Battle Research - A Meeting with an Old Friend

 In my studies to put together a scenario for my forthcoming Battle of Orthez, I was recommended to have a look at a book by Major-General FC Beatson, published in 1925.

Now, as it happens, this book was one of a number of old hardbound volumes I once had, all previously the property of the library at Wellington School. They were pretty dirty, and they smelled of cigarette smoke and mildew and were generally unappetising. There came a time when I had to unload a lot of books - the collection had got out of hand, partly as a result of my working for a while just around the corner from the legendary MacNaughton's Book Shop, in Leith Walk, Edinburgh. The Beatson books didn't look particularly inspiring, and they went out in the clearance.

Well, I found that some of Beatson's back catalogue is now available on Kindle, so I bought this one for about £4.

You know what? - it's bloody good. It is deliberately aimed at officer trainees, and Beatson's rather eccentric use of punctuation takes a little getting used to, but it contains just the sort of nuts and bolts stuff about the organisation and narrative of a campaign that I thrive on, though it is definitely a product of its time and would probably chase most sensible readers away very quickly.

There is excellent material on routing the supply trains as the army moved north into France, and a lot of detail on the political difficulties caused by the confrontation between British officials and the Spanish Cortes. Being a Kindle edition, of course, the photos and maps have disappeared, but I can cover for that. 

It seems that Naval & Military stock a complete Beatson trilogy of Wellington's 1814 adventures, so you can still get them. I'm sure I had another volume, on Waterloo, but my personal legacy of Wellington School's military section included Fuller and a few others, so I may be mistaken about this.

 

With all due apologies to the Major-General for not being sufficiently respectful last time round, I am enjoying my new Kindle book.

Hooptedoodle #434 - Bookmark and Ramifications

And we note our place with book markers, that measure what we've lost

 I was looking through some old books the other morning - trying to find some military reference or other, and a suitably old bookmark fluttered to the floor.

I must have been given this to accompany a book purchase, one among so many. The old-style telephone number (031 for Edinburgh) indicates that this purchase must have been before 1995 [I knew you'd spot that, Watson], though I am surprised that the insertion of a "1" as second digit of UK phone numbers was as recent as that. No matter.

I am a little embarrassed to relate that I had a single employer from the time I left university until I took early retirement, and for much of that period I was based in or around George Street, and for a large proportion of my lunch breaks I would have been in The Edinburgh Bookshop for some of the time. It wasn't an especially brilliant bookshop - it was always overshadowed locally by James Thin's and Baumeister's and the many specialist booksellers in the Old Town, but - well, it was in George Street, wasn't it? On wet days, cold days and just plain boring days I would traipse along to No.57 after my lunch.

It wasn't a very welcoming store. In charge of the shop-floor were two older ladies who always wore black - very serious older ladies. They were devoted followers of the old Edinburgh principle that anyone who worked in a shop was a cut above anyone who might have the temerity to shop there, and they were very hard on anyone who did not conform to their high standards.

Right at the start of my interest in wargaming, I went into the EB (which, confusingly, was usually known locally as "Brown's", though I never met anyone who remembered it actually being Brown's - I suspect it was one of those social tricks to make outsiders feel uncomfortable) to order the Osprey book about the Iron Brigade. They had a stand of Ospreys, so, since I couldn't find the Iron Brigade, I was encouraged to ask.

Mistake. One of the two Angels of Death rolled her eyes at me, and refused to order it.

"Our stock of these is bewildering, we have lots of them, I think the quality is very poor, and I am not going to order a single copy. I'm sure that if you look in again you may find the item you are looking for, though why anyone should be interested in such matters escapes me."

Right.

That kind of sets the tone. I was just a spotty actuarial trainee at the time, and was used to being abused as part of my normal day, so I was not scarred by the experience, and I bought the book on a trip to Newcastle, later the same year. Visiting "Brown's" became a ritual punishment for my colleagues and me - there were many tales of retribution.

My friend Jake Mansfield was asked to leave on one occasion, because he was carrying a Woolworths carrier bag; it was explained to him that a lot of important people patronised the shop, and it was necessary to preserve the tone of the place. Paul Levack was asked to leave because he was carrying a box of cream cakes, obtained from the patisserie next door - maybe this was more understandable. Andy Scott was asked to stop chewing gum.

We were always on our best behaviour - you can understand why.

There were some prominent visitors, in fact - one regular was Professor Peter Higgs (of boson fame), whom I knew slightly because he had been my Mathematical Physics lecturer for one year at university, and there were all manner of lawyers and medical consultants and financial superheroes - none of whom I knew at all, naturally.

I remember one particular incident with affection - it encapsulates so many human frailties in one short lesson, I feel...

I was in "Brown's" at lunchtime, as usual, and decided to ask if they could obtain a particular book for me. The shop was fairly quiet, and I realised with a sinking heart that I would have to speak to one of the Black Sisters. She was already "helping" someone else - generally nondescript middle-aged man, rather below average height, I recall. I stood behind him, to wait my turn. He was not doing well; the lady in charge was becoming very exasperated - shaking her head and being even more rude than usual. He had obviously brought into the shop some kind of a receipt for something he had ordered previously.

"Oh, this is ridiculous - what is all this here? [pointing]"

"I'm sorry, your colleague completed the order - I believe that is the title of the book, is it not?"

"[Theatrical sigh] I can see that it is a title - no - this, here - 'Melville' - is that supposed to be the author?"

"No - no, that is my name..."

"MELVILLE?? - what sort of a name is that? - Melville What? - or is it Mr Melville?"

"No - I'm sorry - it's my name - I am the Viscount Melville."

The lady leapt to attention - like a ramrod; she didn't salute, but I would not have been surprised if she clicked her heels together. Obviously she had been blind-sided by one of these important customers she used to speak of, and what followed was a demonstration of fawning obsequiousness which was so embarrassing that I actually crept away and left them to it. This must be what happens when someone takes a hefty kick in the value-set. I have never forgotten it. The lady in question must have been dead for many years now, but I still remember the occasion with a gentle warmth. Ahhh...   

Edinburgh Bookshop disappeared around 2006. For a time it may have been Ottakers, I believe it was actually a branch of the great rival, James Thin's, for a little while, which must have hurt them deeply. It must have been knocked for six by the arrival of Waterstones, and it was certainly finished off by the rescheduling of George Street to become a very posh shopping area. Nowadays if you cannot eat it or sip it or wear it you will not find it in George Street. Such is progress. Last time I looked, No.57 was a shop selling up-market outdoor sports clothing, but  that may have changed now. The only remaining clue was the iconic clock over the front door.

I was astonished that I cannot find any old photos of The Edinburgh Bookshop online - not even Brown's. I had intended to include a suitably gloomy b&w shot. Just nothing. I spent so many hours there, over the years, on my very best behaviour, and it has vanished without trace. That's not easy to get your head around. There is a new Edinburgh Bookshop now, in Bruntsfield Place, away from the city centre, but they are a completely separate operation; just to be sure, I phoned them up - I spoke to a charming, friendly, helpful lady who was unaware that the old shop had ever existed, and who obviously wouldn't have lasted ten minutes with them, back in the day.

Perhaps I imagined it?

  

Erckmann-Chatrian

 As I believe I have related previously, my maternal grandfather lived in Paris when I was a boy. Once, when we visited him during school holidays when I was about 12 or so, he took me and my cousin along to the Musée de l'Armée, one wet Sunday morning when it was officially closed (the curator was a friend of his - he was that sort of a guy), and I was introduced to Napoleon and his soldiers.

Thereafter, he used to send me occasional Napoleon-themed gifts for my birthday and suchlike. There were a few toy soldiers, but he also sent me some books. Throughout my teens, I gradually acquired a series of little paperbacks, in French (my grandfather was keen on self-improvement!), by an author named, apparently, "Erckmann-Chatrian". I had "Le Conscrit", which is the adventures of a young soldier in the campaign of 1813, "Waterloo", which is a sequel set during the 100 Days, and I also had "Le Blocus" (siege of Phalsbourg) and "L'Invasion" (which is about the 1814 Campaign in France).

In fact, Erckmann and Chatrian were two separate men, lifelong friends from the north-east of France, who wrote a great many books together - ranging from horror stories to collections of regional folk-tales from their part of France. They did most of their writing during the 1860s and 1870s, so the Napoleonic books are novels, written long after the events depicted, but were heavily based on interviews the authors held with old soldiers; thus there is a great deal of reported eye-witness detail which I find very interesting. It's also worth noting, maybe, that E-C were frequently in trouble for their provincial views on Republicanism and kindred topics! 

By way of personal apology, I have to explain that my mother spent a lot of her childhood in Paris (until her parents fell out...), and to this day she is (in theory, at least) completely bilingual. As a result, I had very reasonable French when I was a kid, certainly by the local standards of Toxteth. With some coercion from my mum, I got through the first two E-C volumes when I was about 14-15, but not, as far as I remember, the others.

Years later I got back into Napoleon through the world of toy soldiers. With my fast-fading grasp of French I made rather heavy weather of my old E-C paperbacks, and they disappeared forever when I was divorced in the 1990s.

However, I do have a little hardback of "The Conscript" and "Waterloo", published in English as a single volume by Collins sometime around 1950, I would estimate. I've decided to revisit it, as part of my Winter reading programme this year - we'll see how this goes. I am notoriously impatient these days! 

 It is also possible to download most of the works of Erckmann-Chatrian for free from Project Gutenberg, so I'll think about that as well.

The central character of The Conscript and Waterloo is Joseph Bertha, an orphan who lives in Phalsbourg with a Monsieur Goulden, a watchmaker to whom he is apprenticed. Joseph has a rather soppy girlfriend, Catherine, who lives on a smallholding outside the town, with her Aunt. The details of Joseph's private life are pretty slow going at times, though they do contain some interesting details on the etiquette and social attitudes of the day. Though he is a rather weak youth, and is partially lame, Joseph still gets conscripted in 1813 (to the horror of all parties - especially Catherine's aunt) and sent off to fight in Germany. It does make a man of him, let it be said.

The Waterloo story is less vivid to me now, but I'll certainly give it a read. Some of the early parts of this story contain a lot of interesting information about public attitudes to the return of the Bourbons in 1814, not to mention the arrival of Bonaparte shortly afterwards. Society seems to have split into Old Soldiers vs Everyone Else.

As in most historical fiction, the central character is invariably suspiciously close to the key events in the great battles, but I have to say I found some things I hadn't seen before.

If you are familiar with these books, then I have little to tell you about them. If you are not, then Erckmann and Chatrian themselves are worth reading about, and their recorded eye-witness tales of Napoleon's campaigns, hand-polished or not, are certainly worth a look.

Painting Desk - Out of Traction; Resting

 Very pleased to report that the repairs to the desk seem to have worked as hoped. I still need to polish up the finish to get rid of PVA smears, but it looks OK.

My engineering department did a quick analysis on what had happened to the poor thing. This is all a semi-educated guess, of course:

(1) The unaccustomed heat in the attic last Summer may have offended the old glue somewhat (which must surely have been made of dead horses, or fish).

(2) I observe that the drop-down deskfront (which becomes the writing/painting surface when lowered) no longer recesses properly into the opening - it matters not at all - it simply means that the desk top will sit a few mm open at the top edge, which you can't even see, and which actually makes it easier to open, without scratching round the edges.

(3) However, I recall that the desk top did not close fully when I bought it, two years ago, though it has been doing so lately, before the repair. I believe that I may innocently have got into the habit of pushing the lid closed, which, though not requiring much effort, has produced sufficient leverage to pop the joint in the side panel.

(4) I shall not do this in future. With luck, that is the end of the episode. If the newly-glued joint fails again, I think I'll just scrap the desk and replace it, though I don't think this will happen.

 

Separate Topic - New Book from Amazon

Today I took delivery of a book I pre-ordered a while ago. This book has been available for a few weeks from other retail outlets, but I'm pleased to have it. I had a quick squint at it when it arrived, since James Falkner's efforts (of which I have a few) tend towards the dry end of the creative writing spectrum, and he does specialise in restricting his studies to English language sources, but this volume seems OK. 

The package was expected yesterday, courtesy of Amazon's own delivery service, but didn't arrive - they claimed they were unable to reach my house. They managed today. I believe I know why.

Yesterday, like all the other days since Storm Arwen was cleared away, the 0.75 mile lane from the A198 to my front gate was open for access, my house was in its correct place, and there was someone here. However, Amazon's drivers (who are more reliable than most, I find) tend to leave the public road at the entrance to the next-door farm, and come along the long and winding (and bumpy, and narrow) private road, between the fields, to arrive at our place from the reverse direction. It is slower and less convenient for them, especially when sowing, spraying or harvesting are in full swing, but I have to assume they use some alternative sat-nav system. Yesterday the farm was not busy, but this alternative route was closed because the Berwick on Tweed Motor Club was holding some special stages of one of their Historic Rallies on the private land.

My point, apart from the mystery of why the drivers use this odd route, is simply that if they had come the more obvious way there would have been no problem. Anyway, all's well etc, and my book got an extra trip to Edinburgh and back.

Kilsyth 1645: Wargame Homework - Facts and Legends

 I am preparing for a Zoom wargame, to take place in a little over 2 weeks - I shall host it and I'll be the umpire, which is a situation I enjoy very much, though the experience of the remote generals is heavily dependant on the technology and the picture-quality at their end!

I once had a solo game which was (sort of) based on the Battle of Kilsyth, which in reality took place on 15th August 1645. The game was interesting and a great deal of fun, and I've had a hankering to try it again, with some changes based on things which I've read subsequently, and on aspects of that first attempt which I'd do slightly differently now.

Kilsyth? Well, you may know a great deal about the battle, maybe not. It took place in Lanarkshire, not far from Glasgow, during one of the Scottish bits of the ECW. It featured the Covenanter army, in which I am very interested, and (of course) James Graham, the Marquis of Montrose. Montrose is a fascinating character - to this day there is still an active society to preserve and enhance his legend; in its way, this is a warning sign - the central personality can get in the way of any kind of impartial study. Trying to get some facts about the campaigns of the Marquis is not unlike trying to find some factual history about Robin Hood. The ghost of Walt Disney never seems far away.

I'm having a great time preparing for my Zoom game - I have a lot of books here, most of them excellent, and there is some good stuff online, but there are some surprises for the amateur student. First of all, we have the first-hand narrative of the General in command of the Covenant troops, William Baillie, which - since he was badly beaten - is bound to be something of an exercise in self-justification, but overall it's not a terrible account. We also have the version of the tale which comes from George Wishart, who was Montrose's personal chaplain, and later his biographer - this is adulatory throughout. This theme goes through all the subsequent secondary works. 

Dame CV Wedgwood (Montrose - 1952) and Nigel Tranter (Montrose: The Captain-General - 1973) are both historical novels, really, written in homage to the handsome, brilliant, tragic hero. The good guys are perfect - brave, and breathtakingly wise and just - and the bad guys are - well, ugly, and evil. Boo. Tranter has Montrose and his chums speaking like the lads from a GA Henty novel, and there is much reference to keen eyes, and frowns upon noble brows.

Vol.2 of SR Gardiner's marvellous History of the Great Civil War is heavily pro-Royalist (which was seen as a patriotic position to take, it goes without saying). Again, the references to Montrose and his short career emphasise that he is a heroic character who can do little wrong, and the sizes of the forces involved are tweaked throughout to polish the legend - Gardiner's numbers for Kilsyth look very unlikely. His estimate of 6000 Foot for the Covenant forces seems far too high, and the statement that all but 100 of them were killed is preposterous.

John Buchan (Montrose - 1928) admits in his foreword that the book is really about his fascination with the central character - it is not primarily a historical record, it is the splendid tale of Montrose's adventures. I have no problem with this - it's an excellent read, but it's as well to be aware of where it is coming from.

And so on. The big discord comes with the modern works of Stuart Reid, of which I am a big fan. Reid is a thorough, nuts and bolts military historian, but he, also, seems a bit partial. Stuart gives the impression of having been irritated by the traditional representation of Montrose as a god-like martyr, and strives to present the flaws as well - maybe he pushes too hard the other way - but this is a good starting place from which to construct my game.

A couple of trivia facts - you may disagree with them - if you do, then it's OK - I'm sure you are right.

* Montrose's campaigns of 1644-45, though regarded as part of the Civil War, were not primarily driven by support for King Charles. Charles eventually saw some advantages for his failing war effort in Montrose's success, but this was opportunist rather than planned. The main drivers were clan-based rivalries of great age - the MacDonalds, the Ogilvies, the Gordons and various others vs the Campbells and the Hamiltons and their allies. The Covenant (and, no doubt, the Presbyterian vs Catholic struggles) gave a context, but this was fundamentally older stuff 

* It is interesting to observe that in my reading of the last week or so I have seen both sides described as "rebels".  Royalists considered that Montrose was fighting against the Covenant "rebels", who were allied with the English Parliamentarian "rebels", but a more logical view is that Montrose was leading a rebellion against the armies of the Scottish Parliament. However you view this, the Campbells vs The Rest thing is always there.

* Montrose himself was a signatory to the Covenant, and fought against King Charles in the Bishops Wars of 1639 and 1640. His change of allegiance had a great deal to do with the fact that his personal standing in Scotland was leapfrogged by the rise of the Marquis of Argyll (Archibald Campbell) - there was ambition and a personal feud in here as well. When Montrose first went to join with the King, Charles was neither interested nor welcoming.

OK - this is rambling on a bit. I now have a decent grasp of the OOBs I'm going to use for my tabletop Kilsyth. These are, I hope, based on fact, but they are also drawn up to give a decent game. The next point of interest is the battlefield itself. There is a good overall description in the Battlefields Trust's section on Kilsyth, but there are a few big holes in our knowledge. Much of what the BT sets out is the reasons we know surprisingly little.

Again, Stuart Reid is a useful source, but there are many things which are not clear. Partly because the battlefield has never been properly examined, and partly because some of it has now been altered by coal and ironstone workings, and by the creation of a man-made lake, Banton Loch, which covers at least part of the centre of the fight. We know where the battle took place (roughly), and there are some definite identifiers in Baillie's account, for example, but there are still arguments about exactly where the armies were, and maybe even about which way they were facing. None of this is a problem, by the way, I will happily set out a battle on my table!

Here a few random photos of the Kilsyth battlefield - not mine, by the way.

I confess to something of a blind spot when it comes to looking at battlefields. I can read a map, I think, and I can understand a toy battle laid out on a table, but place me on the ground and I will struggle; for a start, I am very poor at judging distances! This was brought home to me very forcibly when I spent a day on a guided tour of Eggmühl, a few years ago. I had a great time, but spent the day nodding rather dumbly and trying to relate what I was seeing to the map! 

Having said which, I did get a lot of valuable understanding in preparation for another wargame, a few years ago, when I walked the full width of Marston Moor (in the pouring rain). I may use this approach again - if there's a suitable day next week, I live about 80 minutes' drive from Kilsyth. I could go and have a look at it. Rain is not essential.

Hmmm.

You will hear more of Kilsyth before long. This has just been a little explanation about why I am so busy (and enjoying myself very thoroughly) during the homework phase!

Brunanburh: The Colour of Fallen Leaves

 Well, my first books arrived. They came very quickly, the only slight shadow was that they had obviously been packed by someone at Amazon who was eating potato crisps - all 3 books had big greasy fingerprints on them. I am very pleased to report that a microfibre glasses-cleaning cloth removed the marks, so everything is cool.

I've only dipped into them, thus far - the two smaller books (not the Michael Livingston volume) contain a lot of very cryptic data concerning GPS readings for archeological finds, and a host of monochrome photos, some of which are too obscure to make out what they are - not to worry. All good, and this is all new to me.

Livingston's book looks excellent - he is a very enthusiastic writer. It's a while since I read a book describing archeological work (the previous one was an account of the digging up of St Baldred's religious settlement here in East Lothian, including the grave of Olaf Guthfrithson), and I had forgotten what this stuff is like. For a start, the evidence they describe is often disputed, and mostly too damaged to be sure of very much. That's all OK - it's the nature of the beast - the raw material sometimes seems, to a layman, too unconvincing (or even unlikely) to make much of a story.

I'm also reminded that this kind of work involves a surprising level of jousting between proponents of rival views - the put-downs of other people's efforts are sometimes verging on sarcasm. Maybe this is how scholars behave?

I shall rise above this. Yesterday I was reading about the arguments in favour of the Brunanburh battlefield being in the Wirral. One big positive is that the Wirral is an obvious landing point for the ships which brought the Viking force from Dublin. Mention is made, in the Brunanburh poem in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, of Dingesmere, which might be where the boats were, or might be somewhere on the route back to where the boats were, or it might even simply mean "the stormy sea" - there's a lot of disagreement about translations. Whether or not Dingesmere was an actual place, it is worthwhile trying to think through where the Vikings would have landed. A couple of points here:

* This was not a land of mystery to the Vikings - there were Viking communities in the Wirral, and it's a short crossing from Dublin, so they probably knew where they were going. 

* We don't even know whether they landed at the end of the Wirral peninsula (on the Irish Sea), at somewhere like Meols or Leasowe, or in the River Dee, or in the Mersey, or, as one of the theories has it, in the Pool of Wallasey, which is a branch of the Mersey.  

* Somewhere in the ancient writings, the water is described as yellow, which has been interpreted as meaning sandy or muddy. Debate about accuracy of translation has suggested that the original meaning is closer to "the colour of fallen leaves". Hmmm - how long after they've fallen? This could be yellow, or greenish-brown, or anything, really, but it is of interest since the Rivers Dee and Mersey are very different, as I shall now discuss briefly. All primary-school geographers please pay attention.

Here's an old map of the Wirral. A modern map would be rather different, since the River Dee has silted up. You will see that the profile of the Dee Estuary is triangular - the river which passes under a road bridge at Chester (which was a port in Roman times), gets wider and wider as it approaches the sea. This means that, when the tide goes out, the water runs slower and slower as the width increases - a constant volume of water moving through a widening channel - and the silt and mud falls to the bottom. In the 4th Century, there were already problems with silting near Chester, and it became necessary to find useable ports further downstream. This continues to this day - Neston and Parkgate were seaside villages at the start of the 19th Century, and Parkgate was a busy landing place, but now the old sea wall faces onto an area of overgrown saltmarsh which is over two miles in width. When the Spring tides bring the Dee into contact with the Parkgate sea wall, the event is rare enough for visitors to come to see it. Parkgate may well have been a viable landing place in Viking times - there are other possible berthings at Caldy and Heswall and Thurstaston (Thor's Stone). The main point here is that the Dee is, and always has been, muddy.

 

Parkgate, circa 1900, when they still had a beach and fishing "nobbies". When I was a kid, you could still get a little bag of boiled local shrimps in the village

 

This was before the tide went out, permanently, about 2 miles. Don't try to land your army there now.

As you can see from the map, the Mersey has the reverse profile - this river is also muddy, but opposite the Port of Liverpool it is about a mile wide, while a few miles upstream, opposite Speke and Oglet, it is nearly three miles wide. When the tide goes out, that great pool of water rushes out through the narrow mouth, and it keeps itself clear. This is why the Port of Liverpool is more important commercially than Parkgate, but it also explains why the Mersey is a different colour from the Dee.

But is it the colour of fallen leaves? Who knows? I shall read on, with interest.

It seems that the likely battlefield site (if it was, in fact, in the Wirral) is around the village of Brimstage, which is right in the centre of the peninsula. If Miss Bentham's class were to cut out a cardboard Wirral, a pin through Brimstage would be close to the centre of mass. They could colour it in with crayons. Yellow water - all that.

Holcroft Blood, anyone?

 Someone recommended that I would enjoy the Holcroft Blood series of historical novels written by Angus Donald.

 I have to say, I normally don't get on with historical novels. I hated Sharpe, for example - yes, I know, obviously my problem. 20 billion flies can't all be wrong. I also got into trouble once, when I suggested that RF Delderfield was a very overrated author, and that one of his Napoleonic efforts, apart from being chucked together with little thought, was more or less a rip-off from CS Forester. Goodness me - I'll never have an opinion again - promise.

 So this is a humble request, from one who does not know, and does not claim to have the wit or the critical faculties to judge. Has anybody in my trusted world (intellectual bubble?) read any of the Blood books, and what did you think of them?

Any thoughts will be welcome. 

Chandler: The Dedication I Missed...

A few weeks ago I was chortling about the £6 second-hand book I bought online which turned out to have been the property of Charlie Wesencraft, as evidenced by a personal library plate on the front end-papers..

Since Charlie was a great friend of the late David Chandler, and it was one of Chandler's books, I made joking references to the fact that I had fleeting hopes that I might have got a signed copy for my £6, but it wasn't to be.

In fact it turns out that it is a signed copy - I was just too stupid to spot it. Here you go - front title page:

I have to say I feel a little awkward about this, bearing in mind that Charlie is still going strong, and wargaming regularly. I imagine that, like all of us, he has thinned down his library from time to time, so the book I bought recently would have been in circulation for perfectly legitimate reasons, and I'm just lucky to have chanced upon it. However, if it were all a mistake, and he would really like to have it back, I'm open to approaches. Mind you, Charlie would have to sign a few books from my own collection as part of the agreement...

Hooptedoodle #374 - Tales of Shopping during Lockdown

(1) The international parcel saga - as mentioned a few days ago, I made an online purchase in the USA, and it took 12 days for the parcel to travel from somewhere in Massachusetts to the Global Shipping Center at Erlanger KY. I am astounded to relate that, though the scope for detailed tracking rather dropped out of sight thereafter, the package duly arrived on my doorstep in South-East Scotland bang on the promised date, so the international part of the trip took only 5 days, despite the involvement of Pitney-Bowes [who?] and Hermes at this end.

So, as promised, I have to admit that I am very favourably impressed. Credit where credit is due. Well done, everyone.

(2) A happy coincidence - I was pleased to manage to obtain a pre-owned copy of David Chandler's Marlborough as Military Commander online for only £6 plus P&P, and it duly arrived, promptly and tidily, from a bookshop in Bradford. I was very pleased to find that the book was clean and tight, but was especially happy to find a label on the inner cover revealing that it was previously owned by Charlie Wesencraft, no less. Since I read somewhere that Charlie was a close friend of Dr Chandler, I had a mad idea that I might have got an author's signature for my £6 as well, but alas, no!

I now have a number of books which were previously owned by celebs, as it happens - a set of The Dickson Manuscripts and a set of Sauzey's volumes on French Napoleonic allies, both formerly owned by George Nafziger, and a couple of ECW books once owned by Peter Young. These were all just flukes - there are a couple more, but at present I can't remember what they are, or who they came from. I did once buy a book on eBay which had previously been owned by me, but that is another tale, and rather embarrassing.

(3) An unusually fortunate purchase on eBay [UK]. Someone tipped me off that there was an item which looked like the sort of thing I might be interested in (old toy soldiers of an old-fashioned size). I checked it out and, yes, I was interested. The seller was someone I've dealt with before, and he comes up with some very nice old stuff from time to time. Starting bid was £12. The seller was also open to offers - based on past experience of what these figures typically go for, I made an offer of £16. Rejected.

OK - I upped my offer to £21. Also rejected. This was getting a bit steep for me, so I just placed a normal auction bid of £16 - there were 6 days to go. I reckoned I would be happy if I got them for that, and I would have been fairly priced out of the market if I didn't.

I was out this evening, but got home to find that I had won the item for the £12 starting price. No other bids, no other interest. Obviously we win a few and we lose a few, but it demonstrates the risks of making (or not accepting) offers on an auction item - risks both ways, of course, but I'd have happily paid the £21...

A Gentleman's War

I've been very much enjoying Howard Whitehouse's new book for my bedtime reading. Entertainingly written, and the game looks like fun - and also looks like it's versatile enough to cover a few periods with minor tweaking.

One small concern - has anyone played the game? - does anyone understand the card play? - even a bit? There must be something obvious I'm missing; that section seems to provide a lot of detail, but I seem to have missed the overall system. Sat-nav approach to wargames rules. I'll read it again...

Comfortably Familiar

I've had a relatively quiet week, so decided to do something about reading some of the books I've been acquiring. After some dithering about, just to be awkward, I picked on one I've had for years and years - Charles Grant's The War Game - I haven't read it for a long time, but recently I bought a couple of companion volumes produced by Charles Grant the Younger - The War Game Companion and The War Game Rules, so it seemed appropriate to have a look at all three together.

Thus I settled down with the original book, and I must say I'm really enjoying it. A nice, traditional, bottom-up development of how to play 18th Century wargames, starting from a consideration of how quickly men can march, and setting off at a comfortable, relaxed pace to cover the whole subject. Black and white photos of bounce-sticks, canister frames, huge regiments of free-standing Spencer Smith's. Brilliant. I have to say that I have no wish to play the actual game as described, but it is a very pleasant read - it's thorough, sensibly presented and written in an amiably genteel style, as is perfectly correct for its vintage. It is also, I freely admit, useful to revisit those fundamental assumptions and conventions which we have all taken for granted for so many decades.

I am interested to note that one of the more recent companion volumes discusses how the game has been adapted to use multiple bases - I must have a look at that. And then there is a discussion of campaigns. These rules have been in constant use and continuous evolution since 1971, when the original book was published, and they were already well played-in long before that, so we may safely assume that they work.

Anyway, in the meantime I'm quite happy with a glass of wine and my friendly old, non-threatening book. Very nostalgic.

***** Late Edit *****

There must be something in the wind - entirely coincidentally, I now realise that I have published this post almost simultaneously with a splendid commemoration of Young & Lawford's Blasthof Bridge game from Charge! on Wellington Man's most excellent Hinton Spieler blog- if you haven't seen it, go over there and enjoy it.  

******************

One Step Forward - any number of steps back

Some years ago I decided to try to get my book collection back under control (one time among many), so I selected a goodly number of volumes to sell off, give away, bin etc. Among the books that went at that time were the original (green and black) War Games by Don Featherstone, and the original (orange) Practical Wargaming by Charlie Wesencraft. I got rid of them because (a) I never looked at them any more, and (b) well, my wargaming had outgrown these books anyway, hadn't it? I sold both books on eBay, and got reasonable prices for them - these things were in demand at the time. Fine.

Sadly missed - now back in the library

Of course, it took me just about a month to realise this was all a mistake. My life was poorer without them. Whenever I needed cheering up about why I played with toy soldiers, those old books were what I missed. Therapy. After about a further year I saw a good copy of the original edition of the Featherstone book, so I bought it (yes - I did feel like a bit of an idiot, but I paid less than I had received for my original one, and I will maintain (stubbornly) that the replacement was in rather better condition).

I also replaced the Wesencraft book, by buying the new, John Curry-edited paperback. Since I bought this edition, I guess I'm entitled to an opinion; my opinion is that I am delighted that John is re-publishing all these old classics, but I found his reprint of Practical Wargaming disappointing - numerous typos, tables laid out in a way which I found very difficult to follow, and I don't like the scans of the half-tone photos at all. So, you can guess what I've done now - that's right, I've bought a nice, clean, pre-owned copy of the orange, hardback Practical Wargaming from eBay. [I was about to go on to discuss the comparison of the selling and purchasing prices, but in fact I'm too embarrassed to bother.]

So everything is now back as it was - just some stupid footling-about in between.

Anyway, what this all amounts to is me trying to put a positive spin on my Full Donkey achievement of having sold two books on eBay and then having to buy them back again, also on eBay.

Whatever, I'm happy with the arrangement.

Thought for today: How many idiots does it take to make a market?

A Short Spell of Fiddling Around

I have figures to paint;  I have stuff to do. Hobby progress has been slow, in fact it would be easy to fail to detect any progress at all. I'm going away on Friday to sit in on some Field of Battle wargaming, which should be a valuable and worthwhile experience - not to say enjoyable. More of that another time.

Mostly, I seem to have been sidetracked into doing Real Life things. I guess that includes watching a lot of football, now I think about it - we may debate how real that is.

I have, after a lot of lamentable foot-dragging, made a start on playtesting my developing, homebrewed, grid-based, Napoleonic miniatures game, which has spent a very long time being redrafted over and over. My thanks, once again, to Jay for his patience and his invaluable input, and now my thanks are also due to Martin and Dan Sarrazin, in Australia, who have started doing some playtesting for me (using Commands & Colors kit in their case) and have shamed me into shaping up and getting on with it.

Anyway, I've had a few evenings lately of walking through the exact, detailed sequence of what happens when a unit breaks from a melee (for example), and how it is different when that unit was in square or in cover (for another example). Instructive. I always knew that this process was going to turn up the need for a lot more clarity, which is probably why I've been dragging my feet. I've got used to revisions of the rules becoming smaller as the draft stabilised. Getting the soldiers and the dice on the table is bound to reveal a mass of holes, but it's all good!

Unless the testing turns out to be a complete disaster (in which case the game may quietly fade away), I hope to be in a position to report on some actual battles using these rules fairly soon. As I keep reassuring people (including myself), the aim is not to replace Commands & Colors as my game of choice, but to provide a slightly less blunt instrument with which to fight smaller, more detailed actions. To get back just a little into the world of lines and columns, and all that, when it is appropriate to do so.

In the pursuit of more light on the tactical niceties, I was reminded that I really don't know how the British Army of Napoleon's day managed to operate without French-style attack columns, so I've gone back to some good old standby books to brush up a bit.

I've also been reading a new book - a sort of memoir of Franz Joseph Hausmann, of the Napoleonic Bavarian army. This was translated and annotated by Hausmann's greatgranddaughter, and edited by John H Gill. It's interesting, and does fill in a lot of the "what was it like?" aspects of service in that army. Franz was eventually a lieutenant in the 7th Line Infantry. From 1812 onwards he sent his father detailed letters of his experiences - his father was by this time invalided out of service in the same regiment, and was keen to follow the campaign in Russia. Prior to 1812, Franz's personal journals consisted simply of lists of each day's marches. Much of the interest derives from extra information provided by Gill, and from family stories supplied by the translator.

Anyway, it is interesting rather than spellbinding stuff, and it all adds some personality and context to my forthcoming Bavarian force.

Elsewhere - and this really is trivial - I finally tracked down a little portrait of General Anne-Francois-Charles Treillard, a French Peninsular War cavalry officer who commands a division in my collection of toys. Treillard is noted, among other things, for having an unusual number of alternative spellings of his surname (though "Anne" is consistent throughout all versions), and for being famously portrayed by Robert Stephens in my favourite movie, "The Duellists".

Gen Treillard

I know this is silly, but I do like to know the chaps in my little armies. I've got portraits of most of my French generals now - I didn't have Treillard, and I still don't have a picture of Maucune (the head-banger who largely screwed up Salamanca). Maucune (real name Antoine-Louis Popon, Baron Maucune) was eventually a rich and titled chap, and I can't believe he didn't have his portrait painted, though it is possible he may have been very hard to please in the portraiture department. If anyone knows of a painting of the Baron, or if you happen to live next door to the family, please give me a shout. All I have is some detail on the family coat of arms, and a photo of his tomb, at Père Lachaise.

Maucune's final rest

Napoleonic Bavarians - Uniform Sources

Ex-Falcon figures - now available from Hagen. I'm waiting for samples
of these - this picture from Uwe's History in 1/72 blog - thanks, Uwe

Early days yet for my Bavarians - I have some figures, I'm expecting some more - in particular I'm waiting for the postie to bring me samples from SHQ and from the Falcon series, which have recently been taken over by Hagen. I've received a packet of standing Bavarian staff figures made by Hecker & Goros - very nice - they need to be put on bases (we are into specialist diorama figure makers here, with eye-watering prices to match); the H&G figures were sent by Germania Figuren, of Duisburg. There will, I am led to believe, be some new, mounted Bavarian staff figures coming from Hagen some time reasonably soon - they are in Uwe's famous "pipeline". All very promising. Also Art Miniaturen do nice (though expensive) Bavarians - I am interested in their drummers and sappers - and Franznap produce some fiendishly expensive Bavarian Manson-pattern cannons - these are currently 3D-printed, I believe - my plan is to equip the Bavarian artillery with French guns!

Catalogue picture of the Hecker & Goros Bavarian staff figures - this is most
definitely not my paintwork - the grenadier with the cased colours is from
1814, so out of my time period. Presumably that must be Herr Hecker and
Herr Goros on the left...

So no painting yet - I'm at the reading and pondering stage. I have a first-cut OOB - based on Deroy's division of Lefebvre's VII Corps on the Danube in 1809. Classic case of wargamer's dilemma: naturally I want my version of Deroy's crowd to be correct, but I am disappointed to find that the 9th and 10th infantry regiments, who were brigaded together, had identical uniforms, apart from the button metal - that makes four near-indistinguishable battalions, which feels like too much of the same for a small and potentially colourful army. At present I propose to substitute a different regiment for one of these two - one with different facings, to enhance the spectacle. Wargamer's licence - it's my damned army, I can change it if I want. Yet I know that if, maybe a year from now, some visitor points out that I have the wrong regiment present, I will find my lower lip trembling.

So I could justify it like this - the next phase (after the one that hasn't started yet) will be to add another division - I'll borrow one of the regiments from that next division now, the understanding being that I'll put everything right when the second division is complete. Yes, that would work. Anyway, let's not get into that - I haven't started yet, and I am aware that this is all silly in any case - I would happily produce any number of identical line battalions if the division were French.

Thanks to Goya - if God had intended us to buy expensive uniform
books, he would not have given us Osprey

I already had some of the standard general purpose hobbyist books which provide information on Bavarians - I even get as exotic as all 4 volumes of Elting and Knötel. Goya very kindly gave me a copy of Otto von Pivka's Osprey title on the Bavarians, which is attractive and welcome. [Aside: I used to have an earlier edition of  this book - back in the days when I was still obsessed with the idea that one day I would build up all the armies for 1813. I have some uncomfortable personal history with OvP and his works, but I'm very glad to have this back in my collection.]

I also ordered this (below) from Blackwell Books - excellent - artwork is by Peter Bunde. The book is only available with German text, so my reading of the historical bits requires a lot of coffee, and I must keep the big yellow Langenscheidt dictionary handy.

Last, I must make a gentle plug for the works of the worthy WJ Rawkins. I had a couple of his booklets years ago - I suspect that if I have a good search they should still be here somewhere [problem is that my OCD leads me to store my odd booklets in big-box magazine holders, of which I have rather a lot, and which enable me to lose whole sections of the archives in a single step...].

Goya drew my attention to Rawkins' website. Wow. The books have all been enlarged and enhanced - they are excellent. I bought the Bavarian title and a bunch of others - I bought them on CD, sent by post, and they are astonishingly inexpensive - we are talking pint-of-beer prices here. If you choose to purchase by digital download then they are even cheaper, but my own ability to keep track of a digital file without a physical copy is likely to be even worse than my ability to hang on to a paper booklet through the years. There are all sorts of Confederation Napoleonic topics, the French foreign regiments, Austria, the Kingdom of Italy - all sorts. If you have not checked these out, do yourself a favour and do so now - the link to the website is here.

Hooptedoodle #250 - Steve Jobs Says No

This is eventually going to develop into a gentle whinge, so whingeophobes should leave smartly. As a background project - more of a private ambition, really, I intend to improve my knowledge of the Thirty Years War sometime soon. I know some bits of the history and some of the names, but my line of thinking is thus:

This was an important period of European history, I don't know very much about it, and I think I probably should know a bit more. It might make me a better, more rounded person (unlikely) and I might find it interesting (less unlikely).

I have Peter H Wilson's highly praised The Thirty Years War - Europe's Tragedy, which I've skimmed and which looks very good. I bought it about 2 years ago. The main problems have been:

(1) The last two years have been a bit hectic for me - very little free time or peace of mind to settle to it, because - with the best will in the world...

(2) ...it is a big book. Substantial. It is a serious piece of work, to be approached with appropriately monastic dedication. Anything less would be selling both me and Dr Wilson short.

So I decided that I might be better to start with something shorter and higher level, so I can find some kind of timeline or skeleton on which I can hang a more detailed study. This is the Foy Approach to problem solving - start with some one-liners and a nice map or two, and then find where are the hooks and trapdoors to get closer to the details.

So I purchased CV Wedgwood's volume on the subject - a bit long in the tooth now, maybe, since it dates from 1938, and our collective view of Germany has evolved a little since then, but Dame Veronica is always a comfortable read, I find, if somewhat over-partial at times. I bought a paperback, American edition which set me back some £12 or so. It is smaller than Wilson's book, and I have actually started reading it. Good so far. The plan is, once I've finished it, to return to the worthy Europe's Tragedy with a few more lights on and greater enthusiasm.

One (debatable) brainwave was the idea that I might augment my efforts with an audiobook - I listen to audiobooks a lot when I'm out in my van, so I thought that might be useful. We might discuss how an audiobook would work without any maps to hand, but you can see what I was thinking. So I went to the excellent website of Librivox, and downloaded a suitably hefty, three-part freebie, which is an unabridged reading of a translation of Schiller's great standard history.

Now that is a very fair pedigree, you have to admit. I could feel the scholarship gland swelling just at the idea - sadly, the reality was less happy. The product is free, so it almost seems above criticism, but I could not warm to the narrator, the language (translated, at that) is ponderous in the extreme. Indigestible. I found I could drive along quite happily, thinking about something else, while the pearls of Schiller droned on in the background. So I'd run it back a bit, and try to locate the point at which I had lost the plot (so to speak), and the same thing would happen. I also had a faint worry that I might become a danger on the roads if I paid more attention to the goings-on in Germany.

In truth, the main problem is the text - in whatever tongue, Schiller's work comes from a period when it was necessary for historians - nay, scholars of all types - to write in a lofty and long-winded manner which demonstrated their stature and their great wisdom. The actual transmission of knowledge seems so much a lesser objective that at times I wonder whether they even thought it was necessary.

Schiller/Librivox - strike. Not for me.

Being a stubborn sort of fellow, or a slow learner, if you prefer, I located an unabridged audiobook version of CV Wedgwood's history, narrated by one Charlton Griffin. I listened to an extract, and it really sounded very promising, though the issue about the maps remains, of course. Good-oh - so how do I get one?

Well, my friends at Amazon offered me a free download copy, no less, but I would have to subscribe to Audible, which is Amazon's audio-book version of the age-old book-of-the-month-club racket, and would cost me £7.99 a month indefinitely thereafter. No, thanks - I do not care if I then have access to 200,000 audiobooks - I do not wish to even think about 200,000 audiobooks. I swerved that solution.

Next up, I found that I could download the same book for about £8 from iTunes. OK - after some thought, I did this. It comes down as M4P files, which will only play on an Apple device and which cannot legally be converted to more mainstream MP3. In fact I had a pretty good idea this is what would happen, and I do have an iPhone and an iMac, and we have the iTunes player app installed on various other devices, but not, alas, on my van. I could, of course, hook up my iPhone to the van's BlueTooth, or even just plug the beggar in, but it is more hassle than I would choose.

Now we get to sanctimony, so I tread warily here. I can understand that audio and music files should be protected in some way, not just to boost Apple's profits, but to maintain any chance of the recorded music industry surviving. It is customary at this point to bleat on about how I have purchased these files, and thus am the owner, and should be able to play them on anything I want - I would quite like it if this argument carried some weight, but the reality is that I have paid £8 for a set of files which are intended only to play on Apple kit or via Apple's licensed software. I knew this before I bought them, and that is what I have bought - I have no further rights.

On the other hand...

On the other hand, it is worth bearing in mind that Steve Jobs, before he became a lay saint, was not the least sanctimonious person in history. It should also be remembered that an operating system upgrade for one of the early iPhones (or it might have been an iPod - I don't actually care which) deliberately deleted any non-iTunes musical files from the customer's device, even if he had purchased the tracks legally from some other source. I believe Apple did get into hot water over this, and rightly so, but the logic was originally that Mr Jobs felt he should protect Apple's financial position by making it impracticable for i-device owners to buy their music elsewhere (though there was no such Term or Condition of use accompanying the sale of the device), and - primarily - because Apple thought they could get away with it. Given the background, I do not find the idea of someone ripping them off so terrible.

If anyone has any idea how to convert M4P files into MP3, so I can listen while I'm driving, then - entirely out of academic, theoretical interest, of course, I would be happy to learn. Not that I would ever do such a thing, you understand.

New Trotman Book - and a nerdy question

Delighted to say that Jamie the Postie brought a parcel today which turns out to be the keenly-awaited new Spanish Army title by Gerard Cronin and Dr Stephen Summerfield, published by Ken Trotman - this one covers the cavalry, foot guards and artillery of the early Peninsular War.

Haven't had a proper read yet, but it looks just as good as the infantry title. Excellent - very pleased.

Subject 2 - I recently acquired a few of these chaps - this is a British Artillery driver, as you will see, from the Minifigs S-Range series (long, long ago...), and the particular reason I was quite excited to get these, along with their limber horses, is that they give me a chance to further the constant struggle for Creeping Elegance, and replace the draught teams from my British ammunition caissons, which are all Lamming castings at present - nice, but just a touch overscale. Such a change would mean that I could feel much more comfortable parking the caissons near the limber teams. Slight fly in the ointment is that you will notice that this driver has a pistol holster on his right hip. I hadn't really thought about this, but it has been suggested to me that only the drivers in the Rocket Troop had pistols like this, and that the driver castings might be from the S-Range Rocket Troop set.

Now you may feel that I could just brass this out, and claim that it is a well-known fact that caisson drivers wore pistols too, but I thought I would check if anyone knows about this. Any thoughts? It would be a dreadful thing if an army which is already stuffed with errors and anachronisms were to drift any further from the true path. That would not be proper Creeping Elegance at all.

Subject 3 - this was borrowed shamelessly from someone's Facebook page, and I apologise for the low-res picture, but I liked it - seen on a Glasgow baker's van...

Hooptedoodle #211 - Like Icarus, ascending on beautiful, foolish arms

I read somewhere, recently, someone describing someone's written output (not mine, I hasten to say) as a stream of the uninteresting, enlivened here and there with brief moments of the inconsequential. It occurred to me that my Hooptedoodle folio must get precious close to just this, but - since I have a certain house standard and tradition to maintain - I feel I should persist with the current editorial policy.

Today's Pointless Post is merely to note the quick passing of a coincidence - a wow, just fancy that moment which is unlikely to distract you from your day's purpose nor tax your belief set. These things happen, after all.

I have been doing a lot of reading about sieges in the English Civil War, at least some of which is directed towards developing a workable siege game. One of the sieges I am about to come back to is the Leaguer of Chester.

When I'm reading the history of battles, campaigns and so on I very much benefit from having a decent map to hand - I seem to be unusually bad at visualising a geographical area without such an aid - there have been many occasions, reading on the bus of Napoleon's adventures in Saxony, for example, unable to unfold Loraine Petre's flaming maps, when I have nodded stupidly at a bewildering list of German villages in the narrative, and tried to ignore the fact that I have once again completely lost the plot. So one of my bits of preparatory work for my continuing siege research was to find some decent maps of Chester online, and print a couple off. I found, and printed off, this one

which dates from 1580, and is not ideal, since it predates the siege and thus shows none of the relevant details, but is a good start.

Now I have been having a tidying-up session this week, and I felt that it would be a good idea to put my printed map somewhere safe so that I can use it when I get back to reading the Chester stuff (probably next week). My splendid idea was to fold it and put it inside my favourite Chester book, John Barratt's The Great Siege of Chester. The bad news is that I will never possibly remember where I put it, but the good news is that I might get a pleasant surprise next week when I open the book again. You know how these things work.

So I opened the Barratt book to store the map, and - purely by chance - the book fell open at exactly the same map. I didn't even know the map was reproduced in that book. OK - the limited subject range obviously has a big effect on the probability, but what were the chances of that? Would you take me on at any dice game on such a day? Should I break with tradition and buy a lottery ticket?

Nah. It was just an isolated fluke. There will be another one along soon, and it will probably be just as useless.

Almost certainly.

In passing, just for a bit of fun, my post heading is supposed to be an oblique reference to flying pigs (a British euphemism for a very unlikely event) - can anyone tell me where the quote is from? If it helps, it isn't Icelandic - no, I didn't think that was helpful either. [If you solved it using Google you are a tosser, by the way.]