Regulating Your Battalions?
Conclusions and Bibliography
by David Commerford & Howie Muir, UK
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Limited means of communication, and often even less time to make it, inevitably had a crucial role in shaping the standard operating procedures of any army on a battlefield. The concept of a “Regulating” unit is a very old one, but was still in active operational use on the battlefields of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and continued right through the Crimean and American Civil Wars. Indeed, it was still an active concept for Victorian Britain at the close of the 19th century:
It may sometimes be found more advantageous to advance in short echelon than in line; the movement is performed on precisely the same principles.
The use of “regulating battalions” was a highly rational and long-practiced response to the difficulties entailed by slow communications and the need for order on in formations being manoeuvred on the battlefield. While it was historically meant to facilitate action, on the tabletop it offers an excellent method for limiting choices by players. By reflecting this conceptual framework within which historical commanders worked, wargame designers have a ready-made mechanism for curbing the opportunistic and independent action of those “nippy little battalions,” and tabletop generals are given a tool with which to develop more historically oriented battle-handling. It sure beats those imagined distances for command radii, and is a whole lot more interesting than a Napoleonic army full of guided missiles disguised as battalions! BibliographyRight off, we would like to acknowledge the research pursued by Art Pendragon (an active-duty senior NCO still too busy to write this all up) and his diligent rattling of both our heads to get the importance of these concepts to sink in. Much of the credit for the above is his, while the faults of interpretation and presentation are all David’s… [NO, Howie’s!] …. (Treatise) Humphrey Bland, A Treatise Of Military Discipline : In Which Is Laid Down And Explained The Duty Of The Officer And Soldier, Through The Several Branches Of The Service, 9th edition, London, 1762; republished in facsimile by Ken Trotman, 2001. ( Principles) Colonel David Dundas, Principles Of Military Movements Chiefly Applied To Infantry. Illustrated By Manoeuvres Of The Prussian Troops, And By An Outline Of The British Campaigns In Germany, During The War Of 1757, London, 1788; republished in facsimile by Ken Trotman, 2002. Major-General David Dundas, Principles of Military Movements Chiefly Applied to Infantry. Illustrated By Manoeuvres of the Prussian Troops, and by an Outline of the British Campaigns in Germany, during the War of 1757, 2nd edition, London, 1795. ( French Regulations, 1791) John Macdonald, trans., Rules And Regulations For The Field Exercise And Manoevres Of The French Infantry, Issued August 1, 1791, 2 vols., London, 1803. (British Regulations) Rules And Regulations For The Formations, Field-Exercise, And Movements, Of His Majesty’s Forces, London, 1803. Rules and Regulations for the Formations, Field-Exercise, and Movements, of His Majesty’s Forces, London, 1808. (Observations) General Orders and Observations on the Movements and Field Exercise of the Infantry, London, 1804. (Drill, 1889) Infantry Drill as Revised by Her Majesty’s Command. 1889, London, 1889. Christopher Duffy, The Military Experience in the Age of Reason, 1715 - 1789, Barnes & Noble Books Inc, USA 1997. Regulating Your Battalions Tactical Processes and Simulation
The Philosophical Solution The Regulating Solution in "Regulations" How Is This Revelant to Wargames? Conclusions and Bibliography Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire # 76 Back to First Empire List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by First Empire. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com |