War From Below

I suppose that it behoves us, every once in a while, as wargamers, to ponder what it is we are trying to do. I mean, war is a very human activity, and is, as far as we know, ubiquitous across history. The number of wargame periods, after all, should suggest that it is the case. Still, we do go for a sanitised version of conflict. As is frequently pointed out, there are no lead civilians who are murdered or raped, no lead widows and orphans, no looting, pillage, refugees, epidemics and so on.

Now, I sanitise my games as much as the next wargamer, possibly more. I do have an interest in more skirmish or role-playing types of games, but these tend to be more along the lines of ‘try to retrieve that vital document’ or ‘help the villagers to get their village ale back’, rather than ‘go into the caverns, kill all the monsters, and come back loaded with their possessions’. Perhaps that is a sign of maturity.

Still, occasionally an article gives me pause for thought. As those of you who follow the blog might have noticed, at present I am running a large, open-ended campaign called ‘1600 – Something’, part of which encompasses Europe. It looks very much like a set-up for the Thirty Years' War. Indeed, much of the background for the campaign came from books about that conflict. So my eye was arrested recently by an article in History Today: Fight and Flight (vol 76, 9, February 2026, p. 28-39). This is about a man called Hans Heberle, who was caught up in the TYW.

Hans lived near the Imperial city of Ulm, in Swabia, and started keeping a diary in 1628. The war came to Swabia in 1631, when Ulm signed an alliance with the Swedes. This lasted until 1635 when Ulm signed up to the Peace of Prague. I doubt if this was of much interest to Hans, however, as between 1631 and 1648 he and his family were forced to flee to Ulm 28 times. You read that correctly, he fled his home twenty-eight times in seventeen years.

As the article notes, the most common reason for leaving home in a hurry was the approach of soldiers. While we might think that the Swedes might have left the village of one of their allies alone, this was not the case. Most troops did not bother to check whether the people they were robbing were friends of enemies, and it was not worth hanging around to find out if they did.

Violence was not always the case, admittedly. Bavarians were quartered in the village in 1646, and Hans records no problems. On the other hand, the arrival of troops always came with the threat of robbery, violence, sexual assault, murder and extortion. The states could not control or supply the massive number of troops they fielded, over 100,000 in the 1630s. That is not to say the field armies were that size, of course. As with the English Civil War, garrisons made up the bulk of the troops, and local exactions made up the bulk of the problems for the civilian population.

There were other risks as well. Hans and his family fled to Ulm in 1636 because of famine. He lost two of his children at that time. Even Ulm was not safe, of course, and Hans lost his stepmother, sister and two half-sisters to plague in 1634-5, within three weeks of each other. Ulm had a population of about 19000 before the TYW. November 1634 saw 8,214 outsiders living there in addition. No wonder it was calculated that 15,000 people died from plague in 1635.

The question of where to flee to was a problem for the civilians, of course. Hans had two choices. Either he walked the 10 km to the walled town of Albeck, or the roughly 20 km to Ulm. Albeck was nearer but weaker and was besieged in the summer of 1635. Ulm was a much more powerful fortress and, as Hans’ village was a dependency of Ulm, he could get access much more easily than many, so it was to Ulm he went.

Refugees could weaken the defences of a town like Ulm. They could, and probably did, eat food stored for a siege, and so the time the town could resist was reduced. On the other hand, the refugees provided defensive manpower and were set to work strengthening the defences, as Hans did in 1634 after fleeing to Ulm after the Battle of Nordlingen. Nevertheless, Ulm’s resources were such that the shopkeepers stated in 1635 that the refugees (16 – 22,000) of them) would have to be expelled unless the city signed the Peace of Prague.

The supply of food was another concern. Ulm drew much of its supplies from its dependent villages, and the fields were untended while the villagers were sheltering in the city. This led, in 1636, to the city authorities sending the villagers home with seeds and instructions to restart agriculture. The war had many implications of which we are probably not aware.

Eventually, of course, the Peace of Westphalia was concluded. Hans was in Ulm at the time, having fled there to avoid French soldiers. The sense of relief was massive, and the propagation of the peace was a massive party. Hans returned home to try to rebuild a disrupted life.

As a wargamer, of course, I ignore all this. My excuse is that my armies are small, the states are rich, and the discipline is good. They pay their way, and none of my troops would so much as smile at a local young lady without marrying her first. To some extent, of course, I know that this is all a fiction, and, perhaps, it is good to be reminded of the nasty realities of war, even though I could just read the news and achieve the same.

Still, wargaming is a hobby, a fiction, a means of storytelling. I can take such liberties and not have a problem with that, so long as I am doing so consciously, not trying to avoid or ignore the unpleasant (to say the least) aspects of conflict.