The War Room, organized and run by the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society (CABS) was a major improvement in the accommodation of wargaming at Origins over previous years. The area set-aside was all the way at the end of the Convention Center in wing E, at a comfortable remove from the hustle and bustle. In wing E the War College seminars were presented, organized by Pete Panzeri and Russ Lockwood (of Magweb.com). Mr. Zucker's two seminars were attended by groups of 15 each. The first seminar on the Austerlitz campaign presented an outline of the campaign from Ulm to Austerlitz in a series of overhead map slides. Austerlitz The Austerlitz campaign began with the French pursuit of Kutuzov's Russian army at the end of October. This Russian Army had just reached the Inn River having marched through the area of the Austerlitz game map before reaching the Bavarian border. The troops were too late in arriving, partly because no one recognized that the Russian and Austrian staffs were speaking of different calendars separated by 12 days. The first part of the campaign for Kutuzov's Army involved a long unbroken retreat, and they did not turn at bay on their pursuers until they crossed the Danube at Durrenstein, where they were able to inflict serious losses on the isolated division of Gazan. They continued the retreat toward Brunn when they heard that the brige at Vienna had been captured. In order to avoid being cut off, Kutusov sent Bagration to protect his flank at Hollabrunn, and this maneuver was crowned with success by Murat's granting a 24-hour truce. This blunder galvanized Napoleon into action and he quickly joined Murat, with the two Corps and cavalry at Znaim, pursuing the retreating Russians into and through Brunn. He halted the pursuit shortly beyond Brunn near the small town of Austerlitz. A short period of phony negotiations ensued, neither side seriously contemplating peace despite the recent fall of Vienna. Then the Russians advanced, feeling strong enough - with the arrival of the Tsar and a second army - to liberate Vienna. Their plans met with heavy defeat on the 2nd of December. Character The second seminar was entitled The Character of Napoleon, and it began with a hand-out containing a series of quotes by different authorities, and here is a sample ... "He was undoubtedly one of the most complex and gifted humans ever to grace-or bedevil-this planet." "...his growing tendency to believe in his own propaganda's image of himself as semi-divine..." "Wars, then, were inevitable, and it can be as fairly argued that Napoleon was the victim of a war-prone generation as the 'man of blood' responsible for the scale of the holocaust that gripped Europe for so many years." "Napoleon must stand convicted of not playing the diplomatic game with the utmost of tact. This lack of tact--'the golden quality' of statesmanship--was at least partially responsible for the frequency of the wars and certainly was one definite strand in the causation of Napoleon's fall. He could never convert an ex-enemy into a convinced ally, however great his personal charm and magnetic appeal in têtes-a-tête with kings and emperors. Every ally was turned into an unhappy vassal, every defeated foe into a resentful satellite." "The first is thin, abstemious, immensely active, heedless of privation, dismissive of well-being and material pleasures, concerned only with the success of his enterprises, far-sighted, prudent, except when carried away by strong feeling, able to take a chance while avoiding anything that prudence can foresee. "The second is fat and heavy, sensual and concerned with his comfort to the point of making it a major preoccupation, nonchalant and easily tired, blasé about everything, indifferent to everything, believing the truth only when it happened to coincide with his passions, his interests and his whims, proud as Satan and disdainful of men, dismissive of the interests of humanity. his sensitivity had dulled without making him unpleasant, but his goodness was no longer active: it had become quite passive. His mind was just as it had always been-the vastest, deepest and most productive that ever was. Yet there was no more will power, no more resolution, and an instability that resembled weakness. "The Napoleon I have painted first was outstanding until Tilsit: it is the zenith of his greatness and the time of his greatest brilliance. The other succeeded him, and the complement to the aberrations caused by his pride was his marriage to Marie-Louise." "In the last months of the Emperor's captivity, Ali describes an ordinary but deeply moving scene. Napoleon, the unstoppable talker, has long since ceased holding forth. All he needs is the presence of another human being. Bertrand is there, as silent as he. The shutters are closed. The room is quite dark. Ali relates that they stayed like that for hours on end "without a word from either of them." We arranged the chairs in a circle and began a moderated discussion about the question, whether Napoleon remained in the egotistical phase of life and never matured. It was a lively discussion and we didn't reach any conclusions. Aside from Origins, Columbus was putting on a massive Community Festival in a large nearby park with three stages for bands constantly full, food and art vendors, people peacefully enjoying the music and the outdoors. There was also a goofy parade right past the convention center. This was the first Origins since the return of the sponsoring rights to GAMA. The staff of GAMA (special thanks to Mark Simmons) and the CABS organization (special thanks to George Sauer), did a very good job running the show. Other games being shown in the War Room included Going Downtown (the air war over Hanoi) Joe Youst's Wacht am Rhein, and Ed Wimble's 1777. There was also a large contingent of Columbia Block Games next to the glassed-in area facing the I-670 construction. CABS is presenting the Buckeye Game Fest IV, on October 3rd - 5th in Columbus Ohio. To book a $69 room for this event, 614-861-0321. The CABS website is http://home.earthlink.net/~cratex/ Back to OSG News June 2003 Table of Contents Back to OSG News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by Operational Studies Group 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