"Elites: Fighters or Stayers?" Topic

Who amongst French Napoleonic players doesn't have at least a few Old Guard units? I have an Imperial Guard corps!

Napoleon Bonaparte certainly prized his Guard but they're not the only example. British infantry have a similar allure on the tabletop: steady, reliable, and often rated as consistently superior.And most armies have units of superior quality infantry.

Which raises the question: what do we really mean by "elite"?

In many games, elite units get clear tactical advantages—better combat outcomes, stronger shooting or melee and an edge in most engagements. Unsurprisingly, they often become battle-winners.

But historically, was their real value tactical or moral? Were elites actually better fighters or were they simply more reliable under pressure, less likely to break and better at holding or delivering a decisive moment when it mattered?

In other words, is "elite" less about killing power and more about not collapsing?

Are our wargames overplaying the tactical edge of elite units, and underplaying their morale and reliability?

How do you handle elites and what role do they really play in your games?

I try to balance the ability of our elites by making them less good at something else. For example French Guard Grenadiers get plus 1 for morale and melee, but minus 1 for skirmish. British riflemen get plus 1 for skirmish but minus 1 for volley fire.

We decide all combat and morale by using 1D6, so a plus or minus 1 does not make a great difference. The roll of the dice is far more important

For morale tests all troops get plus 1 for their commander within 4" and also formed supports within 4". Again more important than the plus 1 for being elite.

I will impudently quote myself, from this earlier TMP thread on the subject TMP link

IMHO, for wargaming purposes "Elite"-ness in the Napoleonic Wars could refer to a number of distinct traits:

Training – ability to perform combat evolutions and deliver combat power in rapidly changing or unusual circumstances, such as quickly forming square under battle conditions, defense of built-up areas, or attacking over broken ground.

Enthusiasm – ability to absorb the shock of a sudden infliction of casualties while retaining combat power in the attack or defense. This trait can often be found in patriotic but green troops.

Steadfastness – the converse of Enthusiasm, this is the ability to absorb a long and steady accumulation of casualties or other battlefield shocks while retaining combat power. This trait is generally associated with veteran troops, and is sometimes also linked to national psychology such as the archetype of the stoic Russian infantry.

Self-Regard – Also known as esprit de corps, this is the degree to which the unit holds itself to a high standard, knowing (or imagining) that their reputation and honor demand a certain level of performance. This might be the only distinction of "grenadier" or "guard" units for an army that has been at peace for many years, such as the Prussians in 1806.

Reputation – the converse of Self-Regard, this is the degree to which the unit is held in high regard by the _enemy_. This is a much rarer trait to encounter, most troops and officers being not particularly aware of differences in enemy units, uniforms, etc. But certainly the appearance of the blue greatcoats of the French Guard, for example, would be likely to have a morale effect on the enemy.

"Elite" troops under this taxonomy would have higher-than-average ratings in one or more of these traits. Was a Prussian grenadier battalion – superbly well-trained and with a high self-regard – "elite" versus a French line infantry battalion in 1806? The French unit might be nondescript in terms of numerical designation and uniform distinction, but in 1806 it would be composed almost entirely of veterans with a high degree of devotion to the Emperor (enthusiasm) and long-standing combat experience (Steadfastness), as well as being equally well-trained at this point in the wars due to the preparation at Boulogne as well as the aforementioned combat experience.

Depends a bit on level and game mechanics. I don't think that elite Napoleonic heavy infantry were better shots, for instance, but I'm OK with giving them a plus in volley fire on the assumption that they've reserved their fire until just the right moment. If there were a separate roll for firing range, that's where I'd give them the advantage. Even more so in melee, which in this period seems to have been more a willingness to close than actual proficiency with bayonet and musket butt.

Eumelius, I have my doubts about "Enthusiasm" as described here. Patriotic true believers might go without pay or on short rations and not desert, or come back after a rout, but in my reading the units which stayed in ranks while suffering high casualties were not necessarily patriotic and certainly weren't green, but they were intensely drilled, often over a long period. Spanish "New Levy" units were patriotic enough, but when you needed men to die in ranks, you needed the old pre-1808 regulars. Can you give me some examples of these green diehards to research?

Good point on reputation, but as you note, this was quite rare: you might make it a special rule only applicable for Imperial Guard in bearskin and blue overcoat. (I'm remembering that battalion at Waterloo--4th Grenadiers or 4th Chasseurs which was mistaken for militia because they were wearing bicorns. I wonder what color their overcoats were?)

Robert, I was attempting to distinguish the ability to endure a short-term casualty/morale stress event and keep in the fight, which I was terming "Enthusiasm", from the ability to take a pounding over an extended duration and stay combat effective, which I was calling "Steadfastness". As an example of Enthusiasm I would cite the French conscript classes of the 1813 campaigns – the so-called "Marie Louises" – at Lutzen and Bautzen. Speaking more broadly, I think it's quite arguable that many greenhorn units in the French Revolutionary armies, the ACW, and the SCW behaved better their first time out than similarly green units comprised of unwilling conscripts. I concur that belief in the cause, or in one's commander, is no substitute for discipline, but it's not entirely without value either.

This raises another angle.

How do games handle a smaller elite force versus a larger average one?

If elites get strong tactical bonuses, the smaller army can punch above its weight. If elites are mainly about morale and reliability, then numbers should tell.

So, do elite-heavy armies end up too efficient? Should numbers matter more? How do your rules handle this in practice?

Historically, an army seeing an elite unit on their side getting beaten could react very poorly whilst witnessing a militia unit being roughly handled prompted little or no response.

But in a well-structured campaign, the elite troops cannot be replaced as easily as others so you will soon run out.

I look at Empire with its 8-15 different morale grades, each progressively superior to the lower, and I …. do not like those rules for just that reason.

"I look at Empire with its 8-15 different morale grades, each progressively superior to the lower, and I …. do not like those rules for just that reason."

John has hit the proverbial nail's head on this topic – & many of my rules' discussion questions. I want more realistic & historical games but I want them to be short & enjoyable.

Yes, these are mostly mutually incompatible….but I still love talking about such concepts, reading the various expert replies & sometimes picking up a workable morsel. My apologies if you find such discussions tedious. I understand but for me, they're 'bread & butter' of historical wargaming.

BTW I truly love the 'Empire' rules. I've only played one game of it & would never use them again.Unplayable IMO. But they really try to come to grips with Napoleonic gaming & history.

In my grand tactical Napoleonic rules, 'elite' units mainly hang around longer. I do have this nagging feeling that they should fight better at clos quarters too. The Young Guard didn't retake Plancenoit with two battalions merely by having +1 on morale.

I'm with Eumelus. It's not just a one-dimensional grading, you can disaggregate it into specific things that units are better or worse at.

E.g., your elite guards unit may or may not be rated as:
"Veteran" – can take more casualties before the unit becomes ineffective
"Aggressive" – better in close combat
"Devastating Volleys" – better at shooting
"Skirmisher" – superior ability at skirmish tactics as well
"Tactically Inept" – oops! A nice dense target (thinking Prussian guards at Gravelotte in 1870)
etc, etc.

At the other end of the scale, that also allows for differentiation like Eumelus cites between enthusiastic French revolutionary conscripts – "Raw, Aggressive" – and more reluctant levies – "Raw, Fragile, Passive".

Can you give me some examples of these green diehards to research?

Some examples from the Austrian volunteer units in 1809 spring to mind. Examples include: the 4th & 5th Battalions of the Vienna Volunteers at Ebelsberg; the 2nd Battalion of the Erzherzog Karl Legion at Aspern; and the 2nd Moravian Volunteers Battalion at Essling.

3 of the four regiments in Gibbon's brigade at Brawner's Farm 28 August 1862 (19th IN, 6th and 7th WI) were seeing action for the first time – but so noteworthy was their resistance to Stonewall Jackson's veterans that the brigade earned the sobriquet "Iron Brigade".

I think it was the two battalions of Old Guard at Plancenoit.

I'm with John and Ochoin on "Empire;" highly reasoned and unplayable.

"Can you give me some examples of these green diehards to research?"

Untried (but well trained) units were specifically selected for the assault on D-Day because they hadn't learned to stop when casualties were heavy. 3rd Infantry Division being an obvious example.

Great question, surely why it is getting so many responses, when the forum seems quiet.

My thought would be to quote "or were they simply more reliable under pressure, less likely to break and better at holding or delivering a decisive moment when it mattered?"

Never mind the "or" and "simply", that sounds like a list that any commander would rate as an elite without a thought.

I'm not sure I believe in 'elite' troops particularly in the Napoleonic wars. I'm sure some thought they were elite, but I struggle to find evidence of this in battle reports. Personal contact with some of Britain's modern guardsmen also reinforces my view.

What I do think existed were raw, trained and veteran troops and the difference is that the more experienced they get the more predictable their performance becomes. So veterans are less likely to run for no good reason but also more cautious; whereas raw troops may get the jitters too easily or they may run off and do something 'heroic' because they're too naive to know better. Again the research to back this up includes discussions with more modern combat veterans.

With apologies to "Fallout", it is not true that "war never changes"; with respect, Mark, I don't think modern service and combat experience can teach us very much about the conditions, expectations, and military sociology of the early 19th-century. They wore bright colors to draw attention to themselves; they considered it disgraceful to duck. Every nation and every commander of the period certainly acted as if they recognized the difference between elite and regular formations, and I'd be very wary of judging all of them to be wrong.

@Eumelu; I don't think it's terribly controversial to argue that human psychology hasn't changed in the last 1000 years. On that basis whatever commanders may have thought I remain unconvinced it reflected reality. Remember these were people many of whom believed some 'races' to be barely above animals. These ideas persisted well into modern times, in fact I suspect there are parts of todays military in many countries where you'd hear similarly ridiculous ideas.

I read battle reports and I look for situations where 'elites' genuinely do something that amounts to 'punching above their weight' and I struggle to find them. When I ask others to quote me examples they often seem to have trouble too. By comparison I find supposedly ordinary troops who put in a difficult situation rise to the occasion.

Some years ago I posted a link here to an article that appeared on the Delancey Place site that I think is pertinent. Here it is link It's an excerpt from a book that sounds interesting:

Lt. Gol. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Back Bay Books, 1995, 1996, 2009
Excerpts from pages 3-4, 16, 10-11

Basically the gist is that soldiers generally don't want to kill people, so they will tend to 'look busy' if they have to shoot:

"Sometimes the fire was completely harmless, as Benjamin McIntyre observed in his firsthand account of a totally bloodless nighttime firefight at Vicksburg in 1863. 'It seems strange …,' wrote McIntyre, that a company of men can fire volley after volley at a like number of men over a distance of fifteen steps and not cause a single casualty. Yet such was the facts in this instance.' The musketry of the black-powder era was not always so ineffective, but over and over again the average comes out to only one or two men hit per minute with musketry. …

"Muzzle-loading muskets could fire from one to five shots per minute, depending on the skill of the operator and the state of the weapon. With a potential hit rate of well over 50 percent at the average combat ranges of this era, the killing rate should have been hundreds per minute, instead of one or two. The weak link between the killing potential and the killing capability of these units was the soldier. The simple fact is that when faced with a living, breathing opponent instead of a target, a significant majority of the soldiers revert to a posturing mode in which they fire over their enemy's heads."

So maybe what makes a soldier élite is that their motivation is such that they overcome this reluctance to kill. They are more likely to actually aim at the target than in the general area. So maybe there are grounds to believe élite troops should have better combat factors, shooting could be more accurate and the willingness to bayonet someone might be greater. Of course if this is true their self-belief and their reputation amongst their enemies may be significant.

Cheers,
John

Ochion,
"Are our wargames overplaying the tactical edge of elite units, and underplaying their morale and reliability?"

What an interesting question. Thinking about Wellington's use of his Guard units; I can't readily recall guards being at any of the famous decisive moments in his battles. Guard units in most armies can be treated like "veterans", in other words they're men carrying the handed-down knowledge that heroics get you killed, as likewise does running away. But they prize discipline and steadiness. In the British Army in particular, this knowledge is encapsulated in their regimental ethos; they being the oldest regiments of all.

So, at Salamanca, when Wellington wanted a division to undertake the long, hidden, march on his right flank to come out and possibly confront the French vying to cut him off from the south, he chose the 3rd with no guard among them. The guards he reserved as the solid pivot-point around which his strategy would enfold. Then, when he wanted units to extend to take the dangerous extension to Poco Velha before the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro against Messina, he chose the 7th. Again, no guard. His Guard units he used to garrison the village of Fuentes: another possible pivot-point. In fact, the division that actively went out to save the 7th was the Light Division, definately an "elite" formation in many specific ways. At Waterloo, the heavy cavalry which were sent out to relive the British centre by destroying the French Cuirassiers and many infantry battalions was the Household cavalry containing four guard regiments. Interestingly, they were ordered forward not by Wellington but by Uxbridge. Wellington had used guard infantry to defend Hougoumont, a strongpoint he rightly guaged as a crucial place to hold, and his right centre, the position where Maitland took the French guard in the flank.

So, in so far as "elite" pertains to guard, under Lord Wellington at least, these units certainly upheld their reputation as steady troops with immense staying-power, unlikely to break in defence and with better than average abilities in a melee. But as to their steadiness in attack, they didn't seem to have any particular edge over the more youthful and impetuous of Wellington's men and thus their abilities in forward action should not be overemphasised.

The Lights are another issue altogether: highly disciplined, great in defence, great as skirmishers, rifles, great as a vanguard but with a bravery in leadership sometimes bordering on the foolhardy. As Forlorn Hopes, they vied with the Foot Guards to risk life for honours in the breach. I sympathise with rule-makers who can recognise their special status while not turning them into the supermen that imagination has made them.

As for comparisons, the retreat to Corunna upended every assumption about "elite" cavalry. The French had elite, heavy cavalry but how poor they were against the much smaller British light cavalry units. For example, near Benevente, 10th Hussars and the King's German Legion—completely broke the French Guard Chasseurs, forcing them into the river.