Expanded Toolbar - Grog

[Didz]

Hi Didz
Thank you for your interesting account of the defense of LHS. Clearly from your account Baring's units were effective acting as skirmishers.

Hmm! I'm not sure one can claim that the garrison of La haie Sainte were acting as skirmishers per see. They were a garrison, and whilst one company was detached to occupy the Orchard it's not really clear whether they were deployed in skirmish, or close order. It's most likely that they were actually deployed to line the southern boundary wall/hedge as an outpost to protect the southern wall of the farm, especially as in the early part of the battle the barn had no doors and could easily have been rushed by a determined foe. The fact that they prevented the French deploying artillery on the rise above the orchard was I suspect a lucky accident. Baring actually makes no mention of it and so I don't think it was his intention to do so when he ordered the orchard occupied. In fact, as far as I know he was never aware that Desales had tried to deploy artillery on the rise and been driven off by his men's rifle fire. However, it was certainly a lucky break for the garrison as had the French been able to deploy even one cannon on the ridge overlooking the farm their plight would have been increased immensely. I've often wondered whether Wellington realised that the rise was too close to the orchard to allow the French to deploy artillery on it when he chose La Haie Sainte as a bastion for his centre, or whether that was again just a lucky break.

The unit he sent into the garden clearly performed one of Rob's favoured tactics deterring artillery from getting to close.

As explained above, I think that might be reading too much into the history. At the time Baring had most of his garrison assigned to working parties desperately trying to prepare the farm for defence including a frantic search for anything that could be used to block the barn doors that the Irish had used for firewood during the night. It is far more likely that the detachment of one company into the orchard was just a sensible precaution against the garrison being surprised whilst it had its shirt sleeves rolled up and was humping furniture back and forth and digging loopholes in the walls. It was certainly NOT a deliberate attack on a French artillery unit, in fact Baring makes no mention of even seeing any artillery on the rise above the orchard. The first Frenchmen he mentions were the leading skirmishers from the 13e Legere, who suddenly appeared over the rise and caught his men in the orchard completely by surprise at a range of 50 paces causing them to withdraw rapidly back into the farm.

The troops that came to reinforce him were also effectively skirmish detachments operating several hundred yards in front of their parent brigades and battalions. I think the significant point though was that these skirmishers were effectively attached to an officer. It would probably be quite a good rule for a war game to establish some penalty such as high rate of morale loss if skirmishers are too far from an officer from their own brigade or chain of command.

Well again we don't know that for sure. They were certainly a detachment from the 1st Light Battalion KGL, but whether they were operating as skirmishers, or deployed in skirmish order is not clear from Baring's account. One would need to find an eyewitness to their attack to verify that. My guess is that they probably launched a assault in close order, most likely in column formation. That would have been the most effective formation for driving off the French skirmishers in the Kitchen Garden, as it would have overwhelmed them with numbers. Remember the objective was to clear a path the kitchen door of the farmhouse, not engage in a protracted fire fight.

Turning to canister, the French used two types heavy and light - SOW does not implement that but if it had there would be a natural conservation of the light canister as it could not be used at longer ranges so that would provide your desired reserve for last ditch defense.

Both were quite limited in quantity though, so my original point still remains valid.

Rothenburg quotes the regulation content of French artillery limbers to be:
12 pdr: Ready Ammo 9 x ball
Reserve Ammunition in 3 x Caisions totaling: 48 x ball; 12 x large canister 8 x light canister Total: 213 rounds
of which 20 were canister. Sufficient for under 10 minutes of fire, and less if it was a mad minute.

Smaller guns were issued with a higher proportion of canister, probably due to their more expose tactical role.
8pdr's had 30 rounds (10 x heavy 20 x Light)
4pdr's had 50 rounds (26 x heavy 24 x light)
6pdr Howitzers only had an 3 x rounds of heavy canister.

So, stocks were quite limited and whilst there would have been a more general ammunition reserve, its unlikely that the proportion of ammunition transferred to a caisson would have varied. One cannot imagine a scenario where a battery was firing off all its canister and then detaching caissons for replenishment with the shot racks still full. It much more likely that ammunition expenditure was managed by the battery commander to conserve ammunition according to tactical need.

The British of course had Shrapnel as well as light canister so they too had a natural way of conserving for an emergency. I find that my own implementation of Shrapnel, which is effective at 750 yards, causes the French player to have to be much more cautious about where his troops are deployed which seems to have some support from accounts in the Peninsular War. I have not yet derived a sensible way in SOW to use it for indirect fire on the Hougoumont orchard as the British actually did but perhaps that is just as well for game balance.

Shrapnell is an oddity in that it extends the canister cone to a point well beyond the muzzle of the gun, and was only available to British artillery. Ammunition allocation varied both over time (as it became more popular) and according to calibre and type of gun.

The table in Nafzigers book quotes:
6pdr Gun (RHA)20 x shrapnel rounds
6pdr Gun (RA) 26 x shrapnel rounds
9pdr Gun 12 x Shrapnel rounds
12pdr(howitzer) 68 x Shrapnel rounds
24pdr(howitzer) 42 x shrapnel rounds

It's employment was tactical and dependent upon the battery commanders assessment of its likely effect compared to traditional ricochet fire, and probably his own preferences. Some batteries seem to have fired a lot of shrapnel and others hardly any. For example Whinyates Troop RHA is said to have fired 236 rounds of shrapnel at Waterloo compared to 309 roundshot. But it seems likely that Whinyate's troop were more experimental than most batteries having also been used as the experimental rocket troop in the peninsula so perhaps their officers saw more potential for the use of shrapnell than other batteries that fired next to none.

BTW: The nominal effective range of a shrapnel shell was 2,000 yards, not 750 yards. So, once again we have a scenario where the theoretical range of a projectile was not reflected in its tactical employment. There is no way a battery would engage anything at 2,000 yards. The simple fact is that the mark 1 human eyeball could not even see a target at that range, even ignoring intervening terrain.

I suspect the reason one cannot recreate the use of Shrapnel fired over Hougoumont into the great wood beyond is simply that the fire was limited in real life to howitzers, and SOW make no provision for howitzer fire. A long gun would not have been able to lob a shell over the buildings and drop it accurately into the wood, and SOW assumes all guns are long guns.

Incidentally Wellington was not a great fan of shrapnel in the peninsula as he claimed it looked impressive but did very little damage. However, by 1815 the carbine balls which had been used to fill the cases had been replaced with full size musket balls, which reduced the number of projectiles but increased the lethality. So, by 1815 shrapnel in the right situation was very effective.

[mcaryf]

Thank you again for interesting replies.

I find this site quite interesting as it has a substantial section on skirmishers with many examples of their use:

http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/infan ... ande_bande

At one point it quotes from Marshall Davout's instructions issued in 1811 concerning the deployment of skirmishers. The instruction has the skirmishing troops advancing in 3 parties some 200 paces in front of the battalion and then the two wing parties advance a further 100 paces, thus they are operating 300 paces ahead.

Didz I did not follow your mathematics for the quantity of canister. You describe it as follows

12 pdr: Ready Ammo 9 x ball
Reserve Ammunition in 3 x Caissons totaling: 48 x ball; 12 x large canister 8 x light canister Total: 213 rounds
of which 20 were canister.

Surely if you multiply the two sets of canister by 3 you get 36 x large and 24 x light giving 60 canister rounds in total out of 213?

I did not mention Prussian use of Skirmishers in my previous post. Their standard practice by 1815 was to deploy battalions in 3 ranks and those in the third rank would all have been trained as skirmishers. Thus at least a third of their men could be deployed as skirmishers but in fact a further 20 - 30 in each of the other two ranks would also have been trained so the true skirmish capability would have been around 40% of the unit.

According to both Adkin and Lipscombe's article to which I gave a link earlier the effective range of Shrapnel was very much overstated by writers at the beginning of the 19th century and 2,000m was unrealistic although theoretically possible. Of course it would not just be the absolute distance that would be the problem but also the degree of smoke on the battlefield. I find that even restricting my shrapnel range to 750 yards the initial deployment positions of some of D'Erlons corps are within Shrapnel range and until I changed the starting positions for my scenarios these units suffered significant losses. In practice the smoke generated by the Grand Battery would have made it hard for the British to see well enough but I do not think the game mechanics could or should attempt to model that so I just re-positioned the French troops beyond 750 yards.

I do actually restrict the use of "my" Shrapnel munition to British howitzers of which there are obviously only a limited number on the field although there was one battery entirely equipped with howitzers which Wellington specifically deployed to defend Hougoumant. I compensate that restriction to some extent by giving the British guns comparable canister ranges to the equivalent French weapon although I am aware that the British did not historically have heavy canister. Anybody playing with "my" artillery mod as the French has to be constantly wary of a sudden build up of losses in a unit that has come into range of a British howitzer although I have given the Shrapnel munition a slower rate of fire and a higher percentage of misfires which would be historically correct. I did publish a version of my artillery mod about a year ago but I am still experimenting with tweaking various values - I think the published one has a slightly longer range for Shrapnel than I now use in my own games.

Regards

Mike

[Didz]

I MADE A MISTAKE.
My apologies for any confusion caused yesterday, but I realised this morning that I made a mistake in my previous post, which I have since corrected. However, I'll document it here for everyone's information.

In an earlier post @mcaryf mentions Roger's Battery and I made the mistake (working from pure memory) of assuming that he was talking about the battery positioned on the ridge above La Haie Sainte. However quite by chance i happened to decide to recheck Barbero's account of the attack of Crabbe's Cuirassiers mainly to confirm that the Luneberg Battalion they destroyed was a light battalion, and I discovered that the battery I had described as Roger's Battery was in fact Ross' Battery. In fact, there is a rather nice little sketch on page 224 of Siborne's book of Waterloo Letters which shows very clearly the positions of Ross' six 9pdr guns above La Haie Sainte at the start of the battle.

Roger's Battery was much farther to the Allied left attached to Picton's Division and was positioned on the forward slope of the ridge just behind the hedges of the Ohain Road most likely somewhere in advance of the junction between Kempt's and Packs brigades as he would have needed to be far enough to the left to clear the obstruction of the wooded knoll just above the sandpit. In fact, in his letter to Siborne he mentions in passing that Picton was shot and fell from his horse close to one of his batteries guns, so that gives a rough idea of where his battery was during D'Erlon's attack.

Ross' battery was divided and positioned really badly, and it appears with little real thought, and Ross' clearly wasn't very happy about it and his letters tend to reflect this attitude. Both he and Roger's appear to be very defensive about the role and suffering of their respective batteries. Ross tells Siborne that right from the opening of the battle his four guns positioned on the forward slope of the ridge overlooking the farm of La Haie Sainte came under heavy enemy artillery fire. Which almost immediately 'disabled' three of them, and killed several men and horses. Fire which by orders of Wellington he was specifically refused permission to return.

If one measures the distance of these four guns from the position of the French artillery on the ridge opposite its also obvious that they were unfortunately positioned almost exactly in the centre of what would have been the beaten zone for any French round shot fired in the direction of the Allied centre either at the ridge behind them or in an attempt to hit the farm. So, they were basically sitting in the middle of a coconut shy getting pelted by everything within range and unable to do anything but stand there and take it. One can understand why Ross was not happy and reticent about saying much about it.

And just to rub salt in his wounds when Crabbe's Cuirassiers overran the Luneberg Battalion his battery had no way of escaping as the sunken lane (he calls it The Hollow Way) behind him prevented the easy withdrawal of his guns and was already jammed with all manner of carts, limbers, horses and wounded men trying to shelter from the artillery bombardment, and so his guns were overrun by the French cavalry, many of his gunners were hunted down and killed by French cavalry and the rest scattered without really contributing much to the battle at all. Something which he clearly was careful not to admit in his letters.

The two guns from Ross' battery which were deployed on the Charleroi Road itself were in an even worse position in many respects. They were there presumably to guard the abbatis which had been constructed across the road at the mouth of the defile that led to the central crossroads. In theory, that made sense as two guns loaded with canister would have made a mess of anything trying to advance straight up the road and over the barricade.

However, the problem was that because the guns were actually deployed on the road they themselves were in the defile, and so could only really engage an enemy that was stupid enough to advance directly up the road. And contrary to most British historical accounts the French were not that stupid. What actually happened was a bit of a farce as far as these two guns were concerned.

The French initially sent a small column (possibly from the 13e Legere, or one of Quiots Battalions) up the road, but even before it reached the Farm it was fired upon by the riflemen of the 95th from the sandpit, who were also charged with defending the abbatis. This caused the column to immediately veer off the road and attack the sandpit, effectively masking it from the fire of the two guns in the defile.

To make matters worse, faced with several hundred determined Frenchmen heading their way the riflemen in the sandpit (it was actually a quarry) abandoned their positions and retreated back up the slope. Firstly to the hedgerow lining the slope above the sandpit, then to the wooded mound behind that, and finally all the way back to their main body beyond the Ohain Road.

The French followed, occupying the sandpit and the wooded mound with their own skirmishers and proceeding to engage the close order troops which had now moved forward to defend the road line. in doing so they were now overlooking the defile where the two guns from Ross' battery were deployed and were able to fire down at the gunners on the roadway beneath them. Not surprisingly to use Ross' words these guns were quickly 'disabled', which I think in this instance meant that the gunners ran for it.

[Note: The term 'disabled' is interesting and is used by both Roger's and Ross to indicate a situation which prevented the gun being fired, rather than my initial assumption that it meant the gun had been damaged. In fact, it could mean both, or either, and one finds that in the correspondence 'disabled' guns miraculously return to service, and I suspect the term 'disabled' is a cryptic and accepted neutral term employed by artillery officers to cover a multitude of events that might prevent a gun being fired.]

It is interesting to note that if the guns were abandoned then they clearly were not spiked, nor were they carried off by the French, and Ross claims later to have taken his three remaining guns over to the right in order to participate in the defeat of the Imperial Guard and the pursuit.

Likewise Rogers account is also somewhat defencive. In fact, it sounds as though initially he did not respond to Sibornes questionnaire at all, and only did so later when he discovered that one of junior officers (Captain Maule) had already done so, and the impression given is that he was worried what Maule might have said, and was trying to put the record straight give his own more acceptable account of events.

In fact, I've read Maule's account and he doesn't actually say anything that I consider controversial, but Roger's (who presumably didn't see Maules letter, and must have heard about it second hand) seems to think that Maule may have suggested that he (Roger's) had lost some of his guns. He is in fact very careful in his letter to correct any suggestion that, any of his guns were lost, or even abandoned during the battle. He admits that one panicking gun captain on seeing Picton shot and his brigade withdrawing in disarray before the French assault did foolishly spike his gun before making his escape, and two other guns had to be temporarily abandoned due to a lack of limber horses. But he makes the point that the spiked gun was eventually recovered and returned to the artillery park in the rear, and that the battery was eventually moved to a position to the right of the Charleroi Road overlooking La Haie Sainte where it still had five guns and later took part in the defeat of the Imperial Guard and the final pursuit with all five of its guns remaining, even though two of them had trouble keeping pace due to the shortage of horses.

So, he is clearly determined to make the point crystal clear for the record that none of his guns were lost or abandoned. Whereas the reticent Ross admits that three of his were, albeit with good cause.

Incidently: On a related by different topic its worth noting that Crabbe was not a cavalry officer, but is described as a Belgian ADC, (I think he was attached to Ney's staff), and he was on a special mission along with a detachment of 200 French Cuirassiers to scout and occupy 'The Spur'. Which is a key feature of the battlefield which is recognised by everyone that was actually there, but almost universally ignored by historians. Crabbe and his escort of cuirassiers were ordered to set up an observation on the top of the spur, from which one could see virtually the entire length of the allied lines, and no doubt his job was to report back on what was hidden from the French positions opposite. However, it appears that whilst performing this role he witnessed the advance of the Luneberg Battalion and ordered his detachment to attack it effectively setting in motion a whole cascade of events culminating in the attack of the Scots Greys, and overrunning Ross' battery in the process.

Another argument perhaps for the need to allow detachments in SOW. But not just of skirmishers.

Thank you again for interesting replies.

I find this site quite interesting as it has a substantial section on skirmishers with many examples of their use:

http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/infan ... ande_bande

Yes! It's a really good site.

At one point it quotes from Marshall Davout's instructions issued in 1811 concerning the deployment of skirmishers. The instruction has the skirmishing troops advancing in 3 parties some 200 paces in front of the battalion and then the two wing parties advance a further 100 paces, thus they are operating 300 paces ahead.

Yes! Nafziger quotes from the same notes and includes a diagram on page 114 showing how a skirmisher company would have deployed.

Didz I did not follow your mathematics for the quantity of canister. You describe it as follows

12 pdr: Ready Ammo 9 x ball
Reserve Ammunition in 3 x Caissons totaling: 48 x ball; 12 x large canister 8 x light canister Total: 213 rounds
of which 20 were canister.

Surely if you multiply the two sets of canister by 3 you get 36 x large and 24 x light giving 60 canister rounds in total out of 213?

Quite Correct, maths is not my strong point. It should have been 20 per caisson.

I did not mention Prussian use of Skirmishers in my previous post. Their standard practice by 1815 was to deploy battalions in 3 ranks and those in the third rank would all have been trained as skirmishers. Thus at least a third of their men could be deployed as skirmishers but in fact a further 20 - 30 in each of the other two ranks would also have been trained so the true skirmish capability would have been around 40% of the unit.

That was quite common right across the board. The Austrian's used a similar ratio. However, one should not make the mistake of assuming that all of these men would actually be employed in the active role of skirmishing. The three line system was also universal, so at most only about 1/3 of the men detached as skirmishers would actively be engaged in skirmishing the rest acted as supports/replacements and reserves.

Hence my comment earlier that 50-60 men per battalion sounded about right.

e.g. 600 men in a battalion = 200 men detached as skirmishers of which about a third or 66 odd men might actually be engaged in skirmishing .

According to both Adkin and Lipscombe's article to which I gave a link earlier the effective range of Shrapnel was very much overstated by writers at the beginning of the 19th century and 2,000m was unrealistic although theoretically possible. Of course it would not just be the absolute distance that would be the problem but also the degree of smoke on the battlefield. I find that even restricting my shrapnel range to 750 yards the initial deployment positions of some of D'Erlons corps are within Shrapnel range and until I changed the starting positions for my scenarios these units suffered significant losses. In practice the smoke generated by the Grand Battery would have made it hard for the British to see well enough but I do not think the game mechanics could or should attempt to model that so I just re-positioned the French troops beyond 750 yards.

Exactly! my point being that when writing wargame rules or coding computer wargames the theoretical performance of weapons is less important that their practical and historical employment. Thus if you allow canister to be fired at its theoretically effective range, without actually taking into account its historical use players will simply abuse the hell out of it. As in fact they do in SOW.

[mcaryf]

Hi Didz

Thank you for some further interesting material.

I think one slight area of confusion in my posts is that I tend to think of the term skirmisher unit to reflect a small unit detached from his parent battalion to perform a fighting role typically in an advanced position. However, I think some of this debate has been partly about the skirmish formation where men in the unit are fighting whilst relatively widespread. Thus I have been referring to Baring's unit in the garden at LHS as skirmishing whilst they might actually have been as close to each other as if they were in a line. Of course you cannot sensibly talk about a formation when a unit is actually inside a building firing via windows and loopholes. I would say that is closer to skirmishing where the theory at least is that a man will seek convenient cover near his area of deployment. I believe some training drills for skirmishers would have them specific distances apart such as 6 meters but I guess these distanceswould have been approximations depending on the terrain and the key points were to give the skirmisher a greater degree of personal choice about his actions whilst covering a much wider area of ground and presenting less of a target to the enemy.

Regards

Mike

[Didz]

Hi Mike,

If you are using the term 'skirmisher' to refer to detached units operating independently beyond the chain of command of their parent unit, then Baring's company in the orchard is a bad example. The orchard itself was adjacent to the southern wall of the farm and easily accessible via the barn door, so the company was hardly detached or operating independently and in fact Baring was with it along with his second in command. It was in fact nothing more than a standard precaution used by any battalion to screen their main body.

I'm trying to think of an example of an independent detachment, but for the moment nothing springs to mind. As I said Crabbe had a force of some 200 x cuirassiers attached to him as an escort for his special mission. Who were operating away from their parent regiments, but not really independently as such because of course Crabbe was in command of them.

Likewise the 2 x companies of the 1st Light Battalion KGL and the Schutzen from the 5th Line Battalion that were sent to reinforce Barings battalion were not really acting independently, but were actually assigned to Baring's force.

I can't actually think of an instance where a battalion detached a company or section of men and sent them off to act alone and unsupervised. The French whilst often in the habit of forming special teams and task groups usually did so under the explicit command of a senior officer or ADC, and usually with the authority of the army commander or a very senior officer.

One obvious reason why such detachments could not be made without careful preparation is simply that reducing the size of a battalion, and detaching elements from its organisation could and would have had direct implications on its ability to carry out its battlefield role effectively.

[mcaryf]

Hi Didz

A skirmisher unit would quite probably be company sized. the average strength of a French battalion at Waterloo was 520 and during this era the French had 6 Companies per battalion with a Captain and a Lieutenant. Thus a French skirmisher unit could typically be commanded by a Captain. The Allied army was more varied in terms of numbers of companies with some battalions having 10 companies. The average size of Allied battalions was larger but probably there would still be the equivalent of a captain to command a skirmish unit so they would not be leaderless. The Germans/Prussians were beginning to build up their reputation for the effectiveness of their NCO's for command in smaller units which would be demonstrated in both World Wars.

Regards

Mike

[Didz]

A skirmisher unit would quite probably be company sized. the average strength of a French battalion at Waterloo was 520 and during this era the French had 6 Companies per battalion with a Captain and a Lieutenant. Thus a French skirmisher unit could typically be commanded by a Captain. The Allied army was more varied in terms of numbers of companies with some battalions having 10 companies. The average size of Allied battalions was larger but probably there would still be the equivalent of a captain to command a skirmish unit so they would not be leaderless. The Germans/Prussians were beginning to build up their reputation for the effectiveness of their NCO's for command in smaller units which would be demonstrated in both World Wars.

From my own reading Captains were rarely trusted to act on their own initiative, contrary to the impression given by Bernard Cornwell with his Sharpe novels. As I said in my last post independent detachments from the main units were rare and only really occurred under the authority and control of a senior officer. Even detached companies of riflemen and schutzen were usually attached to another battalion rather than allowed to function independently at the whim of their junior officers.

The main reason for this as stated earlier was that special arrangements would need to be made at Brigade or Divisional level to ensure that the rump units left short of men by the detachments were still able to function without them, or were protected from the effects of their absence.

What I think is lacking in SOW is the ability for the player to make such adjustments to the OOB prior to the commencement of an action. For instance, it should be possible for the player to choose to combine all the grenadier companies from a French Division to form a Grenadier battalion, even though to do so would weaken the combat effectiveness of both the parent battalions and the grenadiers.

Likewise splitting up a rifle battalion and attaching its six companies to six different line battalions should be possible, prior to the start of a battle to spread the effectiveness of the baker rifle across the formation, but with suitable reductions in their effectiveness and morale.

[mcaryf]

Hi Didz

Actually it is not too difficult to change the relative size of units in SOW Waterloo scenarios. The numbers used are held in a spreadsheet called scenario.csv in each of the dedicated scenario folders. It is essential to adjust strength values if you try to follow on from one battle to the next like, say QB leading to Waterloo. I do it all the time because when I fight QB or Ligny I might end up with several battalions with very few men so I typically average the losses out in a division. Also if a gun crew has been wiped out or captured then I usually reduce all the other crews so that each gun has at least 15 men.

The standard scenarios for QB and Waterloo are a bit strange as for example most of the French units that fought at both QB and Waterloo are given the same starting strength as they historically had at Waterloo i.e the strengths used in QB are too low as their real QB losses are already added in. On the other hand many of the Allied units such as some of the British Guards are again given the same starting strength in both battles but this time it is the actual starting value for QB thus the Waterloo number for the Guards is much too high with one unit being over 1,000 when it should be around 700. Obviously the testers have play balanced the scenarios so it is not worth asking them to change it now, but, for my attempts to reproduce the campaign, I have modified the OOBs to what I think they were. Of course different historians will give you different numbers but I usually use Mark Adkin just to be consistent with a single source.

Regards

Mike

[Didz]

Sounds odd. Either they didn't research the starting strengths rigorously enough or as you say it was deliberate inaccuracy for the benefit of play balance.

[RebBugler]

Sounds odd. Either they didn't research the starting strengths rigorously enough or as you say it was deliberate inaccuracy for the benefit of play balance.

Neither, simply oversight. The campaign OOB was designed first and was not adjusted for the pre-Waterloo engagement losses. I didn't query about this until it was too late as I was organizing the Quatre Bras OOB to design its scenarios.

Switching topics...Got the officer 'Select Munitions' buttons window done and tested, patch coming soon.