Good things on BBC 4...

Gentlemen can I draw your attention to the excellent series on German Art by Andrew Graham -Dixon on Monday nights at 9pm. Well worth catching upon I player etc if you have these facilities...
Also BBC 4 are showing a programme on Frederick the Great at 9pm Tuesday as part of their current German season. Hopefully it will be of interest.
best wishes and keep warm
Alan

Lady Pettygree's Entourage Returns To Germania

Lady Pettygree and friends are en-route to Frankfurt Am Main traveling with The Legion de Fischer. See the story here, if you please:
http://campaignsingermania.blogspot.com/2010/11/bridging-main-river.html
Several captioned photos.
Respectfully,
Bill

Proxy Battle Needs Players

Gentlemen,

I had missed seeing this post because a number of other posts quickly followed it, shoving it down the page . . . perhaps you missed it too.

One of our members needs someone to step up and fight a "proxy battle" for him in his on-going campaign. Click here for the background.

In a "proxy battle", you use your troops (and favorite rules) to fight out a battle for players somewhere else in the world.

So who can help Lluis?

Battle of Blenheim and changes to Clove-Hamhock blog

A few months ago our club re-fought the battle of Blenheim. The report and photos can be seen at
http://18clovehamhock.blogspot.com/

King Joseph of Sicily Honorers Furstin Maria Athena

King Joseph of Sicily

 Honorers

Furstin Maria Athena

King Joseph welcomes Furstin Maria Athena

into the

Society of the Dragon

Furstin Maria Athena has shown not only

Great Courage

but

Infinite Wisdom.

New Events in Beimbach-Schönau.

I hope some of my fellow ImagiNationeers will be interested by my latest postings. In the last week I have made good progress with the 1740 uniform designs and as of today I have added a map to show the location of my ImagiNation within C18 Europe.

More to come this week including figure reviews and a modelling article.

Proxy battle available

Our 1713-1714 Catalonia campaign's fifth turn (what-if-catalonia.blogspot.com/) has produced two battle situations, only one of which can be fought by us, so that we've thought that maybe someone of you would like to proxy game the other one.

Although each one of these battles might be considered as relatively small, they are crucial to the campaign development -so much, that they could become themselves a real turning point with respect to the campaign's historical aftermath.

We've selected for us the most odd and uneven of both scenarios. Forces are quite unbalanced in favour of the Two Crowns, but the labyrinthic terrain might be favourable to the Catalans, who will be enjoying prepared positions and might even try an ambush operation -although the scouting forces balance is favourable to the Two Crowns, too. We've given it the name of Battle of Ponts in behalf of the town lying east to the map, and is supposed to start on 17 August 1713. Respective OOBs and map can be found here: www.wargames.cat/Galatea/Ponts_17_Aug_1713.pdf.

The encounter we'd like to be fought by someone else is the one to be called Battle of El Bruc, and is supposed to happen the day next to the above. In their route from Igualada town towards Barcelona following the Lleida-Barcelona Road, the Two Crowns army must compulsory pass through a narrow pass amidst an abrupt, densely wooden landscape of steepy rocky hills, known as Coll d'El Bruc (Heather Col). There is no other path, because the road is running very close to the imposing solitary range of Montserrat, so that the Catalan army is of course calmly awaiting them on top of the col, having chosen the best positions to ensure a warm welcome to their adversaries. The battle opening is to be quite unbalanced, favourable in number of troops to the Spaniards, but during its first third the Catalans are to receive the reinforcement of 2 Infantry battalions, as well as 1 Line Cavalry regiment before end of the second third.

Early in the morning, an Imperial column was encamped alongside with the Catalans, but they've started withdrawing after the Two Crowns' army has been spotted, so that they play no role in the game, except for the fact that the Two Crowns scouting reports have lead the Spanish Commander-in-Chief to believe they are Catalans too, so that he might be really doubtful whether they are leaving the field due to internal disagreements, or if it's some kind of cunning tactics instead -maybe to perform some outflanking manoeuvre?

OOBs of al three sides and map of the area can be found here: www.wargames.cat/Galatea/El_Bruc_18_Aug_1713.pdf. Please is there anyone willing to give this scenario a try?

Battle of Zwilling-Hügel

Schwabian Leauge forces throw back a determined attack by Harzburg.  This victory stalls the Harzburg offensive and both sides begin to gather in their forces to regroup for the next campain season.

Pictures can be found at     http://nomadicoldschoolgamer.blogspot.com/

Introducing New Byzantium

Finally got my Imagi-Nation going.... this is the backstory to New Byzantium

A Short History

Following their defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1688, the Ottoman Empire went into a long decline and Russia and Austria nipped away at its European lands. Many of its subject provinces started to agitate for more independence as Ottoman power waned, and in quite a few there was open revolt, though the typical outcome was the Ottoman Empire came to terms with them, albeit usually leaving them virtually independent. This is the story of one of those states, the (alternative) history of New Byzantium. 

In 1716, Prince Eugene of Savoy defeated the Turks at Petrovaradin. The Banat and its capital Timişoara was conquered in October 1716. The following year, after the Austrians captured Belgrade, the Turks wanted peace and in 1718 the Treaty of Passarowitz was signed. The Austrians maintained control over Belgrade, leaving the Turks with control over the south bank of the Danube river.  By the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war in 1735, Russia had managed to secure a favorable international situation by signing a few treaties with Persia in 1732–1735 (which was at war with Turkey in 1730–1736). Austria had been Russia's ally since 1726.

Emboldened by this, many of the remaining territories of what is now New Byzantium felt it was time to remove the Turkish yoke and rose in revolt. In the absence of their Sanjak (Governor) the population of Salanik (Thassaloniki) overthrew the remaining Ottoman garrison and established New Byzantium. The Turkish army, busy fighting Russia and Austria, was not in a position to put down the revolts and the revolutionaries. Russia and Austria could see the benefit of such a revolt in the Turkish rear, fed the revolutionaries with money and surreptitious military assistance. At the end of the war, the Turks attempted to restore order but were too weak and the revolutionaries, with the help of Russian forces landed from the Black Sea and Austrian Grenz troops, forced Turkey (through gritted teeth) to give them semi-independence at the Treaty of Edirne

Under Austrian and Russian influence (and to stop the factional fights that threatened to tear the new Byzantium apart - or even worse, become that most dangerous of things, a Democratic republic), a new king, or Basileios, with vague connections to the last Byzantine emperors was found and installed as Constantine X, and the Greek Orthodox church was quick to move an autocephalous Patriarch to the new capital of Thassaloniki. During the 1740 - 1748 War of Austrian Succession, New Byzantium happily took Prussian and French money to attack Austria, but spent most of this loot in building up its own army, and its attacks on Austria were slow and largely ineffective. When the French and Prussians pressed this point, Constantine X responded that he needed more materiel and training to build a "proper" army - which France duly gave, and is reflected in the French flavour of the army even today.

By 1751, Turkey felt Austria and Russia were sufficiently weakened to try and overturn the treaty of Edirne and attacked New Byzantium, and at this point it became clear that Constantine's policy in the War of Austrian Succession had been to build his own forces up while expending as little energy as possible in actually fighting Austria, and the French trained Byzantine army, supplemented with its European mercenary soldiers demobbed  from the recent wars (and urgently recruited as mercenaries) gave the still largely feudal Turkish army a bloody enough nose in a series of engagements that made the Turks rethink their policy towards this irritating but relatively small new demistate. The Treaty was re-ratified, but no-one was under any illusion that this was a stable situation.  

The army from the 1730's

The troops of the original revolt were primarily men serving in the Turkish army as well as a ployglot collection of mountain men, farmers and city militias. They were joined by a ragtag collection of demobbed European soldiers, idealists and ne-er do wells who formed the core of Western style cavalry and infantry units, but without Russian and Austrian help the revolt would probably still have been put down. 

After being anointed, Constantine quickly realised that his best option was to build a core force of European style heavy cavalary and line infantry which the Turks had no real answer to, but use it in conjunction with the local troops who were better at the light infantry and light cavalry warfare that Turkish forces excelled in. With a vengeful Ottoman empire breathing down his neck he know there was no time to train his own troops, so like the Byzantine emperors of old he used the French and Prussian money to recruit more European soldiers as mercenaries. He resurrected the names of some of the great regiments of the Byzantine Empire to add lustre to loot. 

In addition he regularised the local ex-Ottoman light troops, as he and his French advisors (None other than Marshhal de Saxe was chief advisor, and in fact it is his influence that drove the formation the armoured Scholae lancers, but that is a story for another time....) realised that Balkan light troops, properly armed and with some discipline, were the match of any (indeed most European armies were busy recruiting them as well). The desultory border fighting with Austria was more about training this new army to operate together, and capturing equipment, before the inevitable clash with Turkey. 

This was accomplished in the nick of time, so that when the Turks attacked in 1750 the locals, stiffened by the mercenaries of the new Varangian Guard, Foreign Legion, Latinikon, Gianitzaroi, Turkopoloi and their own light troops were able to inflict enough early reverses on them to delay their plans. At the same time, fortuitously, many demobbed Prussians, French, Austrians and other nationalities were available after the ending of the War of Austrian Succession and more were hastily recruited as mercenaries and put into new battalions and squadrons, and it was this force that then caused the Turks sufficient damage to persuade them too sue for peace till another day. 


Roll forward to today, and the early stages of the Seven Years War. New Byzantium is (as usual) carrying out a delicate balancing act of trying to get money out of warring European states and collaborating with Turkey to extract trade revenue while carefully watching them as well. Austria and Russia are fighting with France against Prussia and England, and the new Basileos, Alexius VI  is busy negotiating with the British for payments to attack Austria and Russia, and letting them use his main port as a naval base in return. The newly resurrected emblem of the Byzantine Eagle is truly watching both ways (or is truly two-faced, as its opponents claim.......) 


(Now all I have to do is get off my arse and start painting and photographing.....)

Flag request

I am trying to get hold of some Holstein-Gottorp WSS flags in 28mm - any pointers would be most welcome...
many thanks
Alan

What has happened to Northern Wars...

Does anyone know what has happened to Dan Schorr's fantastic Northern Wars website? I went there and was told it no longer existed...

Austrian Cavalry On Parade

RSM Austrian Cavalry on Parade. Click pix to enlarge.

In an economy move, the Empress Marie Therese has announced the disbandment of six of Her cavalry regiments: four dragoon and two cuirassier regiments. The units are the Kolowrat Dragoons and the Wurtemberg Dragoons - the two ranks on the left; the Hesse Darmstadt and the Saxe Gotha dragoons - the two regiments in the centre; and the two cuirassier regiments (they all look the same in Austrian service) on the right.

The six inhabers are looking to sell their services to any country in Central Europa. Inquiries can be made with the Ministry of Finance in Hesse Seewald, the agent for this transaction.

Battle of Am Wasser

Battle report from our club game on November 13 is now complete at the 18th century Duchy of Clove-Hamhock blog. See link on right.

Veterans'/Remembrance/Armistice Day

No matter by what name it goes in your country, let us all not forget our veterans on this, the 11th day of the 11th month.

A cast concrete frieze, War Memorial Building, Jackson, Mississippi, USA

It

On August 10th, 1713, the smell of blood -lots of blood- at an almost forgotten town in the South of Catalonia/Galatea caused something ominous, spooky and terrifying being awakened from its deep underground rest. Something else was to enter battle soon.

http://what-if-catalonia.blogspot.com/2010/11/it.html

20,000 hits today...

Duke Frederick and his Household wish to extend their thanks to all who have supported the Duchy of Tradgardland over these last years as we celebrate reaching the astronomical number of 20,000. May we continue to revel together in the 18th Century as it should have been...

First big battle, first defeat

The first big clash between Catalan/Galatan regular troops and the invading Two Crowns Army (which has had to be solved by e-mail using Europa Universalis Combat Tables, due to a dramatic lack of lead on table :D) has come to an end. Numeric superiority and higher artillery firepower have finally prevailed upon bravery and veteranship.

Among the area peasants, it was told for some time the Ebro River waters flew red for two days... no doubt they exaggerated a bit, but the after battle carnage was frightening though.

This is the way the battle started: http://what-if-catalonia.blogspot.com/2010/11/battle-of-tivissa.html
...and this is how it ended: http://what-if-catalonia.blogspot.com/2010/11/defeat-at-tivissa.html

Another Two Crowns victory, almost simultaneously and not far from the 'big battle' location: http://what-if-catalonia.blogspot.com/2010/11/montblanc-8-10-th-august-1713-in.html

...Harder times are still to come upon the Defiant Principality yet, I guess!

Another New Byzantium

An Imagi-Nation recently (?) appeared on the 18th C. international scene.

Hope this competitor for a venerable name will prompt 'our' Byzantium to manifest itself again (I'm still hoping for pics of the 'Amazon Corps'.

Awarded: The Order of Radegast

It is with great pleasure that Reichsfürst Maximilian of Beimbach-Schönau announces the award of The Order of Radegast to David Linienblatt.  This award has been made in recognition of this gentleman's artistic services to the Reichsfürstum.