I’ve been reading an essay by Matthew Bennett, entitled ‘The Development of Battle Tactics’ in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred years War, edited by Anne Curry and Michael Hughes. This is quite a good book to read if you are interested in the Hundred Years War, which I am.
Anyway, at the start of the essay, Bennett tried to define what battle tactics are. He suggests that often the actual tactics get lost in issues of strategy and organisation, particularly among historians.
In pursuit of his argument, he defines seven levels of military activity. These are:
1. The level of diplomacy, political manoeuvring
2. The organisation, raising and financing of forces
3. Logistics; the movement and supply of the forces
4. Strategy, both overall and theatre specific
5. Operational or campaign strategy, involving chevauchee, sieges and battle seeking or avoiding courses of action
6. Tactics, close range manoeuvring of troops and weapons
7. Individual acts of bravery (the chronicler’s favourite).
So, at what level do we want our wargames to be at? Most wargames, are, I suppose, at level 6, tactical, close range manoeuvring and use of weapons. This is where army level, or battalion level or whatever we like to define them as, rules are usually found. Polemos fits into this area, self-consciously defining itself as a ‘big battle’ rule set.
Not all rules are at this level, of course. Skirmish and role playing games cluster around level 7. In my role playing game days Most of the fights the player character party got into were, essentially, scrums. The player character charged in, relying on decent weapons, high level skills and the player advantage to win.
I recall two honourable exceptions to the above. The first was Call of Cthulhu, where any sort of fighting was usually bad news for the players. The second was a Paranoia scenario where, after being badly beaten by cleaning robots in a dark corridor, the party actually sorted out some cross fire and mutual support tactics to at least get us to the objective. This we did, and the tactics (I suppose you could call them small unit tactics) worked. Of course, this being Paranoia, we got wiped out anyway, and the Game Master told us afterwards we were not really supposed to get that far. But it does show that there are relations between the different levels of military activity described above.
Now, what level do we want our wargames to be at?
Most people seem to wish for wargaming to be at levels 6 and 7, tactics and individual acts. I suppose this is because this is where the stories lie; the story of a unit in action, the story of an individual succeeding against the odds, or at least being a heroic failure.
Some wargames do rise above these levels. Some campaign games, for example, do consider operational strategy, at least. Some wargames, such as those described in ‘Setting Up a Wargames Campaign’ by tony Bath go even higher, with considerations of income, recruitment, logistics, diplomacy and all manner of issues. It has to be said, however, that this comes at a cost of massively increased complexity and these systems do tend to collapse under their own weight.
We run into a second problem at this point. Historians are not interested, in particular, in battles and tactics. This is despite the fact that most people (even non-wargamers) are, and that books about battles sell well.
I recently undertook a course in undergraduate history, by distance learning. At the start of the module on the English Civil war, we were directed to read an article by Austin Woolrych, an eminent historian of the period. In it he bemoaned the fact that, as he put it (I paraphrase), wars were won by battles, but few historians were interested in battles. He considered that few undergraduates who took a course on the English Civil War would be able to name more than two battles of the war.
As the module unfolded, it became clear that this was going to be the case. The only battle mentioned by name was Naseby (which was itself in a quote from Woolrych’s book). There was no discussion or description of how the war was fought. All we got was a balance sheet from a garrison, which showed how much cheese they ate in a week.
I don’t mean to single that course out in particular; I suspect that most history courses are like that. Historian prefer to analyse administrative records and the passage of laws, or, if they want to look ‘from below’ they start trying to find out about the lives of women, children, homosexuals and criminals. There is very little about armies, soldiers and tactics., unless, as is the case with the Roman army, the army is the only organisation in a society about which significant records remain.
Bennett suggests that military history, in particular the history of tactics, is largely ignored because of the above and also because it was for a long time the preserve of former military men. In particular, he has in mind Sir Charles Oman and A. H. Burne, both of whom wrote a lot about the battles of the Hundred Years War.
Both Oman and Burne are getting a little dated, now, but historians are only just beginning to question their accounts of tactics. This seems to be because historiography, after the second world war at least, has decided that wars are not good subjects for history, probably because they are too violent.
Even modern military history suffers from this. Modern history of wars and armies tends to be more interested in financing and the effects of the wars on the state, specifically state formation. In Bennett’s terms, this is the second level of military activity, and is not much use to us as wargamers.
So this is what I mean when I say that the academy is of little use to us, and the trickle down of information from it to the public domain is usually not very helpful. There are a few glimpse of light, but they are sparse and far between.
Saturday, 24 September 2011
Saturday, 17 September 2011
Are We Supposed to Enjoy This?
On a shelf on my bookcase there is a book of Bloom County cartoons. Somewhere in this there is a cartoon where three characters are watching the television.
‘Is this a war movie?’ says one.
‘I think it is the news,’ says another. ‘Those guns look real’
‘I’m sure it’s a movie,’ the first responds, ‘Go on, Kerpow! Boom!’
The third character then speaks: ‘Could someone tell me if I’m supposed to be enjoying this?’
Here, I think, is, in some part, the dilemma posed by wargaming. If the programme the characters are watching is the news, then it cannot be termed ‘entertainment’ (even by some news channels, which do their best to show everything as entertainment). If, on the other hand it is a film, it is supposed to be entertainment, and the violence can be enjoyed.
Now, there is a very odd thing about enjoying violence. It is part of the human experience, and, I should think unusual among the animal kingdom. Most animals do not appear to enjoy violence. Even some of the more violent creatures, those who fight for domination such a lions or stags, do not go out of their way to watch it. But we do. And we enjoy it.
We also draw a distinction between real violence and representations of that violence. We can enjoy a war film, but not a report from some God-forsaken battlefront somewhere. We can read and enjoy military history, but might feel a little uncomfortable if it is too modern.
Similarly, we can enjoy a good wargame, but get uncomfortable if our brief is to kill civilians or engage in wanton destruction of agricultural products or urban environments. If these things happen as a part of the game, we can call that realism, but if that destruction is our aim we regard that with at least a little moral discomfort.
Strange, then, that many military expeditions set out with that idea of wanton destruction in mind. I’ve mentioned before the English raids across France during the Hundred Years wars. There are also the activities of the armies of both sides during the Peloponnesian wars, as chronicled by Thucydides. The examples multiply throughout history, I’m sure. But we do not game them, on the whole.
There are I imagine a variety of reasons for this. Firstly, burning stuff is a fairly boring activity, at least as a game or simulation. Battles are far more interesting and dramatic. The same argument applies, I think to sieges. While you do occasionally see siege wargames in progress at shows, and they can be spectacular, they also can make fairly boring wargames. Most sieges were determined, let us face it, by supplies and diseases, rather than decisive military action.
Secondly, we see on our TV screens too easily these days the effects of crop failures. It may well be that we shy away from reproducing that on the wargames table. We know that the consequences are dire for people, and we can see what that means on the screen with small children lying practically comatose in front of the camera. Wargaming by devastation links us, in some way, in our imagination to such scenes.
In history, this devastation tends to get tidied away. For example, the destruction of much of Germany during the Thirty years War gets limited to a few maps, and maybe a quotation or two from contemporary sources. The individual tragedy is hidden from us; we cannot imagine it. The brush with death of a child on TV news engages us with horror far more easily than the depopulation of Germany 350 years ago. Maybe we just cannot cope with the numbers.
Thirdly, I suspect that unless the scenario is specifically designed for it, resource destruction in a wargame is pointless. The only circumstances wereby it could be a useful use of the forces available is during a campaign game. In a normal, one off, wargame it is far better to concentrate those forces on the battle. Defeating the enemy is of far greater import than destroying their resources.
In real life, of course, this may not be quite the same. Battles were not as decisive as we may like to believe, although they were much more important than most historians seem to think. In the English Civil war, for example, there were lots of battles, but only (roughly speaking) three or four of them were truly decisive. The winners tended to dissipate their strength into new garrisons, while the losers recouped theirs from garrisons. The actual domination of the ground altered a bit, but the battle was certainly not a knock out blow.
Even some of the decisive battles were not that decisive. At Poitiers the English even managed to capture the French king, but endless wrangling ensued and the final outcome was not what someone regarding the political situation in 1357 would have expected. Similarly, after Agincourt, the English appeared to hold all the aces, but some aspects of French society simply refused to accept the results of battle and treaty and, eventually, won.
So where have we landed up. The relationship between table top battles and real life ones is, fortunately, rather tenuous. Thus we can regard wargames as entertainment, in much the same ways as war movies are. Perhaps the difficulties really occur during wargame campaigns where it is important to attack the enemy resources, not just their forces. But of course, we can abstract that away and supress the human suffering this would cause in real life because it is only a game.
‘Is this a war movie?’ says one.
‘I think it is the news,’ says another. ‘Those guns look real’
‘I’m sure it’s a movie,’ the first responds, ‘Go on, Kerpow! Boom!’
The third character then speaks: ‘Could someone tell me if I’m supposed to be enjoying this?’
Here, I think, is, in some part, the dilemma posed by wargaming. If the programme the characters are watching is the news, then it cannot be termed ‘entertainment’ (even by some news channels, which do their best to show everything as entertainment). If, on the other hand it is a film, it is supposed to be entertainment, and the violence can be enjoyed.
Now, there is a very odd thing about enjoying violence. It is part of the human experience, and, I should think unusual among the animal kingdom. Most animals do not appear to enjoy violence. Even some of the more violent creatures, those who fight for domination such a lions or stags, do not go out of their way to watch it. But we do. And we enjoy it.
We also draw a distinction between real violence and representations of that violence. We can enjoy a war film, but not a report from some God-forsaken battlefront somewhere. We can read and enjoy military history, but might feel a little uncomfortable if it is too modern.
Similarly, we can enjoy a good wargame, but get uncomfortable if our brief is to kill civilians or engage in wanton destruction of agricultural products or urban environments. If these things happen as a part of the game, we can call that realism, but if that destruction is our aim we regard that with at least a little moral discomfort.
Strange, then, that many military expeditions set out with that idea of wanton destruction in mind. I’ve mentioned before the English raids across France during the Hundred Years wars. There are also the activities of the armies of both sides during the Peloponnesian wars, as chronicled by Thucydides. The examples multiply throughout history, I’m sure. But we do not game them, on the whole.
There are I imagine a variety of reasons for this. Firstly, burning stuff is a fairly boring activity, at least as a game or simulation. Battles are far more interesting and dramatic. The same argument applies, I think to sieges. While you do occasionally see siege wargames in progress at shows, and they can be spectacular, they also can make fairly boring wargames. Most sieges were determined, let us face it, by supplies and diseases, rather than decisive military action.
Secondly, we see on our TV screens too easily these days the effects of crop failures. It may well be that we shy away from reproducing that on the wargames table. We know that the consequences are dire for people, and we can see what that means on the screen with small children lying practically comatose in front of the camera. Wargaming by devastation links us, in some way, in our imagination to such scenes.
In history, this devastation tends to get tidied away. For example, the destruction of much of Germany during the Thirty years War gets limited to a few maps, and maybe a quotation or two from contemporary sources. The individual tragedy is hidden from us; we cannot imagine it. The brush with death of a child on TV news engages us with horror far more easily than the depopulation of Germany 350 years ago. Maybe we just cannot cope with the numbers.
Thirdly, I suspect that unless the scenario is specifically designed for it, resource destruction in a wargame is pointless. The only circumstances wereby it could be a useful use of the forces available is during a campaign game. In a normal, one off, wargame it is far better to concentrate those forces on the battle. Defeating the enemy is of far greater import than destroying their resources.
In real life, of course, this may not be quite the same. Battles were not as decisive as we may like to believe, although they were much more important than most historians seem to think. In the English Civil war, for example, there were lots of battles, but only (roughly speaking) three or four of them were truly decisive. The winners tended to dissipate their strength into new garrisons, while the losers recouped theirs from garrisons. The actual domination of the ground altered a bit, but the battle was certainly not a knock out blow.
Even some of the decisive battles were not that decisive. At Poitiers the English even managed to capture the French king, but endless wrangling ensued and the final outcome was not what someone regarding the political situation in 1357 would have expected. Similarly, after Agincourt, the English appeared to hold all the aces, but some aspects of French society simply refused to accept the results of battle and treaty and, eventually, won.
So where have we landed up. The relationship between table top battles and real life ones is, fortunately, rather tenuous. Thus we can regard wargames as entertainment, in much the same ways as war movies are. Perhaps the difficulties really occur during wargame campaigns where it is important to attack the enemy resources, not just their forces. But of course, we can abstract that away and supress the human suffering this would cause in real life because it is only a game.
Saturday, 10 September 2011
Wargames and Symbolism
What are we doing when we wargame? There are, I suppose, as many answers to that question as there are wargamers. But we can surely try to abstract some of the common threads and see what they might be.
Of course, common threads are there, and are not that obscure. I cannot think of a wargame that does not have a representation of a fighting unit. What the representation represents varies widely. It could be a space ship, a naval vessel, an army unit or an individual. The form of representation varies as well. The representation could be an individual model, a set of models, a cardboard or wood counter, or a bunch of pixels on a screen. Whichever way is chosen, the wargame piece is a representation of a ‘real agent’ on the battlefield.
A second common thread is randomisation. This is normally generated by dice. There are two reasons for including a random factor in wargames. Firstly, some things are random, or nearly so. “Every bullet has its billet” as the First World War slogan had it. Really, we can trace a causal relationship. If I move my head there, then a bullet fired just then, at that angle and direction, will hit me. This is not random, but it is unpredictable. And of course, we cannot trace the causal relationships on all our wargame interactions, so a random factor for this will have to do.
Secondly, there is another layer of unpredictability. Fallible human beings, in situations of great stress, make mistakes or fail to perform as expected. This is not actually random either, although I doubt if the state of psychology at present would enable modelling of it. Add in the complexities of humans acting in a crowd, and the dimension of discipline and its breakdown and you have a very hard to understand situation.
So as common threads we have randomisation representing the unpredictability of the battlefield, and we have representations of battlefield agents, at some level (individual, subunit, unit, and so on). Thirdly, of course, we have a set of rules that the players have agreed to use.
As I’ve said before, the rules mediate between the table top ‘action’ and the world of the players. In the player’s world, no battle takes place, just a (hopefully) enjoyable game or social interaction. On the table top a representation of a battle is taking place. The representative agents are moved and removed in accordance with the players wishes (and the random factor) as mediated through the rules. The outcomes are similarly transmitted though the random factors, the rules and the player choices.
Now, I like to argue that our ‘agent representations’, the toy soldiers, are, in fact, symbols. I do not think that this is a particularly large leap in logic; we are used to reading battlefield maps, or counters in boardgames. These have symbolic meanings which vary according to use. So too do model soldiers; they symbolise an agent with certain capabilities.
The thing about symbols is that they need interpreting. If you do not believe me, try taking your favourite wargame unit and showing it to a non-wargaming friend or colleague. Ask ‘What is this?’
The chances are that you will get an answer along the lines of ‘little men’, or ‘toy soldiers’, rather than “B Platoon, 21st Lancers, Sudan, 1898”, which is what you might have been expecting. But why could you have been expecting that?
Your interlocutor is, in many respects, as correct as you are. In a sense, in fact, they are more correct, as what you have shown them is not a unit of lancers, but a representation or symbol of a unit of lancers, no matter how accurate. And that symbol, as just demonstrated, needs interpreting or its meaning is lost.
To see what I mean, consider an ancient monument such as Stonehenge. At midsummer the sun shines in a certain way on the stones. We sense that this event, is, in some way, deeply symbolic; but what is it symbolic of?
Actually, what it meant to the designers of Stonehenge is lost in the mists of prehistory. While some people do go to Stonehenge on midsummer morning to do assorted ritual stuff, at the very best they give a modern interpretation of the stones. The symbol, the sun on the stones at midsummer, has lost connection with its meaning
The upshot of this is that a base of lancers of the late British Empire is a symbol (a representation of the real thing), but that symbol must be interpreted in order to keep connection with that real thing. In fact, I think there may be two levels of interpretation.
Firstly, I can interpret the base historically. I can look at the figures, their arms, uniforms, disposition on the base and so on, and compare that with other representations I have seen. Hopefully I will come to the same conclusion that the owner of the base has, that indeed this is a symbol of a unit of lancers from a given time and place.
The second interpretation of the base comes via the set of wargame rules. This interprets the base as a symbol of an agent. The base is treated as an agent in the rules with certain capabilities to move (be moved) and to fight (be made active). The rules, then, do not just interpret the table top, they give the symbols we manipulate a sort of make believe agency to act on that table top.
These two strands of interpretation do not have to hold together. I’ve always been a wargamer, not a military modeller; that is, I’ve focussed on the second interpretation, not the first. I’ve never really understood why people engage in military modelling, nor why there is such a divide between them and wargamers.
Maybe, now, I’ve found something of an answer.
Of course, common threads are there, and are not that obscure. I cannot think of a wargame that does not have a representation of a fighting unit. What the representation represents varies widely. It could be a space ship, a naval vessel, an army unit or an individual. The form of representation varies as well. The representation could be an individual model, a set of models, a cardboard or wood counter, or a bunch of pixels on a screen. Whichever way is chosen, the wargame piece is a representation of a ‘real agent’ on the battlefield.
A second common thread is randomisation. This is normally generated by dice. There are two reasons for including a random factor in wargames. Firstly, some things are random, or nearly so. “Every bullet has its billet” as the First World War slogan had it. Really, we can trace a causal relationship. If I move my head there, then a bullet fired just then, at that angle and direction, will hit me. This is not random, but it is unpredictable. And of course, we cannot trace the causal relationships on all our wargame interactions, so a random factor for this will have to do.
Secondly, there is another layer of unpredictability. Fallible human beings, in situations of great stress, make mistakes or fail to perform as expected. This is not actually random either, although I doubt if the state of psychology at present would enable modelling of it. Add in the complexities of humans acting in a crowd, and the dimension of discipline and its breakdown and you have a very hard to understand situation.
So as common threads we have randomisation representing the unpredictability of the battlefield, and we have representations of battlefield agents, at some level (individual, subunit, unit, and so on). Thirdly, of course, we have a set of rules that the players have agreed to use.
As I’ve said before, the rules mediate between the table top ‘action’ and the world of the players. In the player’s world, no battle takes place, just a (hopefully) enjoyable game or social interaction. On the table top a representation of a battle is taking place. The representative agents are moved and removed in accordance with the players wishes (and the random factor) as mediated through the rules. The outcomes are similarly transmitted though the random factors, the rules and the player choices.
Now, I like to argue that our ‘agent representations’, the toy soldiers, are, in fact, symbols. I do not think that this is a particularly large leap in logic; we are used to reading battlefield maps, or counters in boardgames. These have symbolic meanings which vary according to use. So too do model soldiers; they symbolise an agent with certain capabilities.
The thing about symbols is that they need interpreting. If you do not believe me, try taking your favourite wargame unit and showing it to a non-wargaming friend or colleague. Ask ‘What is this?’
The chances are that you will get an answer along the lines of ‘little men’, or ‘toy soldiers’, rather than “B Platoon, 21st Lancers, Sudan, 1898”, which is what you might have been expecting. But why could you have been expecting that?
Your interlocutor is, in many respects, as correct as you are. In a sense, in fact, they are more correct, as what you have shown them is not a unit of lancers, but a representation or symbol of a unit of lancers, no matter how accurate. And that symbol, as just demonstrated, needs interpreting or its meaning is lost.
To see what I mean, consider an ancient monument such as Stonehenge. At midsummer the sun shines in a certain way on the stones. We sense that this event, is, in some way, deeply symbolic; but what is it symbolic of?
Actually, what it meant to the designers of Stonehenge is lost in the mists of prehistory. While some people do go to Stonehenge on midsummer morning to do assorted ritual stuff, at the very best they give a modern interpretation of the stones. The symbol, the sun on the stones at midsummer, has lost connection with its meaning
The upshot of this is that a base of lancers of the late British Empire is a symbol (a representation of the real thing), but that symbol must be interpreted in order to keep connection with that real thing. In fact, I think there may be two levels of interpretation.
Firstly, I can interpret the base historically. I can look at the figures, their arms, uniforms, disposition on the base and so on, and compare that with other representations I have seen. Hopefully I will come to the same conclusion that the owner of the base has, that indeed this is a symbol of a unit of lancers from a given time and place.
The second interpretation of the base comes via the set of wargame rules. This interprets the base as a symbol of an agent. The base is treated as an agent in the rules with certain capabilities to move (be moved) and to fight (be made active). The rules, then, do not just interpret the table top, they give the symbols we manipulate a sort of make believe agency to act on that table top.
These two strands of interpretation do not have to hold together. I’ve always been a wargamer, not a military modeller; that is, I’ve focussed on the second interpretation, not the first. I’ve never really understood why people engage in military modelling, nor why there is such a divide between them and wargamers.
Maybe, now, I’ve found something of an answer.
Saturday, 3 September 2011
Wargame Categories
Man is a categorizing animal. It is what we do, how we understand and make sense of the world. This tabby creature before me is a cat. She will therefore respond in some ways to some stimuli, like a catnip toy mouse, and not to others, like a stick thrown in a game of fetch. My understanding of her behaviour is based on my understanding of the nature of the species ‘cat’. Of course, as this cat she may show some variation, but always within the broad parameters of the term cat.
Categorization is an ancient form of thinking. Aristotle, for example, categorized frantically in order to understand the world. He divided everything into a given genus and species. By everything, I mean everything; even emotions and thoughts were categorized. His legacy is with us still.
Now, clearly, as humanity is a very successful species, categorizing is a useful thing to do. I imagine that a hunter-gatherer finds it quite useful to decide if a new sort of animal falls into the ‘food’ or ‘flee from’ category, or this different sort of fruit is in the ‘poison’ or ‘eat’ category, and so on.
Categorisation has a close cousin called reductionism. Reductionism lies towards the heart of modern scientific method. If an aspect of the universe is too difficult and complex to understand as it is, we chop it up into smaller conceptual bits, until we are able to understand them. Then, we can try to put the bits back together and see how the whole thing works.
Quite a lot of technology works like this,. Computer software, for example, is (supposed to be) designed like this. Individual objects are created to do a given job, and then they are joined together with other bits to achieve an overall task, and so on up a hierarchy until you get, say, a word processor.
Similar things happen with hardware. Different boards in a personal computer do different things. If the PC fails, the board can be changed. Each does its thing, and they are not interchangeable, but one can be replaced by a board of the same type. The boundaries of the categories are not flexible in this case.
There are some things that are not reducible to individual components. Take a crowd, for example. Now, commentators may well say ‘the mood of the crowd is turning ugly’. What do they mean by this?
If you took each individual of that crowd, and asked them ‘are you angry?’ you would probably get a wide variety of answers. Some might say ‘yes’, some ‘maybe’, but many would probably say no. Yet the overall mood of the crowd was assessed as ‘ugly’ by the commentator. The individuals might not be angry per se, but the overall, collective effect is one of anger. The overall effect then is different from the sum of the parts. The total mood of the crowd is not the same as the sum of the mood of each individual in it.
So what has this got to do with wargaming?
I think there are two aspects of relevance to me in this. The first is to do with reductionism, and the second to do with irreducibility.
Firstly, then, reductionism. When we write wargame rules, we need to categorize things. We do this fairly naturally, at least initially, and describe things as ‘cavalry’, ‘foot’, artillery’ and so on. This is quite clear, straightforward, natural and uncontroversial. Then, within these categories, we subdivide. Foot becomes ‘archers’, ‘spearmen’ ‘dismounted knights’ ‘rabble’ and so forth. Again, this is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial.
At this point, though, we can hit a problem. We might have a species called, say, ‘spearmen’, but we find spearmen being used in different ways. Perhaps we find spearmen in Anglo-Saxon armies in defensive shield walls, while Swiss pike are attacking Burgundian knights.
Clearly, we can differentiate these folks, classing the Saxons as spearmen and the Swiss as pikemen and allowing the latter to attack, but they have no shields so cannot be spearmen. But what if we find Saxon spearmen charging, or Swiss pike with paviasses?
The danger is that we further sub-categorize and landing up with such wargame species as ‘light heavy medium spear’ facing ‘medium heavy light pike’. OK, I exaggerate, but only a bit.
The trick, therefore, as a rule writer, is to only go so far in reductionism, and there to stop. Or, as in my case, to reduce your historical focus to a point where you can stop worrying about comparisons across centuries and cultures, and call an Auxillia an Auxillia.
The second issue is the group dynamic one. Bodies of people behave differently than individuals. You cannot predicate group movement by seeing how far one person moves in a given length of time, and assuming that the other ninety-nine will do the same in a body. Life does not work like that.
I recall older sets of rules that based their movement on a given time period, and how far a person could walk or run in that time. This tends to be an awful lot further than the distances covered in battles, and this was usually glossed over by the rules. The better ones admitted the problem, but just changed the time scale to cope.
But what is happening here I think is an application of the irreducibility of crowd behaviour. I cannot move forward until the chap in front of me starts, and he can’t until the one in front of him does and so on. Getting a unit moving is harder than it looks. If you don’t believe me, next time you are in a traffic jam try moving forward before the vehicle in front does. I will not be responsible for any insurance claims arising from the experiment, though.
To summarise, categorisation is a good thing, but. And the buts are that too much reductionism lands up in an over complex (and possibly silly) place, and that some things simply cannot be broken down into component parts.
Categorization is an ancient form of thinking. Aristotle, for example, categorized frantically in order to understand the world. He divided everything into a given genus and species. By everything, I mean everything; even emotions and thoughts were categorized. His legacy is with us still.
Now, clearly, as humanity is a very successful species, categorizing is a useful thing to do. I imagine that a hunter-gatherer finds it quite useful to decide if a new sort of animal falls into the ‘food’ or ‘flee from’ category, or this different sort of fruit is in the ‘poison’ or ‘eat’ category, and so on.
Categorisation has a close cousin called reductionism. Reductionism lies towards the heart of modern scientific method. If an aspect of the universe is too difficult and complex to understand as it is, we chop it up into smaller conceptual bits, until we are able to understand them. Then, we can try to put the bits back together and see how the whole thing works.
Quite a lot of technology works like this,. Computer software, for example, is (supposed to be) designed like this. Individual objects are created to do a given job, and then they are joined together with other bits to achieve an overall task, and so on up a hierarchy until you get, say, a word processor.
Similar things happen with hardware. Different boards in a personal computer do different things. If the PC fails, the board can be changed. Each does its thing, and they are not interchangeable, but one can be replaced by a board of the same type. The boundaries of the categories are not flexible in this case.
There are some things that are not reducible to individual components. Take a crowd, for example. Now, commentators may well say ‘the mood of the crowd is turning ugly’. What do they mean by this?
If you took each individual of that crowd, and asked them ‘are you angry?’ you would probably get a wide variety of answers. Some might say ‘yes’, some ‘maybe’, but many would probably say no. Yet the overall mood of the crowd was assessed as ‘ugly’ by the commentator. The individuals might not be angry per se, but the overall, collective effect is one of anger. The overall effect then is different from the sum of the parts. The total mood of the crowd is not the same as the sum of the mood of each individual in it.
So what has this got to do with wargaming?
I think there are two aspects of relevance to me in this. The first is to do with reductionism, and the second to do with irreducibility.
Firstly, then, reductionism. When we write wargame rules, we need to categorize things. We do this fairly naturally, at least initially, and describe things as ‘cavalry’, ‘foot’, artillery’ and so on. This is quite clear, straightforward, natural and uncontroversial. Then, within these categories, we subdivide. Foot becomes ‘archers’, ‘spearmen’ ‘dismounted knights’ ‘rabble’ and so forth. Again, this is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial.
At this point, though, we can hit a problem. We might have a species called, say, ‘spearmen’, but we find spearmen being used in different ways. Perhaps we find spearmen in Anglo-Saxon armies in defensive shield walls, while Swiss pike are attacking Burgundian knights.
Clearly, we can differentiate these folks, classing the Saxons as spearmen and the Swiss as pikemen and allowing the latter to attack, but they have no shields so cannot be spearmen. But what if we find Saxon spearmen charging, or Swiss pike with paviasses?
The danger is that we further sub-categorize and landing up with such wargame species as ‘light heavy medium spear’ facing ‘medium heavy light pike’. OK, I exaggerate, but only a bit.
The trick, therefore, as a rule writer, is to only go so far in reductionism, and there to stop. Or, as in my case, to reduce your historical focus to a point where you can stop worrying about comparisons across centuries and cultures, and call an Auxillia an Auxillia.
The second issue is the group dynamic one. Bodies of people behave differently than individuals. You cannot predicate group movement by seeing how far one person moves in a given length of time, and assuming that the other ninety-nine will do the same in a body. Life does not work like that.
I recall older sets of rules that based their movement on a given time period, and how far a person could walk or run in that time. This tends to be an awful lot further than the distances covered in battles, and this was usually glossed over by the rules. The better ones admitted the problem, but just changed the time scale to cope.
But what is happening here I think is an application of the irreducibility of crowd behaviour. I cannot move forward until the chap in front of me starts, and he can’t until the one in front of him does and so on. Getting a unit moving is harder than it looks. If you don’t believe me, next time you are in a traffic jam try moving forward before the vehicle in front does. I will not be responsible for any insurance claims arising from the experiment, though.
To summarise, categorisation is a good thing, but. And the buts are that too much reductionism lands up in an over complex (and possibly silly) place, and that some things simply cannot be broken down into component parts.
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Sticks, Carrots, Method Acting and Wargames
Some recent comments about how wargame rules should be written has sparked the rather unusual title, anyway. But the question lying behind it is germane: how do you write wargame rules which are, in some way, historical? What rules can force the players to use the forces at their disposal in a more or less historical way?
This is actually a difficult thing to achieve. To take the final method first, the idea behind ‘method acting’ is that the players have a deep understanding of the period and therefore act in character for a general of the time anyway. This is a very attractive idea, but it is rather difficult to see how it can be achieved in practice.
Firstly, most wargamers I know do not focus on one period. One week they could be a Roman general against the Germans, the next they could be commanding the Napoleonic British against the French. Furthermore, historical match ups are not necessarily the norm. How would an Aztec general have reacted if faced with a Thirty Years War Swedish army? I’ve no idea, and I’m fairly sure that no-one else will have either. So we cannot assume deep knowledge of the period for these reasons.
Secondly, as mentioned before, even if we do have a deep understanding of a historic period, we still bring our own eyes to bear on it. I’ve mentioned before the idea that we appropriate history to form our own narratives, and that is as true of a wargamer (or rule writer) that focuses on a narrow period of time as it is of anyone else.
So we cannot assume that a wargamer is going to arrive at the table ready to act in period.
The second method to consider is the ‘carrot’ method. This writes rules to make the player act in period. An example would be to make, in English Civil War rules, musketeers unsupported by pike vulnerable to being ridden down by cavalry. This can be done by, for example, giving musketeers fighting cavalry a bonus if they have a pike base on their flank.
The example just given was used in DBR, and, for such a simple rule, had a surprisingly nasty effect. Instead of forming units of [musket][pike][musket], players did odder things, such as units of [musket][pike] only, or alternating musket and pike bases down the line. Players did not method act as the rules were better for them if they didn’t. It may well be, of course, that the play testers did method act and so the weaknesses were not detected until release. But as a carrot, and given that musketeer bases are quite powerful in DBR, it was a bit of a failure. The carrot led to some odd results.
Another writer’s tactic is to simply abstract away this sort of difficulty. This is what we did in Polemos: ECW. Muskets and pikes are on the same base, just in different rations. This is more ‘stick’ like; it forces the players to conform to historical tactics by not giving any alternative. In my view this does work better, but complaints could be made that it is too constricting, and that it is not possible to split and merge pike and shot during the game.
How, then, can rules be constructed, rewarding historical tactics but without constricting the players too much? This is the most difficult balance to achieve, and I think no given set of rules will actually achieve it perfectly; the best that can be hoped for is a balance between stick and carrot, constraint and reward.
As an example, consider Romans and tribal forces facing each other. When I did this for the Polemos Romans rules I had to consider the fact that Romans fought in lines (OK, with reserves behind, but basically a series of lines) while tribal forces tended to fight in blocks. Evidence from other games suggests quite strongly that most wargamers like to fight in lines, and I’ve seen a number of ancients wargames where the tribal force looks more like Wellington’s army at Waterloo than an ancient force.
What then can be done? What I have done is to fix the movement rules to make it more expensive to move wider tribal forces than narrower, while the Romans can move any width of force at more or less the same cost. So far as I can see, this has worked in play testing. It does not force the tribal player to fight in deep formations; it just makes it much easier so to do.
So is this historical? The sources are not that good for this sort of fighting, but it does seem to be the case that tribal forces aimed to punch a hole in the Roman line, and that this was what the Roman commanders were concerned about. A massed charge across the entire field was doomed to failure (see Boudicca’s last battle for evidence), while a picked spot for assault (e.g. the Germans at Teutourg Wald) might succeed. In order to survive, the Romans have to have a second line to cover the break through spots. Nobody is forced into this, but the rules imply that this might work best and most cheaply.
So, do we go for carrot or stick? A combination seems to be best. If we can manage it, a mix of incentive and dis-incentive can work to balance the wargamer’s natural desire to play the game like the maps in history text books, with nice clean blocks of troops, and to use a-historical tactics to gain an advantage. The problem is, of course, that a-historical tactics, in history, sometimes worked, and were then termed a surprise. So that has to be covered too, because they are not a surprise for us who have all read the same history books.
Method acting would be the best, of course, but that really leads to role playing and re-enacting, both of which are different ball games, really.
This is actually a difficult thing to achieve. To take the final method first, the idea behind ‘method acting’ is that the players have a deep understanding of the period and therefore act in character for a general of the time anyway. This is a very attractive idea, but it is rather difficult to see how it can be achieved in practice.
Firstly, most wargamers I know do not focus on one period. One week they could be a Roman general against the Germans, the next they could be commanding the Napoleonic British against the French. Furthermore, historical match ups are not necessarily the norm. How would an Aztec general have reacted if faced with a Thirty Years War Swedish army? I’ve no idea, and I’m fairly sure that no-one else will have either. So we cannot assume deep knowledge of the period for these reasons.
Secondly, as mentioned before, even if we do have a deep understanding of a historic period, we still bring our own eyes to bear on it. I’ve mentioned before the idea that we appropriate history to form our own narratives, and that is as true of a wargamer (or rule writer) that focuses on a narrow period of time as it is of anyone else.
So we cannot assume that a wargamer is going to arrive at the table ready to act in period.
The second method to consider is the ‘carrot’ method. This writes rules to make the player act in period. An example would be to make, in English Civil War rules, musketeers unsupported by pike vulnerable to being ridden down by cavalry. This can be done by, for example, giving musketeers fighting cavalry a bonus if they have a pike base on their flank.
The example just given was used in DBR, and, for such a simple rule, had a surprisingly nasty effect. Instead of forming units of [musket][pike][musket], players did odder things, such as units of [musket][pike] only, or alternating musket and pike bases down the line. Players did not method act as the rules were better for them if they didn’t. It may well be, of course, that the play testers did method act and so the weaknesses were not detected until release. But as a carrot, and given that musketeer bases are quite powerful in DBR, it was a bit of a failure. The carrot led to some odd results.
Another writer’s tactic is to simply abstract away this sort of difficulty. This is what we did in Polemos: ECW. Muskets and pikes are on the same base, just in different rations. This is more ‘stick’ like; it forces the players to conform to historical tactics by not giving any alternative. In my view this does work better, but complaints could be made that it is too constricting, and that it is not possible to split and merge pike and shot during the game.
How, then, can rules be constructed, rewarding historical tactics but without constricting the players too much? This is the most difficult balance to achieve, and I think no given set of rules will actually achieve it perfectly; the best that can be hoped for is a balance between stick and carrot, constraint and reward.
As an example, consider Romans and tribal forces facing each other. When I did this for the Polemos Romans rules I had to consider the fact that Romans fought in lines (OK, with reserves behind, but basically a series of lines) while tribal forces tended to fight in blocks. Evidence from other games suggests quite strongly that most wargamers like to fight in lines, and I’ve seen a number of ancients wargames where the tribal force looks more like Wellington’s army at Waterloo than an ancient force.
What then can be done? What I have done is to fix the movement rules to make it more expensive to move wider tribal forces than narrower, while the Romans can move any width of force at more or less the same cost. So far as I can see, this has worked in play testing. It does not force the tribal player to fight in deep formations; it just makes it much easier so to do.
So is this historical? The sources are not that good for this sort of fighting, but it does seem to be the case that tribal forces aimed to punch a hole in the Roman line, and that this was what the Roman commanders were concerned about. A massed charge across the entire field was doomed to failure (see Boudicca’s last battle for evidence), while a picked spot for assault (e.g. the Germans at Teutourg Wald) might succeed. In order to survive, the Romans have to have a second line to cover the break through spots. Nobody is forced into this, but the rules imply that this might work best and most cheaply.
So, do we go for carrot or stick? A combination seems to be best. If we can manage it, a mix of incentive and dis-incentive can work to balance the wargamer’s natural desire to play the game like the maps in history text books, with nice clean blocks of troops, and to use a-historical tactics to gain an advantage. The problem is, of course, that a-historical tactics, in history, sometimes worked, and were then termed a surprise. So that has to be covered too, because they are not a surprise for us who have all read the same history books.
Method acting would be the best, of course, but that really leads to role playing and re-enacting, both of which are different ball games, really.
Saturday, 20 August 2011
Wargaming Beyond Morality
Supposing that we came up with a theory that wargaming in particular, and leisure activities in general were in some sense beyond moral decisions. How would you feel about that?
Now, first of all, let me give a brief outline of the sort of argument which might lead to leisure activities being beyond morality. It goes something like this:
Moral judgements are made about the outcomes of activities.
Leisure activities have no outcome. This is because the point of a leisure activity is the process of the leisure activity, not the result of that activity. Thus, the point of wargaming is to have a wargame, not to have had one.
Therefore, as leisure activities have no outcome, there can be no moral judgement passed upon them.
Therefore, wargaming is an activity which is beyond, or at least outside the normal range of our moral activities.
Thus, wargaming is beyond morality.
Now, your response to this might vary. Some might say “wonderful! He can stop wittering and worrying about it now on his blog.” Fair comment, perhaps. Another response would be ‘of course it is, because it is something that I do with myself and a group of consenting adults. How can morality possibly come into play?’ Again, that is, as the argument above suggests, a defensible one.
However, I suspect that a number of us might not be too comfortable with the idea that wargaming, or any other activity for that matter is entirely beyond our moral range, so perhaps we need to look a little more closely at the above argument.
Firstly, it is interesting to note that some of the activities that we have worried about here, such as promoting neo-Nazi agendas, are ruled out. To promote a political agenda thought the leisure activity is to slip an outcome into it. The argument then is invalidated, and the outcome ruled out by normal morality being applied. Further than this, it might be that the argument also rules out bragging rights and being able to recall the game. This might be a little harsh, but I suppose it depends on what you regard as being within or outwith the leisure activity.
The second thing to note is that the argument is based on utilitarianism. There is an assumption in the initial statement that the thing of interest is the outcome. Now, utilitarianism argues that the morally correct decision is the one that brings the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It is consequential; the consequences are important. However, the argument above explicitly states that the activity has no consequences. It is the engagement in the activity which matters.
Now, utilitarianism is widespread in our public discourse. Most political decisions which are made are informed, or at least argued over, from utilitarian perspectives. I suppose that in a liberal democracy, this is fairly inevitable.
Utilitarianism does have its problems, however. The most obvious is the impossibility of calculating the ‘goods’ which a particular course of action might entail. For example, I might think it good that the country remains with a high debt to maintain a good public health service. You might well agree that a good public health service is important, but you might argue that if we maintain a huge debt to fund it, our children will not be able to have such a service for themselves. The argument then revolves around who the greatest good applies to: us or future generations?
I don’t want to get into the details of the arguments for and against utilitarianism. In our context, it rules out any application of morality to the game itself. I think the problem with this approach has already been indicated. No activity is actually an activity entirely without outcomes.
Some outcomes are good. For example, figure manufacturers, rule writers and terrain makers will all benefit from your activities, as may metal manufacturers, paint mixers, paintbrush makers and so on. These are all beneficiaries of your wargame, albeit indirectly, but they do make the point that no wargame can be isolated from the rest of the world. As hinted above, even the winning of bragging rights suggests an outcome beyond the activity, and then the argument does not apply.
Therefore, it would seem that while a utilitarian argument that wargaming is beyond morality can be constructed, when the details are examined, it might be that the circumstances under which it would apply are so restrictive that the argument cannot apply to a real world scenario. After all, it rather defeats the object of having a wargame if we cannot recall it pleasure, talk about it to our friends and so on.
The other thing which the utilitarian argument does not deal with is morality within the game. While the above argues that wargaming is not a moral argument per se, it does not tackle the issue of dealing morally within the game. I don’t mean, here, the morality of the game level, of what our symbols of real actors are doing, but at the player level. By this, morality means not cheating, not trying to obtain more than is your due under the rules and so on. Utilitarianism may have some bearing on this behaviour (in fact, I think it does) but it is not included in the above argument.
So where does this leave us?
I think that the utilitarian argument described is quite a useful one for thinking about the morality of wargaming as a leisure exercise. However, I think I have demonstrated that it does not actually get us very far. Perhaps the most useful thing it does is rule out definitively some of the more extreme behaviours which a minority might engage in, to make some sort of political point. But, as we have discussed before, that is a tiny minority of people associated with wargaming. The argument has helped a bit, but still leaves a wide open field for further pondering.
Now, first of all, let me give a brief outline of the sort of argument which might lead to leisure activities being beyond morality. It goes something like this:
Moral judgements are made about the outcomes of activities.
Leisure activities have no outcome. This is because the point of a leisure activity is the process of the leisure activity, not the result of that activity. Thus, the point of wargaming is to have a wargame, not to have had one.
Therefore, as leisure activities have no outcome, there can be no moral judgement passed upon them.
Therefore, wargaming is an activity which is beyond, or at least outside the normal range of our moral activities.
Thus, wargaming is beyond morality.
Now, your response to this might vary. Some might say “wonderful! He can stop wittering and worrying about it now on his blog.” Fair comment, perhaps. Another response would be ‘of course it is, because it is something that I do with myself and a group of consenting adults. How can morality possibly come into play?’ Again, that is, as the argument above suggests, a defensible one.
However, I suspect that a number of us might not be too comfortable with the idea that wargaming, or any other activity for that matter is entirely beyond our moral range, so perhaps we need to look a little more closely at the above argument.
Firstly, it is interesting to note that some of the activities that we have worried about here, such as promoting neo-Nazi agendas, are ruled out. To promote a political agenda thought the leisure activity is to slip an outcome into it. The argument then is invalidated, and the outcome ruled out by normal morality being applied. Further than this, it might be that the argument also rules out bragging rights and being able to recall the game. This might be a little harsh, but I suppose it depends on what you regard as being within or outwith the leisure activity.
The second thing to note is that the argument is based on utilitarianism. There is an assumption in the initial statement that the thing of interest is the outcome. Now, utilitarianism argues that the morally correct decision is the one that brings the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It is consequential; the consequences are important. However, the argument above explicitly states that the activity has no consequences. It is the engagement in the activity which matters.
Now, utilitarianism is widespread in our public discourse. Most political decisions which are made are informed, or at least argued over, from utilitarian perspectives. I suppose that in a liberal democracy, this is fairly inevitable.
Utilitarianism does have its problems, however. The most obvious is the impossibility of calculating the ‘goods’ which a particular course of action might entail. For example, I might think it good that the country remains with a high debt to maintain a good public health service. You might well agree that a good public health service is important, but you might argue that if we maintain a huge debt to fund it, our children will not be able to have such a service for themselves. The argument then revolves around who the greatest good applies to: us or future generations?
I don’t want to get into the details of the arguments for and against utilitarianism. In our context, it rules out any application of morality to the game itself. I think the problem with this approach has already been indicated. No activity is actually an activity entirely without outcomes.
Some outcomes are good. For example, figure manufacturers, rule writers and terrain makers will all benefit from your activities, as may metal manufacturers, paint mixers, paintbrush makers and so on. These are all beneficiaries of your wargame, albeit indirectly, but they do make the point that no wargame can be isolated from the rest of the world. As hinted above, even the winning of bragging rights suggests an outcome beyond the activity, and then the argument does not apply.
Therefore, it would seem that while a utilitarian argument that wargaming is beyond morality can be constructed, when the details are examined, it might be that the circumstances under which it would apply are so restrictive that the argument cannot apply to a real world scenario. After all, it rather defeats the object of having a wargame if we cannot recall it pleasure, talk about it to our friends and so on.
The other thing which the utilitarian argument does not deal with is morality within the game. While the above argues that wargaming is not a moral argument per se, it does not tackle the issue of dealing morally within the game. I don’t mean, here, the morality of the game level, of what our symbols of real actors are doing, but at the player level. By this, morality means not cheating, not trying to obtain more than is your due under the rules and so on. Utilitarianism may have some bearing on this behaviour (in fact, I think it does) but it is not included in the above argument.
So where does this leave us?
I think that the utilitarian argument described is quite a useful one for thinking about the morality of wargaming as a leisure exercise. However, I think I have demonstrated that it does not actually get us very far. Perhaps the most useful thing it does is rule out definitively some of the more extreme behaviours which a minority might engage in, to make some sort of political point. But, as we have discussed before, that is a tiny minority of people associated with wargaming. The argument has helped a bit, but still leaves a wide open field for further pondering.
Saturday, 13 August 2011
Revolutions in Military Affairs
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but modern military theorists, occasional generals and historians are currently debating the revolution in military affairs which is supposed to be happening at the moment. Quite what this is, I’m not sure. I suppose that it is related to the demise of the Cold War, the reduction in the perceived threat of mutual nuclear annihilation and the emergence of the United States as the military superpower, at least in so far a global projection of force is concerned. A few other factors, such as the emergence of global terrorism, the deployment of pilotless aircraft and the huge asymmetry in firepower deployed probably also make an impact.
So why are historians interested and involved? I think it is because they have a role in identifying previous revolutions in military affairs and, thus, are firstly sensitized to them and, secondly, hope to find something useful that may illuminate our current tactical and strategic situation.
When you start to look at the historiography, though, military revolutions proliferate. Leaving aside (probably foolishly) the twentieth century, there are still a fair number. Napoleon, it is said sparked one. So did Frederick the Great, although that is arguable. Gustavus Adolfus of Sweden was the original military revolutionary, with Maurice of Nassau coming up hard behind. Edward III of England is described as another, and, much further in the past, Iphicrates is another.
With so many military revolutions, it is perhaps hardly suprising that some sceptics have emerged, as well. The first issue is to as ‘what makes a military revolution?’ A number of suggestions have been made, such as advances in technology, for example the use of muskets or longbows over what came before, and of tactics, such as charging cavalry rather than caracoling cuirassiers. I’ve tackled the caracole issue before, I think, so I won’t rehash it here.
The problem is that what looks like a revolution from one perspective doesn’t from another. Muskets, for example, had been of increasing use over a century before Gustav Adolf appeared on the scene. I’d guess the Swiss pikemen at Biocca (1522) and Pavia (1525) would probably have conceded that firearms were quite useful. The sudden appearance of successful Swedish armies in the 1630’s seems to be less due to a military revolution and more to do with a funded, disciplined force under a commander of talent appearing in something of a power vacuum.
Another claimant for the title of military revolutionary is Iphicrates. It is claimed that he invented a whole new style of warfare when his peltasts mauled a Spartan more near Corinth in 390 BC. Now, granted, Iphicrates won great fame for this exploit, and based a career as a major military and political figure on it, but it was hardly unprecedented. Peltasts had been around since at least Pylos, according to Thucydides, in 425 BC, where they had proved their worth against Spartan hoplites. Indeed, assorted lighter troops, some of which may well have been peltasts, are often hanging around of the edge of Thucydides’ forces, but he only names peltasts specifically at this point. Did Iphicrates cause a military revolution? It would seem not, on balance.
So, was there ever a military revolution?
I can’t really think of one, and the problem, of course, lies in the definition of the word ‘revolution’. From some perspectives, a decade or so can be revolutionary. But actually, as lived reality, a decade is quite a long time. Things seen from the perspective of a century can make a decade seem rapid, but not to those involved.
I suppose the most obvious candidates for military revolutions are the coming of gunpowder, and the tank. However, the first cannon were around from about the 14th century, but did not really become effective enough, in England at least, to displace the bow until the mid-sixteenth century. 250 years of evolution does not make a revolution.
The tank is perhaps more interesting. There is little doubt that the blitzkrieg tactics of 1939-40 caught everyone by surprise, including the Germans. As you probably know, however, they had been anticipated in military theory of the 1920s, and also tested in battle at Cambari (1917) and in the allied advance in late 1918. While the evolution of tank tactics was more rapid than that of gunpowder, 20 years or so is a fair time, so from the perspective of a single life, it was hardly a revolution.
In fact, the most likely cause of anyone crying ‘military revolution’ is ignorance of what passed before. Histoprians of the 17th century come over all vague when it comes to sixteenth century armies, while those of the sixteenth century are equally bemused by that fifteenth and so on. Therefore, the cry of revolution goes up whenever something that looks new appears on the battlefield. I have little doubt that the users of said technology or tactics would be bemused by the label.
So, as wargamers, where does this leave us? I’ve already grumbled extensively about excessive periodization and trying to pitch thousands of years into one rule set. The above may well sound like an argument to the contrary. I’m not sure it does, but we need not to look for revolutions, but to see how far evolution has gone. The British army in 1914, for example, was very different from that in 1916, and that was different from 1918. The royal army in 1642 was different from that in 1645. So we need to keep an eye on this, and not try to stretch our rule sets too far, while accepting that they can, and must be able to stretch a little as the armies of our period evolve.
So why are historians interested and involved? I think it is because they have a role in identifying previous revolutions in military affairs and, thus, are firstly sensitized to them and, secondly, hope to find something useful that may illuminate our current tactical and strategic situation.
When you start to look at the historiography, though, military revolutions proliferate. Leaving aside (probably foolishly) the twentieth century, there are still a fair number. Napoleon, it is said sparked one. So did Frederick the Great, although that is arguable. Gustavus Adolfus of Sweden was the original military revolutionary, with Maurice of Nassau coming up hard behind. Edward III of England is described as another, and, much further in the past, Iphicrates is another.
With so many military revolutions, it is perhaps hardly suprising that some sceptics have emerged, as well. The first issue is to as ‘what makes a military revolution?’ A number of suggestions have been made, such as advances in technology, for example the use of muskets or longbows over what came before, and of tactics, such as charging cavalry rather than caracoling cuirassiers. I’ve tackled the caracole issue before, I think, so I won’t rehash it here.
The problem is that what looks like a revolution from one perspective doesn’t from another. Muskets, for example, had been of increasing use over a century before Gustav Adolf appeared on the scene. I’d guess the Swiss pikemen at Biocca (1522) and Pavia (1525) would probably have conceded that firearms were quite useful. The sudden appearance of successful Swedish armies in the 1630’s seems to be less due to a military revolution and more to do with a funded, disciplined force under a commander of talent appearing in something of a power vacuum.
Another claimant for the title of military revolutionary is Iphicrates. It is claimed that he invented a whole new style of warfare when his peltasts mauled a Spartan more near Corinth in 390 BC. Now, granted, Iphicrates won great fame for this exploit, and based a career as a major military and political figure on it, but it was hardly unprecedented. Peltasts had been around since at least Pylos, according to Thucydides, in 425 BC, where they had proved their worth against Spartan hoplites. Indeed, assorted lighter troops, some of which may well have been peltasts, are often hanging around of the edge of Thucydides’ forces, but he only names peltasts specifically at this point. Did Iphicrates cause a military revolution? It would seem not, on balance.
So, was there ever a military revolution?
I can’t really think of one, and the problem, of course, lies in the definition of the word ‘revolution’. From some perspectives, a decade or so can be revolutionary. But actually, as lived reality, a decade is quite a long time. Things seen from the perspective of a century can make a decade seem rapid, but not to those involved.
I suppose the most obvious candidates for military revolutions are the coming of gunpowder, and the tank. However, the first cannon were around from about the 14th century, but did not really become effective enough, in England at least, to displace the bow until the mid-sixteenth century. 250 years of evolution does not make a revolution.
The tank is perhaps more interesting. There is little doubt that the blitzkrieg tactics of 1939-40 caught everyone by surprise, including the Germans. As you probably know, however, they had been anticipated in military theory of the 1920s, and also tested in battle at Cambari (1917) and in the allied advance in late 1918. While the evolution of tank tactics was more rapid than that of gunpowder, 20 years or so is a fair time, so from the perspective of a single life, it was hardly a revolution.
In fact, the most likely cause of anyone crying ‘military revolution’ is ignorance of what passed before. Histoprians of the 17th century come over all vague when it comes to sixteenth century armies, while those of the sixteenth century are equally bemused by that fifteenth and so on. Therefore, the cry of revolution goes up whenever something that looks new appears on the battlefield. I have little doubt that the users of said technology or tactics would be bemused by the label.
So, as wargamers, where does this leave us? I’ve already grumbled extensively about excessive periodization and trying to pitch thousands of years into one rule set. The above may well sound like an argument to the contrary. I’m not sure it does, but we need not to look for revolutions, but to see how far evolution has gone. The British army in 1914, for example, was very different from that in 1916, and that was different from 1918. The royal army in 1642 was different from that in 1645. So we need to keep an eye on this, and not try to stretch our rule sets too far, while accepting that they can, and must be able to stretch a little as the armies of our period evolve.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)