Civil War tactical comparison with Napoleonic era

[barr7430]

In my quest to make R2E /ACW iteration as playable and realisitc as possible I came across this article by John Hammill
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/cwarmy.html

I cannot recommend this piece highly enough. It is brisk, punchy, provocative, powerfully argued, challenging of the cliche norm and thoroughly thought provoking.
It is not without flaw in argumentation but what is? I felt I got more out of 30 minutes reading this than previous and countless hours reading other much better known pieces..

Have a read and tell me what you think!

[18th Century Guy]

Barry,

He has some very interesting ideas. I'm no big fan of the ACW, I find it boring and maybe this is why! Interesting that he never brings the Crimean conflict into this discussion. I wonder how he would see that one?

[barr7430]

I agree that the wargaming appeal sounds low as described. I think interest in American history by Americans and Hollywood have gone a long way to making ACW popular. I am always struck by a curious parallel. Hugely proud and nationalistic American wargamers and historians are disproportionately interested in British Colonial warfare and the equally proud and nationalistic British wargamers are disproportionately interested in the ACW Both could be described as predictable and somewhat dull wargaming genres.. but both are incredibly popular. In fact, talking to a friend recently about which is the most popular gaming periods he thought:

Napoleonic
Ancients
WW2
ACW
Colonial

in that order


and I thought

WW2
Ancients
ACW
Napoleonic
Colonial

in that order


No empirical evidence just gut sense...

[PaulMc]

That is a very fine article. Looks like you have your work cut out for you if you're doing a supplement for R2E. In fact if you do it would easily lend itself to eventually covering not only the eighteenth century but also up to (and including) the Franco Prussian War.

The real eye opener for me is the poor command and control of the civil war armies.

[obriendavid]

I don't think he has come out with anything new that hasn't been made before and also misses out a lot of information about different periods. I don't see how he can argue that the 'Napoleonic period' that he mentions could possibly be Napoleon III as the battles he talks about are all in the Franco-Prussian war fought 5 years after the end of the ACW so that couldn't be an influence and he certainly doesn't mention the Italian unifcation wars or the Crimean war both of which are more like the earlier Napoleonic period.

Apart from the one instance he mentions of the Prussians in 1864 fighting the Danes even the Prussians weren't sure how good their rifles were until they fought the Austrians two years later. Even then the Austrian Lorenz rifle had a better range than the Dreyse but the Austrians prefered bayonet attacks instead of shooting because that's how they had basically been beaten by the French in '59. It also had the flaw that being a muzzle loading rifle they had to stand up to load it whereas the Prussians could lie down in cover to load and do it much faster so in both cases the poor old Austrians were stuffed

Against the French the Prussians should have suffered severely due to the French rifles having almost double the range and they could also lie down to load but unfortunatly French officers usually stopped their men shooting at long range because they would use up their ammo too quickly. Once the Prussian got within their weapons range they usually won because of superior shooting ability, French soldiers often only firing 3 practice shots a year compared to Prussians firing at least 100. As if that wasn't enough of an advantage the Prussian rifled artillery now reorganised after a poor performance in the '66 war would blast the French infantry out of any static defences.

None of these tactics appear to have been used in the ACW so I think his logic is flawed there and my thoughts on the poorer performance of both sides in the ACW is that it was a war fought by amatuers with little command and control in terrain that bore virtually no resemblance to European battlefields to allow sweeping manouevers.
Cheers
Dave

[j1mwallace]

None of these tactics appear to have been used in the ACW so I think his logic is flawed there and my thoughts on the poorer performance of both sides in the ACW is that it was a war fought by amateurs with little command and control in terrain that bore virtually no resemblance to European battlefields to allow sweeping manouevers.

Interesting article. I tend to agree with Mr O'Brien's last paragraph here.
I simply don't think that the armies were of a high enough calibre of training because they were mainly amateurs. Armed citizens as it were.
I also think that a lot of it had to do with the mental preparedness of the ordinary rank and file to kill fellow Americans.
I know that there were the usual diehards on both sides and we keep hearing about divided families etc. Great copy but the majority of enlisted men had no great desire for the fight.
Standard tactics of the time were to advance as close to the enemy as possible and blast away. Many times infantry units did this until they were exhausted or had exhausted their ammunition with no great effect.
The exceptions to these are at places like Fredericksburg and Picketts attack at Gettysburg. These were defeated by close range artillery and infantry fire. They were carried out in a very Napoleonic fashion by frontal assault and because of poor coordination were doomed to fail.
Infantry were able to put out an enormous amount of fire because of their prepared positions . At Fredericksburg the Union army was halted 50- 60 yards from the stone wall , at Gettysburg only a small number of Confederates actually reached the union battle line.
In my opinion the majority of Civil war battle results were won by the side which made the fewer errors and were able to to keep tighter command and control.
From my reading it appears most opportunities for victory were squandered by inactivity.
Pretty boring wargame though if you can't get a breakthrough charge move!
Interesting though

[obriendavid]

From my reading it appears most opportunities for victory were squandered by inactivity.
Pretty boring wargame though if you can't get a breakthrough charge move!
Interesting though

That's why I think the Risorgimento, 1866 and FPW battles are more interesting to wargame and far more colourful and so far I have resisted Mr Hilton's subliminal attempts to get me into 40mm ACW, he tried it again at the show on Saturday flashing the little beauties in front of me.
Cheers
Dave

[barr7430]

oh God,, he's off again...


Wait till you see them all painted up..

[Gunfreak]

The ACW has the best(most colorfull) generals after the Napoleoinc period. Sure out of the hundreds og hundreds of officers only one propper general exicted Sherman, all the others had some good and some part things, and sure Sherman did have some bad things, but his good ones outweighed them by far.

I did have ok brigadiers, but they often sucked when getting a division or corps, and you had some ok division generals but they sucked as corp or army commanders.

Alle army commanders thought they were fighting a napoleoinc war, only sherman knew this was something totaly diffrent.

If you had A Napoleon the war would have been over in 2 months.