Roman Forts

I picked up out of casual interest, of course, an interesting paper last week. As the title suggests it is about Roman fortifications, this time in what is now Syria, Turkey, and northern Iraq.

Casana, J., Goodman, D., Ferwerda, C., ‘A wall or a road? A remote sensing-based investigation of fortifications on Rome's eastern frontier.’ Antiquity, 2023, 1-18.

The reference is a bit incomplete above, but the link should take you there. The paper is released under a common creative licence, so it is free (unlike a lot of academic journal stuff).

The paper, as the title suggests, is about finding a lot of Roman forts on the Empire’s eastern frontier. Or rather, to me, it undermines the idea of there being an eastern frontier in the first place. In the 1920s Jesuit French priest Father Antoine Poidebard conducted a series of ariel surveys over the region and detected a line of forts which he took to be along the military road set out under Diocletian. This, then, was Rome’s eastern frontier, erected to defend the Empire from the Persians and also from nomadic tribes.

Poidebard detected 116 fort structures, of various sizes from towers through small forts to larger ones of 100 meters square or more. The paper reports the results of a survey of the same region using declassified satellite imagery from the 1960s and 1970s, and they found a large number (396) of additional fortifications in the region. They also failed to find some of the originals, and suggest that increased agriculture and urban development have removed them from the archaeological record.

The structures, however, are not distributed along the frontier, but form a roughly east-west line along the desert margins, connecting Mosul on the Tigris River in the east to Aleppo in western Syria. This does not seem to be a defensive fortification system, nor one to protect a road. The authors hypothesise that the structures, while fortified, were, in fact, to provide secure resting places for merchants, messengers and military personnel travelling from east to west (and vice versa).

The paper suggests that the original survey suffered somewhat from bias, in that Poidebard hypothesised where the frontier road was and surveyed that bit, his results confirming the hypothesis. This is not to denigrate his achievement, of course, his was a pioneering study and ariel archaeology did not really get going in a methodical way until after World War Two. Nevertheless, the recent findings do suggest that a re-think of Roman frontiers might be needed. Such rethinks are not uncommon, of course. The nature and purpose of Hadrian’s Wall, for one, have been a matter of some puzzlement for decades. It does not seem to be a purely military installation either, but exactly what it was remains a little disputed. Similarly, I believe that Roman forts in Germany have been discovered far further east than it was thought the Romans ever penetrated. This too is a puzzle.

The authors suggest that the larger forts, at least, were constructed in the Third Century AD. Some of them, of course, were reused in medieval times but digging on the sites is rendered impossible for geopolitical reasons. Therefore good solid dating information is hard to come by, although the authors note that it is difficult at military sites anyway.

It seems possible that our picture of Roman frontiers, or at least some of them, have to change. The idea of legionaries looking out from behind walls at the unknown barbarian wasteland ahead of them, nervously fingering their pila, is clearly incorrect. I suspect that has been known for some time, but it is still the sort of trope we are fed by some parts of the media.

Instead, we have to consider the possibility that neither the Romans nor their neighbours really thought in terms of borders as we do. The frontier was, necessarily, porous. Merchants, at least, needed to cross them to bring luxury goods that the Empire did not produce, and export other things. Diplomats, similarly, needed to cross the frontier and all of these groups also needed places to stay along the way. In Britain the Romans erected mansios along the way, and these were sometimes accompanied by fortifications. Perhaps in Syria, where the population on the desert limit was low and water was in short supply, the staging posts were smaller and more concentrated in a fortified location.

Recent work, apparently, suggests that Roman forts were places of cultural exchange rather than confrontation. The authors suggest that these fortifications were places for travellers to rest, water themselves and their horses or camels, eat, and sleep. While they would have enabled the faster movement of troops to disputed zones within or beyond the fortified zone, their main function seems to have been to enable trade and communication between the Roman Empire and Persia.

As wargamers, of course, this is a bit frustrating. We like our ideas of legionaries marching out to pay the barbarians a lesson, be that in Syria, Germany, or Britain. The evidence, however, does not tend to support the view that cultural encounters were necessarily violent ones. While the military had a presence, they were, perhaps, more there as a sort of civil police rather than to impose the will of Rome on the locality. Unlike wargamers, the Romans were perhaps interested in trade rather than confrontation.

That does not mean that the Romans were unwilling to resort to force, of course. It does suggest that on the frontier there was less of a threat most of the time. It was only when tensions rose, locally or between the Empire and, say, Persia, that these installations became militarily useful, and they would have then secured the lines of communication for any army sent to and beyond the end of the road (as it were).

It is always possible, of course, that more discoveries will undermine even this theory. On the other hand, we do think that Magi from the East managed to arrive in Bethlehem reasonably quickly (within a year or two) from somewhere near Babylon. That does not suggest a heavily fortified and controlled frontier, even though it would make a better wargame.

Curlew Hills

‘Donal, Donal, wake up.’

‘What is the matter Dougal? It is still dark.’

‘I’m worried Donal.’

‘What about this time?’

‘Well, like, we fought a battle against the English right?’

‘Yes, and we captured Limerick.’

‘But then the Spanish who did the fighting went home.’

‘Can’t blame them for that, Dougal. The weather’s better in Spain.’

‘Yes, but now the English are advancing on Limerick.’

‘Well, we’re going to stop them, Dougal.’

‘But how. The Spanish took all their pointy sticks and bang sticks away with them’

‘Their pike and arquebuses, you mean. Yes, they did. But Dougal, we are going to fight the English the old way, by jumping out at them from bogs and woods. The old way, Dougal. The one you prefer, remember?’

‘Well, yes, Donal. But I’d prefer to be jumping out at them with bang-sticks rather than javelins.’

*

Those of you with very long memories might recall a sub-plot to the Armada Abbeys campaign which featured two cousins, Donal and Dougal, and an errant ship from the Armada unexpected beating the English in battle. If you are really bored, you can catch up using the Armada Abbeys Campaign link on the right.

Be that as it may, I was looking for a game to test out some more reconnaissance and ambush-type rules, and thought the Irish-English clashes might be interesting in this context. A quick look at Wesencraft’s With Pike and Musket refreshed my memory and I set on something that was akin to the Action in the Curlieu Hills from that book, slightly adjusted.

The aim of the English was to transport a siege gun across the board, while that of the Irish was to prevent that. The Spanish, having run out of wine, have sailed back to Spain, unwilling to drink Irish beer any longer. They also seem to have taken their arquebuses and pike with them, so our slightly hapless Irish pair are reverting to proper warfare.

Each side consisted of twelve bases. For the Irish, a spade was allocated for each base. Ace to 4 for the kern, 5-7 for bonnachts, 8-10 for gallowglass, and Jack and Queen for light cavalry. A king indicated two cards were drawn from the deck and troops were allocated according to their value, ignoring the suit.

The English were a standard army from my lists: 2 border horse, one demi-lancer, three shot, three pike, two bows and two polearms. They also had a siege gun to escort across the table, as noted.

For this sort of wargame, you need a fair bit of terrain. The original scenario had a variety of hills, bogs, and woods, and I sort of followed that and added bits as I could I landed up with a fair number of hiding places for the Irish although, not 52, so I was unsure if all of them would turn up.

The English would spot Irish hiding in terrain items at 3 base widths away, while those in open terrain, such as behind hills, would be spotted 6 base widths away.

The photograph shows the game a number of moves in. The English have deployed their border horse against some Irish light cavalry who jumped out from behind a hill (actually, a dip where the wood is) and also managed to deploy some infantry against some kern who were hiding behind the far right wood. As you can see the Irish horse has been driven back.

A few moves later things are starting to heat up. More Irish have appeared, but the English convoy is moving forward mostly unperturbed.

The Irish horse routing to the bottom right of the picture actually had a go at the siege gun but failed to make any impression, and have just been charged by the English demi-lancers who routed them with almost insulting ease. In the background you can see the English redcoats have driven back the kern – actually, they routed one base with which they managed to get into contact. On the left in the centre you can see the border horse; they are actually engaging a gallowglass base in the bog at the extreme left. Other Irish bases are converging on the pass, through which the English will have to move. Another couple of bases of English foot have been deployed against these, but the leading bonnacht base, together with the general, is beginning to appear to be a bit of a threat, especially as they are uphill of the convoy.

The crunch came when the bonnachts charged the lead English pike who had just deployed against them. Decent English tempo rolls meant that other foot and some borderers were lurking ominously. The Irish were, by this time, in a little difficulty, having lost two bases and had their morale slump to ‘waver’, which removes all the orders. Thus, only the bonnachts are moving under direct orders. Poor tempo rolling means that the rest of the Irish are admiring the bravery of their boys.

It nearly worked. The English pike, despite their initial support, were driven back, but the English had sufficient tempo to bring in the heavy mob and practically surround them, and their general, next bound. While the bonnachts fought bravely and nearly pulled off an astonishing victory, the odds wewre too great and they were recoiled. However, with bases in contact to the flank, that result became a lot worse and they routed, taking the general with them. At that point, Donal and Dougal called stumps. Although Irish morale was still OK-ish (withdraw), without a general there was little chance of coordinating any attacks at all.

It was a nice battle, and the mcguffin of the siege gun did its job. The English had to stick to it, and the Irish had to try to overrun it. A problem with these sorts of ambush games is that the attack is uncoordinated and the pressure on the defenders can be rather feeble, or at least not as intense as it could have been. On the other hand, the card system raises lots of questions in the mind of the solo wargamer and encourages the use of light troops for scouting places where the enemy might hide.

So, will Donal and Dougal survive? Will they make their peace with Queen Elizabeth or retreat back to their family home and pass their time eating roast chicken? Only time will tell...

The Scope of Wargame Ethics

Quite a long time ago I had a run of posts on the ethics of wargaming. I am not sure that I came to any useful conclusion, but the thought has returned to my head after a recent post on the Palouse Wargaming Journal. I do not wish to recount the content of the post (you can, and should, read it for yourself) but, in summary, it is about the Eastern Front in World War Two and whether, for example, a board wargame should incorporate elements of the Holocaust, diverting units to round up Jews, and other rear area activities like executing partisans, whole villages and anyone who got it the way.

The subsequent discussion is also interesting, and I will not try to summarise it here, either. In a sense there is no ethical question here: it is a matter of historical accuracy and whether we view the Wehrmacht as being ‘clean’ or not, that is, whether the German army was involved in the atrocities or ignorant of them, or simply decided that it was none of its business. That too is a historiographical minefield as, as the Cold War developed, interest grew in the means of German resistance to Soviet tactics, and some of the participants could get their memoirs out and also attempt to whitewash themselves and their army.

Even without these difficulties, which are real, and the problems that most accounts of the Eastern Front are from a German perspective, simply because the said Cold War denied Soviet archives to historians, there is a bit of a non-ethical (I think) scoping issue here, at least as far as wargaming goes. As a comment notes as wargamers were have the usual historian’s problem – what is to be included and what ignored. We cannot include everything; we are creating a model of a historical situation. Including everything would be recreating the original which is not something we really wish to do.

The scoping problem is then what do we include. At, say, a squad level this might not be too hard a problem. To the question of whether the average German soldier was a Nazi in 1941, 1942, or whenever, the answer is that in a skirmish-level game, the specific ideology of a given solider might not matter too much, except that they may be, I suppose, more or less motivated by the cause.

At the other end of the spectrum, a campaign covering the whole of the war, the syphoning off of units onto other duties might matter quite a lot, both in terms of numbers available at the front and also in terms of suppressing partisan activity and achieving the political goals of the highest levels of command. Whether this was palatable or not is not at issue here (it was not and is not) but whether it should be represented and, if so, how.

There are no simple answers, I suspect. Ignoring the rear areas problem (a nice euphemism for mass murder, I know) might mean that we are ignoring, or at the very least, downplaying the slaughter and mayhem the German invasion brought. On the other hand including these items could be glorifying the very same thing, which is also an unpalatable outcome.

To an extent, these issues are usually ruled offside by wargamers. We know they happened, and we believe them to have been very, very, wrong, but we do not want these facts to get in the way of a good game. There might also be some interest in trying to work out how these two deeply unpleasant regimes fought each other and why one of them won. There are tactical and strategic points of interest to be examined and assessed and, to do so we have to make some compromises and exclusions elsewhere.

The question arises, therefore, if we rule that the rear area murdering is out of scope, are we then really creating a historical wargame of the Eastern Front in World War Two? Are we not, in fact, queering the pitch even by calling it the ‘Eastern’ Front, given that that implies a German-centric point of view?

Again, the question returns to scoping and what we think we need to include and what to leave out in order to create a playable and believable game. There may also be the issue that we would rather not, as nice Western liberals of the Twenty-First Century, no engage in the mass murder, pillage, and rape that the armies engaged in. As I noted before all my wargame armies are well-behaved, pay cash upfront for their food and lodging, and never so much look at a local girl. I would like to wargame, not bog myself down in an ethical and historical quagmire.

Therefore, most wargamers would prefer, I suspect, to ignore the rear area mayhem. If any cognisance is taken of it, it is simply to reduce front-line strength by so many troops who were deployed to other duties (another nice euphemism, well done – ed). We simply rule such activities out of court, or at least out of our wargame.

One way of conceptualising ethical scope is to view it as a series of concentric circles. Innermost is ourselves and our nearest and dearest. Next are our broader families, neighbours, and communities. Then come other items of concern, such as nations, other people (those we do not know), those in far-flung places (relative to ourselves), and then other things such as animals, the environment, and such like. Part of the idea of considering our ethics and attitudes to to widen our ethical scope, to consider more of the items in the circles beyond the closest ones.

Possibly the original post and the questions it raises are related to this. As wargamers how far and how wide does our ethical scope go. We can retain a tight focus on the battle itself and ignore the political, social, and other ramifications of the conflict, or we can, perhaps over time, widen our ethical concerns for what these activities meant in the real world.

I am not sure there is a final answer to that. It might depend quite a lot on who we are and how we are engaging at the time. After all, as wargamers, we want wargames, not historiographical and ethical mazes to navigate.

The Bed Recapture

‘Good morning my dear.’

‘Now Ferdinand. Did you sleep well? You are up early for you.’

‘No. I was uncomfortable.’

‘Well, our bed is currently being transported back to Granada. I believe they are going to put it on display.’

‘On display? How dare they!’

‘Quite easily. They captured it from under your nose. Anyway, if you hurry you can intercept them at the Pass of Adutra.’

‘Ah, yes. I know that place. A very fine young lady came from there. She had a wonderful… um… singing voice. Yes, Voice. She was a base baritone.’

‘Remarkable indeed Ferdinand. I recall the young lady you mean. She could barely croak, but she did wear some low-cut dresses. I sent her away before she could catch pneumonia. Anyway, you should be able to lay an ambush for the Granadines at Adutra.’

‘I shall, I shall. They will ride straight into it.’

‘And then you can shut your trap, Ferdinand.’

‘No need to be like that, my dear. I’m trying my best.’

*

So, in order to get any marital action, Ferdinand needs to recapture his bed. Fortunately, Isabella has already discovered where the ox cart loaded with the bed is heading for, and is despatching Ferdinand to intercept it. Ferdinand still does not have his full heavy cavalry complement, but he does now outnumber the Granadans in jinites. He did not get his full army deployed last week, which I felt might have been a little unfair, so he gets to lie in wait for the bed-snaffling enemy this time.

The picture shows the situation after a few moves. Ferdinand, who does not really do subtlety, as you might have noticed, has his infantry astride the road and on the hills to each side, while the jinites are skirmishing forward to try to disrupt the enemy march column. His right-wing jinites are in combat and both sides have been a little disrupted. Still, the ox cart with its vital load is plodding along the road and should eventually turn up in Ferdinand’s hands.

A few moves later, and the Granada army is nearly deployed, while their left-wing jinites have forced the Castilians back a bit. On the other flank Ferdinand’s left has caused some damage to the remaining enemy lights, but their crossbowmen are now coming after them. Ferdinand is also starting to advance his infantry in the centre, concerned that his elements will be a bit far apart to support each other. The Granadine infantry is also pushing up, but they have suffered from insufficient tempo to get their heavier cavalry moving again.

The above picture shows the end of the game. The Granadine crossbowmen have forced Ferdiand’s left wing jinites back although they are still in action. However, this meant that those three bases of crossbowmen were not available to the centre. On the Granadine centre left you can see that a base of crossbows is forcing back (and has nearly broken) a base of Castilian shot. On the other hand, the Castilian foot, together with Ferdinand’s gendarmes have just destroyed the second base of Granadine spearmen. The first base can be seen routing in the centre of the picture. They have also accounted for the Granadine general. The ox cart is within reach of the Castilian foot now, as well. On the Castilian right the Granadine tempo drought has left the jinites lacking in orders and ability to reform, and one of the bases is looking a bit rocky.

At this point, however, due to losses, the Granadines were forced to make a morale check which they failed and got a withdraw result. Without a general to persuade them otherwise they withdrew, much to Ferdinand’s relief.

I think I am getting to grips with using the new ‘Castilian light’ army. Having exchanged to base of gendarmes for two of jinites they cannot just smash their way through their opponents as they used to. On the other hand, the light horse can cause considerable problems. In this scenario, the Granadines were forced to try to block the Castilian left-wing jinites from getting to the wagon by deploying three bases of crossbowmen, which meant that these were not available in the centre where their army was crushed. Ferdinand also managed to use his gendarmes and heavy infantry to good effect, administering the coup de grace with the former while the infantry backed them up – in fact, as the picture shows, the final Granadan spear base was practically surrounded when it was destroyed.

Perhaps the Granadines were always up against it in this scenario. They had to keep cohesion while seeing off a mobile enemy. On their left, they more or less succeeded, but not on their right, and they did not manage to get a coordinated defence by infantry and cavalry. A lack of tempo really did not help, granted, but they deployment from column into line also hampered things, as did a general lack of space.

*

‘Behold your conquering hero comes, Isabella.’

‘Oh, hello Ferdinand.’

‘Put the bed down lads. Carefully. Good. Now, dismiss!’

‘Ferdinand, why were you carried into the room by those poor soldiers?’

‘The Spartans were told to either return carrying their shields or carried on them, my dear. So I thought…’

‘So you returned carried on your bed, rather than carrying it?’

‘Rather a wheeze, don’t you think Issy?’

‘How far did they carry you?’

‘Oh, only from the waiting hall, my dear. I’m not that hard a taskmaster.’

‘Well, I suppose it is appropriate Ferdinand.’

‘Why?’

‘You spend most of your time attempting to get young ladies into bed.’

‘I only have eyes for your loveliness, my dear. You know that.’

‘When you talk about this sort of thing, my dear, do you know how I know you are lying?’

‘No.’

‘Your lips are moving, my darling. Still, you did manage to recapture our bed, and so that is a good thing. Now, if you carry it into our chamber, we will investigate how much damage it has incurred during its journeys.’

The King's Bed

  ‘Ah, there you are Ferdinand.’

‘Oh. Isabella, my sweet. I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘So I understand. I have sent those young ladies home.’

‘Young ladies? What young ladies?’

‘The ones not wearing sufficient clothes who were waiting in the corridor for you to be free.’

‘Oh, those young ladies. Um. They are all excellent singers, my dear, its just that they find modern fashions rather restricting.’

‘As do you, Ferdinand. Anyway, you won’t need to worry about getting undressed unless you do something.’

‘Yes, dear. You have to undo all these knots that hold your trousers up. That can be quite time-consuming.’

‘No Ferdinand. That is not what I mean. I have news of great import to us.’

‘Oh? What news?’

‘Granada is poised to capture our bed.’

‘Our bed?’

‘The new one, that you enjoyed testing so much.’

‘How dare they!’

‘It was on an ox cart and I have a report from the escort that they have been forced to stop on a hill by a pursuing enemy force. You must go and relieve them, or no more bed.’

‘At once, my dear. I depart at once!’

*

Recently I was reading a little bit about the conquest of Peru. The Estimable Mrs P, having endured my confusion as to what was going on – there were about 17 years of civil war after the conquest, after all – suggested that a wargame involving the Reconquista might be interesting. She might have meant the conquistadors, but it reminded me about Ferdinand and Isabella and their quest to conquer Granada.

Anyway, a perusal of some resources came up with Scenario 4 in One Hour Wargames, in which an isolated force holds a hill and waits for reinforcements. The isolated force is one-third of the whole army, and the rest appears from a corner. Needing some sort of reason for an isolated force to be holding a hill, I decided that Ferdinand and Isabella’s new portable bed, for use on campaign, was in danger of being captured. This, as the above might have shown, motivated Ferdinand to saddle up and ride to the rescue.

Those of you with long memories will recall that Ferdinand's forces were downgraded by the loss of two bases of gendarmes, which were the main strike force as they tended to win battles on their own. He therefore has only one gendarme base and more jinites than he is used to. The advanced force, holding the hill and the bed, consists of two bases of shot and two jinites. They need to hold out until the rest of the army arrives.

The picture shows the initial position with the bed wagon in the centre, the holding force on a hill just to the right of it, and the might of the army of Granada on the far right. Ferdinand will arrive top left at the end of turn two.

The picture shows a few moves in. The Castilians on the hill are under pressure from the Granardan infantry and some jinites, while they are also being flanked both left and right. The arrival of Ferdinand means that the Granardan cavalry has been diverted from surrounding the hill to delaying Ferdinand’s advance.

A few moves later and it is nearly all over for the Castilians on the hill, the infantry attack having gone in, overrun them and captured the wagon with the King’s bed on it.

The wagon has been temporarily moved to permit the infantry to fight. In the background, Ferdinand has carefully lined his gendarmes up to charge the Granadine cavalry. They refused. Three times.

‘Why are we charging, sire?’

‘To rescue my bed!’

‘Your bed?’

‘Yes. Charge.’

‘Are we talking a bed, like a thing to sleep on?’

‘Yes, man. My bed, and the Queen’s bed.’

‘We are about to risk life and limb for your bed, sire?’

‘Well, that and Christendom.’

‘Oh, Christendom as well as your marital relations, sire?’

‘Um. Christendom first, man, of course. We are crusaders.’

Eventually, Ferdinand persuaded them to charge home and they did defeat the Granardian cavalry, but Ferdinand had spent his personal tempo on persuading them to do so for some time and the rest of the army was either un-deployed or defeated.

The photograph shows the end of the game. Ferdinand’s cavalry charge has taken him to the right-hand edge of the board, where they are being harassed by some jinites. The wagon, of course, should be on the other side of the hill. The rest of the Castilian army has still not deployed and their morale is a bit low. At this point, I, as Ferdinand, decided to use my second-best bed instead and withdraw.

I think that this scenario depends quite heavily on movement rates. For my rules, the hill could have done to have been a little further from the Granadan table edge. As it was the Castilians on the hill edged backwards as much as they could, but eventually were caught. Ferdinand did suffer from a bit of a tempo drought at times during the game, but his endless attempts to get the gendarmes to charge could have been better spent. I think I got the Granardan command right, for once. Their infantry was too powerful for the detachment on the hill and the jinites did their job quite nicely, better than their counterparts.

*

‘Ah, Ferdinand. How did you get on? Where is my bed?’

‘My dear, in warfare you cannot always achieve the results you desire.’

‘I see. Without the bed, you will not achieve the results you desire. You know that.’

‘We do have alternative beds, Isabella.’

‘If you think I am going to share a bed with you that creaks every time I turn over while living in a tent, you have another think coming. I don’t want the servants to know what we are up to.’

‘We do have some children, my dear. I dare say they know what we’ve been up to.’

‘You had better start working out how you are going to intercept the carriage of that bed before they get it back to Granada, or it will be no result for you, my friend.’

‘Yes, Isabella.’

A Reconnaissance

A short time ago I read in Lone Warrior an article by Jeff Subko, about reconnaissance operations in World War Two and their importance. It also included quite a lot of information about reconnaissance units and equipment in France in 1944-5 and provoked some thinking by yours truly.

I am rarely one to let a lack of suitable toys slow me down. If you abstract sufficiently, I think, more or less any situation can have its period changed, and so I started pondering. I also recalled some of the activities by the force before Naseby. In short, the Parliamentary scouts surprised a Royalist cavalry outpost in Naseby village. The latter were gambling and playing quoits; I am not sure if the two were linked. Some reports suggest that the Royalists were also having lunch.

All of this went together in my poor overstretched little mind and combined with some of the stuff I read about intelligence in Andrew’s book that I wrote about last week. As I was getting desperate to have a wargame and could not quite stomach starting another campaign, or reviving Machiavelli again, I sketched out a possible reconnaissance game. I vaguely remembered a report on a participation game from years ago, where the player was leading a squad sent to scout a farmhouse in 1944 Normandy where what they found was, in fact, randomly controlled and could be anything from nothing to a Panzer division, I needed a bit of a random method of creating what I found.

I will not bore you with the details here. It is really too much of a scribble. I might write it up more sensibly sometime. Basically, what was found in each terrain item, plus each square of the table, was controlled by playing cards. The encounters ranged from nothing to an enemy camp. There was a points system as well. Getting a message back to headquarters on what was found was 1 point, getting a prisoner or deserter back was 2 points, and losing a base in combat lost 3 points. The idea was to get out with a positive point balance.

The picture shows the initial terrain. Each terrain item was, potentially, the concealment place for an enemy force of some description. My side (the Royalists, for no better reason than that I picked a Royalist cavalry base first) enters by one of the two roads nearest the camera. The idea is to see what might be lurking in the rural scene above and get away without damage, as the points system suggests.

In order to do this I had four bases of dragoons and three of cavalry. The latter was conceived of as backup, to rescue the dragoon bases if they hit trouble. I suppose I could have deployed some scouts as well, but decided against it (or forgot). It probably would not have made much difference. The other thing to note is that I ran out of hedges and walls. I needed quite a lot of cover for troops to hide in, and that included along the roads, so every hedge and wall was deployed. I also have some more unpainted and un-based hedges. I might need to break them out.

Still, I cautiously moved some dragoons onto the table and sprang some enemy dragoons in the rough ground on the right, nearest the camera, as well as a scout on the road ahead of my troops. The dragoons opened fire (ineffectively) while the scout made off pursued by my brave men. After a turn or two they did, in fact, catch him and he was sent up the line to be questioned.

A few moves later things were getting lively. My advanced dragoon troop had found an enemy camp near the road. The shooting of the enemy dragoons (and my dragoon’s return fire when they had dismounted) had started to alert the camp but they were slow to deploy, their general in particular being rather sluggish (I wonder what he was doing). The picture shows the situation as the camp was getting organised. You can see to left and right Parliamentary dragoon outposts and patrols withdrawing, while centre right a Parliamentary cavalry troop is heading for what might become the fray from covering a foraging party which was way out to the right. The foragers themselves, another troop of horse, are rallying.

On my side, on the left, a troop of dragoons backed by cavalry are probing forwards. In the centre I have started to withdraw my leading dragoons as they are a bit exposed, and I have deployed my cavalry to stop any smart ideas of charging them.

As it was it did get a little fraught. The dragoons took a bit longer to withdraw than I hoped, leaving the cavalry facing three bases of enemy cavalry. Both sides attempted to charge but the troops of neither side fancied their chances and so after a few growls and doubtless some sword waving from the more excitable elements on both sides, I completed my withdrawal without too much further ado.

You might think that this was very boring as a wargame. Fair enough. Not much happened. But I did succeed in the mission, and got a message reporting the camp and a prisoner back to headquarters, and managed to get my troops away without too much damage – one of the dragoon troops took a lucky hit from some Parliamentary dragoons near the end of the game.

On the other hand, I had discovered the enemy’s presence in some strength and, possibly, the captive scout might tell us more about the enemy's dispositions. My dragoons had inflicted a few casualties on their most advanced post as well and those dragoons, plus their colleagues on the other flank had been pushed in, to use the contemporary term.

All in all, it was a rather satisfactory little game, I thought, and, if it had been part of a campaign context, might have been a bit more important. The thing with reconnaissance, as I have said, is to try to get your troops off without casualties and the message back to headquarters as to what you have found. Dying in a ditch while taking on the whole New Model Army with a couple of troops of dragoons is not much use to anyone.

The Secret World

Everyone does it, you know. Even people who deny that they do it, do it. I am, of course, referring to spying or, to give it its respectable name, intelligence gathering.

I have just been reading

Andrew, C., The Secret World: A History of Intelligence (London, Yale, 2018)

This is a thick brick of a book, with 760 pages of text (more or less, there are some illustrations) and another hundred or so of (very compressed) notes. A serious tome, and it has taken me a bit to read it all. It was, however, undeniably fascinating and by turns amusing, alarming, and bewildering. As with Geoffrey Parker’s Global Crisis, you do start to think that world leaders are rather stupid.

Still, this book claims to be a comprehensive history of intelligence services from the earliest times (the spies Moses sent into the Promised Land, Numbers 13) to the aftermath of the Islamist attacks in the early 2000s. There is much of interest in it for the wargamer, although the actual operations are usually more along the lines of role-playing or skirmish games rather than actual large-scale wargames. That said, one of Andrew’s points is that intelligence and the history thereof is largely unknown in government, security services, and academia.

For example, early on in the book, Andrew notes that on the three occasions when Britain has been seriously threatened by invasion by a foreign power – 1588, 1805, and 1940 – the intelligence services have been quite happily reading the enemy communications. On each occasion (except the first, of course) the codebreakers were ignorant of the fact that it had been done before. It would have helped, it would seem, if they had known because, firstly, it enables a longer view of intelligence and what it can deliver to be taken and, secondly, knowing what went before can clear up a good deal of confusion in how to handle the results of intelligence gathering.

Example abound. For an audience of wargamers, I might not need to mention the US intelligence decision in the late 1930s to have the Navy and the Army decrypt messages on alternate days. It probably seemed a good way to defuse inter-service rivalry at the time, but it led to serious confusion in the run-up to Pearl Harbour, even if the intelligence that had been received probably would not have issued a specific warning.

There are all sorts of fascinating historical items floating around. As another example, the machinations of the 1815 Conference of Vienna were a secret agent’s dream and a security officer’s nightmare. So many diplomats descended on Vienna that it was a simple matter of the Austrians to pay newly hired staff to retrieve documents that they were supposed to burn. Not that the diplomats were much better. A lot depended on who their mistresses were and who the mistresses spoke to. That Europe survived and was reshaped is possibly remarkable.

Another item of interest is that from 1844 to the outbreak of World War One the British had no cryptology department. The interception of letters from Mazzini, an Italian revolutionary caused a political outcry. No gentleman would read another’s mail. This attitude persisted for seventy-five years, more of less. Apparently, the US Embassy in Moscow was so riddled with spies and bugs that nothing could be kept secret until it was swept in the early 1950s. US diplomats continued to use easily cracked codes as well, on the basis that no one would intercept and read them.

It is also the case that the use of intelligence is a bit dubious as well. Enigma information, as is well known, was kept securely under wraps for fear of the enemy detecting that the codes had been broken. On the other hand, ministers and other leaders have a sometimes laughable propensity to announce that they have seen decrypts of foreign diplomatic messages – the temptation to boast is always around, I suppose.

There are also problems with intelligence analysis. Moses had a bit of an issue with that as 10 out of the 12 spies he sent into Canaan brought back scary reports of the place, with the result that the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years. Poor analysis of the results of intelligence can have significant implications for policy, warfare, and diplomacy. Countries have a predilection to misjudge others. The US and British misjudged the capabilities and imagination of the Japanese in 1941, as well as of Islamist terrorists in 2000. You cannot tell if there is a threat unless you are looking in the right place.

Intelligence does not of itself provide victory, either diplomatically or militarily. It can give a force multiplier, however. If you know what your enemy is probably up to you can take suitable countermeasures. If you do not, as with the German army at the beginning of World War One, you have to cover more options, in this case, the Channel ports as it was unknown where or when the British Expeditionary Force was going to land. The resulting division of the German army possibly affected the outcome of the Battle of the Marne.

In wargaming terms, not to mention real life, intelligence, both general diplomatic and specifically military is often overlooked (guilty as charged, m’lud), and, perhaps, it should not be. For example, agents in Bayonne fed Wellington lists of French units passing through on their way to Spain, so he had a pretty good idea of what he was up against. On the other hand, while the Prussians seem to have had far better intelligence than Napoleon before Jena, it did not stop them from losing. Nevertheless, some consideration of the obtaining of intelligence and its analysis and use could well enhance our games and, perhaps more specifically, our wargame campaigns.

I did like this book, although it is a very lengthy text. It has some great ideas for wargame (RPG / skirmish) scenarios in it, and has made me stop and ponder a bit about how intelligence gathering and use could be factored into our games, particularly when, as I do, you play solo. Hm.