo) and most of the following fighting was in the East Prussia/Pomerania. Russian contribution amounted to approximately 120K.
So if we assume, as you proposed, that there was no serious earlier fighting, then there is a relative parity of the numbers: on one side Prussia 250K + Russia 120K and on another 330 - 360K (including Poles, Saxons, etc.) https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Война_четвёртой_коалиции
Of course, it is an open question if untouched Prussian army would be able to support itself in a relatively small region of East Prussia/Pomerania: in OTL during the "Pomeranian campaign" both sides suffered from the serious food shortages so situation would be much worse in a proposed scenario. Plus, during that campaign it was convincingly demonstrated that Russian army, while being able to fight stubbornly in a battle (Eylau), is slow on a march and incapable of coordinated maneuvering (like at Guttstadt-Deppen where Ney managed to escape from the main Russian army). After the war practically all aspects of the Russian military system passed through serious reforms.
Now, as far as the leadership is involved:
On the French side you have Napoleon assisted by Davout and Lannes (not to count the less brilliant but still noticeable military talents like Bernadotte, Murat, Ney, etc.).
On the Prussian-Russian side: the Duke of Brunswick, Hohenloe (without OTL defeat they are still on the top, reform or no reform), Friedrich Ludwig Christian von Preußen (bravery as a substitute of the brains is not always working) and Blucher (at Auerstedt his cavalry attack failed miserably), On Russian side - Fieldmarshal Kamensky who by that time got age-related mental problems and simply fled from the army issuing statement that everything is lost and leaving leadership issue open to the quarrel between Buxhoeveden and Bennigsen; Bennigsen eventually won the competition but never could get his act together: his slowness allowed Ney and Bernadotte to escape a potential encirclement in Southern East Prussia, let Ney to escape at Guttstadt-Deppen, did not use a potential opportunity after Eylau and ended up with a defeat at Friedland. Even if we assume that the allies are acting in a complete concert, the quality is still not there.
So there is a considerable French advantage over the allies in a leadership and in general organization and quality over at least Russian army (even if we assume that the AH Prussian military reform resulted in an immediate miracle which somehow was hard to see in the early 1813).
Probably any reasonably decent army would have a good chance to win at Auerstedt because Davout was outnumbered 27,000 to 60,500. However at Jena Napoleon had 96,000 vs. 53,000 so his victory was pretty much assured and after it he could safely deal with Prussian main army even if it managed to beat Davout.
The main by-product of OTL double defeat was not as much in the numbers lost on a battlefield but rather in a "cultural shock" because Prussian military were absolutely unprepared to what they saw. Clausewitz was present at Auerstedt and his narrative is quite telling. Prussians could not figure out the size of Davout force because the tactics was completely new to them providing impression of the huge reserves available somewhere out of view. Massive cavalry attack led by Blucher ("Who would doubt its success?"), a standard Prussian recipe for victory, had been easily repulsed by the French infantry in square formations and the "legend" of invincible Prussian cavalry ignored the fact that this cavalry never saw a military action.
It was like a know world was falling apart so the following collapse should come as no surprise.