Wargames
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76 Rudolf von Ems, Der guote Gêrhart, J. Asher, ed., Tuebingen: Altdeutsche Textbibliothek, 1989, lines 3437ff.
77 See, for the evidence, Bumke, Hoefische Kultur, p. 361.
78 See on this entire subject below, pp. 302−4.
79 Barker, The Tournament in England, pp. 174–5.
80 Gutiere Diaz de Gamez, The Unconquered Knight, J. Evans, ed., London: Routledge, 1928, pp. 142–3.
81 Dom Duarte, The Royal Book of Horsemanship, Jousting, and Knightly Combat, A. Franco Preto and L. Preto, trans., Highland Village, TX: Chivalry Bookshelf, 2005 [c. 1438], pp. 75, 76, 79, 100.
82 R. Coltman Clephan, The Mediaeval Tournament, New York: Dover, 1995 [1919], p. 117.
83 J. K. Ruehl, “Wesen und Bedeutung von Kampfsagen und Trefferzhalenskitzzen fuer die Geschichte des spaetmittelalterlichen Tourniers,” in G. Spitzer and D. Schmidt, eds., Sport zwischen Eigenstaendigkeit und Fremdbestimmung, Bonn: Institut fuer Sportwissenschaft, 1986, pp. 82–112.
84 See Muhlberger, Jousts and Tournaments, p. 30.
85 Coltman Clephan, The Mediaeval Tournament, p. 133.
86 See Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, p. 81.
87 Muhlberger, Jousts and Tournaments, pp. 10, 21.
88 J. de Bueil, Le Jouvencel, Nabu, 2010, vol. II, 100.
89 J. Larner, “Chivalric Culture in the Age of Dante,” Renaissance Studies, 2, 2, 1988, pp. 122ff.
90 See, on mercenaries, Barker, The Tournament in England, p. 29.
91 J. Evelyn, Diary, W. Bray, ed., London: Bickers, 1879 [1818], vol. III, p. 118.
92 See C. Dodgson, “An Unknown MS of Freydal,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 48, 278, May 1928, pp. 235–42.
93 E.g. H. von Aue, Erec, M. G. Scholtz, ed., Frankfurt/Main: Klassiker Verlag, 2004, [c. 1191], line 2430.
94 See, for what follows, S. Carroll, Blood and Violence in Early Modern France, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 132–49.
95 W. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, scene I, lines 75–110.
96 P. de Bourdeille Brantôme, Memoires contenans les anecdotes de la cour de France . . . touchant les duels, in uvres complètes, Paris: Foucault, 1803, vol. VI, pp. 70–1.
97 Kiernan, The Duel in European History, p. 47.
98 According to K. McAleer, Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin-de-Siècle Germany, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 18.
99 Carroll, Blood and Violence, p. 149.
100 B. Mandeville, An Inquiry into the Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn, London: Kraus, 1975 [1725], pp. 31–2.
101 See M. Peltonnen, The Duel in Early Modern England, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 87–8.
102 Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV, London: Everyman, 1928 [1751], p. 17.
103 See, above all, P. King, The Ideology of Order, London: Routledge, 1999, especially pp. 255–89.
104 Brantôme, Mémoires contenans les anecdotes de la cour de France, p. 139.
105 See I. Reyfman, Ritualized Violence, Russian Style: The Duel in Russian Literature and Culture, Stanford University Press, 1999, pp. 64–5.
106 Kiernan, The Duel, p. 145.
107 See S. Demontreux, “The Changing Face of the Hamilton Monument,” Weehawken Historical Commission, 2004, p. 3.
108 See S. K. Taylor, Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 21–5.
109 E.g. J. Hamilton, The Dueling Handbook, Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007 [1829], pp. 1–16.
110 Gilchrist, A Brief Display, pp. 103–7.
111 Ibid., p. 60. All italics are in the original.
112 Ibid., p. 59.
113 A. Steinmetz, The Romance of Duelling in All Times and Countries, London: Chapman and Hall, 1868, vol. II, p. 249.
114 H. Martineau, Society in America, London: Saunders and Otley, 1837, vol. II, p. 60 , and vol. III, pp. 55–6.
115 J. K. Williams, Dueling in the Old South, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1980, p. 4.
116 See, for James Bowie, B. Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood: A History of Dueling, New York: Bloomsbury, 2003, pp. 154, 190–4.
117 Figures for Italy, as well as Austria-Hungary, from S. von Bischoffhausen, ed., Mitteilungen der Algemeine Anti-Duell Liga fuer Oesterreich, Vienna, 1903.
118 Kiernan, The Duel in European History, p. 260.
119 See, for dueling in France, McAleer, Dueling, pp. 183–95.
120 G. de Maupassant, “Bel Ami,” in uvres complètes, Paris: Dumont, 1979, p. 138.
121 Figures for France, as well as Austria-Hungary, from “Zweikampf,” in K. Birkmeyer, ed., Vergleichende Darstellung des deutschen und auslaendischen Strafrechts, Berlin: Liebman, 1906, vol. III, pp. 125–59.
122 See, for what follows, Reyfman, Ritualized Violence, pp. 45–95.
123 Aleksei Suvorin, quoted ibid., p. 89.
124 J. K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel, Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1900, ch. 13.
125 U. Frevert, Men of Honor, Cambridge: Polity, 1995, pp. 102–3, 106.
126 See H. Ring, “Die Mensur, ein wesentliches Merkmal des Verbandes,” in R.-J. Baum, ed., Wir wollen Männer, wir wollen Taten! Deutsche Corpsstudenten 1848 bis heute, Berlin: Siedler, 1998, pp. 383–5.
127 See P. Dieners, Das Duel und die Sonderrole des Militaers: Zur preussisch-deutschen Entwicklung von Militaer- und Zivilgewalt im 19. Jahrhundert, Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt, 1992, pp. 34–5, 85–7.
128 Ibid., pp. 128–33.
129 K. Demeter, The German Officer Corps in State and Society, 1660–1945, New York: Praeger, 1965, p. 119 .
130 F. von Mueller, Unterhaltungen mit Goethe, R. Grumach, ed., Weimar: Boehlau, 1956, p. 162 .
131 Frevert, Men of Honor, pp. 149–50; W. Liebknecht, quoted in F. J. Raddatz, ed., Reminiscences of Marx and Engels, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959, p. 159 .
132 Frevert, Men of Honor, pp. 133–4.
133 McAleer, Dueling, p. 161.
134 See, for what follows, Frevert, Men of Honor, pp. 220–7.
135 See H. Kater: “Die Ehreauffassung der SS: Nationalsozialismus und das Duell. Himmler als Burschenschafter: Das Duell R. Strunk gegen Horst Krutschinna,” Einst und Jetzt, 38, 1993, pp. 265–70 .
4 Battles, campaigns, wars, and politics
From squares to hexes
The wargames discussed in this volume so far were played by real men using real weapons, though admittedly some of them were blunted or otherwise modified to make them less dangerous. Either the games took place out of doors, as most did from the Stone Age on, or else they were held in special structures such as the Colosseum. Without exception, all were somewhat dangerous – danger, in fact, was precisely what set them apart from other two-sided games in which victory was won not by fighting but by other methods. Many, notably single combat, combat of champions, gladiatorial combats, trial by battle, and duels, were very dangerous indeed. In some cases this was carried to the point where the fighting was as real and as deadly as anything in war. The difference consisted in the purpose the games served; also in the ceremonies with which the games started and ended and of which they were a part.
However, between about 1450 and 1525, a vast change came over warfare, and with it wargames. Until then, practically all weapons used by all civilizations around the world had been edged and derived their energy from human muscle. This even applied to those which, like siege engines, used various contrivances in order to combine the energy of numerous individuals. The introduction of firearms, as demonstrated most convincingly at Constantinople in 1453, changed all that. On the one hand it made weapons much more powerful and much more deadly. On the other, this very power and deadliness meant that they were no longer suitable for use in two-sided wargames of the kind discussed so far. In other words, two-sided games and weapon practice were forced apart. Indeed the time was to come when the latter could only be engaged in if and when there was nobody who could possibly get hurt for miles around. The only exception was dueling pistols. However, even they grad
ually grew so powerful that the games in which they were used ended up by abolishing themselves. Other methods for playing at war, simulating war, and training for war had to be found; building on much older foundations, other methods for doing so were found. In the process, the way war was understood itself underwent a profound transformation.
The wargames in question were played indoors by means of counters, or miniatures, on a board of some sort. As we shall see, these methods enabled all kinds of factors that previous wargames could not and did not simulate to be introduced. On the other hand, as we shall also see, there were certain elements that had to be left out. The oldest known board game, the ancient Egyptian senet, was played with dice and pieces on a field of thirty squares. However, what it symbolized was not war but the trial of the deceased in front of thirty judges in the next world.1 The ancient Greeks had polis, sometimes known as petteia. It was played by two persons on a large board with the aid of pieces (pessoi) known as dogs. The game seems to have resembled chess in that the number of pieces filled two rows at each end of the board. Polis, though, differed from chess (but resembled draughts) in that all the pieces were of the same kind. They moved in the manner of chess rooks and captured by the interception method. Apparently the rules made it important to make sure no piece would find itself isolated from the rest. This has caused some modern authorities to argue that it was used to teach players the kind of discipline that hoplites, fighting in a phalanx, required.2
The Romans had a different game called latrunculi (little robbers). As best it can be reconstructed, it was played on an eight by twelve board by two players using pieces with contrasting colors. Each player had twelve normal pieces plus a king. All thirteen pieces moved as rooks do, except that the king could only move one square in each direction. As best we can reconstruct the game, it resembled petteia, in so far as capture was by the interception method. However, kings could not be captured. Apparently the side that immobilized the opponent’s king on all sides, or captured all the opponents’ normal pieces, or had more pieces left on the board after fifty moves, won.3 Other peoples, including the ancient Irish, Thai, Japanese, Nubians, Scandinavians, and North and South American Indians all had, or have, their own games.4
Most wargames of this kind are played by two persons, but some involve four. Each player commands an “army” on a board that symbolizes a field. Sometimes a lattice pattern is used, as in Go, or else there are squares of contrasting colors. Games are differentiated by the shape of the board (rectangular or oblong) and according to whether the board has other marks on it and, if so, the purpose those marks serve. The number and arrangement of pieces on each side, the types into which they are divided, their various moves, the methods used for capture (interception, leap, or encirclement), and the rules as to what constitutes victory are also different. Most games involve contests between symmetrical armies, but some do not. Since play proceeds by turns, designing a game in which the player who moves first does not enjoy a certain advantage is all but impossible; hence tournaments are often organized in such a way as to neutralize this effect by having players play now one side, now another.
By far the best-known wargame of this kind is chess. It has many variants, including a Chinese one that remains very popular and is often played in the street. Played on a lattice, Chinese chess has two armies drawn up on either side of a “river.” The total number of pieces on each side is sixteen, as in Western chess. However, each army also has two counselors (instead of one queen) and two cannon, leaving only five pawns. Not only are the movements of many pieces different, but some of them may cross the river into enemy territory whereas others may not. Those which have done so may move in a different way from those that stay behind. To this extent the game takes into account Sun Tzu’s warning concerning the difficulty of waging a campaign far from home, something that Western chess does not do. All this makes it as least as sophisticated and interesting as Western chess, with as many different strategies, openings, endgames, and so on.5 But whereas Western chess has been widely adopted in China, the opposite had not happened. That is why I shall focus on the development of the former. In doing so, I follow the account of H. J. R. Murray, a great early twentieth-century scholar whose work is unlikely to be improved upon in the future.6
This story starts with the Nitisara, an Indian work on public policy dating to the first half of the first millennium AD. It says that a chaturanga, literally “an organism consisting of four parts,” is made up of elephants, horse, chariots, and infantry. A king and his vizier, both of whom represent individuals rather than troops and whose presence on the battlefield is self-explanatory, are added. The text goes on to discuss the best ways these arms should be employed: noting, for example, that a horseman is worth three infantrymen and that the elephants should be stationed in the wings. The parallels with war extend to the way victory is obtained and are both obvious and well understood. To speak with Clausewitz, the objective of war is to overthrow the enemy.7 This could be accomplished either by the capture or death of the opposing monarch or by the annihilation of his army. Both are exactly reproduced by the two methods of winning in early chess – the checkmate and the baring of the opponent’s king.
From India the game spread to China and Persia. In the latter it acquired the name of shach (king) and went on to conquer the Arab world and Byzantium. Around AD 1000 it began to be played in Western Europe. Over time important changes were made. The original monochrome lattice board was replaced by a checkered one. The elephant, an animal not familiar to Europeans, was replaced by the bishop. Similarly the vizier was replaced by a queen − a change that, though anything but realistic (real-life queens rarely accompanied their husbands to the field, let alone into combat) caused rivers of ink to be spilt as feminist scholars tried to present it as an indication of the higher status of women in Western societies. The most important change took place around 1490. The queen, originally able to move one square diagonally, was allowed to move any number in any direction. This made her much the most powerful one on the board. It also turned a somewhat slow game into a much faster and more aggressive one.8
The rules governing the moves of the remaining pieces also underwent long and complex development. Throughout all this, writers of various nationalities never doubted that chess was indeed a wargame, intended and able to capture some aspects of real warfare. This is even truer of Chinese chess with its pieces representing chariots and cannon. Probably the most charming affirmation comes from a Jewish poet in Spain, Abraham ben Ezra (1089–1164):
I will sing a song of battle
Planned in days long passed and over.
Men of skill and science set it
On a plain of eight divisions,
And designed in squares all checkered,
Two camps face each one the other,
And the kings stand by for battle,
And ’twixt these two is the fighting.
Bent on war the face of each is,
Ever moving or encamping,
Yet no swords are drawn in warfare,
For war of thought their war is.
Luigi Guicciardini, an early sixteenth-century Italian author, once wrote an essay entitled, “A Comparison of the Game of Chess with the Notable Treatises on War.” Chess, of course, is a two-sided game of strategy aimed at “killing” the enemy in which the enemy’s moves are as important as one’s own. As in war, strategy consists of attacking, defending, concentrating, dispersing, breaking through, circumventing, and, perhaps most importantly of all, cheating (within the rules, of course), misleading, and taking by surprise. Like war, it allows for very different styles of play: tactical, strategic (meaning, in this context, play that looks at the board as a whole rather than at the moves of specific pieces), aggressive, defensive, positional, attritional, and so on.9
Some players show a notable preference for some pieces, such as pawns, whereas others do not. Some try to occupy the center of the board as fast as they can, whereas others a
re more interested in the flanks. Some pay more attention to controlling “terrain,” others less. Quite a few show psychological insight by varying their style from one opponent to the next. Just as in war every great commander developed his own methods, so in chess many of these styles are linked to the names of individual players who invented them. Prominent among them were François-André Danican Philidor (1762–95), Paul Morphy (1837–84), and Aron Nymzowitsch (1886–1935). In both chess and war, an important trick is to combine the various arms so as to bring out the capabilities of each of them while masking the weaknesses. Another is to orchestrate them in such a way that each one will carry out not one task but several at once.
Many of the parallels even extend to detail. In both war and chess, one excellent method to gain an advantage is to isolate an opposing piece until it can no longer be defended. Another is to pin the opponent by threatening such an important target as to force him to defend it and, in doing so, to suffer more losses than he can afford; another still is to nail the opponent on the horns of a dilemma or, to speak with Liddell Hart, confront him with a plan with several branches.10 As former Israeli prime minister General Ariel Sharon once said, in real-life battle the worst thing that can happen to troops is to have enemies appear in their back. The chess (and draughts) equivalent is the queening of pawns that have reached the last line. To quote Samuel Rosenthal, a Polish-Jewish player who, living in Paris, became a chess celebrity and adviser to Louis Napoleon: