The Verdun Project: Echos of Revolution

I’m making a small detour in this post from the battle of Verdun to bring you some stunning images from a game at my local wargames club this week. The action being fought was a brigade-scale Napoleonic engagement in 28mm from Napoleon’s Italian campaign of 1796, with French demi-brigades being pitched against lines of Austrian battalions.

It was an incredible spectacle, with almost all of the figures having been painted over the last couple of years by Dr Daz, one of the long term club members. I can’t remember a game I enjoyed more for a long time, not only because of the spectacle of a table filled with dazzling uniforms but also because the rules fairly smoothly reflected the tactics and “feel” of the period and theatre.

For Napoleonic experts (of whom I am certainly not one), Daz will be well known as the author of Le Feu Sacre, his set of rules for Napoleonic Divisional games. The action on the wargames table this week, however, was an evolution from the mechanics developed by TooFatLardies’ supremos Richard Clarke and Nick Skinner in their forthcoming Chain of Command rules for World War Two. Daz has skilfully pinched (or perhaps I should say foraged….) the terrific command, control and movement features in Chain of Command and adapted them to the Revolutionary Wars.

It’s always enjoyable when a rule set you enjoy (Chain of Command, still in playtest but due for release this spring) is adapted to encompass a period you’ve always loved (Napoleon’s campaigns in Italy).

So here we had the Austrians (Al and myself) manoeuvring our forces to cross a fast flowing and deep river close to a small Italian town close to Legnano. Substantial French forces (commanded by Elton) were arrayed against us, but were arriving later to the field than our Austrians, allowing us to marshal our forces and press to the bridges before a river crossing became impossible. 

 
A thoroughly enjoyable game developed with our Austrians feinting on the left, while advancing in strength on the right. Highlights of the game included a storming assault by an unsupported, and rash, French battalion over one of the bridges into the mouths of an Austrian 12 pdr battery, and the latter assembly of an impressive line of Austrian battalions facing off against French attack columns. 

By the end of the game, honours had very gracefully been ceded by Elton, as the French Commander, to the Austrians. but as ever, it was the fine spirit in which the game was played, the smooth rules adaptations and Daz’s umpiring and informed commentary which linger in the memory. 

So what on earth has this to do with Verdun and the Great War? Well, possibly not a huge amount at first sight. But there are some connections......

First, I’ve been looking through the internet for some French propaganda posters from the Great War with a view to using them in some resources which I want to post here on the Blog. Its struck me how much of the French propaganda imagery looked back to the glory of the revolution, and the fighting spirit of the first citizen army. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the collective memory of the revolution for the French people was being drawn on to encourage recruitment and contributions to war loans in a later, though equally desperate, conflict. In the two phenomenal posters below, the connection is drawn in the clearest way possible. 

Second, its strange how the site of a miniature army and a wargame can be inspirational for whatever project you’re working on. Daz had introduced in his rules an advantage of inflicting “double shock” for a French attack column contacting their enemy in the first round of combat. His name for that special rule was “La Marseillaise”. As a lifelong Francophile, I have always loved rules like that.  Some players might call it “chrome”, or perhaps even “fluff”, but for me it’s the sort of rule which brings a wargame to life and makes me feel as if I'm playing a French army, not just any army from the period.   I hoping that I’m getting  close to deploying the Great War poilu on the wargames table for the first time next month. As I do so, the thought what additional rule tweaks might be useful in that later period is just as enjoyable.