"vendee; how to wargame" Topic

What is the best way to wargame the Vendee war? Better to go skirmish or 1:10 or 20?
And what rules do you recommend for this war

Skirmish level implies 1:1 ratio, IMHO, I'd go that route and use Sharp Practise rules.

The best way to wargame is what you like most.

Vendée is good for 1:1 skirmish in difficult terrain with plenty of hedges etc but you could also find some bigger skirmishes or small battles if you prefer. Almost as good for role-playing skirmishes as for very small battles.

For maximum realism, gather as many 18thC. civilian figures as you can, lovingly paint them, then put them in a model boat and sink it in the nearest pond. Cracking jokes is optional.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noyades

Vae Victis issue 100 includes an article by Jean-Philippe Imbach entitled Serie 120 Vendee, which in 12 pages covers the rules, army lists and flags. The 120 refers to 120 figures per side on a 4 foot square board fought in two hours. They look interesting although I haven't had chance to use them yet. link

Regards
Garry Wills
caseshotpublishing.com

Or you could put loads of model women and children into a model church and then burn it. See if you can get your tailor to make you a pair of breeches made of human skin to wear whilst you're doing it, and call yourself General de Brigade Crouzat.

What is a good history to read covering the military aspects of the Vendee uprising? Most of my books start with Buonaparte addressing his troops in 1796.

There are a few free ones on Archive.org.

G.A.Henty's fictional tale: link

And historical account2: link

link

The histories were written by Frenchmen who participated in the events and are undoubtedly biased.

I hadn't heard about some of this stuff before… gruesome.

One factor you may need to consider is hidden movement & ambush rules.

In such a conflict these aspects will be paramount.

Sorry I have nothing to suggest: my rules cover large numbers of figures, standing in the open & blazing away.

Tell us how you get on.

Further thought……morale will need to be tweaked. I can't imagine much call for surrender on either side.

Terror tactics are also a consideration. These ideological conflicts are less "civilised" than your usual war.

And victory conditions need thought.

In 1815 several needed French army units were in the Vendee rather than at Waterloo. Holding down the army without getting destroyed might be a victory.

Thanks for all the advice.
Will look into these.

Musketeer and chouan, I suppose we will see you with every wargame posting on TMP to point to the various crualties of every war?

I hadn't heard about some of this stuff before… gruesome.

It was VERY bad. Republican soldiers were driven mad by ambushes in a very difficult countryside and reacted with abominable crimes against the local population (I say that and I am not a royalist). Some historians even call it a French vs French genocide. It still has some far consequences in French local political elections in Vendée till today.

Musketeer and chouan, I suppose we will see you with every wargame posting on TMP to point to the various crualties of every war?

The war in Vendée is not well-known abroad so I suppose it's why they mentioned this.

what rules do you recommend

If you wish to imagine your own adventurous and daring scenarios with a role-playing mind, "Argad!":
argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
Er… People like it or loathe it. Or you may prefer something more conventional.

I am not much use with ideas either but can I suggest you go looking at other Napoleonic "Little War" situations such as the Tyrol, Calabria and, of course, Spain?

There should be rules on the scales you are interested in and can be adapted to the Vendee.

Good luck with your gaming.

Here's an old article on the Kapiti Fusiliers website – The Vendée 1793-1794 : Wargaming in the Grand Manner:

link

When you've got bored of the Vendee you could always try to find rules for Armenia in 1915, or you could play Shanghai or Nanking in 1937, or the Philippines in 1899-1902.

Thanks for the suggestions but i only play wargames up to 1914 in the european continent (although as an exeption we had a 7YW wargame in india).
But as you known so much about these, I suppose you play them?

It may be possible to find some similarities in the Thirty Years War or English Civil War. Or Caesar's "Gaul". Or the Seminole War.

Duc and others,

while I can't speak for Chouan (who by his chosen name may well have had ancestors among the victims), my comment was merely a way of asking what there is to wargame in a conflict that started as a very one-sided skirmish and rapidly degenerated into a series of massacres?

Obviously, every war has its ugly aspects (cf. current news), which we wargamers choose to gloss over. However the particularly ghastly nature of this particular conflict has largely been kept out of Republican French history textbooks to this day. Only very recently has research been conducted and published (no thanks to the authorities!), that goes as far as to speak of deliberate genocide (based on Repubican commanders' written orders, and their boastful report that "the race of Vendée is no more!").

All that being said, I can see the purely tactical challenge in a guerilla war situation, as mentioned by Karpathian. It's just that morale rules will be very difficult to define, given what's at stake for one side…

You can always bring in some Hornblower style interventions and a good what-if would be to go beyond the landings at Quiberon top include a British expeditionary force.

As an aside when I was on holiday in Carnac many years ago I came across the Route du Purgatoire (road to hell) so named due to the last voyage of emigrees to the beach where they were massacred. The road works sign indicated the construction of the giratoire du purgatoire (roundabout from hell) :)

what there is to wargame in a conflict that started as a very one-sided skirmish (…). All that being said, I can see the purely tactical challenge in a guerilla war situation

You answered to your own question :-)
It could be very good for skirmish: royalist ambushes of republican troops and/or republican troops running after royalists.
Only it would need lots of hedges and small woods etc on the table.

morale rules will be very difficult to define

1:1 skirmish addicts (as myself) don't need no morale rules :-)

Patrice, I don't think I did – Tyrol was bad, Spain was worse, but both were far removed from the systematic atrocities perpetrated in the Vendée (only the latter had no Goya).

This was no guerilla war, it was a brief uprising against totally inadequate and unprepared troops, quickly followed by a steamroller approach of vastly superior Republican forces. So both phases strike me as too one-sided to pose a challenge.

The other book that might be of interest is Banners of the King by Michael Ross 1975.

Regards

Garry Wills
caseshotpublishing.com

Musketier what I meant is that in any conflict – especially in such difficult geographical terrain – you can always imagine small skirmishes between small groups of opponents, even if there was no large battle on equal terms.

But you are right, perhaps I am more thinking about the "Chouannerie" war in Brittany than about the Vendée itself.

I would second "Banners of the King",also excellent is the Tranie/Carmignani volume "Les Guerres de L'ouest" You don't need to read much French to make sense of it and it has great color and B/W prints to help with painting and collecting the armies. I have both 25mm skirmish figures and 15mm figs for the larger battles of the were a fairly surprising number although I can't say that I've played with them a great deal.

Ray

Given the broken terrain and relatively small scale of the warfare, I'd suggest trying 'British Grenadier' – a ruleset designed for the AWI, but which I've been using for the 1797 French landing in Wales (which also involved chouans, btw) and also intend to use for the Irish Rebellions and a hypothetical Welsh Rebellion.

"Hypothetical Welsh Rebellion" almost beats "Manic Street Preachers" as a name for a band.

Very educational thread, BTW.

Pike your right! That is a very good band name.

Actually "Pike your Right" might be OK as well :)

No, my heritage is British. I studied the Vendee for my Master's dissertation, and the Republican discourse for my, as yet uncompleted DPhil.

Some of the battles in 1793 were 25-30000 per side, not exactly a skirmish. There are many mid sized battles that could be done as well.