Salute Continental Wars Society Battle of Nachod 1866

[mollinary]

Hi Andy!

Cannot feed your addiction I am afraid - the bases are 20mm deep.  I find this gives you the opportunity to provide a slight staggering of the figures which gives the look of movement and aggression. Once you get much below 20mm , it is very linear. 

Mollinary

PS. Sorry for the delay in responding, just spent the last five days walking the fields of the early 1870 engagements: Wissembourg, Worth, Spicheren, and Nouilly-Colombey Farm, as well as a good walk in the centre of Gravelotte-St Privat to try and understand the inter relationship of IX Corps and Guard Corps.  Great sites, still to get my thoughts in order!

M

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

You lucky lucky man!

The last part is easy, walked it twice,
IX brigade think they have found the French end of the line. They deploy artillery too early, which gets taken apart by French small arms fire, and even have some guns captured. They do take the farm at Champenois (a fortified farm, left undefended,), but the division's infantry stall along teh line of the farm to around the Lion memorial whilst advancing up the scrub around the railway (Zola was here). Guards send one brigade to support on the right of the (unfinished) railway line, as they are being sniped from Amanvilers before they advance on Saint Private (two units plus the Guard Schutzen or was it the Jagers, I can't remember) Guard artillery make it as far as the ridge by Champenois but get mown down by a mitrailleuse brought up from Amanvilers. Guard make it as far as the very outskirts of the modern suberb, where they cannot advance any further as they are faced with dug in French  infantry fire from along the ridge... They are then stuck until nightfall and the break of the French army.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

It was the Guards Schutzen! I was right! Even on Goolge maps!  
Guards Grenadier no 1 (Kiazer Alexander)
Guards Grenadiers No 3 (Queen Elizabeth) made it the furthest!

As far as I can work out, IX Corps arrive c10am, and fight until about 1, but if you take the idea that a lot of the memorials are at the furthest advance of the units, most of the Schleswig-Holstein units infantry units of 18th Division didn't make it far outside of Verneville. The Hessians used Haut Bois and teh railway embankment to shield themselves, but stall around 1-1.30. The Guard attack goes in about 2, and they stop about 3. The rest of the French is spent firing enfilade on the rest of the Prussian Guards attacking Saint Privat.

[mollinary]

Very impressive ML, but not quite the cigar!

No guard artillery being mitraileused on this front, but the IX Corps reserve artillery  on the spur above the Champenois farm, suffering the fate you describe.   The Hessian division artillery gets mostly deployed on the other side of the  unfinished railroad track towards St Privat.  Managed to drive down a back farm track, see the old signalman's hut which saw the culmination of the Hessian attack, and then walk to the Hessian lion and mass grave, which is really difficult to access.  Then went down to the Champenois farm, and think we found the remains of another Hessian monument  in the buttresses and gate posts of the current farm. It looks like a roundel, containing a Hessian lion, in the centre of a Maltese cross.  The gate is surrounded by four large, sculpted, stone blocks, which look like the base for an obelisk.  The monument to the IX corps artillery has been vandalised, so no inscription now, but is clearly in the centre of their line.  The weather was beautiful yesterday, and it was a memorable day!  All your Guard regiments are, of course, completely correct, as their monuments and the maps in the General Staff History attest!   Finished this morning driving really obscure parts of Nouily Colombey, and seeing monuments of VII Corps which are very moving, if only for their isolation.  Including individual grave monuments, moved into a central location at some time in the past to allow the fields to be farmed.  Was particularly struck by a poor Hanoverian, an NCO in the Hanoverian Landwehr, called  up into the Line Regiment (73rd?), killed on 14th August, and described as an "Overforster Kandidat". All the ambition in this description, cut off in this obscure little corner of France, really got to me.

But you are right,I am really lucky, and had a fabulous time!

Mollinar

Mollinary

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

I sit corrected.

The Hessian artillery was complete last time I was there, beautiful with an eagle atop (you can see it on Google maps, if you allow photos). In Ascoli it is described as being exposed on a finger of a ridge, without support. Must have been a hell of a fire storm...

Re vandalism, It appears to happen a lot at the moment. I was devastated last time I was there, the Guards memorial in Saint Privat had been stripped of it's bronze lists of all the fallen, there were three huge plaques the first time I was there, full of names, when I went back three years ago is was bare! I know the local preservation society is trying to cataloge everything before it all goes. Bastard scrap thieves!

[mollinary]

The IX Corps Artillery Monument still has its eagle, but the plaques were white marble, and seem to have been smashed with a sledge hammer. Not a lot of salvage in that! This is one of the reasons I love this forum - where else could we have an exchange like this?  For those interested work seems to go on apace for the  new Gravelotte museum, on the War of 1870-71 and the period of the Annexatiion (1871-1919).  The outer shell of the new museum is complete, and the new car park is finished on the other side of the road. Still, a lot of work to do to get an opening in time for the anniversary on 16-18 August?

Mollinary

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

That will be the meuseum promised to be open in 2009!