Reply To: Battle of Castiglione: A Polemos Ruse de Guerre Refight

[OotKust]

>>Ever been to Mantua?

No- but then I’d bet 99% of commenters have never visited theirs either. However I did make an effort- about 35 battlefelds driven and walked from middle France to Vienna and Alessandria, and Waterloo; never made Austerlitz in Bohemia due to the partners fear of going behind the Iron Curtain; and about 4 states in US following the Revolutionary trails.

>>Could it have been flattened out over the past 150 years?

Everything is possible. yet many of these places remain largely untouched. Of course Waterloo grew a mound; Stare Vinorady at Austerlitz is much reduced from its cited 300 height (another ‘nob’).

>> This map shows Monte Medolano__

Obviously a much higher scale of map. If you look at the previous wiki one there is zero inference of any such elevation. Wondering how Marmonts battery would have been expecting to reduce any fortification IF they had been that elevated, but 5m seems more resonable and clearly not much more than a walk in the park.

What should be astounding to us, is the declining/ ignorant awareness that linear warfare just wasn’t it any longer. The Austrians really expected a simple frontal attack on their terms?

>>I hardly think the Army of Italy was degraded or despondent by August 1796 – since April …taken three of the Quadrilateral fortresses and were besieging the fourth.

And a year later the almost same Army had lost the entire region again to new Allied commanders. The subservience to ‘places’ held was an Empirical meme and wasn’t really enforced in French doctrine.

Again in 1800, defensively holed up in Alessandria, the Austrians marched out to thrash the French intruders on their domain. And nearly did.

Five days later the Armée du Rhin in the Battle of Höchstädt under Moreau defeated, Kray defending Ulm, with a covering force, described as-

The campaign culminating in Kray’s evacuation of Ulm was one of Moreau’s most resounding triumphs. Napoleon Bonaparte had given Moreau specific instructions about the conduct of the campaign, all of which Moreau had ignored. Regardless,…

Given the proximity of timing, 5 days apart, I wondered if either side knew of the previous reversal of fortunes; and whether anyone at French command cared about Moreau’s win in taking strategic territory once again?

So the maintenance of fortresses while a necessary evil, but was not a comittment to be tied to. Austria continued this nonsense until 1805 in all theatres.

I’ll raise this in a new topic shortly,

cheers