INTRODUCTION
Sunday, December 6th, 1812, bright and clear, brought another day of shattering Russian cold. A disintegrating Grande Armee crossed the Berezina River, November 25-29, in a magnificent final effort. Its last few days of existence lay before it.
During a map campaign of the Grande Armee's retreat, one tactical figure action involved the actual events of that December 6th morning. History overlooked many incidents during that era, and this combat could have occurred on that day. It carried action through the second of three connected incidents: October, 1812; December, 1812; January, 1814 (see Notes and Conclusions; October, 1812 was reported in The Courier, Vol V, No. 2).
Most games take place with two players. They sit opposite one another. A game board between them defines the limits of the game space. Each sees the whole board, all the opposing pieces, every move the opponent makes. Each player has equal chances, and each takes equal time and turns. This is a game form with little, if any, resemblance to war.
Replace the opponent with a series of independent historical events. In December 1812's intense cold, the player faces movement across ice and snow, the effects of physical and mental exhaustion. Put aside the square, curtailed, board space; events now occur without warning. All space, near and far, turns hostile; the enemy is unseen, the situation unknown. Uncertainty enters every action. Simulations of this sort resemble war.
A player took the Russian command. A director put the historical events into action; he controlled the French but was restricted by the rules and the design. Short descriptions of the events follow, together with player actions and comments on the rules and design.
GAME DESIGN
Situation:
Late on December 5th, a detached Cossack unit enters a small village some distance from the Oschmiana-Wilna road (sketch 1). With village help, they capture a six man French detachment. Earlier, a passing officer had created a stir among the French. This usually meant, the village elder concluded, important traffic on the Oschmiana-Wilna road.
So informed, the Cossack commander decides to remain in the village overnight and reconnoiter the road in the morning; below zero temperatures continue. On the Cossack departure, the villagers will murder the captured men, and blame the Cossacks should other French return.
Action:
Cossacks moved to the road under a random mixed command and action card pack controlling movement and leadership. Two sub-units of 5 figures and a Russian Commander make up the 11 figures. Each sub-unit had 20 cards. A sub-leader could act himself, or command an action for 2 specifically named figures on the card. On five cards,4 named figures could be commanded to act as individuals or together in sections.
Restrained by the card pack, figures spread out, simulating the disordered slipping and sliding on a rough, snow covered, icy road in intense cold. Three moves in succession brought a half move on the fourth because of fatigue.
Each sub-unit also had a random mixed individual card pack. A player picked one individual card on each round of draws. This single named figure could be put into action (a double action if the figure was also named by a command and action card). Individual cards could be accumulated; they allowed the player an increasing control over the detachment as play proceeded. Once used, they had to be discarded.
If the player waited for this greater control, the continuous stream of historical events could overtake him. Learning when to act, and when to hoard individual cards, came to most players by hard experience. Players did not know the number of cards in any pack.
Command:
The Cossack command figure moved independently on each phase (one round of dual sub-unit and individual card draws). His commands coordinated all other actions. Exerting control only through the sub-leader's command cards sacrificed the detachment's coordination. Yet, control through the Cossack commander compressed action within his limited single sphere. I n this way, the player faced realistic choices. He could maintain control, but with constraints in each choice.
The Cossack commander lent a considerable morale factor to a sub-unit by his presence. He represented the player; if injured, killed, or unable to command, the situation ended in a player failure.
Time:
No turns or player intervals split events. Events took place as they did that morning. A player drew continuous cards rapidly or slowly; as events happened, each had to be met. Events jammed up on some players and required that they act, prepared or not. Again, the player faced realistic command pressures.
Distance:
Figure size and available playing surface set the exact length of a move. For 25mm figures in ice, snow, and extreme cold on each card draw, it was 6cm mounted and on a road, 4cm if moving cross country, and 4cm for road bound wheeled vehicles. Some plays used larger figures with proportionally increased distances.
Terrain:
Action occurred along the Oschmiana-Wilna road (sketch 2) with piled cotton snowdrifts, and clear acetate ice built up on carved, white styrofoam topography. Line of sight was frequently blocked, especially near the road.
THE ACTION
Event 1:
Just before dawn a single French horseman appears on the road, a courier with dispatches from Wilna (the capital of Lithuania) to Oschmiana, a common occurence on that route. Most players suffering a lack of control in the conditions of a bitter cold dawn could only observe the horseman (A to B, sketch 2).
If the Cossacks were observed (director's die roll), an alarm would spread. A player had to anticipate the consequences without knowing if the detachment had been seen. Given the intense cold, time of morning, and the December, 1812 condition of the French garrisons, chances of interception were slight. Since he did not know this, another constraint was added to the player's command.
Event 2:
At dawn, duplicating the morning's events, a coach travels east from Wilna. Unknown to the players, it contains Hugues-Bernard Maret, Duke of Bassano, French Minister for Foreign Affairs, on his way to a rendezvous at Miedniki. The coach stayed in sight for two phases (A to B, sketch 2).
Players greeted the coach with unreserved enthusiasm. Cossacks too far away were bypassed; others brought the coach to a stop. After the Duke was forced outside, the design offered a role playing segment to the player if he so chose. Accumulated individual cards allowed figures to talk and act. Once a card was used it was discarded.
Role Play:
The design inserted these segments into figure action. Some of the players were pure role players new to wargaming. In the design role, play traits built each figure's personality into a collective index for unit morale and other factors (see Notes and Conclusions).
A five minute limit was set on role play. All other events stopped but players did not know this. The language barrier prevented fluent conversation. Asked questions in dialectic Russian (English), the director replied in his worst pidgin French. Players did recognize a high ranking officer.
Role players searched the coach without prodding from the director (a quest for treasure, one presumes). They found a purse with gold, stuffed into the seat, an extra green fur coat with a hood, diagrams of escort stations and horse relays at Smorgoni, Miedniki, and Rumsziski. Open speculation on the diagrams provided the players with a sense of an objective.
Wargamers, as players, were reluctant to yield individual cards for role play. In character, wargamers strove for a win and to maintain complete control over all elements. Role players took to side issues, letting events occur, then acting only at that point. Role play ended, the action resumed.
In one instance (a wargamer), the coach was run off the road and the horses cut loose, ignoring the director's gentle hint that the coach horses might relieve the Cossack detachment's rapidly increasing fatigue. Role players and other wargamers, learning fast, took the horses as relief mounts and concealed the coach from sight.
Event 3:
As it occurred on December 6th, a small party of four horsemen comes into sight, proceeding to Wilna (B to A, sketch 2). Dirk van Hogendorp, General of Division, Governor of W ilna, leads two escorting soldiers and a courier enroute from Oschmiana with orders for the Wilna garrison. Players pounced on this group with fierce determination: ambushed, shot, run through with Cossack lances, captured, and interrogated in the various plays. No information was yielded in role play because of language difficulties. French morale held because of their obvious disdain for filthy, savage, and cowardly Cossacks. Speculation on Van Hogendorp's obvious importance now had players looking for even bigger game on the road.
Firing:
Figures fired as individuals; a volley needed combined individual cards. Figure morale and personal skill with the weapon scored hits rather than range and chance. One throw of a set of 10-sided dice, read three ways, provided an index for a hit, the casualty's morale following the wound, and the type of wound. Types of wounds set the victim's ebbing rate of mortality. Instant death was uncommon. The fate of the lingering wounded, a deliberate part of the design, was another constraint on the Cossack player's decisions.
Close village and clan ties in the Cossack sub-units demanded the wounded be aided and saved, or the rules caused the Cossack morale to fall and, along with it, individual firing and melee skills. A sudden drop in morale, the Cossack player realized, could diminish the detachment's combat ability in one stroke. Command and action cards had to be balanced between aid and combat.
Cossacks, prior to action, could be equipped with a musket, musketoon, or carbine, in addition to their two pistols, saber, and lance. Loading in 5 actions with a 6th added for the intense cold (two movement phases), found the extra weapon a real advantage if reloading was handicapped by the action.
Event 4:
In accord with actual events, a coach travels west toward Wilna, the same coach that carried the Duke of Bassano to Miedniki. It returns to Wilna with Armand de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza, Master of Horse to the Emperor. He aims to secure a change of horses at Wilna for a journey west. If the coach had been stopped on Event 2, the director substituted Event 5.
Event 5:
A lone rider follows the road. This is Armand de Caulaincourt, riding to carry out his mission. Without a coach, in his usual practical way, he would take to horseback. Players recognized the usefulness of a single rider for information; in most cases, they captured him alive. From Caulaincourt's effects they learned of his connection to Imperial headquarters, perhaps even to the Emperor. Now destiny offered them the supreme target (most had played October, 1812). Command cards directed ambush deployments with individual cards ready for firing and moving.
Event 6:
The final incident of the December 6th morning: a body of 10 to 15 horsemen (die roll) escort another coach west to Wilna. The Duke of Rocca-Romana leads his few, half frozen Neapolitan Horse Guards, with some extra accompanying officers. Count Dunin Wonsowicz, an interpreter, and two outriders follow the coach. On top, beside the coachmen, sits General Charles Lefebvre-Desnouetts, Colonel of the Light Horse of the Guard. Two passengers occupy the coach.
Melee:
An assault on the coach could bring disaster to the Cossacks. Cossacks avoid attacks on equal strength enemy units. Any attack brought on the well known Neapolitan surge from utter dejection to insane bravery. Defense of the coach, in the rules, shot the escort's morale upward into the fanatical range with increased firing and melee skills (see Events of December, 1812 in Notes and Conclusions).
Closing on an enemy at full speed across snow and ice increased the chance of slipping. A fall (die throw) could cripple both horse and rider. In this treacherous footing, the Cossack lance lost its impact... Cossacks were forced to fence with it, or abandon it, once the escort closed in with sabers. Cossacks fired pistols mounted and, in these conditions, at a disadvantage.
Each casualty dropped Cossack morale. Lower rated Cossacks fled for a prescribed distance (die roll), then would stop, turn, and resume the assault; family and clan ties would not let them rout. Still, the withdrawals cost the Cossack player in coordination and lost impetus. Some players tried to ignore morale and push action in a race with the collapsing morale rate. It ended with Cossacks fleeing in all directions.
Suggestions to players pointed out the usual Cossack tactics. First, Cossacks would cut off any isolated escort members. As some fired dismounted, other Cossacks would spur forward, turn and retreat to draw a pursuer into the fire. With the escort spread out and weakened, Cossacks firing on the coach would shoot a trace horse to stop it, then launch an attack. If done too soon, this could be dangerous. A stalled coach rallied the escort and outriders for a fanatical last defense.
The coach and outriders continued to move independent of card draws. The escort, under the director, acted by individual pack, or experimental free moves. Most plays alternated escort and Cossack moves. Frequent shots into the moving coach missed the occupants (die roll). One wounded a passenger slightly in one play.
Before the rules balanced all factors, a preliminary play saw the escort scattered and the coach halted. Two passengers jumped out; one was cut down at once, while the other, a stout, high ranking officer, wrapped in heavy furs, drew his sword and faced the Cossacks.
The Emperor of all the French confronted his often expressed terror of Cossack capture. Too late to use the poison pouch carried around his neck since October, 1812, when he first faced attacking Cossacks. Alone, he resolved to die on this icy road to Wilna. Before the Cossack lances struck, the director ended the action. The Cossack player's successful command, in an unbalanced situation, was sufficient reward.
Notes and Conclusions:
Three actions: October, 1812; December 1812; January, 1814 reenact the incidents wherein Napoleon faced personal danger in combat. These three came about from a Napoleonic wargamer's demand that the design show how a real skirmish could have altered history in any significant way. I n December, 1812 the situation parallels the actual events threatening Napoleon. The threat developed by the design held true to the events, and made any attack on Napoleon one of great hazard and difficult to execute to the point of exasperation.
Events of December, 1812:
On December 3rd, Napoleon, in the midst of a disintegrating Grande Armee, announced his return to Paris. He ordered Caulaincourt to prepare escorts and horse relays. The Emperor issued Bulletin 29, said farewell to his Marshals, then left Smorgoni at 10:00 PM, December 5th, escorted by Polish lancers of the Guard and some officers. His coach and two others made up the party; each traveled separately.
Halting at Oschmiana near midnight, December 5th, Napoleon barely missed Colonel Seslawin's Cossacks and Hussars in their twilight raid on the town. They were still close, west of the community. Napoleon hesitated; if outposts were sent to secure the road that night, it might alert the enemy to important traffic. He decided to continue as planned. At 2:00 AM, December 6th, he left with an escort of Neapolitan Horse Guards from Loison's division at Wilna.
One secondary account, although unverified, has an authentic ring to it. As the story goes, Napoleon, in his usual dramatic way, bound the escort to him by calling on the escort commander to shoot him in case of capture. Informed of this by the commander, the escort shouted it would.
Each of the three actions used different skirmish techniques. December, 1812 moved single figure skirmishes into all parts of unit actions; individual personality levels set unit morale, firing, melee, and influenced movement.
Personal and physical traits with skills were rolled out in a few minutes, recorded on a card, and linked to an identity number attached to the figure's base. The individual figure's traits in tactical unit indices ^fade up units of very different character. One Cossack sub-unit, because of its members' spirited morale, surged ahead of the other sub-unit by an extra move every two moves (apart from fatigue).
The director provided action and advice for the players. The historical situation, the terrain, the weather were the player's antagonists, not the director.
Role playing enhanced the figure action if kept within the situation's limits. Recruiting a few pure role players as Russian commanders secured valuable suggestions for use of this type of gaming. Skirmish wargaming uses individual figures in tactical units; it carries role playing's personal identification into a real and historic situation. Skirmishes will bridge the gap often erected between wargames and role play.
All players (in this and a later medieval situation) were told the tactical and logistical effects of each military action. Understanding of the larger consequences gave the skirmish a significance beyond military incidents. A real topographical map, in the proper scale, altered to fit the situation, provided a reasonable alternative to tracking the movement of larger units in December, 1812, prior to the skirmish.
General rules for entire eras suffice for games and tournaments, while designs based on particular historical situations demand exact rules. Rules need not be detailed or complex to carry the design into accurate play. Often players criticize simple rules; they expect rules to stand in for the design; rules can only implement a design.
Card packs served to control movement, but need an allied form of free movement. Expedients for free movement without alternating turns added a useful flexibility to the play in December, 1812. In advanced simulations, skirmishers took to their own developed techniques in all forms. die to a man in his defense.
During the terrible cold that night, only 15 of the escort arrived at the Miedniki horse relay, falling to 8 as Napoleon's carriage approached Wilna.
A league from Miedniki, at daybreak on December 6th, the Duke of Bassano joined Napoleon as ordered. Caulaincourt went ahead in Bassano's carriage to secure fresh horses and another escort at Wilna. General Dirk van Hogendorp, delayed by the road and weather, had just preceded Caulaincourt to Wilna. Napoleon followed with Bassano. At Wilna, teams were changed in the suburbs on the Kowno road (10:15-11:30 AM, December 6th). The party continued, and reached Paris at 11:45 PM, December 18th.
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