Battles of 1866:
The Royal Saxon Army

Commitments continue to pile up for Battles of 1866, surprising all of us at Avalanche Press. Now that we’re having to work more seriously on this game than we’d thought, here’s a look at one of the game’s key formations, the Saxon Corps. The Saxons appear in two of the battles, Gitschin and Königgrätz.

The 1866 campaign in Bohemia involved three armies, those of Prussia, Austria and Saxony. The Saxon army, noted for fine cavalry in the Napoleonic period but little else, had greatly improved over the last 50 years. An excellent military academy had been opened in Dresden, and professional officers, many drawn from the middle class, replaced the aristocratic scions of most other armies. Saxony sided with Austria during the pre-war political battles, pushing the Habsburg position even harder than the Austrians themselves. Saxony’s military and political leaders showed themselves eager to make war on Prussia, looking to regain some of the lands lost in 1815, and the army’s rank and file echoed their enthusiasm.

Officially, the Saxon Army made up the X Army Corps of the German Federation’s army. No one used this designation in 1866, and the force was always called the “Royal Saxon Army Corps.” Our Classic Wargame proposal is based on the game system found in Gettysburg and Chickamauga & Chattanooga. While there will be some modifications to account for the nature of combat in Europe in the period as opposed to America, the games will still be fully compatible. If you’ve played either of the first two, you’ll be fine playing this one right out of the box.

In the War of the Empires system, leadership is a key factor in activating troops. Formations (in Battles of 1866, these are army corps and the two Austrian light cavalry divisions) must be placed in command by the army commander, or through the corps commander’s initiative. The Austrian player’s army commander at Königgrätz is Ludwig von Benedek, who rates highly for tactical command (he’s a good man in a fight) but not so well for command radius (this army command thing is a bit much for him). With the large map area of Königgrätz, it’s going to be tough for the Austrian player to keep his corps commanders in line through the army commander’s influence.

Crown Prince Albert of Saxony, a royal with talent

Therefore, a good Austrian player is going to recognize the same thing Benedek did: Prince Albert of Saxony is a good choice for a position far from army headquarters. He’s not bad on the front lines with a tactical rating of 2, but it’s his initiative of 5 that stands out. During the actual campaign, Benedek entrusted Albert with independent command along the Iser River and the battle of Gitschin, and at Königgrätz placed the Saxon corps on the far left end of his line.

The Saxon Army used “outmoded” tactics compared to the Austrian army’s brutal stosstaktik. While Austrian units formed massive assault columns and suffered terribly from Prussian rifle fire, the Saxons used the linear tactics of the late Napoleonic period. The Saxon corps saw as much action at Königgrätz as most of the Austrian corps, but suffered fewer losses than any equivalent Austrian formation. The wrecked Austrian IV Corps lost roughly seven times as many men as the Saxons.

The Saxon Divisions

Saxon soldiers carried muzzle-loading rifles, but followed an organization unusual among the German armies. Like a Prussian formation, the corps had two divisions, each of two brigades. But the Saxon Army had no regimental level; each brigade contained five independent battalions, four line and one rifle (light infantry).

All of the armies present in this campaign brought along stronger artillery components than an equivalent formation from the American Civil War as shown in War of the States. The Saxon artillery is smooth-bore, less effective than the Austrian batteries and about equivalent to the Prussians. While the Saxon guns were not nearly as modern as the Prussian steel breechloaders, they had much better crews and officers willing to use them in battle.

     
The Saxon guns

The two samples here are the Saxon Corps reserve. The Köhler (“Köhl”) unit actually includes three batteries, the 12-pounder batteries Lengnick, Westmann and Hoch (Saxon practice named artillery batteries for their commander). The H-W unit is the two six-pounder batteries Heidenreich and Walter. Each Saxon battery started the war with six guns.

Not shown here are the divisional artillery units, two for each division (one 12-pounder, one six-pounder) and the cavalry division’s four-gun horse artillery battery.

The famed Saxon Horse

Saxony’s famous cavalry had lost its edge by 1866, but most Saxon generals had come up as cavalry officers and so the branch remained numerically very strong. The corps brought along a full division of cavalry, but it did not participate in the fatal final charge of the Austrian cavalry reserve at Königgrätz.

Unlike the American armies of 1861-1865, European formations include heavy battlefield cavalry like those above. We addressed this in the original rules by separating light and heavy cavalry, as all cavalry in Gettysburg and Chickamauga & Chattanooga is light cavalry. Playtesting might demand a few more distinctions in assault combat than are now present.

With the unexpected surge in Battles of 1866 orders, we’ll probably start a heavier load of playtesting soon. With the rich history of this campaign, its intriguing personalities and immense importance to world history, this should be one of the better games we’ve done and one with great replay value. I haven’t been this thrilled to work on a game design in many, many years. Thanks for making it possible.

Mike Bennighof
December 2004