Regulating Your Battalions?

How Is This Revelant to Wargames?

by David Commerford & Howie Muir, UK

At the start of this article we mentioned the idea of controlling the actions of players in a more historic fashion. It is our view that replication of the “regulating” principal can do this very nicely.

In a lot of rules something like this is already attempted through requiring players to have units in a certain distance of a General figure either at the start / finish of a move or in some cases all the time. Players are penalised variously by reduced moral, movement, disorder, order activation and Lord knows what else, if this is not adhered to.

Tom Penn, in his otherwise excellent, Version 2 of Napoleonic Principals of War, has gone one step further by the introduction of a “Command Marker” separate from the General’s figure which acts as some form of spiritual focus or gravitational hub for the forces command area! Symbolic of the Commander’s H.Q. perhaps, who knows! For the most part it requires a lot of measuring and questionable penalties to achieve the wrong answer. Units should be aligned with one Battalion (or Brigade) while their starting formation, focusing on command figures (or markers), is not as relevant.

The position of Commanders could be important, if your rules were concerned with order transmission, as couriers had to have a starting point when trying to find them in the heat of battle, so the position of the Regulating unit was a good place to start. If they move somewhere else and your rules have a delay built in for orders verses distance, all well and good but units operating as a part of cohesive formations should be what stop our “nippy little battalions,” not command figures per se.

A. Manoeuvre

Ideally, Brigades maintain the internal relationship of Battalions to one another, so that the same Battalions remain in relative position to each other throughout the battle. Players may easily designate the Regulating Battalion by placing their Brigade Command figure behind it. From then on when the Brigade conducts its moves at the speed of the Regulating Battalion, with the other units of the Brigade slowing or accelerating as necessary to maintain relative position in conformance to the regulating unit. Rules that randomise movement distance will give a better understanding of this challenge than those that don’t.

Obviously we are speaking in generalities here, as rules vary in the way they treat movement and movement restrictions but these principals can be universally applied with a little thought. The key thing is that no unit moves beyond the position of the Regulating Battalion and all units keep the position in the formation in relation to each other and where they started out. Some rules already apply an approximation of this idea the several versions of ‘Empire’ always required it without ever explaining why.

An added nuance is to require that the Regulating unit of a Brigade be moved first, after which the other units of the Brigade are moved into conformance with it. This greatly reduces the hemming and hawing and endless fiddley adjustments that players can find themselves reduced to. This discipline also increases the premium of developing a good eye for ground and space. In a similar fashion the Regulating Brigade of a Division should be moved first, and then the other Brigade(s) moved in conformance to it.

Visual inspection of the opposing player’s formations should be all that’s required to keep a check that the principle is being adhered to and those drifting away from their relative position in relation to the Regulating Battalion can be easily challenged while the move sequence is underway.

Of course, the Regulating Battalion can be changed. So for example, changes in direction requiring the Brigade to wheel from the opposite end to the existing Regulating Battalion, or the Regulating Battalion moving out of line of sight for the majority of units in the Brigade would be legitimate reasons for change. As most rules have some kind of Leader Attachment/Detachment phase it is easily encompassed in this part of the game play along with whatever restrictions might apply, and the change of Regulating Battalion would be signified by the shift of the Brigade Commander to association with the new regulating unit.

The Regulating Battalion was also used to signal changes of unit formation for the Brigade. The quickest way for the Brigade Commander to signal the battalions that there was a cavalry threat requiring them to form square, was to put the Regulating Battalion into square -- the others would follow that lead almost immediately. Similarly, when advancing in a line of battalion columns abreast, these would all form battalion lines as soon as the Regulating Battalion did. This introduces the opportunity for a little pre-planning for players, or nuance in order-giving. If some degree of “mixed order” is desired for example, the Battalion on the flank is going to remain in close column while the others form line. (An example here might be either Brigade of Cole’s division at Albuera.) Then, either time for the order’s communication, or an advance commitment to such an arrangement, must be given by the owing player.

With no radios, Brigade Commanders and their chiefs of staff (brigade majors, in the British army) had only a few mounted aides-de-camp or battalion runners to assist them. The transmission of many individual orders intended to coordinate a series of separate actions by different units within the Brigade would have been a nightmare to contemplate. A face-to-face conference of the responsible unit commanders with the Brigade Commander, was the counseled and only practical solution, but was something for which there was not often time on the battlefield.

B. Contact

Thus far, we’ve focused on application of the historical concept of the Regulating Battalion to tabletop manoeuvre. What happened upon “contact” with the enemy? The (British) treatises and regulations discretely drift away on this point. In Britain, lacking formal military education for its general officers, in the grand tradition of the noble amateur, it was not thought proper to propose official guidance or regulation for a general officer’s conduct of grand tactical operations — that was his “art.” Nevertheless, Bland’s Treatise (9th edition) did provide some hints about the Brigade’s, or line’s, inter-relationship after engaging the enemy.

    When any of the Battalions have forced those they attacked to give way, great care must be taken by the Officers to prevent their men from breaking after them; neither must they pursue them faster than the line advances : for if a Battalion advances out of the line it may be attacked on the flanks by the enemy’s horse, who are frequently posted between the first and second lines for that purpose.
      [p.158]

And if attacked by enemy horse:

    … the commanding Officer of every Battalion should be prepared to receive them according to the method laid down in [an earlier] chapter; with this difference, that when they are attacked by horse in the line, or in brigade, they are not then to act separately, but in conjunction with one another. The method of acting in this case, must depend on the manner you are attacked; for if they endeavour to fall on the flank of the line, by its laying open to them, a Battalion or more must be wheeled back to secure it”
      [pp.171-2]

While this may sound like purely old-fashioned 18th century stuff, it is worth recalling that wheeling back several companies, a wing, or a full battalion en potence is exactly what Hoghton’s brigade did at Albuera (1811) when accosted by some of the lancers who had strayed from accosting Colborne’s ill-fated brigade, and what Campbell’s brigade of the 3rd Division did to repel an attack by French chasseurs à cheval at Salamanca (1812). Bland then immediately and deferentially stepped back from his excursion into higher tactics in classic fashion:

    But as this would carry me into a higher scene than what I proposed, or am qualified for, I have therefore endeavoured to avoid it as much as I possibly could ; and have only entered so far, as not to leave the parts treated on dark or obscure, that the young Officers, for whom it is writ….
      --[pp.172]

Perhaps the most succinct statement of principle was Bland’s observation that:

    As every Battalion is to observe the motions of the line, when they see the Greatest part of it retire, they are to do the same, without receiving a particular order from the General who commands the line for it; it being impossible for him to send such orders to every Regiment, in the heat of action ; for which reason, it is a fixed rule for every Battalion to act, as near as possible, in concert with the whole, both in advancing, pursuing, or retiring together : however, we are not to conclude from hence, if some of the Battalion should be ruffled in the attack and forced to give way, that the rest are obliged to follow their motions; neither are two or three Battalions to go on, when the rest retire.
      [p.164-5]

Echoes of this guidance can be found in Dundas’ Principles [e.g., p.130-1/122], but the fighting of the brigade or line seems, in the British practice, to be left to the general’s art. For the tabletop, the main idea would seem to stress keeping the brigade intact and cohesive, and to avoid or severely restrict any significant voluntary, independent movement by it Battalions.

Still, to be honest, this can’t be rigid either, as the Battalion manoeuvres of Picton’s Division at Busaco (1810) would illustrate. On the other hand, offensive, manoeuvre and defensive uses of the concept had very different applications, for obvious reasons.

One answer is the use of “Situational Awareness” to guide battalion actions in the period of potential confusion and difficulty of central direction following close-range engagement with the enemy, and subsequent success or failure (See First Empire 57 March / April 2001).

Napoleonic battalions were often capable of considerable levels of flexibility and adaptation to circumstance. However, what needs to be borne in mind, even at the point of contact, is that their commanders could not react to that which they could not see, or that which was masked by the confusion around them.

Therefore a brigade that in action becomes internally separated by terrain and or enemy engagement should no longer be treated as a cohesive whole. In modern parlance the task of the Regulating Battalion was to deliver the Brigade onto the enemy position. Once engaged it would be virtually impossible for the Brigade Commander to re-designate the regulating unit and re-inform the component parts of the brigade of the change made.

To allow for this level of confusion units would often be given an object beyond the enemy position to try and ensure that successful attacks did not stop at the point of contact but continued beyond it when the enemy broke.

Players should be encouraged to examine the possibility of the Brigade Commander not being aware enough, amid smoke and noise, to know the condition of every part of the Brigade. Indeed given that the commanding General often led the Brigade from the front in the closing stages of an attack (a high proportion becoming casualties as a result) overall loss of control was a very likely event.

Regulating Your Battalions Tactical Processes and Simulation

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