Donald Featherstone's Lost Tales
Sample Pages
Chapter 14
Realistic Rules from the Penninsular War
Extract
Wargamers are strong-minded people with very definite ideas of the abilities and potentialities of the armies they command. They derive their views and opinions from a variety of sources, but principally from reading, films and television. This is fine in so far as it goes, providing the reader does not blindly accept one source but takes the trouble to read a variety of books on the same aspect and then gauge them against each other before arriving at his own conclusions. It is at this point that the snags begin to occur because, having no first-hand knowledge or personal experience of Horse-and-Musket warfare , the wargamer's conceptions and interpretations of his reading are coloured and affected by his temperament and character.
Then, the tender question of national pride must be considered because the average British wargamer, particularly in the Napoleonic period, tends to slightly overrate Wellington's men. In so doing, the rules he formulates are inevitably tinged with a slight (and perhaps unconscious) bias in their favour. But it is no denigra-tion of our worthy ancestors to accept that Napoleon's French infantrymen were often very experienced and very good and that, in their heyday, the French cavalry were superb. And yet, a realistic set of rules for the French and Austrian campaign in Italy during the last years of the 18th century MUST reflect the fact that the Austrian cavalry at that time were superior to the French, being the best mounted arm in Europe. Similarly, it is written in a number of authoritative places that the Russian cavalry at the time of Borodino in 1812 were as good as any others in existence.
Perhaps it is not unreasonable to claim that the British infantryman in line had a better chance of turning back cavalry than did his Austrian, Prussian or Russian counterpart, who had been dis-couraged by a long series of defeats and disastrous happenings on fields and in battles far bigger than experienced by the British infantryman, until Waterloo. A three-deep line of high morale infantrymen had a slight chance of turning back a cavalry attack but no set of rules should make this a right because it was an unlikely and infrequent happening.
Broadly speaking, so far as the Napoleonic period is concerned, the main tactical concept was for infantry to be forced into square formation because of the threatening presence of enemy cavalry; then their tightly-packed formations were flayed with close-range artillery fire from batteries that were themselves out of the range of the infantry muskets. Eventually the infantry ranks were so disordered by this artillery fire that they became vulnerable to the attacks of cavalry, or, even more likely to succeed, infantry in column. Therefore, authentic rules for this period must be so designed that they give cavalry little chance of success against infantry in square, and that foot soldiers in the open and not in square have little or no chance of remaining unbroken in the face of a cavalry attack.
Similarly, when recreating the Peninsular War, British infantry should be given some benefit for their known solidarity in line formation but French infantry, not only in the Peninsular War but at all times, must be given benefits when authentically attacking in column. If any battle is to be realistically reconstructed with both armies employed in the authentic tactics of the period, then rules must be so devised as to force those tactics to be used on the tabletop, even though the wargamer/commander may be conversant with differing tactics of another period that are likely to be more successful. The information on armies and their leaders, their equipment and their morale state, together with the Fighting Assessment Charts, are sufficient to enable the wargamer to compile rules that reasonably reflect the strength and weaknesses of the armies of this period.
There are certain essentials which must be considered when formulating any set of rules to control a wargame; these include the reflection of an army's strength and weaknesses which, taken in comparison with the opposing army, produce a reasonable simulation of the events of the time.
The rules must set out definitions that accurately reflect the speed and accuracy of an army's movement and manoeuvring, together with a means of simulating their ability or otherwise to maintain the rate of small arms and artillery fire that is known to be historically correct. For instance, under favourable conditions, an artillery battery during the Napoleonic period took a minute to come into action and from one to three minutes to limber and move off from a firing position whilst a single gun could unlimber and fire in thirty seconds. A trained British soldier took between twelve and fifteen seconds to reload and fire his Brown Bess musket; French authorities believed that two shots per minute could be fired from the musket of the period. The musket itself was inaccurate over ranges of more than about 60 yards and there are recorded instances of volleys fired by entire battalions only hitting four men at ranges of 100 yards. It took an army of 30,000 men two hours to form line of battle if not under fire but longer if some of them were already engaged; infantry charges took 60 seconds to cover 180 yards while cavalry was said to be able to charge for 700 yards during the same time - in either case the infantry being attacked would be lucky if, under stress, they could fire more than one round before the enemy was upon them.
It is essential to bear in mind that these movement speeds and rates of fire were recorded during practice or drill when no one, including both the men and the recorder, was under any stress. The times are for trained veterans whose morale was steady; nervous troops, conscripts or inexperienced soldiers were inferior in every respect and took much longer to move and fire. Herein lies one of the great pitfalls for the inexperienced wargamer in that he accepts these claims and figures to formulate rules that allow unjust powers to favoured forces; it must be realised (and rules must so reflect) that under the stress and strain of battle soldiers did not perform so creditably.