Po Valley Campaign - the Second Battle of Parma, 1742

The campaign finally kicked off today. The King of Sardinia with his Piedmontese army swiftly advanced on Ivrea to the north of Turin, on hearing of the combined Franco-Spanish army climbing the Alpine passes. Meanwhile the other Spanish army led by Montemar started crossing the Apennines on the route to Parma. The Bourbons (Spanish and allies) hoped to perform a two-pronged advance on Parma: Montemar from the south and the King of Naples and the small Modenese force under Francesco d'Este came from the east.

The cunning General Traun with his Austrian army based in Milan forestalled the Bourbons and arrived at Parma first. The Neapolitans and Modenese advanced slowly so as not to get caught by the stronger Austrian force. Montemar moved around Parma and attacked the Austrians from the north, hoping the King of Naples et al would arrive soon to back him up. The 30,000 Austrians turned to face Montemar (less than 23,000) who found he had to spend the first couple of hours on his own. [I diced to see whether the Italians would arrive for the start of the battle (no!) and then during the game from turn 7 on].

The situation after 2 map turns

I used the map for the actual Battle of Parma, 1734, where the Austrians faced the Franco-Piedmontese. The two opponents were placed roughly where the historical forces were (read Spanish for Franco-Piedmontese). Blogger is playing up and won't let me load the historic map for Parma, but the following are photos taken during the game played this evening.

Spanish to the north of the Piacenza road (E-W) and north east of the Cremona road (SE-NW). I've used 'earthworks' to denote the road is raised. 

The field is rather cramped with streams and rows of trees marking small tracks and field boundaries. No crops shown as it's early April. The Austrians outnumber the Spanish 6:1 in cavalry (all the Austrian cavalry are to the south east). The Spanish had a slight advantage in numbers of infantry and better quality with 12 battalions of guards. The Austrians had the upper hand in artillery.

The Austrians

The Spanish. Guards and cavalry on the right. The plan was to refuse this flank and attack in the centre through the farms and village of Crocetta (top left)

Battle is joined. The Spanish have seized Crocetta. The two sides would fight for hours around this area with musket and bayonet in a slow attritional struggle.

The city of Parma behind its walls to the east of the battlefield.

Finally the King of Naples arrives with his contingent in turn 10 (c 2 1/2 hours after the battle started). 

The King's arrival with 10,000 men evened up the numbers. Also marching to the sound of the guns is d'Este and the 5,000 Modenese. It would be a few more turns before they arrived, and tipped the numbers in favour of the Bourbon cause.

The end of a slow attritional battle. 

The Spanish in the Crocetta area had resisted manfully until the Austrians brought their heavy guns to bear and tipped the balance. Even then it was several turns before they were turfed out. On the left the Spanish almost turned the Habsburg position. Centre right saw a very lengthy firefight between the Spanish guards and the Austrian line infantry. Losses slowly mounted on both sides and the Spanish gradually retired to avoid being flanked by the Austrian cavalry. Talking of cavalry, other sides were underwhelming. The trees hindering movement and even then there were several refusals to charge by both sides. After 20 turns I called it a day. A slight advantage to the Austrians tactically and in terms of losses. But strategically they have failed to force the Habsburgs away from Parma. They cannot besiege the city under these circumstances. What will happen next?

Close up of the right centre at the end. Spanish nearer to the camera.

Post game thoughts.

Well that was quick to get to a battle! Which is what most wargamers want. I had to add a couple of rules to the campaign. I hadn't through the sequencing enough but that's the beauty of solo play. Gap plugged so that's an improvement!

During the battle I was highly conscious of the need to live to fight another day. Montemar had got himself in a bit of a pickle in the first place, but as this was almost exclusively an infantry battle things didn't work out too badly. I called it at 20 turns rather than wait to one side or the other to start to lose 'wings' in the normal Twilight of the Soldier Kings way. I thought it more realistic for the Spanish to disengage as they were closer to breaking. I also remembered I needed to add a rule for post-battle recovery of losses and imported one from another set. Basically because neither side had really chased the other from the field, and there was no pursuit, I gave each side an equal chance of recovering losses. The Habsburgs did better in this respect so the overall numbers left will be closer.

The next challenge is to decide who does what after the battle. There are no easy options for either side. And then there is the question of what the Gallispans coming from the Alps are to do faced with a Piedmontese army almost as big as theirs sitting under the guns of a fortress. Would a retreat back the way they came and debouch into Piedmont from one of the other passes be the best option?

More on the Po Campaign Rules

Following on from the last post, I organised the lettered beads into coloured groups, each representing 1 of seven 'factions'. Each commander (between 1 and 6 general officers per faction) had his own lettered bead and a duplicate goes in the 'activation hat'. Thus forces will be activated randomly each turn.

The seven factions are in two main camps:

Austrians and their Piedmontese allies (with occasional British involvement/interference);

Bourbons: Spanish, French, Neapolitans,  and their friends in Modena and Genoa.

I reviewed the 'guideline' rules I'd sketched out a couple of months ago. And they were rather sketchy, based on a couple of hex-mapped campaigns I did for the War of the Austrian Succession. So I spent quite a lot of time honing these into something more usable and considerably tightened up. Tightened up is a relative term here; bearing in mind this is for a solo game, the rules wouldn't pass muster for a competitive game. They still don't cover 5 pages in Arial font size 12.

The rules cover:

• Unit Types
• Activation
• Movement
• Supply
• Replenishment
• Battle
• Sieges
• Events
• Victory Conditions

In addition I have: a turn tracker (a turn now being a week and not a day!); orders of battle; table of commanders; and will have a schedule of towns and who controls them.

Here are a few samples of rules:

Sieges are abstracted, but I might try the Siege Works rules for a bit more fun, time permitting. 

There are 12 random events that can be diced for each month (April-November) with 5 favouring the Austro-Piedmontese, 5 favouring the Bourbons and 2 neutral. Amongst the neutral events is the interdiction of a Supply Train by Pandours - unless it is countered by an Escort! Some events can only happen once, e.g. the death of Felipe V, for obvious reasons. Nearly all the Events are based on real occurrences so they are not so out there that they are not plausible. However, it's just occurred to me that I omitted one that could have happened with all these troops marching around the country - Plague!

Ultimately Victory is going to be about capturing and holding Fortresses. The rival dynasties, Habsburg, Bourbon and Savoy, have got expansionist aims. How very modern! Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

It's all gone quiet over here!

 ...to coin a taunting football chant. It's been over 5 weeks since my last post and no dice have been rolled in anger. No paint brushes have been lifted either. My Italian AWS campaign stopped before it started. I called a halt initially at the end of January because I had a spell of busyness (i.e. a couple of longish drives to watch football, amongst other things). Then I realised that I didn't have enough lettered 'beads' which I was intending to use as tokens to mark competing forces on the map - under my scheme I would have 2 beads for each force (1 for the map and 1 for the 'magical activation bucket') x half a dozen 'factions' x however many forces each faction divided itself up between. Whilst I prevaricated over this, a trip up to Cleethorpes to watch Grimsby exit the FA Cup at the hands of Wolves* used up more time and energy than I had to spare. Then followed by a week's trip to Spain during which I became ill - nothing serious, but it left me blown out and too tired to do much after work for my first week back.

* For the benefit of non-UK readers, this refers to Wolverhampton Wanderers, an Association football club, not a pack of canine animals of that name. For the initiated, Wolves appeared more like a tribute act for Wycombe Wanderers (Adebayo Akinfenwa vintage) than the Old Gold heroes of the past. The players' physical stature and their method of play looked more like a League One side than a Championship-bound Premier League team. But as a League One side they were too good for League Two Grimsby. The best team won.

Had I got my act together before going to Spain I could have taken my map and bits and pieces and at least played out some initial map moves and play-tested my scheme. Thinking about this I had the idea of Having some 'block armies' out there to play tactical games during quiet evenings.

So this evening after work I checked the range of products in Flying Tiger Copenhagen and the closing time of the local branch. Bingo! They had what I wanted and were open until 7pm so I made use of my old folks' bus pass to flit down there.

What I went for

What I also came back with - these come in 2 lengths: 9cm and 15cm

And I also came back with these. The 'Jenga style' blocks suitably re-styled will be the basis for the 'wargame armies in exile'. 

In theory I could leave the blocks unaltered as they come in 6 different colours, but the pastel shades are somewhat 'unmilitary' to my mind. The measurements are 7.5x2.5x1.5 cm - longer than I would have liked, but they'll do.

The other box looks like a 'Mastermind-style' game. Handy in itself, but I have a vague notion of using it as some sort of tracker (like Charles Wesencraft's weather tracker).

There was one piece of tangentially 'wargame-related' activity on Friday. I met up with David-in-Suffolk at the National Army Museum for a lunchtime talk on the training regime of the British, Dominion and Empire troops in the Second World War. Not my core area of interest by any means, but these things are always informative and it's always good to catch up with young David.

Campaign Delay / Reading Matters

Despite my best intentions (paving the way to Hell) I didn’t start the Po valley campaign whilst the Margravina was away visiting her ancestral lands. By the Friday I needed a bit of downtime after a busy week. Saturday was taken up with a trek to Cheltenham to see the Mighty Mariners extend their winning streak, and then Tuesday evening saw a similar trip to Colchester with a similar outcome. Both tiring trips by car. Especially the first one as it involved driving back across country in the dark, through narrow, pot-holed lanes, and a long tailback when traffic heading eastwards met a lorry coming the other way with no room to pass.

I fleshed the campaign map out. Still have a few towns to name.

I haven’t been totally inactive on the hobby front though. Santa bought me a few books and I’ve gradually been working my way through them.

Been thinking about getting this for a while. Currently onto the last couple of chapters. Bit of myth busting in it.

Contents for the above.

This was enjoyable. Almost tempted me into a campaign

Couple of booklet sized publications in the waiting pile.

Last but not least, I bought myself this when I discovered the disappearance of an Italian website that had much of this information, and more.

Some of the militia units look interesting, and were pretty effective in some cases. If you fancy a walk on the wild side of the 18th century, some small wars action in the Alps could be engaging.

Lots of lovely plates like this.

Sheffield Modeler

I came across this on the BBC website. Whilst not specifically about wargaming, it is 'adjacent'. Enjoy.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kgve7pk0o.amp 

Italian WAS Campaign Background Reading

In my last post on the subject of my proposed Po Valley Campaign for the 1740s I mentioned my next steps. Firstly:

• Identify orders of battle
• Set-out campaign objectives

So to tackle both of these I started reading. I read the relevant parts of the book below. And I searched on t'internet. I found this which gives a very brief, but useful overview of the Italian theatre in the WAS:

https://warhistory.org/@msw/article/the-war-of-austrian-succession-in-italy-1740-1748

I'd recommend it to anyone who's vaguely interested in the subject. I used it to draft a brief narrative. I wasn't able to find a lot of other resources in English on the subject. The usual rule seems to apply: if the Brits (and later Americans) weren't there it might as well not have happened in the Anglophone world. At least there is something on the subject - more than say on the War of the Polish Succession*. At least Britain had some involvement via the Royal Navy (and subsidies to belligerents) in the WAS in Italy.

* The book peaking out from underneath the Anderson does have something on the WPS in northern Italy.  Alexander Burns' 'Infantry in Battle 1733-1783', a Christmas present I was in the middle of reading when I decided I needed more background on the WAS in Italy.

One resource I found, in a slightly odd location was this:

https://bootcampmilitaryfitnessinstitute.com/2020/09/30/what-was-the-war-of-the-austrian-succession/

It is another useful overview, of the whole WAS, with a section on Italy. There's LOTS more of interest on that site.

Wikipedia is pretty limited on the subject. And there are some dead ends. For example, you can find a Wiki page on the Second Battle of Casteldelfino (1744), but the link to the First Battle (1743) leads you back to the Second. But if you search in Italian you can find both, though to be fair, they are also brief. I've found before when searching for stuff for this period on Wiki that you can often find things in other languages when they are not available in English. Translation is relatively easy these days with all the tools available, but to be honest, a lot of it is fairly clear if you have a smattering of the language (or even a related language) and military terminology. I like to have a stab at reading it first then use a translation tool to check and fill in the gaps/correct my errors.

So, that lead me to this resource in Spanish:

https://arrecaballo.es/siglo-xviii/guerra-de-sucesion-austriaca-1740-48/

Naturally there is going to be a lot more available in Spanish as they were one of the major participants. Arguably, if it wasn't for the Spanish, there wouldn't have been much campaigning done in Italy. Austria had its own wish list but being occupied fighting in Germany and the Low Countries, it probably wouldn't have started fighting in Italy at that time, but for the Spanish Bourbon family's desire to acquire new territory. The Arrecaballo site has a handy little table of army strengths (although for France and Austria this includes numbers elsewhere). However, I am confident I can infer numbers from elsewhere.

So all of this reading has helped give me a better idea of what went on. I had a rough idea of campaign objectives but it helped expand on that and fill in a notable gap: the Austrian wish to re-gain the Kingdom of Naples.  In addition I found a few maps which have helped me flesh out my sketch map. It still needs a bit of work but it's nearly there. I have quite a few notes to review and make sense of, which I'll be doing this week.

The main areas of the prospective game that I still feel are somewhat lacking are supply and intelligence. I want to have some simple rules/guidelines that are admin light but permit these important aspects to be 'modelled'. Somehow.

I'm aiming to get things ready for next week as the Margravina will be away and the youngsters are back at uni, allowing me a relatively free hand in the evenings. There is the small matter of a football match to go to, but knowing the weather forecast and the track record of that place, there's a good chance it will be postponed.

Better get cracking!

On the campaign trail again

As trailed in a previous post, I've been thinking about getting another campaign going. The options were both to be set in the War(s*) of Austrian Succession: Italy or the Austrian Netherlands. I plumped for Italy, and specifically, the northern theatre, as I want to make more use of the Piedmontese and Spanish armies I painted. I realise I could say the same about the Dutch, but it's 2:1 The Austrian Netherlands can come later.

* I prefer "Wars" as I see it more as a, sometimes loosely, connected set of conflicts. The Habsburgs and Bourbons continued to fight after the end of the Prussian-Austrian conflict (1st and 2nd Silesian Wars). The Spanish Bourbons were already fighting the British when the Silesian Wars kicked off, and for a couple of years, the British were 'auxiliaries' of the Habsburgs in the Low Countries. Similarly the Anglo-French colonial conflict had a life of its on.

This campaign will be different from my previous foray into the WAS in Italy as that was for the whole of the war and the whole of Italy. Also it was really a hex map game with figures for counters. This new campaign will be more like the recent Saxon campaign with point to point map moves and actions fought out as table top games with figures.

My first step was to map the map. I've basically traced modern Italy, mostly the Po valley from west of Turin to the Gulf of Venice. As well as the Po and other major rivers, I have marked in key roads and towns. Each town being a day's march apart.

It's a bit rough at the moment. I intend to shade in the Alps and the Apennines and sea. Many towns (dots) have been left unnamed simply for legibility purposes. Actually, also because where roads cross the mountains I've spaced the towns closer together so the same distance takes twice as long to cross. There is very little scope to cross the mountains laterally as evidenced by the road network and my main focus is on the Po valley. There are different options for east-west movement - decisions will be diced for at each nodal point based on a rough assessment of probabilities.

Two key things to work out now:

• Orders of Battle
• Campaign objectives and scope

The Saxon campaign had a very limited window - based on the weeks leading up to the end of 1745 and it had to be completed within my time off at Christmas and New Year. The Po campaign will have more time, both in historical setting and in playing time. My immediate thought on objectives is the Spanish aim to recapture Milan and Parma from the Habsburgs. But it will be more complicated than that as there are 3 (possibly 4 or 5) other parties:

Austria: obviously wanting to keep Milan and Parma

France: generally helping Spain (as they were ruled by the same family firm) and weakening Austria in the context of France's struggle for hegemony in the Low Countries and Germany

Piedmont-Savoy (aka the Kingdom of Sardinia): to remain independent and to stop Spain taking Milan and avoid being surrounded by Bourbon territory.

Naples: part of the Bourbon family firm. The ruler owed Spain a favour for help in recovering the Naples for them in the War of the Polish Succession

Britain: traditional foe of France and Spain, and ally of Austria on the basis of my enemy's enemy....

The hard part will be setting an end point. If Spain captures Milan and Parma, will the game be over or will Austria have a chance to grab them back as they wouldn't have just given up, unless they reached exhaustion point. And that would at least partly depend on what was happening north of the Alps.

Other bits and pieces to ponder:

Sieges will be abstracted - I'll probably adapt the siege section from my previous Italian campaign. Though I might be tempted to try Siege Works.

Intelligence: who knows what and when. Some simple scouting points maybe.

I will also have to adopt a mechanism for ensuring rest days are taken, and a way of tracking these.

Battles will be played out using Twilight of the Soldier Kings or WRG 1685-1845 depending on the scale.

Last but not least, I will think about some simple supply rules.

So more thinking to be done!