16

REFLEEHONSON FIREPOWER WAR IN TIIE FRANCO.PRUSSIAN

Peter Dennis takesa pot-shot at some myths
stockdo"nwards: pttshitg in catidge aftet arlridge after cartidge npidly wih be n9ht: ud. without dtnng. 6fl9 awat in the Drcbabk direction oI ke eneny The ten ol Moulin a caJe'(the @tree ni ) wasinvented for this node of 6rinE. Nthough one cannot assume that the d;sadvantagesof this still the et'penditue of atuuition co ld rcnain @ncealed, sedefess Irad habit was adhercd to tluouBhout the enLirempaign. Th Duke goeson to giv evidencein suppoi of his claim that most French fre was of this q?, and I se no reasonto doubt that he is conect. What seemslike anathema to the Prussiansystem,with its enphasis on individuai ained 6re, does make some kind of sense whenlooked at ftom the point ofview ofthe Frenchinfanfiynan. The with of 6ring the Chasspot Duke is conect about the unpleasantness the sliding backight at the top of the flip-up leaf, the top of the stock dgles threateningly into the tendons framing the armpit. It feels paintul enoughwithout fting a big nineteenthcentuiy cartridge. The rarget, identified at a mile range, is nothing more thm a d&k snudge on th landicape. dd that\ in good light. The ani e.y which suppods thos distot Grmans is probably dropping shels ever narer to your positioDs. The temptation to.lrop on one tne, Chalspol rE Ihyse NeedlFgu brch loader, the prhapseven to goud the stock of youJ rifle dd egle the nuzzle By bing the first nation to adopt the bolt-a6-tion Prusialts paid the pdce we aI pay fo. being ai the forefiont of sk]eard! like a moiar, and spray the diredion of the foe with lead, fashionable tecbnology: having got the kit. sonebody brings out when ordered to open tue at extreme range must have been geat. Once staned, like any massinfantry fire,dle of6@rs would have sonething twice as good the year after. The Chsepot rifle w6 sightedto 12m netres, twic the uletul Iange of the Dre]se, it was found it difficult to control, and Fobably imposible to stop. Thusthe lighter and could fir ten shols a minute. althougb theoreticaliates of 90 rounds caried c{) d be expended in about l0 mitruies. This is a problm if. a! a wargamer, you are habituated like me to using 10 fire are partiorla y mideading in any penod. The problem w6, you ., mrnuteume-segmenrs. avemge,or evenabov average.French soldir wa! ldgely mtrained 'small book' of a Fie.ch soldier Anlvay. acording to our expen. the beaten zone was some in m&knaNhip. For example, the picked up on the field at Woerth, in 1870,showedthat in 1866dd '67, 12001800metres fion the firer. and the lead desnded in a lethal he had fired 14and 20 roundsrespectively.It is les thd comJortingto shower. The nomal Prussian assault fomation was to have the shot. ln '68 and '69 Skimisher Zufs out in front skimishin8, and the rmainder of the b told that in both yean he ranked asa ftst ctass 'company colums' about 5m pacesbehind them. he wa! quanered in Algeria, md nevertued at a[ | The situation in the battalion h four These collrtrIns were forty menwide and four trlen deep, and it wason PrussianArmy wa! quite different. Troop6 were constandytmined in Even so, I hear nusketry, eachmanfinng alms.t 130roundsper year. A third ofeach rheseunfoiunates that the buliet showerdescended. coinpany formed the 80 man 'skiinishr' or 'marksman' Zu& nade you thinking, it can't have been very etredive, can it? The arlswermustbe, in romal circunstances,no. But whenevents up of the bestshot5,and every nenber of the companyaspiredto join conspire to present the coffee-mill squal with a denser than usual that elite body. 'Hard c"ss So, provided the Gemm cruld gei to slug-tnding rangewith th t&get, the result could be a huge Ceman butcher'sbill dd as a rule-naker I'm always bothered by French, they were confident that their superior training would make make bad law' they say, were causd,seeningly agaifft the up for the shortcomingsof their weaponry. Their training suggBted thos times when hug casualties that 3m yardswas the sort of range at which they should be opening laws of probabfity. The Prussian Garde attack on St Privat is the 6re of the battalion line clasic iistance in this war. Three brisadsanacking on a 2,000pace tue. The French doctrif,e wasthat the m?ssed openingat extreme range,would kep the nmy at bay, and makeit fiont weie assailedby frre at over 1,fi10 metres range and in 10 impossible for him to reach effective range with the Needl-Gun. minuteslosi 6,0m men. I have read that the Frcnch were ananged in Hardly had the smoke cleded norn the fint clashes,befor Grman tiers on a hillside. blt photographsof the site showno suitableslope. military anallsts were wandeing over the sites of Prussianattacks, and the Duke of wurttemberg visited the site soonaJterthe battle and denies that this ws posible. However. several lines of infdtry sdching for clues as to how ihe two s'stems had perfomed. By 1871 an English translation w6 published of fte sr.s.en of hosingthe groud with lad, ground occupiedby troops at a depth of 10 to the pace could give u5 that figurc without resorting to attack of the lb}.J.ssiai Inhitty i' the Campajg of 187G71by Lie\r. Field-Marshal winim, Duke of Wuntemberg. In this fascinating exaggeratedfire-effects at extreme range for the chassepot. when fifing to legidat for French tu then. we must allow for a pamphlet tne Duke hasquite a lot to sayabout French musketry, and kind of super-archery, with French troo!6, prhapE in complete I trust the reader wil forgive a lengrhy quote: -fo oreNheln hostile colunns at a.lhtate of ldn defts with cover, chewingup the gound a rnile in ftont of them, dd, I'm afraid. mmuition nns are unavoidablel Fojectiles, and thus to rcndet it inrytsibte fot then to apqoach a' After St Privat, as the Duke sa]s, 'The atiack in Line of Colwrrs oectpkd pondon within efiecdve frnng di'tarcr, waspnponded as ofthis one, marked over opengromd was,in spite of the final success an axion by Frcnch tacticiats, with the tull assentof the amy. to aim over as an inpossibility and a uselessloss of men, and definitively Ir ofier b attain &is long tutge, it becomesnecessary rejected. Instad. troops advarced in skirnish order, forming close point oftl,e back sight, whnh entailsa down||ad $esturc the highest to the enmy in somefold of the glomd, or any area of cover before of the stock oI the ifle. Thus the Germanswere able to avoid the EvettMy knowEhow difrcltlt it h to take aim in thjs way: but no launhinethe final a5.sault. one ulill naintain that the Frcnchmatl tuds any pleasurc it giving worst etr;cts of the long-rangefire, and were able to exploit their hinseff touble. Frivolity and establishedcuston, together vith the marksndship to ftI advantage.Even so, they were not willing to rentenbtutce by the older soldjes of dE fomer nethod of 6ring attempt the final rush againsttroops who had not had the benefit of a ftun the hip without aty calcuktion led very npidly to the bad habit steady pouding fron the famous Germar artillery. of holditg the ifle in the teft hnd at att angle of nearly 45', vith the to havehad Every wargamingmagazineI havepicked up latly seems an article about the FPw in it. I welcome this; the FPW is a conflict rich in possibilities for wargamers, and one in which figure manufaduer! aie taking a growing interest. However, like mo6t periods,it comescompletewith a baggage train of mlths, legen& and 'facts'which aI the articles I've read recendyhavetrotted out without a scondthougha. So what's the problem? The Chassepotrifle drdhave at leasttwic the range of the Dreyse, the Pnssian breechloading artilery d? hrock sevenkinds of bnck{ust out of the French anillery, someof whom were stupidly armed with a priroitive nachine-g n lhey didn't know how to use . . . thesare FACTS, we c.ango aheadand ftame our wargamesrules, we rced look no tuiher. wen. folks. t tbiDl we do need to look nrnhe.. l-et me say at this point rhat tbe redotr for the French defeat in 1870do not lie in the hardware or the way it was usd.In this pice I y and usagethough, and it you atrl goingtoconfnemyseftoweapo want the full story you mNt look elsewhere.(Seenoteson sources.)

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tE $ret Sorp8
- 15mm Metal Figwes - llEW ,IVEYY Roman& s Gauls Moghuls ThirtyYears War English C i v iW l ar Seven Years War French Wars & Indian Clive in lndia American War of Independence Napoleonics Seminole War U.S.A. dganE US-Mexican War uBlElnmns ln American CivilWar lor I ta8 (hcrnpoign PlainW s ars M a x i m i l l i aE n x p e d i t i o n [.61820 Italian Warsot Independence Austro-Prussian War Franco-Prussian War

Xnpp sleel breechloaders vs brass muzle-load$ Why did the French stick to quaint old muzzle loadeE, when the Prussians had soper modem breechloaden? Were they crazy?They were bound to loseI This is the drift of a good deal of comment about the anilery in thjs war. The facfihar the French did get the wo6t of it almost everyvhere is indisputable, but it wasnt the gunsthemselves whjch were at fault- If the French can be diticised for stickins to dowr-the^poutarrilleD.rhensocouldthe British.dnda Boodm;) other respected armisat the time. Muzzlloadrs were more ftgged than the breechloadeB, and rates of fire were crnparable. ln any c6e, 6 dy gunnerwould tell you, it wan't how quickly you fired that counted. In tbe daysbefore recoil mechanisms,it was skili in laing that made the difference. Cnticism ofihe French for giving the Mitrailleose to the anillery is ,lso, I feel, a linle unfair, I @ t think of any nation which had machine guns at this time which did not man then with gunnrs, I meu, a black banel on sheels just wouldn't look righr with infmtrymen around it would ir? To think of the Mitrailleuse in the sametems as say a Maxim Gun would also be a mislake. Onc! the weapon got inlo a firing cycle the target would be conpletely obscuredby lmoke. and th effect aimed at would b more rhat of long{ang mister than the sweepingtue of a WW1 machine-gun. The weapon did have quite a moraleffect, rhe cemar! hated it. I think thar we should look at the Orde^ of Battle of the rwo sides for our 6rst clue asto why th Frenchanillery failed- Overall numben of guns quoted for the armies do not suggesta grossimbalanc of numbers, bul a closer examination shows an interestins difrerence. wlile rhc ba'c \rrengrhs were sirnilar:rhe French of the divisions infanrry division commander had at his dnposal two light artillery balteties (6 suns) dd o.e battery of mitrailleuss, which, with a range of some 1500 metres, cannot be usd in an artillery duel. Against this. the German division @mmander hastwo light, and two 1,eai7batteries.giving hin a tremendouslocal supriority of tu. The French corp6migbt have three or even four divisions, and rhe corps anillery would normally be t o light, two healy and four or so horse bnttenes. The German corps were alwa's of rwo divisions, and the corpscommmder would nonnally havetwo heavy, two light and two hone batteries. Thus, regardlssof any technical superionty, th Gemans were able to deploy fd more artillery at a relatively low level on the chainof command.In our wdgames fought at corpslevel the Gends invanably drive ofi the French artillery very early onBul. if overall numbeA de the same,where are the French guns?In an army reseNe, thafs where. Following th Napoleonictradition, a large park of artillery wa: at the disposal of the army colmmdrWhen the battle is joined on a sevenmile ftont though, by the rine the commanderhaslocated the best place for his resw to be used, thal location willalready hnvbeendominatd by rhe Prussianguns. Apart fton a better thought-out dispositionin the commandchain. the Gemm gunner had the tremendos technical advantage of supenor mmuoilion. The Germans had perfected the percussiontuse. wbich meant that when a Prussianshell mived it went baf,s. scll. nine lmetr our or ren. The F ench ammuniuonconsi"led6l commonshellwith a tine fue which wasavailablein only t$o ranges, 1.i00 and 2,800metres.At any other mnge it was supposed to explodeon conlact- but didn'i. A few shrapnlshellswerecanied by IiEbt batleries. bur rhetr h@s were so notonously bad that the shells

WORLDWIDE MAIL ORDERSERVICE S.A.E. lot ILLUSTRA|ED LISTS. FREIKORPS 15, 25 Princetown Road,Eangor, Co. Down BT2O3TA, Northern lreland.
were liftle used. I need hardly say that the Prussian training was supenor. the ded old Prussians of the 1870s assureusthat it was,pith that appallingsmugness which characterises all their utterancesat that time.If I @ stmd it, in my nen anicle I'll tell you what no less a prson than Kraft, Pnf,c of Hohenlohelnge$ngen, commanderof the Prusian Guard anilery in 1870hasto sayabout gunsand gunnery in this prologu to World War One. The Frd@'German war produced ; massiveamount of print, some 8,0m volumes,it hasbeen said were Mitten during the nen 30 or so yeals- Litde enough is cuently in print, although wdgmes publishersare getting their act together, and at leastone major work, David Ascoli's A Day ofBattie (Harnp) hasbenpublishedin 1987. Miiitary dalysts haveswarmedover lh actionsof lhis shon war. and a wealth offiFt-rate material for our purposss is around sorreplrere, bur clos reading of booksellers' lists is necssaryto pick it up. As interest in the wd increa!s, so do bookselleN' pnces. My copy of Marnce's Ftub-GeM wt, publi'lhed by ArbD & Unwin 1899, which is a monumental Battls md leaders'history st me back a win@-mali.g I50. Mosr of the inforrnation he:e camefrom th Duke of Wurttemberg's pmpblei de&:ribedin th ten, and ftom Lt Col G - a study in pncti.al tactis F R Henderson s The Ba.rIe of SpichercD ard wa..ra,;r;g, publishedin 1909by Gale & Polden. Hendeson is a filst rate delvr into the military nitty-gitty which warganers 6nd so enlightening. His works should b snapped up, so remembr the Moltke and his staff were wel aware of lh benefits of wdgming asd inlt uctional tool, and thanks to Bill l-son,we are ableto play their gme. Bill publishes th contenporary rules of Von Tschischwitz for tbe Kriegsspi]. wilh fantastic maps of huge dimensions, dd even lead blocks to play with. Detaiis hom Biil at 5 St Agnell's Lane Cottages.Henel Hempstead,Herts, HP2 7HJ. Anyone interestedin this priod should tate this opportunity to examineand play the game the Prussia officeE themselvesusd.