Although I found part of Professor Rothenberg's letter (EEL 71:2) to be very true, I could not participate at all in his dismay at EEL's "concentration on minor tactics." EEL is dedicated to Napoleonic Wargaming. While a historian is an analyst, wargamers must be both analysts and gamers. They operate within the bounds of the historical conditions, but their games are essentially fiction. All serious Napoleonic wargamers know how superficial is much of the tactical information they have been supplied with. The results of this has been catastrophic, and such newsletters as EEL have been conducting a despairing struggle against the old, false accounts. I need only remind my readers of the unbeatable British armies, of French troops only allowed to maneuver in columns of attack, of Austrian line infantry who could not skirmish, and much more of the same character. All this sort of thing has been shown to be counterfeit since EEL has made better information available to the interested wargamer. But the wargamer still finds nothing useful in many popular history books, simply because they are superficially written or parade the old cliches. I do agree with Professor Rothenberg, naturally, that leadership played a more important role than such factors as the number of ranks, 2 or 3, in a firing line. But many authors in EEL have been trying to make precisely this point clear. Tactics simply did not differ that greatly between armies, though rules writers seem not to have grasped the fact. They attribute for example, Napoleon's superior leadership to the quality of the simple soldier, even though he was in many cases less well trained than his opponent.. The consequences are rules in which the wargamer with French troops gets, along with them, a leadership bonus earned by Napoleon. So various armies, like the British or French armies of wargamers, are held to be inherently superior to other to other armies, although it is actually a question of superior leadership. The Austrians and Prussians are often presented above all as "dumb lummoxes" and cowards. As readers of EEL know, there is something wrong with this. Nevertheless the various historical leadership qualities of the armies should be set aside in wargaming, where it is a question of "what if?" What would have happened if I had commanded the troops at Wagram? That is to say, it is the wargamer's task to properly post his troops. But we often see troops like the Austrians, who, because they were rather poorly led historically, are consequently penalized by unrealistic rules while other, popular armies receive a bonus. I find this simply unrealistic and unjust. A wargamer must operate according to historical principles. Thus, for example, a wargamer commanding 1806 Prussians cannot maneuver in columns of attack on the wargaming table, and cannot organize his army according to the French corps system. He must make his preparations with these handicaps, just as his historian counterparts did. But he also has advantages, like the qualitative superiority of the Prussian cavalry, though it cannot be organized in cavalry corps; or the fact that the Prussian infantry fired faster than the French. Therefore, the more we wargamers know about tactics, strategy, and organization, the better we can prepare our rules, and the more secure and realistic will be the historical frameworks in which we operate.  And here, I may say, EEL, thanks to some exceptional experts, has done some pioneering work, and the readers are no longer being taken for a ride, as they have been elsewhere in the past. All this is naturally hard to understand for some wargamers, not readers of EEL. It is a bit of a shock for many wargamers if it is established tTiat the unfashionable Prussian troops of 1806 might be able to beat the French, or that a French wargaming army could throw the British out of Spain. They must learn that such results come about from their own errors, and that British miniatures armies cannot be victorious in the future simply because they are British. Naturally, I feel that we, as wargamers, should conduct ourselves in a historical fashion; but out conduct should still be our own. For this reason, I am, as a wargamer, interested more in the regulations and the eyewitness reports, than in the intrigues of the Viennese Court, in spite of the fact that these had far-reaching effects on the theater of operations. A number of historians are prone to serious errors when they try to discuss the tactics of yesteryear, since they know nothing of the subject and often report only old prejudices. Today this is changing for the better. In this, historians and wargamers can usefully complement each other. Nevertheless, wargaming will always remain a mixture of history and fiction. Anyone who would like to become better informed with respect to various aspects of wargaming, can profitably consult the fantastic book Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun, by Paddy Griffith. As always, hearty thanks to John E. Koontz for his untiring efforts as translator. NOTE FROM EDITOR. Please compare the above article with Paddy Griffith comments on the subject of drill page 18 and my editorial page 1. Back to Empire, Eagles, & Lions Table of Contents Vol. 1 No. 78 Back to EEL List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by Emperor's Headquarters 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