Featured battle : Koniggratz (or Sadowa)

Part of Austro-Prussian "Seven Week" war

Date : 03 July 1866

von Moltke, commanding the Prussian forces, obtained good intelligence as to the movements of the Austrian and Saxon army and that they were concentrating on the Upper Elbe north of Koniggratz. He desired to finish the war by crushing his opponents so planned a complicated attack, with his First Army attacking directly east, the Army of the Elbe circling south to attack northwards, and the Second Army driving down the Elbe valley to seal the trap from the north. At dawn, in dismal rain, the Prussian Elbe and First Armies attacked, but the telegraph to the Second Army had been damaged, so they failed to get the order to move. Confusion at the point of attack dulled it's effect, and the Austrians with a well-timed counter-attack halted the Prussian advance and the battle turned into a brutal slogging match. Von Benedek, the Austrian commander, could have put the Prussians into retreat if he had committed his cavalry at this point, but they remained in reserve. Finally a rider reached the Prussian Second Army with their orders and by early afternoon they arrived at the battle and tipped the balance. The Austrians were defeated but fell back in good order. A decisive factor in the battle was the Prussian use of the Dreyse bolt-action, breech-loading, 'Needle gun' rifle which gave them a much greater rate of fire over the Austrian's traditional, muzzle-loading musket.

The Two Battles of Copenhagen

Gareth Glover
This book covers the two battles of Copenhagen, the intervening years and what followed. Both the political and military aspects are dealt with in relation to one another. There is an extensive bibliography should the reader wish to follow up any thread in greater detail.
I declare my bias I am a Gareth Glover fan and I am pleased to say that this book will not disappoint others like me. The narrative flows easily without getting bogged down in lists or too much factual detail. But the detail, the product of much research, is contained in the appendices of which there are thirty six. The author’s forte in flushing out hitherto unpublished first hand accounts is used to good effect. He makes clear the difference between reporting and opinion whenever he has exercised his judgement especially when dealing with variations between a number of original accounts.
There are a number of illustrations throughout the book and a well chosen set of colour plates in the centre of the text. The weak point, true of almost every recently published book, are the maps. It is all very well to insert small facsimiles of the original maps which were used at the time but they are very little use without scales to the reader attempting to understand locations. I turned to the maps in The Great Gamble by Dudley Pope, published in 1972, and used its four excellent maps.
This is a most readable, informative and enjoyable book which we fully recommend to anyone with an interest in the Napoleonic period.

Pen & Sword Military, 2018