The expression "Napoleonic Terrain" may sound rather odd. As if the landscape changed from one period of history to another. Surely a tree has always been a tree, and a field has always been a field? Surely the hills and rivers have looked more or less the same ever since the latest ice-age? The above assumptions certainly seem to underlie most wargames with miniatures. The terrain features we use for our Ancients games seem to serve remarkably welI for the Second Great World Conflict. Even if we have to add a few telegraph poles in the latter case, and subtract a few two-story houses in the former, we are left with essentially "inter-operable" terrain parts. It is a great convenience with many practical advantages. But is it good for our wargames? I don't think I would like to stick my neck out so far as to suggest that it is positively harmful to our games, but I do believe that there are a number of important aspects which could do with more consideration than they have so far generally received. These are, breifly: Period perception, Period design, Period tactical location, Period tactical practice, and Balance of effort on the part of the wargamer. PERIOD PERCEPTION What I mean by this expression is the point, which is well understood by aesthetes and art historians, that the people living in each age will see everyday things through different eyes from those of people living in a different age. There is, in other words, such a thing as a "neo-classical" tree. That was the sort of tree that Napoleon saw, because he was alive-and a major patron of the arts-at the time when the neo-classical school of landscape painting was flourishing. There is also such a thing as a "Romantic" tree, which is what Napoleon III might have seen when he looked at the same tree, because in his day the arts had moved on. As a matter of fact the drill books for infantry manoeuvres which were issued in the late eighteenth century were liberally sprinkled with "neo-classical" trees. They look a bit like hot-house orange trees, with short straight stems and a well-manicured spherical top. Hedges are also very neat and civilised, and all fields are flat as a pancake. The trouble is, however, that a number of contemporary artists were already getting the early twinges of Romanticism by Napoleon's time, and so we have pictures of towering rocky Alps or tortured, doom- laden forests which we must set against these images of rationality and 'Enlightenment.' The Napoleonic period, after all, saw the transition from the music of Mozart to that of Beethoven. As far as Napoleonic wargames are concerned, I feel that the player is fortunate that he can make a straight choice. Is he going to lay out his terrain in a "neoclassical" style, with everything neat and well-tended (even perhaps, extending this to the rigid lines of slim, elegant soldiers which are so much in evidence in the battle pictures of the time); or is he going to go for a wild, confused landscape with irregular clumps of chunky, colourful model soldiers? Because both of these artistic styles were common at the time, the wargamer is free to make up his own mind. But ideally he should be consistent throughout his entire layout. PERIOD DESIGN The natural world is not the only feature of landscape, because we must also consider the works of man and how they changed in each age. Houses and other architecture are obviously the key area here, although we should also include the design of things like roads, walls, orchards and cemeteries. Every age has its characteristic style for organising these things, which is not necessarily identical with its characteristic style for looking at the natural landscapes. In Napoleonic times we have a specifically "First Empire" style in France, and a "Regency" style in Britain. This is perhaps an area which wargamers have already studied to some extent, and we are all dimly aware that thatched cottages are somehow better Napoleonic 'period' pieces than mud huts or bungalows. We also have several commercialy-produced "Waterloo Farm House" designs, which seem to crop up inevitably as centre-pieces to every Napoleonic wargame table. But we should not rest content with this. The architectural styles of the Napoleonic battlefield were varied in the extreme-the onion towers of the Kremlin, or the Pyramids from which twenty centuries allegedly looked down; the elegant brick town houses of cities like Leipzig or Dresden; the splendid palaces at Austerlitz, Vienna or Milan. A serious wargamer should be ready to ring the changes, and should consider very carefully what types of artificial landscaping had taken place in the area over which he proposes to fight. Merely to throw in the same old farm buildings every time does not really seem to meet the need. PERIOD TACTICAL LOCATION Each age prefers to fight its battles in different types of terrain. In Ancient times you needed an open field. In modern times you look for the closest and nastiest terrain you possibly can. It was a feature of the Second World War, both in the Ardennes (twice) and repeatedly on the Eastern Front, that successful attacks tended to come through the very worst ground that was on offer, simply because the enemy was looking elsewhere. In Napoleonic times, by contrast, there was a distinct feeling of "transition" between these two extremes. Armies crossed the impassable in the Alps, Egypt and Russia. They deployed massive bands of skirmishers who could take woods and mountains in their stride as no earlier army had been able to. Because armies grew much bigger than before they were forced to cover wide frontages, complete with whatever terrain might crop up. They could no longer pick and choose. Yet on the other hand Napoleonic battles still turn out to have been fought very often on open fields. At Wagrarn the battle was even fought on a vast parade ground, the "Marchfield." Its major hazard was that the open cornfields constituted a serious fire-risk where the burning wads from the guns fell upon them in the heat of the summer. At Austerlitz the rolling open fields were so vast that columns lost operational communication with each other, even though they could see each other perfectly clearly. There were elements in common with a naval battle, so big was the terrain. I would judge that most Napoleonic wargamers tend to opt for this more open type of terrain for their battles, paying only passing tribute to the close country which was increasingly being used. Yet if we consider the overriding impression made upon the minds of contemporaries, I would say that we ought really to be looking at the other end of the spectrum-at the more difficult and "close" terrain. Wellington's battles in the Peninsula are notorious for the difficult ground on which they were fought. Without it his inferiority in cavalry and artillery would have been disastrous. Suvarov's meanderings (1799) and the forest battles in Saxony (1813) are also well known. But what of the other great Napoleonic battles? Surely they were fought in fairly open terrain? This is doubtless true in the sense that they often contained extensive fields and good "cavalry country"yet if we analyse these battles more closely we f i nd that they very often revolved around the possession of a few small but crucial built-up areas. Although the generals wanted dearly to stay in the open, they only too often found themselves channelled into villages and towns. They found that these could pose enormous problems, as they changed hands repeatedly and sucked in fresh reserves. Much more than in the open fields, the villages destroyed the cohesion of formed units. They reduced even the best troops to a formless mob which could be easily beaten by a new impetus. At Waterloo even two companies of the French Guard could clear the village of Plancenoit on one occasion -although they in turn were quickly bamboozled in the buildings, and turned out by a renewed Prussian counter attack. PERIOD TACTICAL PRACTICE Now that we have decided on our "style" of landscape and the 'closeness' or otherwise of the terrain, we might think for a moment about the practicalities of fighting over it. What was there in Napoleonic tactics which would require special features in our wargame terrain? The key thing I would suggest, is that our model soldiers must be able to move anywhere. A lot of fighting will be as skirmishing in villages and woods, so it is useless for the game if these items are modelled in such a way as makes it cumbersome or difficult for us to emplace models within them. Villages must have plenty of spaces in which we can set down small tactical sub-units, but few in which we can deploy whole battalions in close order. Strongpoints such as the Eylau churchyard, the Austerlitz pheasantry (Sokolnitz) or the notorious 'Waterloo farm- houses' may be included -provided we have a full realisation of just how powerful they can become, and just how quickly they can be loopholed for artillery as well as muskets. The Sokolnitz pheasantry's east wall to this day carries the scars of some rapid loop-holing for a battery of six cannon, with only two or three yards between each. In the main, however, we will try to build our villages with few of these strongpoints -although our town suburbs, of which there should be a greater representation than is usual in these games, should have many more. When we turn to woods we find that many soldiers may be bogged down in them, in dispersed order, for many game-turns at a time. Fighting in woods tended to be as indecisive as fighting in villages was quick and conclusive. Whereas the village destroyed cohesion and offered up its occupants to the first determined charge, the wood destroyed cohesion but protected its occupants from attack. The streets inside each village provided luxurious avenues of attack to the assailant or counter- assailant; the underbrush in woods frustrated him. We must therefore expect rather a high proportion of our models to spend long periods in the woods, and so the woods themselves must be designed for this to be easily accomplished without the knocking over of trees or excessive over-crowding. Finally a note on water obstacles. These should usually be indicated only lightly, I would suggest, since most of those encountered were eminently crossable. Quite apart from the more spectacular feats (a cavalry squadron swam the Seine in Paris without loss; infantry swam Lake Lucerne; cavalry captured the Dutch fleet across the ice!!), most obstacles to be encountered on the battlefield could be negotiated with fairly trifling difficulty- with the exception of the major rivers (eg. at the battles of Leipzig, Berezina or Friedland), where they could not be negotiated at all without a bridge. There would seem to have been fewer "middle points" between these two extremes than many wargamers might assume. Yet the lesser streams do still need to be represented in some way, because although they were not difficult to cross, they might nevertheless spring some surprises. If one charged into them without a reconnaissance they would totally destroy you, as the British cavalry found on the left flank at Talavera. If one tried to cross them under heavy fire they might loom menacingly in the mind's eye beyond all proportion to their true size. The firefight at Albuera appears to have been caused by a fairly minor declivity being disputed by fire. If it had not been there the attacking British infantry might not have been daunted in their charge. A major problem in wargames of all eras is the fact that real ground which looks 'open' from afar-and which is certainly portrayed as such on a map or in a sketch-in fact is often much more 'close' than one expects. Minor bumps, bushes and hollows appear almost magically from nowhere. Persistent skirmishing turns out to be possible on what had at first sight appeared to be dead flat ground. At the start of the battle of Friedland a succession of small folds in the ground was used by the French to confuse the enemy as to their true numbers. At Waterloo even very slight rises came to assume major tactical--and even strategic importance. This subtlety of tactical terrain is something which we should not ignore as wargamers-- but it does, unfortunately, seem to be extremely hard to represent on the table top. BALANCE OF EFFORT BY THE WARGAMER All that I have said so far about terrain in Napoleonic wargames may seem to be something of a counsel of perfection. The "style" of a tree is rather a subtle thing, after all; and the precise size of sub-unit which can be fitted into a model village is possibly a trivial consideration when compared with the important problem of designing a model village in the first place. But if our hobby is to progress I would maintain that it is to details of this sort, and not to the more popular minutiae of armaments and organisation, that we could profitably turn. If we are miniaturists we will naturally be concerned about the accuracy and splendour of our model soldiers- but we should not forget that we are forced to place them in a landscape. It seems logical to devote as much attention to that landscape--if not more--than we devote to the soldiers themselves. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. IV #4 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1983 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com