This post provides the historical solution to a decision-forcing case study. So, if you have not done so already, please begin your engagement of the problem with the first two posts in the series.
You decide to make a night march from Dassel to Göttingen. (As the crow flies, this is a distance of twenty miles.)
You move at night in order to avoid contact with the people who live in the countryside, While the subjects of Duke Charles or princes allied to him, the folks living in this ‘no man’s land’ are more concerned with local relationships than with matters of formal allegiance. Thus, if treated well, they are as likely to provide information to a French soldier as one from the army of Duke Ferdinand.
You are able to move at night because you and many of your men know the area well. Your regiment has been conducting patrols between Dassel and Göttingen for close to a year. You have been serving in western Germany, in positions that required many rides through the countryside, for the past six years.
The break of day finds you at Esebeck, a village about four miles northwest of Göttingen and three miles northwest of a suburban dye works. The latter collection of buildings plays host to a French outpost, composed of a handful of cavalrymen and a small number of foot soldiers.
You order four of your squadrons to hide in a piece of low ground west of Esebeck. You lead the two remaining squadrons on a raid against the French outpost at the dye works.
(The sources for this story decline to explain how you knew about the outpost. Thus, you may have known about it prior to the start of this operation. Alternatively, you may have learned about it from scouts you sent out soon after arriving in Esebeck.)
Your two squadrons conduct a surprise attack against the French outpost. In your orders for this enterprise, you tell your men to make sure that some of the French soldiers escape.
This coup de main succeeds. Thus, you manage to both capture some prisoners and ‘allow’ some of the French soldiers to alert the garrison of Göttingen to the presence of two hostile squadrons.
You and your two squadrons return to Esebeck. There, you post two fresh squadrons in front of the village and four squadrons in the low ground west of the village.
Before long, a substantial force of French cavalry appears in the open ground southeast of Esebeck.
Your two forward squadrons skirmish with forward elements of the French cavalry force, but avoid decisive engagement.
After a few minutes, you deploy two more squadrons. This leads the French commander to do the same.
Soon thereafter, you send out the remaining squadrons of your force. The French commander returns the compliment, but declines to attack.
Once you are satisfied that the French commander has deployed the entirety of his force, you make a count of the squadrons that you see. Having thus completed your mission, you return to Dassel.
The French commander declined to pursue.
In telling the tale of this maneuver, Johann Ewald, a veteran of both the Seven Years War and the American War of Independence, noted that the French commander declined to press his advantage because he believed that a much larger force of hostile cavalry was hiding in the hollow west of Eseback. In other words, the French commander thought that the six enemy squadrons in front of him must have been deployed to lure him into a trap.
Friedrich Adolf Riedesel Freiherr zu Eisenbach would later command German stipendiary troops fighting in the service of George III in the American War of Independence.
Sources:
Johan Ewald (Robert A. Selig and David Curtis Skaggs, translators) Treatise on Partisan Warfare (Westport: Greenwood, 1991) pages 98 and 99
Johan Ewald Abhandlung über den Kleinen Krieg (Cassel: Johann Jakob Cramer, 1781) pages 79 and 80
For Further Reading:
My apologies to all. This was not supposed to go out until Friday!
Well conducting a raid and starting an engagement with the main body is certainly one way to do things! It’s much faster than my COA, but I don’t recall starting a fight as part of the mission brief 🤣
Clearly it worked out well enough, but it is a really good thing the French commander was not one of Joachim Murat’s ancestors!