"Franco-Prussian War of 1866 (new book)" Topic

The Austro-Prussian War of 1866: The Opening Battles.
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The War of 1866 shocked Europe: by its short duration, little more than seven weeks; by its unprecedented number of corps sized engagements; and by the unexpected eclipse of the continent's second ranking military power. Most of the war's remarkable events took place in Bohemia, culminating in the climactic Battle of Königgrätz. This book examines four of the engagements which set the scene (Gitschin, Trautenau, Nachod and Skalitz). In addition, it examines a plausible ‘what if' alternative Battle of Skalitz in which Benedek, the Austrian Commander, takes advantage of the opportunity presented to him in real life, and engages one Prussian Corps with two of his own.

The book analyses the campaign, the armies and their weapons, and leads the reader through the process of bringing them to the tabletop. In this instance, this involved modifying an existing popular rule set to produce a game the flavour of which is distinctly ‘1866'.

This approach has been aptly described as ‘a staff ride in miniature', and the authors stay true to this.

This Staff Ride in Miniature is very apt as it is more than just another wargaming scenario book as it looks in detail into the campaign that is barely mentioned in English. It showed the superiority of the breech loading rifle and the artillery. It forshadowed the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

Other books in the series.
Wargaming in History Vol 1: The Seven Years War (I),
by Charles S Grant with Phil Olley, 2009
Wargaming in History Vol 2: The War of the Austrian Succession,
by Charles S Grant with Phil Olley, 2010
Wargaming in History Vol 3: Gettysburg 1863,
by John Drewienkiewicz and Adam Poole, 2011
Wargaming in History Vol 4: The Seven Years War (II),
by Charles S Grant with Charlie and Natasha, 2011
Wargaming in History Vol 5: The Seven Year War (III),
by Charles S Grant 2011
Wargaming in History Vol 6: First Bull Run 1861,
by John Drewienkiewicz and Adam Poole, 2012
Wargaming in History Vol 7: Peninsular Actions,
by Charles S Grant with Family and Friends, 2012

I have just begun to buy the books in this series, and if the latest is as good as the first three (and knowing the author, I would be very surprised if it wasn't excellent) it will be well worth buying.

Dear Bob
I think this is the best of the series so far. The modifications of the Fire and Fury Rules are excellent. If you know the rules, then the 6 pages of tables can be used with ease. The quality of the maps and layout is a great improvement.

It is amazing the detail on the new 10mm figures.

There is alas very little in English upon this interesting war.

Stephen

Could any of these 19th century conflicts have erupted into an earlier world war or was the memory of 1815 still too fresh? I would think that some old veterans would still be around.

Certainly an interesting question. Again there was a world war again Russian in 1853-56 that we refer to it as the Crimean War. There was conflict in the Baltic, Black Sea, Bulkans and in the east.

All the other European Wars were very short affairs. The British avoided the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 like it did for the ACW.
Stephen

Could any of these 19th century conflicts have erupted into an earlier world war

IMHO,YMMV: The fact that they ended so quickly meant that they did not become the extended bleed-out of the Great War, or gather more participants. They were nasty enough, though. They would doubtless have a larger place in the European consciousness if they were not followed by 14-18.

They also played a big role in the expectations of 1914 that that war would be short. After all, that was the experience of the last couple of major wars.

Column bayonet charges into breach-loading rifles ensured the war would be short.

That is certainly the message from the book. Although the Austrian Artillery and Rifles were superior at long range. The Schnellfeuer was at about 100m outside that the Austrians were superior. It is not as hopeless for the Austrians as it seems.

Stephen

There's a fair few books in English on the Helion site…
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Dear Ben
Thank you for making me aware of this.
Stephen

It will be good to see one of the battles redone at Salute at EdExcel, East London. I am looking forward to seeing the 10mm figures in action. The painting is better than my 15mm.
Stephen

Are you talking about the rules presented in the book are going to be used?

Yes the 6 pages rules modifications in the book (in effect making quick play sheets) will be used of the Fire and Fury rules. These were found to be sufficient for players conversant with the Fire and Fury rules. The F&F rule book would still be required. The OOBs in each scenario are written in a general manner for any set of rules and give the actual numbers etc… The Appendix show the F&F versions that were are described in the book.
Stephen

Stephen:

Thank you. The ground scale, figures per stands is wonkey, it would be interesting to play the rules.

Bill

Dear Bill
That is a side alas I cannot answer. I think DZ and Anthony changed some of these elements but I do not know the F&F Rules in detail to compare.
Stephen

Stephen:
I wasn't thinking you could answer the question. I just found the 80 men to a stand, 50 yards to an inch rather odd decisions for the Prussian and Austrian units and formations in 1866,not because they might be different from F&F.

Hi McL,

I must do the Superman thing and reveal my true idenitity – I am not in fact, mild mannered Mollinary, but one of the authors! I am curious as to why you think the scale choice "wonky" for this period. Our rationale goes somewhat as follows:
I) we want to play the Corps on Corps battle of 1866, so the fields need to fit on our table. We are lucky, and can do fields of 10-16ft wide. This dictates the ground scale;

II) both Prussian and Austrian Battalions are about 1,000 men – 6 companies for the Austrians, 4 for the Prussians. The first number at which these coincide is 12, and that is the number of bases in a battalion in our game? Each base has four figures, and represents 80 men. So a battalion is c960 men. Our understanding is that Prussian battalions tended to deploy by the tactical "zug"ie the double rank in which the companies deployed, one third of the company's strength. So the first "skirmish or firing" line would be the third double rank. Four bases for a battalion in our scale.

I would concede that the problem we face is depth of formation, not a unique one in Wargames rules, and one we share with RF&F. You can partially compensate for this by making your bases less deep than ours – you could probably get away with 10mm deep if you wanted – but I would emphasise that our aim was not to write and publish a rule set. It was to describe a process we went through trying to reproduce a period, in a way which would allow others to do so in an easier fashion, utilising their own research and their own take on the period. We would both be delighted to hear others' takes on how to do this period, and utilise them in our future games.

Cheers,

Mollinary

As might be expected, I agree with my co-author in this area.
The other consideration is that we have found by playtesting that the various factors, ground scale, figure scale, weapon ranges and firepower, are all in synch. They produce casualty exchange rates that are eerily close to the historical ones.
That said, it requires some significant changes to RF&F because the tactics and training were so different, and we felt that they had to be capable of being represented on the wargames table. ie a column had to look like a column.
Holdfast

Gentlemen:
Thank you for your clarifications. I am all in favor of your book and I like what I see of the presentation. I certainly understand the depth issue and that isn't what I was referring to. It is the 50 yard frontage with 80 men to a stand, at least for the Austrians. I can see why that was an attractive composition numbers-wise. Here is the issue as I see it:

The 80 men to a 50 yard has two lines of forty men, or more than a yard between each man which I am not sure the Austrians were following with their mass formations. From what I understand, it was more like 26 to 30 inches between men, typical of the 19th Century. Officers standing outside the rank and file wouldn't count, of course.

A Divisions-Masse had a 25m wide frontage, which isn't going to be represented unless stands are run with their sides forward. I understand that.

However, when the battalion was formed into a geschlossene Divisions-Massen-Linie (the three Divisions closed up abreast at minimum interval) it would have been perhaps 90-100m wide. This was the usual attack formation and what you show in the bottom picture on p. 61.

That means your formation would have to be two-stands wide instead of the three shown as expected with two stands to a company. The stands would be way deeper too, and not representative using a two stand company.

What I see in the bottom picture on p.61 is this formation with a frontage 50% wider than expected… so the four battalions take up an extra 200 yards of frontage or two more battalions in Division Masse-worth of frontage. [even with normal intervals]

If deployed in an open formation (geoffnete Divisions-Masse-Linie) the division masse could stretch perhaps 175-215m, according to the diagrams in the 1863 Manövir Reglement. That is as close as you can get to any formation frontage with the stands. Often the two company divisions would operate separately when this occurred. You see this at several battles.

This makes it difficult to represent actions scale-wise on the table, at least the frontage. Two Austrian brigades in normal formation are going to take up the frontage historically occupied by three brigades.

There are some ways to work it if the figures don't have to represent particular numbers of men, or the stand frontage is manipulated. However, you won't get the nice numbers. It might even be necessary to mount the Austrians on different-sized stands to do it well.

Best Regards,
Bill

Hi Bill,

Great post, and thanks for highlighting so clearly one of the dilemmas we faced when trying to come up with an adaptation of RF&F which might represent the War of 1866 appropriately. I can list the factors we took into consideration, but I fear you may regard them as something of a fudge. In fact you would be right to, because that is exactly what they are! As I indicated in my first post, the main determining factor in deciding the ground scale for us was the size of the fields and actions we wished to reproduce. Our Nachod is fought out on a table about ten foot long and six feet deep. The depth becomes the key if you wish to play these corps sized games without extendable arms. To go for a 25yards to the inch scale is obviously impractical with our ambitions. But if you wanted to go with a brigade sized action, say Hertwek's attack on Wenzelberg, then I think you would have a strong case for doing that on that scale. So we then had to consider base and troop scales. We might have gone for bases of half an inch wide, but they would only take two figures, and would involve rebasing the armies we started with (based to allow use with the maximum number of rule sets, including the Wyre Forest Group's adaptation of BF&F). That said, they would reduce the number of figures necessary! So, if you bear with our logic, if 50yds is dictated by terrain, and a 50yd base is dictated by existing forces, the only question is how many men are represented by the base? I think your logic would say, 160, or a company, for the Austrians. This would then cause problems with the Prussians. I then took a big decision, which I should perhaps have given more prominence in the book. I thought reproducing the Prussian tactics was more of a problem than reproducing the Austrian, and would therefore take precedence. So how do I rationalise it's effect on the Austrians? Well I took refuge in the "this is a corps sized game not a company sized game, so some mechanics are abstracted" type logic. The Austrian base is somewhere in between the two Austrian formations you describe, and the game mechanisms give an impression of the sort of decisions commanders have to take, and show something of how it might have looked. I know this is not a fully satisfactory answer to your question, but I hope it helps explain why we did what we did. In fact I am also looking, for the future, at going down to the original game scale of RF&F and trying out scenarios of a much smaller part of big actions. If I do so, I will be sure to take account of your excellent points.

Cheers,

Mollinary

HF and Mollinary:

Thanks for the explanations. The pracical does have its place in all this. ;-7 The thing about F&F is that it repersents two opponents that organized and fought in very similar fashion, quite different from the 1866 War. That conversion makes it difficult when the Prussians and Austrians fought in such a distinctly different manner. I am very happy to see your portrayal of the then very unique Prussian doctrine of forming reinforced firing lines with supporting small company columns.

I think another gaming conundrum with the mid-century wars, 1866-1879, is the greater range of the weapons. Small tactical systems, like the one you describe with 25 yards to the inch provide the small unit formations, but require much greater approaches and thus reduce the chance of both full battles and any maneuvering, as you note.

The 1866 War isn't well understood at the grand tactical and tactical level you present in your book, so it is very welcome. Considering wargamers' interests, authors like Wawro make a hash of most of the battles when compared to the actual accounts.

With what you've got to work with, having four stands represent the battalion might give you a better representation… particularly if you gave the Austrian stand 50% more weight in any close assault, which was the purpose of the tight formations. It does make it near impossible to have company skirmish lines or independent Division Masse actions.

Best Regards,
Bill

Bill.

Thanks for the rapid comeback. I think your final proposal encapsulates perfectly our dilemma. To go for this four stand per battalion is a one stand per 250 figure solution. That puts it more in the BF&F line, and we are awaiting Bill Gray's version of that rule set with interest. We fully accept we have made compromises here, with the aim (I hope a laudable one), of providing people with an approachable, playable, "feel" of 1866. If we lost the ability to do the Prussian tactical formations, in however attenuated a fashion, the process would have been little different from many other "unit" level games where the differences in tactical approach of armies are lost in anything but numerical form. We thought it was worth a try. Exchanges like this enable us to determine exactly what our individual objectives are in the games we construct. It may be that we made too many compromises in what we did, but the end result, at the level of actual battles, felt right. I hope we have introduced some more gamers to a period we find fascinating, and to some of the challenges of producing a rule set that will make both good, fun, games, and provide a reasonable understanding of the choices the period has to offer. That said, I am sure there are better compromises out there, and I am still looking for the Holy Grail! Perhaps, if we try our hand at a follow on Koniggratz book, we can explore more of these scale and tactics issues. If so, I look forward to more of these constructive exchanges.

Best Regards,

Mollinary

Mollinary:

I don't think it's a Holy Grail search. The question is how to do it in the must success manner possible…all depending on what a person's game goals are. There is no perfect game that can do it all. No wargame, no simulation can do it all, nor will they ever be able to, computers to tabletop. Our discussion does point up the issues inherent in using someone else's design--and goals--in attempting your own design.

One of my persistent goals is to allow the right amount of troops able to form a battle front. No rule that says it has to be everyone's primary objective. ;-7

Best Regards,
Bill

Alas I did not take my camera to Salute. Here are some shots that I came across of the demonstration game put on by the Authors for the Continental War Society. The painting of the figures and the detail is better than my old 15mm
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Stephen

The first two print runs were sold out and the final print run of 150 copies is with the printers as we speak. So should be published in about a month. Over half have already been sold I am told by the publisher.

kentrotman.com

Would it be possible for the Editor to change the name of this thread to "Austro-Prussian" from "Franco-Prussian", please? I for one would greatly appreciate it. Thanks to Stephen for letting people know that there will soon be some more of these on the market – I hope he is wrong about it being the "final" print run!

Mollinary