Franco-Dutch War 1672-78 Game

This weekend's game was set in the Spanish Netherlands during the early part of the Franco-Dutch War 1672-78. In this scenario a vital French supply column had become 'lost' somewhere en route to the siege of a Spanish-held fortress, so the commander had sent a sizeable force to find it and escort it to safety. The Dutch and Spanish had put together a relief force, based in another nearby fortress, which was also tasked with locating the French supplies and seizing them, and in so doing scuppering the French attempt to capture their besieged fortress. 

The supply column wasn't immediately placed on the table. A dice roll would determine where it was (it could also be off table in which case a random entry point would be identified).  I then forgot all abut it until lunchtime when I realised I'd have to busk it. Read on...

Paul, Conrad and Richard were the Dutch/Spanish while John and Nigel took the French. We used Pike and Shot with my own amendments for the period; more like Pike and Powder really. Briefly, the game went like this…..

The French left wing cavalry under John engaged Conrad's Spanish and German cuirassiers facing them, and were beaten and forced back. On the right, the Gardes du Corps and the Gendarmes of the Guard under Nigel made hard work of fighting Richard's Dutch cavalry, and despite some limited successes were driven back to the town. Richard's Dutch Footguards (both battalions) blundered straight towards the enemy cavalry, effectively acting as an area denial weapon by forcing the latter to pull back out of range. I kept encouraging Nigel to charge them but he was not to be persuaded. The chances are he'd have ridden them down but he was wary of their pikes.

In the centre the Spanish quickly occupied the churchyard and surrounding fields, but were eventually driven off by the French Guard, who occupied the ground vacated by the retreating Spanish. Tactically there was no need whatsoever for the fighting around the church but built up areas do work as magnets for players on the tabletop. It was no surprise when there was a mad dash to capture it and then a fierce fight to keep/win it. [Ed:Teeheeheehee]. In the combat, despite being forced out with the loss of a regiment the Spanish did however manage to break the Scots Dumbarton’s Regiment after it was caught by close range artillery fire two moves in succession. The 'English Regiment', brigaded with the Guard and Dumbarton's, lurked out of harms way for the entire battle. The main Dutch attack against Nigel’s French infantry soon ground to a halt and degenerated into a series of one-on-one combats. Losses were heavy but the Dutch just about came off worse. 

At this point the supply column arrived, somehow right behind the Spanish/Dutch lines! It was escorted by a couple dragoon regiments but I decided they’d be more interested in guarding the supplies than attacking several regiments of Spanish infantry. 

By now both French cavalry brigades were broken so despite the successes in the centre, the French were in no position to safeguard or even make contact with their supplies; with no cavalry remaining and with several regiments of unengaged Spanish and Dutch/German horse between the supply train and safety, it was fair to say that the French had lost. It was a surprise how poorly the French Maison du Roi performed as they were in theory at least the best troops on the table. Not so surprisingly the French chevau-leger were always going to struggle against four regiments of German and even Spanish cuirassiers.  Here is a photo montage of the battle as it developed (additional pictures courtesy of Richard).

The French on the right begin to advance.

The Allied army seen from their left flank, with massed Dutch cavalry in the foreground.

The church in the centre was to be the focal point of the battle..

French cavalry on their left wing.

More French cavalry, Gendarmes of the Guard and Gardes du Corps on the French right.

The French centre.

The French left quickly engaged the enemy but were quickly beaten and pushed back. One regiment has already broken and the other will be forced to retreat.

The defeated French left wing pulls back.

The victorious Allied right wing cavalry; four regiments of cuirassiers (two Spanish in the rear and two  from Celle/Hanover in the front).

The French right engaging the Dutch horse.

Both battalions of the Dutch Footguards blundered straight forward, forcing the timid French to pull back.

The forgotten supply train as it arrived on the table in the allied rear.

The French have temporarily got the upper hand on their right.  Not for  long though.

The fierce fighting around the church.

                      

Spanish infantry supporting their comrades in the church.

Both infantry lines in the centre grind to a halt, with a battalion or two from each side being broke. or forced to retreat in the process.

The French right giving ground to the enemy.

                              

Spanish artillery. Their fire did for Dumbarton's Regiment and also proved annoying to the French visible in the distance.

So ended the game. I enjoyed it. So did everyone else. This collection is probably my favourite of all and it had been over eighteen months since they were last on the table. Next game here will be on 28 August but I'm hoping to take part in a refight of Wagram at the club on Saturday. I will take my camera.

Perry Franco-Prussian War Prussian Infantry

 

I needed (?) to build up another sthree battalions (plus) of Prussians to complete my Corps for the 1866/1870 collection, so the release of this pair of boxed sets came at a very opportune moment. I ordered the three-box deal purely to get the ‘free’ mounted officer; two boxes of the advancing set and one of the skirmish line set. The contents are essentially the same, but with more firing line types in the skirmish box and more marching or running at the trail in the other. Body, head, two arms, half a blanket roll and for some a bayonet-come-pioneer tool of some sort are all the parts there are to stick together, and of course there are the bits to do an officer, standard bearer, bugler and drummer as well. It’s possible to use one of four styles of headgear; forage cap, two styles of picklehaube and a Landwehr shako. This latter option also opens up the possibility of creating not only Prussian Landwehr but units representing troops from the German Confederation during the War of 1866, my main area of interest. 

I use battalions of 20 figures, so 60 figures for a regiment, plus some extras for a skirmish line, so three boxes isn’t enough for a full brigade. However I’m sure the command sprues will become available separately at some point soon, or I can use some spare metal command figures. Ironically, these plastics fit in perfectly size and style-wise with the old Helion/current North Star 1866 range as they dwarf the older Perry sculpts produced for Wargames Foundry back in the day.

Despite initially wanting to do three regular battalions as noted earlier, my first battalion has been built using the Landwehr head option. 

I’m taking the lazy approach to starting these by using a Prussian Blue spray primer, but why not? It’ll do amd it’s one less job to worry about. Incidentally these Landwehr are destined for a refight of Langensaltza against the Hanoverians at some point in the future. Before then they’ll no doubt appear against the Federal German forces along the River Main.  I just need to paint Hanover’s finest of course!

Now back to some Goths, again! When will it end?

Bullocks, Grain and Good Madeira - the Mahratta and Jat campaigns 1803-1806

Deep down in the recesses under my games table I have a large box full of unpainted figures for this campaign, Europeans, Sepoys and Mahrattas, the full shebang. I bought them when there were some silly “ignore ‘em at your peril or regret it!” sales from AW Miniatures. I wasn’t planning on doing anything with them for six months or so but this book might (will) just tip me over the brink of sanity and derail my ‘plan’ if I’m not careful. I can always rope in a load of my Sikh irregular infantry and cavalry to pad the numbers out……

This is one of the latest books in Helion and Co’s excellent and growing ‘From Reason to Revolution’ series. ‘Bullocks, Grain and Good Madeira, the Mahratta and Jat Campaigns 1803-1806 and the emergence of an Indian Army’ is another subject about which I have a great deal of interest but not the in-depth knowledge I have of other periods and campaigns. 

The book is well written and after a brief chronology to help put everything in context within a wider world, not just in India,the various troops types, ie the Europeans (Crown and Company), East India Company Native Sepoys and the Mahrattas, are discussed, with details relating to dress, training, effectiveness and organisation. This was the period when the Presidency armies of Bengal, Madras and  Bengal were coming of age as an ‘Indian Army’ in the eyes of the Crown and the East India Company. The information relating to the European-trained and led sepoys in the Mahratta armies is especially useful, and these hard fighting troops were to prove to be more than a match for the ‘British’ forces facing them. This section is underpinned by the excellent colour plates in the centre of the book that provide us with some great example of uniforms of the regular troops and the various states of dress of the irregulars. Many of the plates are taken from private or public collections, and all are excellent depictions of the regular and irregular troops  engaged in the campaigns, but four pages contain gorgeous originals by Patrice Courcelle.

The narrative then takes us through each of the campaigns, in the Deccan, Hindustan and the Holkar and the failed siege  of Bharatpur. The focus is very much on latter, plus the battles of Assaye, Argoan, Laswari and the fighting outside Delhi receive good coverage. Some detailed maps of the manoeuvres during the campaigns and major engagements are very helpful when following the course of events, as are the orders of battle. As usual the use and inclusion of quotes from primary sources is enlightening and helps draw one into the narrative.

At the end of the book are three excellent detailed orders of battle; one for a relative newcomer to the history books called Wellesley and his army at Assaye,  another for the Grand Army of the Doab under General Lake, and sandwiched between the two, one for the regular army of the state of Gwalior. 

Overall I found this book full of useful information, clearly well researched and presented in such a way to allow the course of the campaigns to be followed easily for a relative novice to the subject like me. The supplemental stuff regarding uniforms and organisation is useful, although whole books could be (and have been) written on the subject! I’d recommend this book both for anyone wanting an introduction to the period and to wargamers interested in refight of the wars.

Wargames Atlantic Late Romans

 

Like I have enough Late Romans, but I thought I ought to buy a box or three of the nice-looking figures just released by Wargames Atlantic and see what they’re like. 

What do you get? There are 24 hard plastic legionaries in the box, with a wide variety of headgear and weaponry, plus the option of making a musician, officer and standard bearer. I particularly like the    arm options allowing you to depict your legionaries throwing their Spiculum or Martiobarbuli/Plumbatae. The torsos are all pretty much in the same position but there are enough arm options in the box to disguise this. The variety of heads is also good, ranging from the Panonian cap to various designs of helmets, including Spangenhelm and more traditional looking Roman styles. Plumes and crests can be added should you wish. It is also possible to use these figures to represent Ostrogoth/Visigoth infantry as they were armed and equipped much the same as yer typical Roman squaddie due to the acquisition of captured equipment and production centres and the fact that many of the Goths had been serving with the Romans in one form or another.

A couple of things I really don’t like. Although the shields are lovely, with a row of plumbatae moulded into the back of the shields, the shields themselves are very big, way too big in fact for any of the currently available Late Roman shield transfers, for example from Little Big Men Studios. Thankfully, there are plenty of shield designs that we know of that were pretty plain, or that we know nothing about at all, and therefore easy for a ten-thumbed painter like me to reproduce or make up. The other minor irritant for me anyway is the fact that compared to other hard plastic manufacturers’ figures, there are a lot more points of contact with the sprue, so for instance an arm holding a spear might have five points that need cutting and trimming away, which for an impatient person like me is annoying. There also doesn’t appear to be an arm option for the draco or vexillum, unless you chop the end off one of the spears, even though that results in quite a short staff.  The figures do go together really well and look good when ranked up. Overall then I do rather like them.

I just need to paint this unit, which I think will be a Bucellarii legion for my commander Maximus Parmo, and then work on the other box, perhaps as well-armed Goths of some description. I wonder what WA will bring out next in this range? Probably Goths, or some army builder deal, which means I’d end up buying more troops that I already have enough, but hopefully it’ll be something different like Sassanids (which I already have enough of as well but not painted). I live in hope, but my breath is not yet bated!

The German War 1866

No game last weekend or indeed this week, and only some more Goth cavalry and infantry finished so not a great deal worthy of a post, hence this review of a rather splendid book that’ll fire me up to game the period again very soon.

In a rather serendipitous way, this book’s release coincides nicely with the Perry twins’ plastic Franco-Prussian War boxed set (with the option of giving the figures the earlier style picklehaube), so what we really really need now are a set of plastic 1866 Austrians at some point in the not too distant future. No chance really, but then I already have two full brigades of Austrians and one of Saxons, plus cavalry, to face off a corps of Prussians plus some allied German battalions.

So, on to this book. ‘The German War 1866’ covers the Bohemian and Moravian campaigns in what is commonly and erroneously referred to as the Austro-Prussian War. It is the first and only unabridged translation of Theodore Fontaine’s classic, Der deutsche Krieg von 1866, first published in 1870. This study covers all of the major and minor battles and actions between the Prussians, the Austrians and their Saxon allies in Bohemia , Moravia and Galicia in what was to culminate after a few short weeks at Koniggratz, which saw the destruction of the Austro-Saxon army and the ascendancy of Prussia in Germany in one final massive and cataclysmic battle. This war is a subject I know a great deal about, and despite this prior knowledge or even because of it, this is an absorbing read. I think understanding the subject is helpful but the narrative is such that a reader unaware of the details of the campaign would find it equally informative and enjoyable. The origins of the war, a commentary on the plans and areas of operations together with detailed accounts of the fighting are covered in three parts. Book I: The Origins of the War; the Elbe Army and 1st Army at Gitschen, Book II: The 2nd Army to the Upper Elbe from 1st to 3rd July, and Book III: Koniggratz and After. The book contains a significant number of orders of battle for the different actions, together with reproductions of the original sketch maps, which I found helpful, and many contemporary black and white illustrations. 

It’s always a funny one reviewing the translation of a 150 year old book. Is one reviewing the original or the efforts of the translator? In this case the answer is an easy one. The editor Gerard Henry and translator Frederick Steinhardt have produced what has clearly been a labour of love. I’ve not read the original German but this translation seems very sympathetic and reading the book and compiling this review has been an easy and pleasurable experience. The original author’s use of what must have been very fresh memories for all of the personal reminiscences is, I feel, especially compelling. The more than occasional bias from a very patriotic Prussian is an amusing aside from the main narrative.

The original has been oft-cited as a key source in pretty much every history of the war to date, and this English translation should occupy a similar place of prominence providing access for a much wider group of readers with an interest in the subject. Helion are to be commended for commissioning this excellent addition to their ‘Musket to Maxim’ series. Highly recommended.

I do have a game planned for this coming Saturday 14 August, so I shall be reporting on the outcome shortly afterwards.

The New Knights. Another great book from Helion

Being a pretty straightforward sort of bloke it never occurred to me before, but I probably should have mentioned this a while ago, but when I’m blogging about books from Helion it’s because very often, but not always, they’ve very kindly sent me a copy of a new publication to review. Cynics might suggest or mutter quietly to themselves that I’m therefore bound to give a glowing review as I get the books for free. Not so. If I really like a particular book I will say so, which is pretty much always the case across all the series I’ve been involved in on this basis. Add to that the fact that I’ve yet to come across a Helion book I didn’t like, even if in the early days some of the translation and editing was a little bit dodgy. It’s the subject matter that counts surely? And weirdly some of their best and most enjoyable books have been on subjects about which at the time I had little interest in, but now, to the detriment of my bank balance, I do.

If I wasn’t so keen then my review would be more ‘matter-of-fact-like’ if you get my drift. Not damned by faint praise but less of the oozing superlative perhaps. But enough of that unnecessary attempt to justify what I think and write. They (the Helion gang) do a fantastic job bringing new authors (often non-English speakers/writers as a first language folks) onto the scene, covering all manner of often (very) niche historical subjects, or authors putting a new spin on old subjects, in a torrent of publications almost every month. For this they should be applauded.

The latest book in the ‘Century of the Soldier’ series is one that I can and will freely and of good conscience say good stuff about. The book looks at the development of the employment of cavalry from the Italian Wars of the sixteenth century to the rise of the armies of Louis XIV and the War of the Spanish Succession at the start of the eighteenth. The focus and detail are very much, but not totally, French oriented, which given the nationality of the author is understandable and perfectly ok in my view as the key roles played by the Dutch in the late sixteenth century, Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII and Louis XIV in the seventeenth, the impact of Holy Roman Empire’s exposure to the Ottomans, and the tactical use of cavalry by Duke of Marlborough in the eighteenth are also examined in detail within the overarching French context.

One has only to look at the content of this volume to see that it has been exhaustively researched, with an impressive array of primary and secondary sources. We are taken on a journey from the introduction of firearms both mounted and on foot, and the ultimate demise of the fully armoured and lance-armed gendarme, with all the major tactical changes that evolved as a result, through to the solid ranks of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century heavy cavalryman who relied on either fire or shock tactics. How these different tactics evolved is examined in great detail, and their impact on the bigger picture of battlefield deployment and changes in the overall usage of the cavalry arm is discussed, proposing the pros and cons of firepower against shock, and indeed what exactly these diametrically opposed tactical methods meant on the battlefield, especially when they faced each other on the same piece of turf. Also discussed are the ways these developments impacted on infantry, in terms of how they dealt with the changing tactics of the cavalrymen and how the cavalry evolved to combat the evolution of predominantly musket-armed foot.

The author examines the processes of recruitment and training in the French army, not just of men but also horses, as well as the significant changes seen in personal protection and weaponry and the move from the use of companies to squadrons as the basic organisational and battlefield unit. We are treated to a number of theoretical case studies that examine the basic tactics, and several real battles, such as White Mountain and Rocroi in the 30 Years War, Dreux and Ivry at either end of the French Wars of Religion, and finally Blenheim, that are used as exemplars to demonstrate how these theories evolved and were put into practice.

Well written and sympathetically translated and edited the author has provided the reader with a comprehensive examination of what is a fascinating subject. The reader may not necessarily agree with the author’s theories but they are well argued and backed up with compelling research, resulting in what is an engaging and thought provoking reading experience. Nicely illustrated throughout, with some helpful maps that link well to the narrative, there is much to commend this excellent book.

History of the Damas Legion

‘For God and King’ by Hughes de Bazouges and Alistair Nichols is a history of the Damas Legion between 1793 and 1798 during the French Revolution. Not as an obscure subject as one might first think to the uninitiated.

It is a big book by Helion standards, over 300 pages, but this amount of space is needed to tell the story of the birth of the regiment and its campaigns, and sad end for many of its members, against the French Republic.

Raised by Etienne de Damas-Crux in 1793 as part of the Armee des Princes for service in the army of the United Provinces, it was to be formed as a ‘Legion’ with infantry and cavalry elements. After the Flanders campaign of 1793-94 and the defeat of their Dutch paymasters in 1795 the survivors transferred to English service. The infantry met their end at the ill-fated Quiberon expedition, victims of the savage reprisals acted upon them by the Republic, but the cavalry, regiment served in the Emigre Army of the Conde in Upper Germany and Switzerland in Russian service this time under its disbandment in 1798.

This book is a beauty, and an absolute must for anyone interested in the French Revolutionary Wars and especially the role played by the Emigre armies and is a fascinating study of a neglected aspect of the conflict. It is well written and is packed full of detailed information, taking us through six or so long, savage and intense years of fighting. The book has clearly been extensively researched using primary and secondary sources, and in telling the story of the Legion is full of excerpts from contemporary accounts and first hand witnesses testimonies to the events. The authors provide us with detailed information on the organisational make up of the Legion, and on the various Emigre armies of which it was part, with several orders of battle which are new to me.

No Helion book such as this would be without a centre spread of colour images and this is no exception, with 16 pages bursting with depictions of the soldiers of the Legion in the various iterations of uniforms worn throughout their existence, together with a dozen really useful maps dotted throughout the book outlining the various theatres of operations. More uniform information can be found in the appendices, as can further details of Emigre orders of battle.

The Wars of the First and Second Coalition’s against Republican France are an era of significant interest for me, and this book has given me great pleasure in reading it as well as some quiet thought about what made so many men serve in Emigre regiments in the knowledge that capture meant almost certain execution. This book deserves a worthy place on the bookcase of any French Revolutionary Wars buff! 

I already have the legion in my 28mm collection but perhaps I should expand it a little……