Friedrich, again

Still reading Friedrich's bio, and just come to the battles of Rossbach and Leuthen. Wow ... I mean, just ... wow. Rossbach of course I knew the outlines of, and Leuthen I'd heard of, and both were of course famous victories for Freddy, but to see them in detail, back to back, I'm just stunned.

Fascinating, fought just a month apart, and such comprehensive, devastating victories: and they work almost as bookends, with Rossbach such a sweeping, comprehensive cavalry victory, and Leuthen a crushing infantry victory.

The one thing I hadn't appreciated, with either of them, is just the odds facing the Prussians - at Rossbach they attacked with 21,000 facing a French/Imperial army of 45,000 (admittedly 10,000 were Imperial troops of no military value to speak of), and at Leuthen 30,000 against 61,000 Austrians ... two to one odds in both cases, and he never hesitated a moment to launch an attack. I don't know if I'd ever be that bold.

The funny thing is, when I look at the French manouevres at Rossbach, it actually looks like Soubise was aiming at Friedrich's Leuthen manouevre (indeed his favorite manouevre) - the attack en echelon on his open right. Unfortunately for them, instead of having some low hills to hide the fact of their columns turning to the flank, they were on an open bare hill, and Friedrich was the one with low hills to hide his manouevring, so their columns went head-first into his front, rather than outflanking it. Good thinking guys, some work on the execution still needed.

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Just starting to plan our excursion to Historicon in a couple of weeks. This is the big (huge) toy soldiers convention, held in Lancaster PA each year (Amish country!), in mid-July. It's always enormous & well-attended, with 4000-5000 competitors and ghu knows how many spectators. Of course, everything is on offer - SciFi gaming, American Civil War, Ancients, Napoleonics, Renaiisance, Steam Punk, John Carter of Mars, Dinosaur-racing, and much more strange and exotic things.

Ray is driving over from Oklahoma on the Tuesday, and we'll set off on Weds - planning to break the journey partway there on Weds night, and arrive on Thursday (it's about 1000 miles driving from Little Rock); we'll stay til Sunday night, then drive back Monday - not sure if we'll do the return in one day or two.

I've also arranged to meet online friends from New Jersey, for dinner on Sunday night (that's always a bit nerve-making, sometimes it's worked well, others not so much). Cat will, I imagine, be busy doing the tourist thing, there seems to be quite a bit to do. I am only planning to be wargaming on Friday & Saturday (that should exhaust me), so I may join her on Sunday in looking around.