Posted on 04/29/2016 9:22:50 AM PDT by C19fan
Tim Blanning, Frederick the Great: King of Prussia (New York: Random House, 2016), 688 pp., $35.00. NAPOLEON SWIFTLY conquered Prussia in October 1806, inflicting crushing defeats at Jena and Auerstedt that humbled a realm long known for its military tradition. A bulletin announcing news of the two battles described them as expunging the fifty-year stain left by Frederick the Great’s victory over a French army at Rossbach in 1757. When he visited Frederick the Great’s tomb with a group of his generals, Napoleon purportedly instructed them, “hats off gentlemen, if he were alive we wouldn’t be here today.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
;’) The title s/b FRederick the Great. ;’)
Respectfully, Prussia redeemed the defeats and collapse of 1806 (Jena-Auerstadt) in the 1813 campaign, with victories at Dresden, Kulm and Leipzig (The Battle of Nations).
Napoleon was forced to abdicate and go into exile on Elba as a result.
The reforms of Scharnhorst and von Gneisenau enabled the Prussian Army to quickly regroup and resume the advance despite early defeats in the 1815 Waterloo Campaign, arriving in good order with reserves and ammunition on Napoleon’s right flank as the Old Guard broke against Wellington’s squares in time to seal Napoleon’s fate.
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