1. I recently reviewed Pat Condray's rules on the Spanish Civil War, which I called VIVO EL CRISTO REY. I will testify, under oath, that I copied the name from Pat's own publication, and though the title didn't have the right ring to it, I thought that perhaps it might be a "modismo", an idiom, coined during the war.
I showed the name to several Spanish speaking friends, including my spanish teacher, a person of the Bolivian persuasion, who also couldn't make sense of it and thought it might be a modismo.
Then, suddenly... a light at the end of the tunnel. In the latest COURIER, Pat's rules are mentioned, and the name turns out to be VIVA EL CRISTO REY.
The episode reminded me of Bowden's EMPIRE II, that fine "Napoleonic reference and source book", in which the scholarly author, throughout the book, some 40? 50? pages, categorized the capabilities of artillery batteries as running from "poor" to "excellant". Not once in the entire text was the word 'excellent' spelled correctly. Here, perhaps, the term "excellant" could be interpreted to be a Bowden "modismo". Let's hope so.
2. There's a brief article in this issue, comments by Arty Conliffe on the topic of unit-wheeling-capabilities in ancient warfare. Arty's ARMATI rules are fairly restrictive in the wheeling league for both infantry and cavalry.
By coincidence, the night I finished typing, cutting, pasting, etc, the article, there appeared on a television program called BIOGRAPHY, an hour-long episode on the life of Alexander the Great.
The one battle the program focused on was that of Issus, when Alexander smashed Darius' army, despite being outnumbered some 3-to-1. The program had some nice looking computer-generated maps of the battlefield and of the initial dispositions of the opposing sides. The sketch shows both forces facing each other across the river.
The sea limits the battlefield in the west, and an assortment of rough terrain limits it in the east. The result was that Alexander, despite being outnumbered, was able to form his troops up with a frontage, if not a depth, equal to that of the Persian array.
Darius sent his entire cavalry force, some 10,000 troopers, to his right flank on the west, with the intent of smashing Alexander's left flank, and then rolling up the Macedonian army.
Alexander, with only 5,000 cavalry, countered this by sending a portion of his own cavalry to his left. Their mission was to hold the Persian cavalry, preventing them from breaking through, while Alexander led the remainder of his cavalry on his right flank in the eastern part of the field. He, too, envisioned a charge against the defending infantry, and then a rolling up of the Persian line from east to west.
In effect, what was happening was a huge counter-clockwise movement of the armies of both sides, as each cavalry force came forward.
The result was that Alexander's left flank cavalry held the Persian horse while his own advancing cavalry smashed the Persians in the eastern part of the field. They then wheeled 90 degrees to their left, and proceeded to eat up the Persian line.
Two things of interest here: first, we have a wheel, a genyoowine wheel, by cracky, of almost 5,000 of Alexander's cavalry in the heat of battle, first beating on the Persian infantry and then turning to their left, and making for Darius' position in the center of the Persian line.
Second, note that Darius had evidently studied the same textbook on wheeling, for his orders to his 10,000 cavalry were duplicates of Alexander's: charge forward, destroy the infantry to your front, and then wheel to your left and eat up the enemy's line.
My question: if Alexander and Darius could do it, why can't I?
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© Copyright 1994 Wally Simon
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