The Battle of Ligny: June 16th 1815, 2:00pm

[TheRedEpic]

Hey All,

This is the third of three Napoleonic Maps I did for Forbidden Games and my friend/owner Glenn Drover.

Short History on the Battle:
The Battle of Ligny (16 June 1815) was the last victory of the military career of Napoleon Bonaparte. In this battle, French troops of the Armée du Nord under Napoleon's command, defeated part of a Prussian army under Field Marshal Prince Blücher, near Ligny in present-day Belgium. The Battle of Ligny is an example of a tactical win and a strategic loss for the French. While the French troops did force the enemy to retreat, the Prussian army survived and went on to play a pivotal role two days later at the Battle of Waterloo, reinforced by the Prussian IV Corps, which had not participated in the Battle of Ligny. Had the French army succeeded in keeping the Prussian army from joining the Anglo-allied Army under Wellington at Waterloo, Napoleon might have won the Waterloo Campaign.


From my earlier post:
This map, and the others (Quatre Bras and Waterloo) represent many hours of research and positioning to give the viewer a good idea of the approximate locations and tactical situation of the battle at a certain point in time. Glenn wanted me to emulate classic maps of the period (such that they were) and thus I had to merge several styles together (most notably taking inspiration from the ACW) to give both a historically appealing as well as understandable look to each. I developed a few brushes to help me speed up the process, since drawing every single mark would have driven me quite insane. Even so, the files were quite massive and the relative simplicity of the look belies their complex nature.

The positioning of the landmarks, troop strengths, commanders, battalions was all very fascinating, and in this case, even inches could matter greatly. I used a great number of old maps, and old books to try and triangulate unit placement, as well as hand written notes/revisions from Glenn himself to correctly place everything.


For fun, I have included some reference which i used to compile this map! As you can see, I had to amalgamate from these source a map that aesthetically matches the others in the series, as well as simplify the amount of information thrown at the viewer!

Comments and Critiques welcome,
~Blando

[Jaxilon]

Once again, stellar work Jared. I can't say I've seen historical battle maps look so beautiful.