Did you know Napoleon kept a bust of George Washington on his writing desk? Ever wondered why? Oh, I know, he was a great man and all that. But think of it this way, of all the people he could have had staring down on him, Caesar, Alexander, Frederick the Great, or even Paoli, why GW, and only GW (I believe it is in Christopher Herald's 'Age of Napoleon" where it states... "he would only keep a bust of George Washington on the desk of his study)?
Frankly, I don't know why either, but the question has been in the back of my mind for years. - Editor.
A few years ago I took Thoreau's advice, "to know Concord" (partially attributable to a string of bad years at CoAG which made staying close to home financially advisable). I indulged myself in studying the Battle of the Clouds; the massacres at Paoli and Crooked Billet (possibly the inspiration for that horrendous scene in the film "The Patriot" where the people were locked in a church and unceremoniously torched); the heroic remains of Forts Mifflin and Mercer, and the scarred stone walls of Cliveden, site of the epic stand of the 40th Foot during the battle of Germantown.
I grew up practically on Brandywine Battlefield, and, not surprisingly, have always had a fascination with it. In fact, my first attempt at game design concerned the battle (deservedly unpublished). Today I live on the banks of the Pickering, but a stone's throw from Valley Forge. Most of you know that Clash of Arms Games is located in Phoenixville. It was then called Gordon's Ford; site of a maneuver conducted by Sir William Howe in 1777 that a student of military history could not help but recognize in Napoleon's crossing of the river Po in 1800.
Across the Delaware River about an hour away lies Trenton, and just beyond that Princeton... the campaign of The Ten Crucial Days in 1776 was surely on Napoleon's mind during his Six Days of Glory in 1814.
To what end?
Last summer Rich Kane asked me to write part of the historical commentary that would accompany the release of his tactical study "Brandywine/ Germantown." All the junk I had collected in my head finally had purpose. However, when it was done I realized I had a lot of momentum and that there were a lot of fascinating aspects of the campaign that just begged to be explored at the operational level. So I designed a game.
The first step was to choose a scale. This proved to be fairly easy. One of the maps I had (Patton's Southeastern Pennsylvania Road Map) was grid in two- mile squares and covered almost exactly the area needed to demonstrate the campaign.
Next, I identified as best as possible the major road network, boroughs, townships, villages, taverns and meetinghouses that were extant in 1777 by comparing this map to the one both Washington and Howe used when they planned their operations (it's on display at the Visitor's Center at Brandywine Battlefield State Park, published in England circa 1775). I was able to transfer all of this onto a single standard 34" x 22" hex sheet.
While working on the map I puzzled out what the heart of the game should be. To whit, one of the characteristics of Howe's maneuvering during this campaign was an enigmatic display of fits and starts. What lay beneath the enigma was the long sea voyage to Elkton. They had packed only four weeks worth of fresh food and fodder for a voyage that ultimately took seven.
The gist of this was that the horses needed to pull the wagons and cannon of the army had either died or were in need of several weeks recuperation, and the men were all weak from subsisting on briny water and wormy biscuit. These two things, maneuvering in fits and starts, and the need to forage for new horses, fresh food and fodder, immediately brought to mind the days I had spent developing "1807: The Eagles Turn East."
In that game foraging plays a major role. Unlike 1807, however, where failure to forage causes manpower losses, I chose to tie it directly to the Administration Points (APs). Thus, instead of rolling on a chart for APs, you forage for them. I suppose everyone has their own definition for what an AP is supposed to represent. In this game the emphasis is less on the staff work side and more on the edible.
The fits and starts are there. As the British, or Crown player, you have to spend time foraging in order to build up a reserve of APs. Once that is done there will be a burst of activity possibly culminating in a battle, after which the army will once again have to forage in preparation for its next burst of activity.
Howe's army was also tied to its baggage train, For some this will resemble the Center of Operations found in all games in The Campaigns of Napoleon (CoN) series. The two aren't really that different except in what they conjure in the mind of the reader.
For me, Center of Operations calls to mind staff riders coming and going, a big tent, a camp table with maps spread across it, in a word, headquarters. Baggage train is more literal; wagons loaded with barrels of flour, salt pork, or racked fodder, ammunition, camp followers, medical staff and equipment, portable forges, personal equipment belonging to the officers, oxen (for pulling as well as providing meat on the hoof), extra horses, and most importantly, the army's purse. This moves slower than a Center of Operations and is virtually tied to the road network. (It was an effort to cut out their enemy's baggage column that got Wayne's men into such a fix near Paoli Tavern.)
In an age when the entire staff of an army consisted of maybe 12 men, less their escort and servants, the baggage train was its hub.
What happens when a small enemy force is sitting right in the center of a defile you need to cross? The mechanism for handling this in CoN is called Repulse. You either bump them out of the way or, if they happen to be rather larger than expected, you end your movement and then attack them at a disadvantage in the coming combat phase.
Well, this kind of situation is common to all eras and I couldn't for the life of me see any way of avoiding it in 1777. It's called Brush Aside but if anyone refers to it as Repulse I will not take offense. What I have done is elaborated it considerably. Players have a choice of whether they probe or assault the offending force.
Likewise, the defender has the choice of skirmishing or defending against the moving force. The chit match-up result can range from "nothing much happens," to "escalates out of control into a horrible battle which everyone regrets."
Army Organization Displays
In 1777 they are called Off Board Army Displays. Their function, while similar to the former, is not at all the same. For one thing they are not used to keep a running total of individual unit strengths (for this units have a loss chit beneath them).
Secondly, combat units do not have to occupy them. They can be on the game map if they are not part of a column.
Thirdly, where the unit is on the display determines where it is in the column/ stack.
Thus, a unit in the number one box is at the fore, or van of the column, a place you were likely to put your light infantry or dragoons. What they do have in common is that they allow armies to consolidate into several large divisions. Howe liked to operate in two and sometimes three columns, Washington at times had men all over the place but more often than not considered Greene and Sullivan his "wing" commanders under whom large forces were concentrated.
Depot Hexes
Yes, these are certainly common to both though the CoN system calls them a Supply Source. And, like in the CoN series, you have to move it in order for it to keep up with the army. This is another reason why Howe seemingly moved in fits and starts. A case in point was when he sat for several days after the battle of Brandywine for no apparent reason (propagandists made out like the army was licking its wounds).
Of course, in 1777 you'll see that he was waiting for the fleet to arrive in Delaware Bay so he could shift his source of supply from Elkton (on the Chesapeake) to Wilmington. And yes, the Baggage Train is tied to the depot hex by a Line of Communication, although it's called a supply line in 1777.
One could here ask, "Hey, if they were foraging, why must they have a supply source also?" Good question. In short the answer is that you cannot forage for ammunition, medicines, shoes, or the other dry goods an army depends upon.
Washington's army displays the oxymoron of an exceedingly rigid, disorganized force. I believe this stems from two diverse sources. The first, Washington's and his lieutenants' experiences on the frontier during the French and Indian war; and secondly, the crash course they were all taking in tactics and strategy from books. (Ewald, in his marvelous Journal of a Hessian Officer mentions the capture of an American officer who, upon examination of his kit, discovered it full of military texts. He concludes the anecdote wishing officers of the British and Hessian service would be as serious about their profession as the young rebel obviously was.)
Thus, Washington is able to pull off the surprise at Trenton with a relatively small force. But in his approach march to The Battle of the Clouds with five times as many men he takes great pains to keep things simple (marching the entire army down a single lane, stopping, and then making one huge left-face).
Since the Seven Years War the British army had evolved more along Fredrecian lines, especially those officers who had served on the continent with the Duke of Brunswick. They understood the concept of converging columns. Washington had some frontier savvy, yes, especially when the size of the force under his command was small, but in a formal situation he was more likely to operate along the lines of a Marlburlian general. When he attempts a similar plan to the one used at Trenton ten months later (for the Battle of Germantown) with four times as many troops, everything becomes hopelessly muddled.
Thus I had a choice, I could try to shoe-horn the Americans into the same mold as the British, or I could come up with a different set of command regulations entirely. I chose the latter, for which I had precedent in my JENA! game, where two different sets of rules govern movement and command, elucidating some of the differences between a Fredrecian and Napoleonic army.
What Not to Include
Of course, one of the difficulties in designing a game is deciding what not to include. Try as I might, I couldn't find an excuse for including either Henry Knox or Lafayette. Lafayette, while figuring prominently in the Valley Forge phase of the campaign, simply did not have much of a role to play before 1778 (although he does take over Stephen's division when the latter was cashiered for drunkenness, and commands it during the Whitemarsh phase of the campaign). Henry Knox too, being "the artillery" of the army, had to go since artillery is abstractly represented in the game.
Captain Montresor, the real workhorse of Howe's army, had more impact on the campaign than any other single British officer. Being but a captain of engineers, however, without any unit specifically detailed as such, meant that his role too was relegated to the abstract (when constructing the works around the city he employed civilian labor and slaves hired out by their owners to supplement his detail of soldiers).
Bushnell, the great inventor for the Americans (the Turtle), who should rank up there with Robert Fulton, also had to go the way of obscurity. I simply could not find a reliable date for the Battle of the Kegs, or any verification of the event. In any case, his attempt to sink the British fleet through the use of floating mines (the first use of the marine contact fuse in history) had to be relegated, along with the American use of fire ships, to the "why bother" category.
If one of these attacks had succeeded... well, that would have made for a different story. But there was no way of measuring the effect of these attacks since we don't keep track of powder in the game.
Also, regarding what I chose not to include on the map: Nearly every hex had something in it; a village, tavern, mill or meetinghouse. Of course, to include all these would have made for undue clutter and distractions. I therefore limited actual places to ones that figured in the historical narratives, and my historical commentary. I also didn't include the multitude of minor or secondary roads, but only the main highways that appeared on the Visitor's Center map. These were the ones both Howe and Washington based their respective strategies on.
In any case, travel across clear terrain is identical in movement points to travel on one of these highways; players should assume that the baggage train, or whatever, is not simply striking out crosscountry but using these. By the same token, forest/woods hexes were crossed by local roads or paths, and contained farms and residences as well.
Thus, there wasn't much difference marching or foraging in these places from the clear terrain hexes (instead of stealing cattle the Hessians stole chickens, for example). Often times, too, the woods were where the local people had driven their livestock or cached their harvested crops for safe keeping. In fact, with few exceptions, one could say that in this area there was no such thing as a "clear hex."
Even today, as one crests a hill, the valleys present a broad canopy of trees broken only by church steeples and the occasional high-rise building. In local centers, such as around the furnaces and forges, broad tracts of forest were cleared in the making of charcoal, but never so much as to denude more than a few square miles (of course later, when the area experienced industrialization, this was much more the case).
One thing I really wanted to include but couldn't was a "noise" index. Imagine you are one of the disaffected (as Washington termed the fence sifters who would not commit one way or the other, for or against the rebellion) and that you live in Philadelphia at this time. Rumors are rife about the pending invasion. The weeks drag on as your friends, both Tory and Whig, tug at you with stories about how this or that is going to happen when they finally arrive.
The war so far has been limited to one minor naval action and, of course, the threat last year that ended in a parade of Hessian prisoners through the city. Then one morning the streets are electrified with the news that Sir William has just landed at Elkton, Maryland. The Rebel soldiers parade through the city on the way south to meet them.
As every day passes word of a new skirmish is barked out by the town criers, and the taverns are full of details of the action. Maybe a wagon-load of wounded is brought into the city. Maybe you know someone among them. But, also, every day the skirmishes are reported closer and closer to you. One afternoon you actually hear the rumble of distant thunder. You prick up your ears to listen as someone says... "My god, I believe that's the sound of cannon."
From that moment on, from September 11th through the present, every day has its cannonade and parade of wagons loaded with wounded. On September 26th the British actually enter the city. Far from this signaling the end of the rebellion, however, things heat up. State Navy vessels attack the city the very next day. A US Navy frigate runs aground and is captured. Just a few miles away there's a really big battle where Rebels penetrate all the way to the market- square of Germantown. Rebel prisoners are paraded through the streets as well as the wounded.
Then the continuous bombardment of Fort Mifflin begins. Now, even through the night, cannon disturb the peace. On October 23rd the bombardment intensifies and everyone runs to the river to see the big British ship that has run aground. To your horror, just as you arrive the ship explodes in a deafening roar. You even feel the flash of heat from the explosion. What is worse, when you get home all the windows in the city are shattered, including yours. You cannot afford to fix them as the Rebel blockade of the city has caused the prices of everything to go sky high, and you need to save your money for food.
Word has it that if the river freezes over before the Sir William has broken the blockade things will get very much worse. Even now there is starvation in the streets; something unheard of in the history of the city. You cannot leave. The British have built a ring of fortifications around Philadelphia. Friends of yours who left prior to the redcoat's arrival have had their houses pillaged. You even saw a neighbor's prized clock sell for shillings on the pound, and marked with shame the person who bought it. (They knew full well whose clock it was. That the owner was a Whig, and the seller was an English officer should have made no difference to them!)
Then, on November 10, things go from bad to worse. The day is punctuated by thousands of large explosions as the siege of Fort Mifflin enters its final stage. This continues for several more days and grows, if possible, even more intense.
Then, one morning, the 16th to be exact, all is quiet. You climb to your rooftop just in time to see redcoats lower the flag over Fort Mifflin. As it gently wafts to the ground, from across the river, the cannon at Fort Mercer salute the valor of its defenders by resuming their attack on the British ships.
Now, of course you wonder what a "noise index" would be all about. I would have used it to measure the intensity of the conflict. Every day that some form of battle noise, or reports of same, did not reach the city the level would drop. But every day that there was at least one action the level would remain stable. And, every day that there was a significant action (including all naval actions) the index would rise a point or two (depending on its intensity).
Now how would this effect the game?
A Revolution works on two levels; the first concerns the actual combat of the contending armies; winners or losers in the contest of arms. The second concerns the winning-over of the disaffected.
The longer and louder the noise, the more credibility the rebel cause is going to gain among them. The war either becomes desultory (no real change), or it gains momentum in either of the two directions. This affects many things, among which the recruiting of militia (or their desertion), the stability of the currency, or the raising of funds in the first place are the most important. (Of course, the longer the siege lasts, the greater the chance that each disaffected person will experience one of the depredations occupying armies cannot avoid visiting upon their hosts.
When things become personal, loyalties change.) But, incorporating the noise index would have necessitated a leap down the road of complexity I believe inappropriate for a game with only one map. So it had to be left out.
All in all, players familiar with Kevin's Campaigns of Napoleon series will find the learning curve considerably reduced when playing 1777: The Year of the Hangman. They'll also discover that being in the Old Guard of the Grand Army meant being a member of Washington's bodyguard... as was the case when young Napoleone was an impressionable eight-year old in Ajaccio, listening to tales of "the great one" sitting by the hearth in the Buonaparte's ancestral home.
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