IF YOU CAN'T RND IT AT THE COMPLEAT 51 RAI'EGIST

YOU WON'T RND IT ANYWHERE!

At THE COMPLEAT STRATEGIST you'll be able to find everything you'll ever need or want for your wargaming hobby, from books to brigands! We carry historical books, refer­ence books, boardgames, all the historical wargame magazines, at least 50 different historical wargame rules from ancients to modems. We have over 3,000 figures and a complete line of paints, brushes and accessories.

You'll enjoy the friendly casual atmosphere at THE COMPLEAT STRATEGIST and our staff will be happy to answer any questions you may have and assist you with your

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you can't wait to get home to start playing.* We are happy to announce the opening of

another store that caters particularly to the historical wargamer, located at

320 West 57th Street NewYork,N~ Opening Date:

On or about June 1, 1981 If you're unable to visit one of our

locations, we also accept mail AND phone orders. Mail orders are accepted ONLY at our 33rd Street location; or by phone during business hours at (212) 685-3880-1 . Please

use VISA or MASTERCHARGE for phone orders. Write to purchases. There are

even game rooms located in our stores just in case OMPLFAT

the store nearest you for a free Catalog.

In New York: 11 E. 33rd St. NY.C. l0016 (212)685-3880-1 10:30-6:00

JR4TEGI5T WE'VE GOT IT ALU • No game room at the 57 th Street store .

In New Jersey: 209 Glenridge Ave. Montclair, NJ. 07042 (201)744-6622 11:00-7:00 Tues. to Sat. Thurs. tin 9:00

In Florida: 5406-8 Stirling Rd. Davie, Fla. 33314 (305)961-5660 11:00-7:00 Tues. to Sat. Thurs. tin 9:00

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NORTH AMERICA'S FOREMOST MINIATURE GAMING MAGAZINE

FEATURE ARTICLES

NOW THAT I HAVE PAINTED ALL THESE SWISS, WHAT DO I DO WITH THEM TOM McM ILLEN discusses several battles of the Rennaisance .

PRUSSIAN INFANTRY TACTICS - 1792 to 1815 - PART 2 PETER HOFSCHROER describes the tactics used on the Regimental and Battalion level

A BRIEF LOOK AT NAPOLEONIC TACTICS GEORGE JEFFREY details the differences between the French and Prussian systems .

THE ARMY OF THE BLUE KING GUNTHER ROTHENBERG reviews the army of Elector Max Emmanuel .

EYE WITNESS ACCOUNTS OF HISTORY )1M ARNOLD with Hooker'S Corps at Turner's Gap (ACW) .

THE COLONEL AND THE COMMANDANT WAL TER SIMON describes a British-Boer Battle .

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ... JA Y HADLEY looks at the historical figure market.

BATTLE PROBLEMS FOR ON TO RICHMOND PAUL KOCH AND ROGER WELLS . ................ . .

WARRE a play by William Spearshaker .

DEPARTMENTS

THE REVIEWING STAND with Jim Womer .

SAPPER'S REPORT Buildings for the Ancient Gamer by Otto Schmidt.

THE COURIER DISPATCH with Rob Mclean .

DISPATCHES FROM THE FIELD Letters to (or at) the Editor .

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VOLLEY FIRE . . . .. . ... . ..... ............. . ..... . . .. .... ...... . .... . . .. . .. . ... . • . . . . .. ... . ... .. ..• . . . . .. .. • ........ . . 56

ERRATA: The Sun Never Sets, On to Richmond . . .... 56

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m:be

~(l-U·ti£·tt MANAGING EDITOR: Richard L. Bryant

BUSINESS MANAGER: leo Cronin ART DIRECTOR: Joseph Miceli

ADVERTISING MANAGER: Gloria Miceli THEME EDITOR: THE RENAISSANCE

Nick Nascati

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS William Abrams; Ken Bunger; Phil Barker; Robert Beattie; Rodman Burr; Steve Carpenter; Tom Des­mond; Steve Haller; Peter Hollinger; Ian Knight; Doug Johnson; Robert Mosca; Eric Ritchie; Bob Sarber; Clif Sayre; Jim Womer; Ned Zuparko.

STAFF CARTOONIST: Jose Niera STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS

Philip O. Stearns Tom Desmond EDITOR, SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS: Bruce Weeks

THE COURIER DISPATCH: Robert Maclean

STAFF ILLUSTRATORS Alan Archambault AI Karasa

THE COURIER PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. Richard L. Bryant, President

DIRECTORS Richard Bryant, leo Cronin, Joseph Miceli

THE COURIER is published approximately bi­monthly at 45 Willow Street, Brockton, MA 02401 USA. Back issues are available for $2 .75 (foreign $3.00 surface, $4.50 airmail) six issue subscriptions are $10.50, USA ($12 .00 Canada & foreign surface rate; All foreign airmail , 3rd class - $25.00). All monies in US funds drawn on US banks or interna­tional Postal Money Order. Subscriptions start with NEXT published issue after receipt of payment.

No responsibility is assumed for statements of fact or opinion made by the authors . No responsibility is assumed for unsolicited manuscripts, but all sub­missions are welcome, no query necessary. All sub­missions should contain a self-addressed STAMPED envelope large enough to return the submission.

This magazine and other publications of The Courier Publishing Company are sold with the understanding that every reasonable attempt is made to deliver them safely through the mails. The Courier Publ ishing Company is not responsible for items lost in the mails. Replacements will be pro­vided at their usual cost.

All DEALER INQUIRIES, ADVERTISING COPY AND INQUIRIES, SUBSCRIPTIONS AND AR­TICLES to THE COURIER, Box 1878, Brockton, MA 02403.

Entire Contents Copyright © 1982 by The Courier Publishing Company, Inc.

THE VANGUARD

EDITOR'S NOTES

Vol III, No.6! Another year of THE COURIER completed! Now is as good a time as any to bring the long overdue attention of the readership to the un­sung heroes of this effort.

All false modesty aside I get much more than my share of recognition at conventions, in print, etc., not unnaturally, Dick Bryant is identified with THE COURIER. Most recognition, however should go to my partners (who will be bulls-t when they read this) without whom THE COURIER could never be produced.

Leo Cronin is our business manager - its in his home where our business "of­fices" are found, where we store all the back issues & Supply Depot material and whose family graciously movs over every Wednesday night and Saturday morning (starting at 8 am!) to allow us to do Courier business . Leo keeps the books, sends out the invoices, pays the bills, sets the budget, maintains the inventory and more, but most of all he is the backstop against which I bounce my thoughts and my ideas for THE COURIER - he keeps our feet on the ground.

The other long suffering partner in this enterprise is Joe Miceli . Joe is the Art Director and it is his many hours at the library that provide most of our il­lustrations and all our covers . His artistic talent is applied to the layout and pasteup of each issue with only insufficient and often cryptic instructions from the editor to go on . Joe is the one person responsible for the profes­sional presentation of the magazine.

I shouldn ' t close without thanking all the editors and authors who keep each issue from being blank pages and especially Nick Nascati for the fine job he did as Renaissance theme editor. The new theme year is the MEDIEVAL PERIOD with editor George Schneider (PHD, History). George welcomes articles concerning the period from our readers . Write to him at 48 Harding Parkway, Mt Vernon, NY 10552.

HISTORICAL MARKET GROWING

Quite a few store managers and miniatures manufacturers that I have spoken to, tell me of a stagnation of the FRP market and the very substan­tial growth of the Historical market in the last few months! Store owners are beginning to realize that while many FRP gamers buy only a few figures for their adventure teams & monsters, Historical gamers are constantly building their armies and continue to be repeat customers long after the "new releases" have dried up. A further indication is that many manufacturers a re-releasing older lines to help the Historical gamer round-out his armies.

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NOW THAT I'VE PAINTED ALL THESE SWISS, WHAT DO I DO WITH THEM?

BY TOM McMILLEN MAPS BY A. KARASA

Some time ago Robert Mosca wrote an article for this magazine introducing the reader to Renaissance wargaming. With the introduction of Ral Partha's stunn­ing Condottiere I ine the 1450-1550 period seems to be in­creasing in popularity. The purpose of this article is to pursue this interesting yet somewhat difficult subject, to help the gamer who is new to the subject to avoid some widespread misconceptions, and to suggest some historical scenarios that might be adapted to the wargame table .

Probably the main reason that this era is so interesting is the multiplicity of effective troop types. Only during the Italian Wars can we see masses of pikemen, halberdiers, sword and buckler m en, crossbowmen, arquebusiers, light cavalry, heavily armoured gendarmes on barded horse, and artillery each forming an integral, perhaps decisive part in the order of battle. Yet the results of those interactions were often startl ing. When the French hired the Swiss as mercenaries they combined the best infantry with the finest cavalry and most powerful ar­tillery in Europe. After brushing aside the Italians at For­novo, however, the Franco-Swiss coal ition proceded to lose their five major engagements together over the next twenty-five years .

The major difficulty in studying Renaissance warfare is that there are relatively few good sources, and even these are not easily obtainable without access to a major libray. Sources are listed after this article, but those readily available are only the Osprey books by Douglas Miller, The Swiss at War and The Landsck nects, as well as George Gush's Renaissance Warfare. To illustrate the difficulties in pursuing the subject further, in both the Osprey books the entire bibliography is in German.

There is also one boardgame on the market which deals with the years 1450-1550. This is Yeoman, from SPl's " Prestags" series. Each scenario is followed by a short paragraph describing the engagement, and it is in­dicative of how poorly this period is understood to see all of the basic errors contained in those descriptions. The " Hericourt" scenario is followed by a nice descrip­tion of Grandson. Of Ravenna, it is said, " The French in­fantry, generally Swiss pikemen . ... " when no Swiss are present. In fact, this is the only French-Imperial battle in which the Swiss were not the bulk of the French infantry. The battle of Ceresole is dated 1522 and placed between Biocca (1522) and Pavia (1525) when is actually took place twenty years later, and belongs to a different war. Tactical descriptions of Fornovo and Ravenna are also

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LANDSKNECHT PIKEMAN Ca 1525 (Laub)

erroneous, probably because the designer's purpose was to demonstrate how heavy cavalry had lost its effec­tiveness, and therefore their part goes unmentioned when they were the decisive arm. The point here is not to be picky with SPI, but rather to demonstrate that this period is often superficially bypassed . If someone had placed Leipzig before Austerlitz, for example, or talked of Roman legionaires at Arbela, it probably would not have been published .

Before proceding to the scenarios, I would like to reem­phasize a point made by Mr. Mosca in his article. The one type of battle which should be avoided when

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simulating Renaissance engagements is that old favorite, the " battle by agreement" in which both sides line up facing each other across a field and have at it. There are two reasons why this is so: one, there is not much generalship involved in having two large, practically im­mobile masses of pikeman with no realistic alternative to bashing head on into each other, and two, it simply did't happen that way. Of the major engagements in the 100 year period only Ceresole was fought in such a man­ner. Cerignola and Ravenna were close, though in both cases the Spaniards were entrenched . The major excep­tions were Grandson, Morat, Nancy, Fornovo, the Garigliano, Novaro, Marignaro, the Sesia, and Pavia. (Bicocca was more of an assault on a fortress than a pit­ched battle .) Nor is it simply coincidental that battles of this period did not consist of both sides " squaring off" . It was a major point of the Swiss system to take the enemy by surprise before he could unravel his convoluted bat­tle formation . Similarly, Spanish generals such as Gon­salvo and Pescara were not only usually grossly out­numbered, but were also aware that their troops were no match on a man for man basis in a toe-to-toe slugging match with French gendarmes and Swiss pikemen, so they resorted to various stratagems. The moral is ob­vious if you want to recreate the spirit of Renaissance battle, choose disproportionate armies and give one a flanking position, an entrenchment, or a surprise attack. Which is another reason why reference to historical scenarios is important.

Of the following scenarios, Grandson and Morat are dealt with at length in Miller's work . However they are difficult to understand without being related to topography, and he did not present maps. This account will be drawn largely from Kirk, who presents things from the Burgundian standpoint and differs significantly in his account of Morat from The Swiss At War.

GRANDSON, MARCH 2,1476

Grandson lies in the Jura region of western Switzerland, on a narrow strip of reasonably flat ground between Lake Neuchatel and the impassable wooded heights of

_ SWISS

LAKE. NEUCHAT L

THE BATTLE OF GRANDSON (from Kirk, 1868)

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Mount Aubert. A few miles north of the town a thickly forested spur of the mountain extends to the shore of the lake, so that even though the two armies involved were virtually on top of each other they were not aware of the others presence. The Burgundians of Charles the Bold had recently taken Grandson by siege and hanged the garrison, so they know that the Swiss would soon be rushing south to avenge their countrymen . As the Con­federates worked their way across the spur, the three divisions of their army became separated and lost con­tact, the main battle and rearward divisions halting even though sharp skirmishes with Burgundian patrols had oc­curred at defiles in the woods .

A small advance group of Swiss emerged from the woods and began skirmishing with the Burgundians, who hastily drew up in battle formation . They placed their artillery, some 200-300 pieces, on a small hill along the Corcelles road, and kept the heavy cavalry with the main body. Before long the entire Swiss Vorhut (forward division), along with elements of the main battle, had arrived in front of the spur and formed a massive square contain­ing about half of their total army. It is important to note that they did not immediately charge headlong into the Burgundian lines, but held their ground and awaited rein­forcements .

The Burgundians launched cavalry attacks against the Swiss right flank, but these were hampered by lack of space before the ground sloped too steeply. The charges were not without effect, penetrating the Swiss position to the standards, but the square remained intact. Charles then attemped to break the stalemate by retreating his infantry center, hoping that his opponents would move forward onto open ground where their flanks and rear would be exposed . Unfortunately, while this maneuver was being carried out, the rest of the Swiss army arrived with horns blowing, drums beating, etc., causing the Burgundian foot to "fail their Reaction Tests" en masse and continue their retreat all the way to Burgundy. Thus the battle never really commenced, and the one bright spot for Charles was that his army had fled so precipitously that is suffered few casualties.

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_ SWISS

c:J ~UR."U .... t>I"

THE BATTLE OF MORAT (Kirk)

For forces engaged, Kirk gives 19,000 Swiss. (15,000 can­tonal, 2,500 allied) with 7,000 Bernese, 1,200 Schwytz, 1,900 Lucerne, 1,700 Zurich infantry and 300 Strasburg, 60 Basel , and 120 Austrian cavalry. For Burgundians he gives 20,000 plus, probably at least one-half cavalry (other estimates-Harbottle gives 18,000 Swiss and 36,000 Burgundians, Eggenberger chooses 30,000 Swiss, and Dupuy gives 15,000 Burgundians and 18,000 Swiss).

MORAT, JUNE 22,1476

As his army was not seriously damaged (except in morale), Charles was able to renew the fight without much delay. He proceeded to beseige the town of Morat, which, as can be seen from the map, has severely restricted access from the east due to the lake and mar­shland to the north and the gorge and river to the south. In addition, most of the area in between is occupied by the wooded hill of the Bois de Domigne. The logical ap­proach for the Swiss would have been along the Clamitz road, where there were no natural obstacles and the vulnerable flanks of the pike squares would be pro­tected. However the Swiss were in no mood simply to drive off the Burgundians once again; they intended to sweep over the hill , encircle the enemy right flank and annihilate the entire army. Interestingly, that was exactly what the Burgundian duke was counting on .

Charles set up a solid palisade on the high ground near Chapel Ie and placed his artillery, arquebusiers, and English longbowmen securely behind it. He then formed his numerous, powerful heavy cavalry at right angles to the palisade just south of Munchenwyler, facing south . The trap seemed deadly - as the Swiss emerged from the wood they would be decimated by missle fire at point blank range while charged in the flank . If they tried to advance against the cavalry, or even stand to face it, the artillery would plough into them at will; if they tried to neutralize the palisade they would be swept away by 6,000 horse!

The Swiss proceeded over the hill but, half way through

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their passage, halted. In that arbitrary, almost perverse way in which the Swiss always do the unexpected (to the constant dismay of their French employers in the future), they stopped to say some prayers, award some military honors, and basically stand around in the rain for three hours . The Burgundian knights, meanwhile, grew tired of sitting around in their armor getting rained on, decided that there was not going to be a battle, and persuaded Charles to retire to the camp for lunch. He had even very uncharacteristically removed his personal armor, just about the time the Swiss arrived .

The rest of the battle is easily imaginged. The detach­ment left at the palisade fought well and delayed the Swiss considerably, but the Burgundian gendarmarie ar­rived piecemeal, could not effect a reasonable charge, and were unable to halt the pike columns . The rest of the Burgundians attempted to repeat their performance of Grandson, but the retreat was already blocked. The Swiss attack went exactly according to plan with the left flank swinging around and enveloping the enemy camp, after which Charles' army was mercilessly slaughtered .

Kirk gives 36-40,000 Burgundians for the campaign, with 24,000 regulars available for the battle. Since Grandson the army had been reorganized into eight battal ions, each with 500 pike (they had used spears at Grandson), 600 archers and 1600 cavalry (in 200 " lances" ). The first battal ion had double infantry, the second had a preponderance of cavalry. He gives 35-40,000 Swiss with 1600 cavalry. There were apparently an unusually large number of " light" Swiss troops, i.e. not in pike columns, perhaps 40 % Other estimates: Eggenburger 35,000 Swiss, 20,000 Burgundians; Harbottle 24,000 Swiss and 35 ,000 Burgundians, Dupuy 20,000 Swiss and 25 ,000 Burgun­dians .

There are a couple of points from these two battles which deserve to be emphasized . One is that Charles the Bold was not one of the history' s more fortunate cap­tains, and was considerably more capable than his reputation indicates. Looking at Marignano, where Fran­cis I was forced by circumstances to fall into the same situation which Ch;3.rles had so carefully prepared at

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