With my alternative-move Napoleonic game I was beginning to feel like the sort of eccentric American who still doesn't have automatic transmission in his car, so I decided to experiment with converting my game to simultaneous moving. This compelled me to do some basic thinking.
The first question to be answered was what was the ideal length of move for the period? This involved looking at the various things that could happen during a move movement, firing, loading, unlimbering and limbering-up, and melee. The rules already provided for infantry melees to be decided immediately at the end of the move in which contact was made and I thought this was correct in view of the rarity of actual hand-to-hand fighting between infantry except in confined spaces. But what I had not realised before was the obvious fact that firing also takes no time at all -- it is the loading that takes time. So I decided to look at approximate loading times.
The sources that I had available gave varying times as required for loading the weapons of the period, but I eventually worked out the following rough scale for loading times: Musket - 1/2 minute; Cannon - 1/2 minute; Rifle - 2 minutes. This suggested a move lasting half a minute. Clearly it would be impossible to fight a large battle with such short moves, but I had already accepted that realistic tactics can only be reproduced in small actions. I also liked the idea of half-minute moves because of the time it would take attacking forces to get from effective musketry range (100 yards) to contact. Infantry in line moving in ordinary time (75 paces to the minute) would take three moves and infantry in column moving in quick time (108 paces to the minute) would take two moves. Even cavalry at the trot would take one move.
Rules in which moves were based on loading times would clearly sometimes call for a record of the 'loading state' of a unit to be kept on the order sheet. Rifles would always have to keep such a record in order to make it clear in which move they had completed loading and were ready to fire. Musketeers who had not fired at the end of a stationary loading move would note the fact, which would allow them to move in the next move and also fire at the end of it.
There remained the perennial problem of whether infantry or artillery should be allowed to fire on enemy units at the end of the move in which the enemy had charged home. Clearly they should not be allowed to do so if they themselves were loading during the move. But what if they were already loaded at the beginning of the move? This would not happen very often, as enemy units in a position to charge would normally be within their field of fire at the end of the last move. But they would have to be allowed to fire on units charging from cover or at the gallop from out of musketry range.
Unlimbering and limbering-up are processes that do not seem to be treated very realistically in many wargame rules. I decided that gunners should be allowed to unlimber and load in the same time (1 move) that it took them to re-load in continuous firing. (The actual unlimbering time would correspond to the time taken to sponge out the gun and run it up again in continuous firing). The gun team would be allowed to move away in the same move, as the actual unhooking of the trail would take very little time. Limbering-up, on the other hand, would take A whole move in itself, and the limber would have to be close to the gun at the beginning of the move.
This brought me up against another perennial problem - the fact that a team and gun are about the right shape to represent a battery moving in column on a front of two guns, but quite the wrong shape for a battery in line, whether in action or in movement. I got over this by placing a gunner marker to indicate the flanks of the battery (moving them in as the battery suffered from counter-battery fire) and by counting only the limber itself (not the horses) in reckoning the depth of target represented by teams in line. All movements of teams to and from the guns would be 'measured from the first to the second position of the limber, allowing the horses to be placed in any direction at the end of the move.
The last question to be answered was how detailed the written orders for each move required to be. At the Dundee Convention I had seen something of the difficulties that could arise. For example, an umpire had asked me as referee whether he should rule that a battery was destroyed because it had been ordered to move a full move in a direction that would land it in the middle of the river: I eventually decided that it would be sufficient for an order to show the direction of move, the rate of movement (walk, trot or gallop) in the case of cavalry, and any change of formation in the case of infantry. Anything less than a full move could be indicated by a common-sense direction, e.g. not to go beyond dead ground. Infantry changes of formation would take one move except in the case of a whole battalion forming from column or square into line or vice versa, which would take two moves.
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© Copyright 1971 by Donald Featherstone.
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