Chaos and Control in War and Wargames

When, Where, and How Much?

by Bill Haggart

"General Heudelet thereupon ordered our colonel to move us over a bridge away to our left. This necessary movement was the cause of our undoing, for the soldiers were so eager to come to grips with the vaunted enemy infantry that they disordered the ranks in spite of les sages avis of our officers; when we tried to re-form our battle order under heavy fire, some Austrian hussars, mistaking us for Bavarians in the thick smoke and fog which was a feature of the day, wounded a great many of us and captured 160 men including 4 officers."

    --Corporal Jean-Pierre Blaise of the 108th Ligne, December 2, 1805

The morning fog dissipates under a cold December sun, revealing thousands of blue-clad fantassinsstanding in formations along the frozen Goldbach stream. Close behind them huddle scores of plumed horsemen, waiting. Among this assembly two figures on white horses can be seen, the Emperor Napoleon and Marshal Soult, their spyglasses intent on the Pratzen Heights above them. The two watch the Russian and Austrian columns slowly trudge down the slopes off to their right. Several officers overhear Napoleon's question to Soult.

"How long will it take you to move your divisions to the top of the Pratzen Heights?"

Soult eyed the rise before him and said, "Less than twenty minutes, sire, for my troops are hidden at the foot of the valley, hidden by fog and campfire smoke."

Napoleon nodded. "In that case, we will wait a further quarter of an hour." The time was 8:45 am. (Chandler, David G. The Campaigns of Napoleon page 425)

Two miles south along the Goldbach, the vital villages of Tellnitz and Zokolnitz have just fallen to the advancing Allies and Marshal Davout is hurriedly organizing a counter-attack with Heudelet's newly arrived brigade. It force-marched most of the night. Confused by the smoke and fog, the brigade's counterattack faulters. Many are cut down or captured, while the 108th Ligne mistakenly fires on the 26th Legere, as it reformed behind Zokolnitz, disorganizing them further. The 108th succeeds in driving the Russians out of Tellnitz only to be ridden down by the Austrian 4th Hessen-Homburg Hussars. (Bowden, Scott. Napoleon and Austerlitz page 328-9)

At that moment, Soult orders the advance of Vandamme's and St. Hilaire's divisions. The Battle of Austerlitz is barely an hour old.

So, how much control did Napoleon or the Allies' commander, Marshal Kutusov, actually have on that December morning in 1805? What kinds of chaos were working to wrest away their control of the battle? It isn't a simple either/or question of whether chaos or control had the upper hand in the battle. It is a question of where, when, and how much control and chaos was present.

The Battle of Austerlitz is a good test example because it is a relatively welldocumented battle, and presents some useful extremes in control: The battle is arguably Napoleon's best-managed battle, while the Allied commanders are often used as the poster boys of ineptitude. It was a very lopsided victory for the French, which suggests a great deal of control compared to the Allies.

Austerlitz also presents very common control issues for commanders, from 2000 BC to 1900 AD. During that time, battlefield communication and control was limited to the spoken word, line-of-sight, and mounted messengers. The majority of current wargame rules deal with battles within this time period, so the question of control vs chaos for this particular battle can have wide application.

The Sources of Control and Chaos

First of all, let's look at the sources of chaos on the battlefield, at least those that affect a commander's ability to control his army and win the day. There are really only three. The first source is obviously chance, those random events beyond anyone's control. The fog and smoke obscuring various parts of the battlefield at Austerlitz is an example. A second source is the army itself. Fundamental errors in judgment, simple mistakes, or even over- zealous troops like those of the 108th, can frustrate any officer's efforts to remain in control. And third, there is the enemy, whose primary goal in battle is to create incapacitating chaos for their foes.

The lack of intelligence concerning the enemy's location and even friendly troops was a major challenge for all commanders, and it is a challenge for game designers to simulate--The old 200 foot general is ever present at our games. However, as significant as limited intelligence was, it was not a source of chaos in-and-of itself, but rather another opportunity for circumstances, one's own army, and the opposing forces to create it.

The only effective responses to the battlefield chaos are an army's plans and preparations, the quality of their equipment, officers, and training, as well as the experience and motivation of the troops. John Keegan makes this observation in The Face of Battle. When these cohesive elements of order in an army are overwhelmed by the chaos, regardless of the causes--that is, when control has completely failed, an army turns into a mob, and the battle is lost. This describes the Allied army at the end of the battle of Austerlitz, as well as the French at Waterloo ten years later.

How Much Control?

So, let's get back to Napoleon sitting on his white horse. He hasn't spoken to Marshal Davout since the day before when he reinforced Davout with a division of dragoons. When Napoleon decides to delay Soult's advance another quarter hour, he has little idea what is happening on his right flank, other than the distant sounds of battle. He won't receive any messages from Davout for another hour. Lannes is under attack by Bagration on the French left at that moment. Napoleon can hear the cannon fire from his left. Again, Lannes will send no messages and Napoleon only sends an ADC for a report around ten.

Only at 11:30am does the Emperor move up behind Lannes' positions at the Stare Vinohrady just in time to watch the 4th Ligne rout passed him. He concludes that it was cavalry that scattered the 4th, because the Frenchmen keep looking behind them as they run. Only later does he learn that the 1st battalion, 4th Ligne has lost its eagle to Russian Guard Cavalry.

It is interesting that Napoleon asks Soult how long it will take for his divisions to reach the heights. Why ask? Napoleon has several years' campaign experience and is renown for his ability to maneuver troops. Well, it's because Napoleon didn't know where Soult's troops were! The fog and campfire smoke hid them. So he asks how long the advance will take. And Soult gives a definite answer: Less than Twenty minutes. No "probably", no "If all goes well", no "It's a 60-40 proposition." In fact, Soult probably was hedging his bets before the Emperor and giving himself some extra time in case anything did go wrong.

Still, it's clear that both men acted as though their control was something finite and dependable enough to actually use in timing the movement of thousands of troops and in launching the coup d'etatof the battle. It would seem that the threat of impending chaos did not rule their planning nor turn them into simple opportunists hoping for the 'right cards' or a favorable 'roll of the dice.'

Army Quality and Chaos

Now, this certainly isn't the whole story concerning Napoleon's masterful control of his army. In 1805, the Grande Armee was, man-for-man, the best trained and most experienced army that existed on the continent between 1792 to 1815. Napoleon had already called Soult, "The foremost manoeuver in Europe." These men had excellent reasons for their confidence in controlling their army. However, being confident doesn't necessary translate into actual control. Both Napoleon and the Allied command were confident.

The Russian and Austrian commanders met at 1am on December 2nd to hear the Austrian Chief-of-Staff Weyrother explain the morning's plan of battle. By all accounts, Weyrother was very confident of the plan's success. Yet, the lack of organization, the complexity of the plan, and the mixed forces of the Allied army, all invited confusion and chaos. Each of the seven columns was given both individual, and shared objectives. There were no riders to carry messages. Several column commanders tried to beg some from passing cavalry regiments, and were refused. (Ibid, page 323)

A number of officers didn't understand their assignments because there hadn't been time to translate the orders into Russian and German respectively. Predictably there was confusion in the columns forming up in the darkness. Note, It was predictable. Kutusov predicted it, then fell asleep during Weyrother's briefing.

At first light, Kutusov was probably not surprised to find the army in considerable confusion. Liechtenstein had realized in the early hours of the morning that his cavalry corps was far to the south of where Weyrother had indicated they should be. So, he attempted to correct this by moving his thousands of cavalrymen right through Langeron's column. Of course, this disorganized both commands. Langeron halted his column--which in turn halted Miloradovich's and Kolowrat's commands behind him. They all had to wait until the traffic jam was cleared. Buxhowden seems to have been incapable of handling this, though Langeron and Milordovich were under his command. Some reports were that he was drunk.

At 8 am, The Emperor's Alexander and Francis found that the columns motionless. The Tsar confronted Kutusov:

"Mikhail Harionovich! Why haven't you begun your advance?"

"Your Highness," replied Kutusov. "I am waiting for all the columns in your army to get into position."

"But we are not on the Empress' Meadow, where we do not begin a parade until all the regiments are formed up!"

"Your Highness! If I have not begun, it is because we are not on parade, and not on the Empress' Meadow, Sire. However, if such is your Highness' order." (Ibid, page 323)

There were other delays. Doctorov arrived before his objective, the village of Zokolnitz, but halted his column until Kienmeyer and Langeron were in sight on his flanks. The Allied army was an hour and a half late in attacking the French. Weyrother's plan was all ready falling apart, even before the French intervened. In determining the reasons for the delays months later, the Allies actually blamed the traffic jams on the fog. (Chandler, page 424)

The entire battle plan itself contained several miscalculations that not only encouraged the early morning traffic jam, but also seriously weakened the center, aiding and abetting Soult's planned advance. (Ibid, page 420)

So, even before the French could add their portion of chaos to the Allies' plate, there had been several self-inflicted bouts of confusion. Some officers like Kutusov and Doctorov saw these problems coming, while others were happily unaware of them, or like Liechtenstein, blithely added to them. How much Kutusov and others could have done to mitigate the problems is not clear. It is clear that Kutusov, at least, was fairly pessimistic about the whole battle plan and did little to solve the problems that arose.

The chaos is almost all self-inflicted. Any lack of control is caused by failures in the army command structure, and the chaos is predictable in a general sense. The only question was how bad the problems would be and what the Russian and Austrian officers would be able to do about it. Once the columns were untangled they moved just as fast as Soult's divisions, pressing their attacks well before 8:45am.

Would there have been any traffic jams if Liechtenstein hadn't made the mistake he did? Or would other errors have been made? Would there have been such a long delay if the Allied leaders had been more energetic in correcting them? What would have happened if the Allied attacks had started 90 minutes earlier? These are tough questions and often answerable only with supposition. But they are critical when wargames are simulating the "what ifs", providing garners with the same possibilities and choices available to the real commanders and not just the historical result endlessly repeated.

What is clear is that Napoleon did not face any of the challenges to his control on December 2 that Kutusov did. What's more, Napoleon actually spent far less time "in control" or attempting to control his troops in the morning than Kutusov.

When were they in control?

Napoleon didn't fetch his Marshals for a brief meeting until after 6am on Monday Morning, December 2nd. Davout was not present. The Marshals were back with their troops in less than an hour later, leaving the ADCs that fetched them with Napoleon. The rest of the time, from 7am to 9:30am, Napoleon was with Soult's Corps in the center. He only sent two dispatches to other commands during that time. (Bowden, page 321-348)

Kutusov, on the other hand, spent the first three hours of light in direct contact with the majority of his column commanders, and then with the remainder of them after 9am when the Allies realized the true nature of the crisis Napoleon had thrust upon them. Comparing the two army commanders, who was in more control of his army and when?

Most of Napoleon's control flowed from things that had been done days, weeks, and months before that December morning He actually applied far less effort and time than Kutusov in those first hours of battle. Napoleon was not 'in contact' with a significant portion of his army. He had no idea what was actually transpiring with Davout's command or Lannes' Corps. . He trusted that Lannes and Davout would take care of business.

In comparison, Kutusov was in contact with the majority of the Allied army. For two hours, he was directly involved in untangling the various columns on the Pratzen Heights. Napoleon issued very few orders, while Kutusov and his chief-of-staff were giving them out as fast as they could, particularly after 9am.

So who was in control? Most games would have Kutusov wielding far more control, considering his location and the positions of his forces.

Control vs Chaos?

In reading the accounts of the battle, one thing stands out in regards to the chaos of battle: The closer one got to the front lines, the more chaotic the environment becomes. For the common soldiers, the entire battle feels like chaos, with fleeting islands of coherence being established by their officers. Even the experienced and motivated French soldiers were suffering all sorts of stupid mistakes and minor catastrophes that morning.

This is not so for the commanders, at least not in the same way or nearly to the same extent. In our games, it makes sense that pure chance/chaos, in the form of die rolls or cards, should be used most often for individual units in combat. Commanders have a different experience of chaos and control.

Concerning the Battle of Austerlitz, several things are evident:

    1. The primary source of the chaos for both armies, particularly at the beginning of the battle, was internal, with very little external chance playing a part.

    2. The one uncontrollable external event was the early morning fog. Yet, it was actually a condition, not some chaos-producing act of God. In fact, it was a condition anticipated by Napoleon, and used to mask his army's positions. Like thick woods, it created problems and opportunities for both armies.

    3. The enemy provided the second largest portion of confusion and stress for each army, but even that was dependent on each army's internal level of control.

    4. The problems, confusion, and chaos experienced by the Allies were predictable in general terms, and were expected by a number of Russian and Austrian generals, even by some that supported Weyrother's plan. They just felt the plan would work in spite of any potential problems.

    5. Control was not simply a matter of location or distance or more-or-less effort from the commanders. Chaos was not a result of being "out of command" or being in the grip of uncontrollable fate. AND, however you define the term, being "out of command" was a very different set of experiences for the opposing armies. Any chance events or little catastrophes generated very different responses from the two armies.

    6. Of the two commanders, Napoleon and Kutusov, Napoleon actually had less direct knowledge of where his troops were located and far less idea what was happening to them. Yet, for several reasons this lack of intelligence created no chaos in Bonaparte's mind or in the operation of his army, while Kutusov, with far better knowledge of what was happening to his troops, obviously felt helpless in wrestling with the chaos caused by his army. He chose to ignore many of the problems he encountered that morning. As Christopher Duffy comments: "Perhaps the war-weary old Moscovite was reflecting on the apparent uselessness of his troops." (Duffy, Christopher. Austerlitz, page 103)

The Place of Pure Chance and Serendipity

"For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe the horse was lost ..." is an old saying that speaks of the small, uncontrollable events that determine battles and wars. However, when you actually look at such things, like Lee's general orders being found by the Union Army during his 1862 offensive, or General Johnson's unnoticed, but fatal wound at Shiloh, they usually determine very little by themselves, particularly when compared to the errors in judgment made by army leaders before and after the chance events.

Armies are designed to enhance control and predictability wherever they can, and the major sources of chaos come primarily from the men in the same army if Austerlitz is any example.

Poor quality organizations like the Allied army invariably suffer the greatest number of chaotic experiences. Rarely does blind fate rule the day, regardless of the armies involved. In those instances when it does, by definition the commanders can do nothing and are the victims of fate.

Far more often, it is the errors and inabilities of the army itself that leads to the chance events. The army leadership finds it cannot reestablish control because of the army's inadequacies, and it ultimately loses the battle because it cannot respond to the enemy threats effectively.

Chaos and Control in Our Games

In terms of game mechanics, the Allied player in a game of Austerlitz should struggle with all sorts of chance events compared to the French player. If we look at how various games that deal with command control, there are a number of them that would leave players unable to give an answer with Soult's confidence. Other command control rules have nothing to do with command control at all. Here are the current design approaches:

Command Radius:

Many games have control ranges around a command figure on the table. Actually, the command radius has little to do with command control. It is a device for enforcing historically reasonable fronts for brigades, divisions, and corps. In games, poor officers often will have small radii and good ones much larger command areas. Actually, this has nothing to do with the ability of either to control or communicate with their subordinate units, as though good officers have horses that can go further. It has far more to do with the numbers of units in the command and possibly the units' abilities. It's not about control.

Using this kind of rule, Davout and Lannes and many of their units would have been well out side most "command radius" found in current rules. They would probably be suffering the negative effects of being 'out of command' if similarly deployed in a miniatures game. In comparison, Kutusov and his columns would have been 'in command' most of the morning.

Variable Movement: Many games have die rolls to decide whether troops can actually move in an effort to portray the lack of control commanders will experience as chaos takes a hand. While the presence of the leaders Napoleon and Soult might increase the chances that all of the IV Corps would move in a game of Austerlitz, it would by no means be certain, depending on the particular game mechanics. Fire & Fury and its variants, Napoleon's Battles, Principles of War, From balmy to Waterloo, 1870, and Empire all have such mechanics. Other games like The Sword and The Flame roll dice for movement, leaving the actual distance the troops can travel in question each turn. This may or may not represent the variables in movement that Soult would have been estimating when he answered "twenty minutes."

Commander Characteristics:

Numerous games also give army commanders and their subordinates command modifiers and abilities in an effort to simulate the quality of various army organizations. The problem with this, of course, is that officers are portrayed as having a little more or less of 'something' that increases or decreases the chance of the commanders being unable to move their troops. Usually, this won't create the Austerlitz experiences because it never is enough to create the Allied problems and too much to create Napoleon's control. The question that must be answered with this approach is: what characteristics lead to a commander's retaining or losing control, and why do the French have it at Austerlitz and the Allies don't?

There was as much discord in the French army as any found in the Allied camp. Lannes had challenged Soult to a duel, which Soult had ignored. At the 6am meeting, Lannes confronted Soult because he wasn't wearing a sword.[which was out of the ordinary on the morning of a major battle.] Bernadotte had angered Napoleon several times for being slow to follow orders several times during the campaign. A number of division commanders were not happy about being temporarily assigned to different corps. Murat had alienated corps commanders while attempting to command several corps during the Ulm campaign. Yet, the French army functioned without any of the "personality" problems of the Allies.

Variable Turns/numbers of moves:

Then there are the games that leave any movement open to doubt. Piquet and Richard Borg's tabletop version of Battle Cry have such mechanics. There are also a number of rules sets that insure players won't know exactly when a turn will end, Piquet, Grande Armee, and Warmaster, all incorporate such mechanisms. While I personally enjoy this kind of game design, it doesn't mean much when viewed from the historical perspective. Both the Allies and the French had the same amount of time to act, and both could depend on that. Any doubts about how much their respective armies could accomplish within a set amount of time rested entirely on the three sources of chaos I have already mentioned, and the problems were quite different for each army. A player would be rash to have make the statement with the confidence Soult did to Napoleon if playing a game with these mechanics.

It has been argued that the variable turns simulates 'in general' the results of chaos in battle, but when applied to any specific instance, they don't seem to make much sense. This turn length randomness creates some real tension for garners, but it's not like any source of tension either Napoleon or Kutusov would have experienced-and as we will see, whatever unknowns and tensions faced the two commanders, it wasn't in equal proportions.

It is quite common these days for rules to be described as heuristic, or a "black box" design, which means that the game mechanics themselves, like chance endings to a turn, have no conceivable/provable relationship to what is being simulated, but the results in some way mimics the conditions and decisionmaking challenges of actual commanders. It's certainly a legitimate design technique IF the original conditions and command challenges to be mimicked are identified. I have not seen anything written to establish this anywhere. It doesn't fit the circumstances surrounding Napoleon and Soult.

No Command Restrictions: <

It's only when you get to relatively simple [or nonexistent] command rules and/or grand tactical games like Volley& Bayonet or Armati, Shako, Johnny Reb, or They Died for Glory do you have anything like the certitude of control expressed by Soult and believed by Napoleon. But then there are no Leichtenstein romps through neighboring columns either. When it is possible, many garners prefer a simpler method for adding such chaos: large numbers of players. This certainly simulates the chaos that different personalities can produce very well, but it often homogenizes any control differences between the armies. With different garners playing each of the corps and column commanders at Austerlitz, there is just as much chance that command problems will show up in the French advance as the Allies'. Was there an equal chance of such things? Hardly-The personalities were easily as volatile in the French army as the Allies, but the behaviors weren't that day.

Command Points :

With some games, the difference in the control enjoyed by various commanders is portrayed with command points or chips, like Jim Arnold's Genera/ship rules or Grande Armee, which does restrict player control by army, but does not necessarily produce any chaos. The command points are given out or not given out by players on purpose. Fewer "CPs" do mean more stationary troops, but players take that into consideration when planning moves, regardless of the limits it imposes. A decent mechanism, but it only captures part of the dynamics of command, and a limited amount of the chaos.

The actual lack of control experienced by the admittedly dysfunctional Allied army in game terms (a traffic jam /lack of movement of four of the seven columns for one to three turns) is far more drastic than many game mechanics allow for. In others, such an event is possible with current rules only in extreme cases (i.e. a low probability of it ever happening.) The probability of such events occurring in the Allied army was not all that low.

As it can be seen, our current games at times mimic specific elements of the command experience, or assume their existence with other mechanics--or simply ignore them altogether. However, none of the approaches actually captures the basic dynamics of 'being in command' found in the first three hours of Austerlitz. There remain some basic elements of command just begging for innovation.

The Design Problem

For wargame designers, the challenge is not how much control or chaos commanders actually experienced, as though the two were sorts of homogeneous battle conditions that appear in varying amounts. Rather, the challenge is how to portray the chaos and control in ways that mimic the battlefield conditions and behaviors of each army, particularly when the two forces are very different.

Whatever the methods, the chaos cannot simply be random events or completely uncontrollable processes for the players. Armies were and are designed to be predicable in their responses and 'controllable.' When they are 'out of control', the reasons and behaviors are often predictable, even if the specific chaos produced by a particular officer is not. The chaos forced on the enemy must also have predictable elements or battle plans would be pointless. Napoleon used every one of these considerations in his calculations for turning the Allied army into a fleeing mob. They had to be predictable in some way for him to successfully plan anything.

Furthermore, commanders always have tools and systems to mitigate those spurts of chaos, some that work, like Napoleon's, and some that don't work as well, like Kutusov's. Those tools should also be available to the player, if command is what is being simulated.

As David Chandler observed in describing Napoleon's decision to wait that fifteen minutes: "Napoleon's mind was working like a computer, calculating distances and times, odds for and against alternative courses of action, and yet leaving space for the element of 'luck.' Timing is everything in war. (Chandler, David G. Austerlitz, 1805, Osprey Campaign Series #2, Page 56)

For game designers, it is not a question of whether chance and chaos play a part in battle. They do. Like Napoleon, designers too have to calculate how much space to leave to "luck" and where in order to produce a reasonable simulation of command. A simple Chaos vs Control view of wargame design-and of war for that matter-barely begins to address the qualities of chaos and control experienced by commanders on the battlefield.

Wargame Design

Back to MWAN # 126 Table of Contents
Back to MWAN List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum
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