The Civilians
My first period of enthusiasm for tabletop
sieges was about five years ago now; this was before I started this blog, but
the first serious playtesting was recorded splendidly by Clive in his Vintage Wargames blog. My early rules
had a lot of holes in them, and the game was fun but definitely creaky in some
areas – I’ve done a little work on it since then, but otherwise I have been
distracted by other things (excuse 1), and for a while I have been waiting to
see what Piquet would produce in their mooted Vauban’s Wars rules, for which we are all still waiting, sadly
(excuse 2).
During my solo Peninsular War campaign
(blogged here in 2012-13) I deliberately chose not to use tabletop sieges,
since they do not fit well with the timescales and turn cycle of the map
movement game. I did consider the possibility of having a siege set up on a
tabletop if it was required, and working it alongside the map stuff (such
things should be possible in a solo game, you would think), but then I realized
that I would be in deep trouble if there were two sieges simultaneously. Thus I
spent some time developing algorithm-based siege simulators, and I have to say
that the two sieges that took place during the campaign worked very nicely as
mathematical models, but I was still a little sad that the lovely fortress
toys and my siege train did not get used on the table.
I am very keen to get back to sieges
sometime soon, so I’ve been doing some further thinking and scribbling. I
already had some rough notes about what I termed barometers, which were missing from the early rules, and which I
have always known I should have to come back to. During a siege, my logic goes,
the normal siege turn will represent 24 hours’ activity, but if anything more
tactical occurs – such as a sally, or a storm, or the arrival of a relieving
force – then the game temporarily switches to 15 or 30-minute turns, during
which a more standard type of wargame is conducted until events calm down again
to the more measured step of the siege operations. Over and above all this, I
envisaged a weekly check on the progress
of a number of things, and this is where I would maintain the barometers to
show the current state of the garrison and the civilians (if any) in the
fortress, the level of enthusiasm of the besiegers, and the supply of
provisions and ammunition (in a simplified form). It would also be necessary to
monitor damage to the town as the result of bombardment and fires, and check
for sickness and epidemics (on both sides). The movement of the barometers
would be linked one to another in many cases, and there should be a little contributory
dice-rolling to simulate good and bad breaks.
This, potentially, could get very
complicated, but thus far the barometers don’t exist in any useable form, so in
odd moments I am doing some head scratching and trying to write down a few
basic ideas. Some of this is from first principles (or what passes for commonsense
around here), and some is borrowed from my various sources, which include the
works of Chris Duffy, Tony Bath, Charles S Grant, Henry Hyde and a number of
other worthies, plus the Festung Krieg
rules from the Koenig Krieg 18th
Century rules and other bits and pieces.
My first attempt at a barometer is that for
the civilian population who have the misfortune to inhabit a besieged town. My
starting point was to identify five broad “states” of the civilians, thus:
(1) Completely
supportive of the garrison; will collaborate fully in matters of supply and
will require no policing effort; if necessary, will be prepared to form
irregular units and/or help man the defences. The population of Saragossa
during the sieges there might be an example of a State 1 civilian group.
(2) Passively
supportive of the garrison; will contribute food and labour, but will not
fight; a small amount of policing required; will probably hand over spies.
(3) Pretty
apathetic; may require active policing and control; will not fight, but may
well be demoralized or sullen.
(4) Hostile to
garrison; may obstruct military effort, or disrupt supply arrangements.
Extensive policing required, and there will be inhabitants who provide
information to the besiegers, and who may take up arms to assist an assault
from outside.
(5) Violently
hostile; the population is held in check only by extensive diversion of troops
and effort; there will be a tendency to insurrection, and armed resistance
against the garrison. They will certainly assist the besieging force if chance
is offered.
Clearly, the citizens may move from one
state to another – up or down the barometer – as the situation develops. A
military governor who deprives the townspeople of food in order to feed his own
men, for example, may find that he has to divert much of his strength to
suppress a violent backlash if the citizens slide into State 5.
OK – there’s a lot to do here, and the way
this all links with the progress of the siege and with the other barometers still
needs thinking out, but this is my first skeleton. I was interested in the fact
that States 1 and 5 imply that the population may generate irregular “units”,
which become involved in conflict on either side. I started thinking about how
many such soldiers might be produced from a civilian group.
Bearing in mind that my priority here is to
get something working for Spain in about 1810-13, I reasoned that, if half the
population were male, and there were large numbers of children, many of whom would
not survive to adulthood, then about one-third of the males might be aged 16 to
50, and capable of carrying arms. I am aware that many of the men would already
have been called up to join the army, or have otherwise disappeared to avoid
being called up, and many might have been killed in the war. Let us assume this
takes the one-third down a bit. A convenient figure might be that 1000
population can yield 4 fighting figures (at 33 men/figure). Thus it will also be
necessary to track civilian losses in the siege.
I propose to work with a standard unit of
rations (yet to be named), which will feed 1000 civilians or 1 infantry
battalion (of about 700 men) or 1 cavalry unit (of about 350 men) for a week.
There are some tables in Tony Bath’s book giving guidelines for the
effect on sickness and morale (and thus desertion) of living on reduced rations
for various periods, which look useful without being too onerous, so I propose
to check that all out.
These siege thoughts will, I hope,
constitute an occasional series as ideas come together; much of this is very
rough at this stage, and it will take some time and much testing to get it into
shape, but it’s the sort of thing I enjoy fiddling with!
