Jena Landgrafenberg

Jena Napoleonstein

The best views of the battlefield and surrounding area is from the Napoleonstein on the plateau of the Landgrafenberg overlooking the town of Jena.

This is the area held by Marshal Lannes throughout the night before the battle, when he faced overwhelming numbers of Prussians. A determined attack would have bundled the French down the hill into the town below.

This is an excellent spot to survey the battlefield with the aid of a good map or even a battle diagram. We used copies of the maps from the West Point Napoleonic Atlas and read a description of the area from Loraine Petre's "Napoleon's Conquest of Prussia 1806". Both of which I would strongly recommend to anyone planning a visit to this most interesting of Napoleon's battlefields.

http://napoleoningermany.blogspot.com/

Napoleon in Germany

Napoleon museum Cospeda

Just started a new blog for our visit to Napoleon's Battlefields in Germany.

This was the second of our holiday's with Midas Battlefield Tours. It would cover Jena, Auerstadt, Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Leipzig and even a visit to Colditz.

This would be our last holiday with Midas. Our first one was overshadowed by the poor weather, this time it would be poor planning and preparation. It would convince us that we could do better on our own, and we would subsequently prove this to be so.

However there were highs on the holiday, and our visit to Jena on the first day would be one of them.

You will find it all here

http://napoleoningermany.blogspot.com/

Some thoughts on Walking Napoleonic Battlefields

Torres Vedras 1994

I have just finished the Summary on Austerlitz

http://walkingnorterneurope.blogspot.com/

This has prompted me to review the progress so far.

I started this blog in April 2009, with our visit to Waterloo - the first battlefield of many we were to walk.

Since then I have written a blog pretty well every week, and covered our visits to

Spain and Portugal with Holts
Spain and Portugal on our own
Northern Spain
The Pyrenees

Its been great fun writing up the blogs. The research has involved looking back through our old photograph albumns and reading the old diaries written during the visits. It has been very nostalgic and at times emotional.

And its not over yet.

The next blog will cover our visit to Napoleon's Battles in Northern Germany with Midas Tours. Then will come our 10 days in Italy on our own. Finally another 10 days around Vienna and a longer stay at Austerlitz.

So if you have enjoyed them so far, you are in for a treat in the coming months.

Thanks for following the blog.

Austerlitz and Vienna

Pratzen heights from Zurlan Hill

The highlight of our last day at Austerlitz was to revisit Zurlan Hill, Napoleons command post during the battle. On our first day we could see little due to low clouds and heavy rain!

Today was much better. Not exactly bright and sunny, but dry and clear. Its the ideal spot to take panoramic photographs of the battlefield. Unfortunately my camera was not quite up to the job. But I did the best I could, and you can see the results at:

http://walkingnorterneurope.blogspot.com/

We then visited the wonderful military museum in Vienna before catching our late afternoon flight back to UK. If you are interested in Napoleonic exhibits and have not yet visited this museum I would highly recommend it.