by Jim Owczarski, 31 July 2024
Closing a long-term, online Kriegsspiel has a lot in common with ending a theatrical production. You work for months, even years, with a terrific group of people, to tell a story. Players have to drop out and new folks come along. There are exciting bits and days that seem to last weeks. There is certainly a fair amount of effort put into it all and, at times, you wonder whether it will ever stop. In the end, the world is not changed, but you get to keep memories, even as the thing itself vanishes into smoke.
The Kriegsspiel of Napoleon’s 1807 campaign in Eastern Prussia and Poland that just ended is the third I have written about here. Fought using the irreplaceable Flight of the Eagle, it began in April of 2021. In terms of the battle space and the number of troops involved, this is easily the largest of these games that I have attempted. Along the way I learned a number of lessons that are worth sharing.
- Cadence is everything. I give great credit to those players who stuck around for the whole game. While the overhead and effort required is as slight as you are likely to find, it still takes a lot to focus on anything for over three years. We lost a couple players along the way, some vanishing into the either and others asking to be excused, and I would be lying if I were not worried that some left because, as time wore on, they felt your unworthy umpire had lost the plot.
- Poland is big. We had great success with our campaigns in Thuringia (1806) and Bavaria (1809). These were pocket-sized, though, compared with Friedland — the particular campaign depicted here. This made marches much longer, required commanders to think full days in advance before issuing orders, and left dispatch riders to march for days before being able to bring a message to its intended recipient. Throw in bad weather rules that could slow marches to a crawl and it could feel like armies were marching through treacle.
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Most importantly, the size of the area fought over made it very difficult for the two armies to find one another at times. I have never used the patrols that are allowed in Flight of the Eagle in email games for fear of overhead overload, but I have begun to wonder if they are not needed in something of this scope.
- Russian units were really, really big. The Flight of the Eagle breaks units down into divisions. It then requires players (and umpires) to calculate the length of units on the march. I had not previously umpired a game involving Russian units and was stunned to discover divisions numbering in the tens of thousands. Coupled with the inefficiency of the Russian baggage train in this era, one of the best Russian divisions measured over 22 kilometers ling. As these units typically march only two kilometers per hour, they needed to march a tiring 10 hours a day just to march their own length. Commanders were incredulous when they asked why the second unit in a route column had not appeared at a particular location and were told the units ahead were so long that they had not even stepped off when night fell.
- There is still nothing in wargaming that replaces the Kriegsspiel. Over the years during which this game played, there were several moments of “Aaagh! Where did they come from?!?” and “Wait, where did he go?” Units were lost from commander’s situational awareness and, in one notable case, a supreme commander realized his subordinate was so far away that the most efficient way to issue him orders was to make a general appreciation, given him orders of the most generic kind, and wish him well. Players regularly puzzled over what was really on the other side of the hill and, at least a couple times, commanders led their foes on a merry chase in the hope of distracting them from their main mission. It was confusing, frustrating, aggravating, and, at least from my end, all together glorious.
As to the outcome, I will let the videos tell most of the story but, in the end, it came to a draw. The victory conditions said the win would go to side that broke the most enemy divisions. That honor, on sheer numbers, went to the French. On the other hand, the Russians, left to rest by the ebb and flow of the campaign, were strongly in control of the critical portions of the battlefield and Napoleon fought no battle close to the significance of Friedland. Surely that must count to the Russians’ favor.
Finally, I must issue a pair of medals. The first is to our own David Pumphouse who played Marshal Joachim Murat with a dash that would have made his historical counterpart proud. Watch the videos and see him tear about the battlefield at the 19th Century equivalent of breakneck speed. He tore up bridges, sought for the enemy, dropped off whole divisions of horse to assist others, and had almost made his way back to the big battle as the scenario ended. A white plume for your hat, sir.
And the MVP (Most Valuable Prince) must go to Dr. James Sterrett who played Prince Tolstoi. His lone, isolated, under-strength corps held down no fewer than three French corps for several days. With a bit of grit, as well as a puckish curiosity as to what the French were up to, he deprived the Emperor of desperately-needed troops without firing all that many shots. All this despite being so far from his commander that he might as well have been on the moon.
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Enjoy the videos, feel free to ask questions about it all — I might actually remember the answer — and watch this space for the next one.
The Kriegsspiel will return.
Youtube Playlist follows ––
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This was an extremely interesting jaunt over the Polish countryside and I thoroughly enjoyed my role as Emperor Napoleon. Unfortunately, real-world events (surgery, my mother-in-law suffering a series of strokes, and my father passing away) adversely impacted my ability to properly keep up with the game’s pace and as a result the French northern army got prematurely embroiled in a large battle near Eylau without my providing adequate coordination before-hand. The fact that two French commanders (Bessieres and Davout) dropped out mid-game further complicated things.
In general I thought my overall strategic plan was a solid one: assign our two strongest corps (Davout & Soult) to the south and have them work together to crush any enemies in the south and then rapidly march north to join the rest of the Grand Armee against the main Coalition forces in a decisive battle. I realized early on that the distances involved meant that any couriers sent between the southern and northern sectors would take nearly a full day to make the journey, and so I delegated overall command of operations in the south to Davout (who, as noted above, dropped out mid-game) and directed him to simply keep me informed while he (and Soult) cooperated in defeating whatever enemy forces were down in that region. In the north my scheme was to probe until contact was made with the enemy main body and then fight a series of minor actions to maintain contact until Davout/Soult could then come north and envelop them once they completed their assignment in the south.
Unfortunately, no plan remains intact once you’re in contact with the enemy… Instead of aggressively crushing what turned out to be Tolstoy’s weak force, Davout and Soult essentially ended up acting as a benign corps d’observation simply monitoring what Tolstoy was doing – well deserved kudos to Tolstoy who performed brilliantly, tying down almost a third of the French army on his own! In the north things went well until Eylau, but I completely accept blame for that debacle (even accounting for real life issues) as I failed to clearly articulate my long range plans to my subordinates, who then (entirely appropriately – I applaud them for what they did, even if it didn’t work out) acted on their own initiative and threw my plans into disarray. The fact that the northern army was able to safely extricate itself from the resulting disaster was (in my opinion) a near miracle and is largely due to the Coalition forces not following up their victory and immediately counter-attacking with their more numerous forces that were mostly in much better condition than ours.
I suspect that had the game gone on for an additional two to three game days we (the French) could have been able to achieve a decisive victory after Davout, Massena, and Soult arrived on scene, but the “sudden” ending caught me by surprise (I wasn’t aware that there was a time limit until the day just before we wrapped up).
Broadly speaking I found the campaign to be both immensely confusing and frustrating as I never quite felt I had a solid grasp on where the enemy was or what was going on except in my own immediate area (to be clear, this was a GOOD thing from a game play/historical standpoint, but had I been the actual Emperor I think I may well have relieved a few of my corps commanders for cause, and possibly even gone as far as sending one of them to the guillotine).
As always, a great game and many thanks to Jim for running this for us all. Looking forward to the next one!