The Bavarian Army under Carl VII Albert Part II

I took a picture at the Musee de l'Armee in Paris back in 2010 I believe where they display an original Bavarian flag of the period.  Suffice to say the very faded original has lost a lot of detail but confirms the use of the Imperial eagle motif and the blue bavarian lozenge use on the same flag.

There are also some nice cigarette card prints available on the GrosserGeneralstab pages that show interesting details for some units like this grenadier from the Leibregiment.  Note again the darker blue coats than most wargamers use for the period.

Finally here are some pictures of my own 15mm Bavarians with the imperial flags in use and based for our WAS games where a base is a battalion or 2 squadrons each.  The three Kuirassier regiments in their white coats on the right and the three Dragoner regiments in their red coats on the left of the infantry with converged grenadiers in the rear as reserve.  These are primarily Old Glory figures painted by a friend with a black undercoat method.

The Bavarian Army under Carl VII Albert

To begin this section I have these prints from the Herr und Tradition series published back in the 1960's showing the armed forces available to the Elector turned Emperor during the War of the Austrian Succession.

These cover all arms and the flag print is a bit rare showing the Imperial Eagle and crown with the initials C VII for Carl the seventh.  I have a copy of this for wargame figure use if anyone would like the file please let me know.

The couple of pages from the works of the Funckens is shown below:

It should be noted that almost all the Bavarian cavalry of the period were not fully up to strength and did not have enough horses to form up into units, but the uniforms are nice anyway...

A couple of prints by J. A. Drexler from the Brown Collection are also shown below and there are many more done by Drexler at the Brown University download site.  First a infantry drummer and secondly a Hussar trumpeter.

Next a series of free uniform templates available on line as well

I have a 15mm force painted and ready to go for this army and will try to get a decent set of pictures for another posting soon.

The Nine Years War Campaign, Part II

The Nine Years War Campaign

Part II – The First Years

The first year of the war began with a flurry of activity on behalf of the Alliance.  William took great personal efforts to ensure that the Dutch forces, together with their subsidy and Empire troops were prepared and drilled and he also prepared a descent upon England by gathering together the needed transports in the Texel.  

The Nine Years War game requires both sides to display one of their action cards at the beginning of each year to see who will have the initiative of playing an action card first in the year.  In this year Louis decided that his troops were in splendid positions to accomplish his designs, so only played a 2 value card.  The Alliance, blessed by good providence had drawn a 3 card and promptly played it to secure the initiative. 

William left the 3 actions card out as played and then proceeded to the following:

Action 1 – Charles of Lorraine led the Empire and Subsidy troops formed in the hinterlands to Phillipsburg to forestall any Bourbon advance into the central Rhine.

Action 2 and 3 – Taking advantage of favorable winds and tides William set sail for London with three corps and succeeded in driving James II out of Southern England.  The ‘Glorious Revolution’ ensued and London declared for Mary.  James and the Jacobite forces fled to Dunkirk leaving small forces behind in Edinburg and Dublin.

Bourbon actions based on playing their 1 actions card next:

Action 1 - The Bourbons advanced their army into the Spanish Netherlands and summoned Namur but the city folk were under the thumbs of the Spanish garrison and had to be resolved to withstand a siege.  Vauban as the senior Marshal would undertake the effort.

The Alliance then played a 1 action card.

Action 1 – William and 2 corps returned from England and landed at Amsterdam, one corps suffering storm losses during the trip.

The Bourbons then played a 2 actions card.

Action 1 – The siege of Namur was promptly concluded, the Spanish garrison sent off under arms to join the Alliance army.

Action 2 – Marshal Boufflers moved his army to Tournai in the hope of completing the siege before then end of the year.

The Alliance played their final card of the first year a 3 action card.

Action 1 – Replenish the corps returned from England.

Action 2 – William and his army advanced from Amsterdam to Antwerp to begin collecting a force to oppose the Bourbons in the Spanish Netherlands.

Action 3 – The Austrian corps available along the Main was advanced to Phillipsburg to secure the area and serve as reinforcement to Charles of Lorraine.

The Bourbons played their last action card, a 1 action.

Action 1 – Attempt to take Tournai by storm which failed and Boufflers had to move his army back into France for subsistence during the winter.

Yearend activities saw both sides busy reinforcing their forces in Flanders and Germany in anticipation of the coming campaign year.  It is noted that no field battles were fought in this opening year and that the Bourbons did not have as many action opportunities as did their opponents, but still the actions occurred outside of France and the costs were borne more heavily by the Netherlands and German peoples.  The loss of England as an ally did not tip the scales of this conflict one way or the other at this point as the British contribution in terms of troops has been marginal.

1689 – The year the Turks became active in the East.

Due to the draw of event cards the Alliance had to dispatch two Austrian corps to quell the unrest in the eastern part of their Empire as the Turks took action to launch many raids into Hungary and Podolia while the Austrian army was involved heavily in Germany.

Once again the Alliance put down a 3 action card to challenge for the initiative and once again the Bourbons could only counter with a 2 action card.  Louis was heard to complain to his advisors that they did not seem well enough informed of the enemy plans and that they needed to do better.

The Alliance kept their 3 action card in play and did the following:

Action 1 – Marlborough and a small army moved from London to Edinburg to capture the last Jacobite stronghold in England.

Action 2 – Max Emanuel moved an Imperial/Bavarian army to Landau as a backup to Charles of Lorraine and to keep the French from poaching into the Imperial Circles along the Rhine, especially Koblenz, Cologne and Trier, all administered by various Bavarian clerical relatives.

Action 3 – Charles of Lorraine advanced to Strasbourg with the intent to place it under siege.  The Bourbons could not allow this to happen so met him in the fields outside the city and precipitating the first major field battle of the game.

After some discussion we agreed that each factor in the game would translate to a brigade of either 5 battalions or 10 squadrons of our figures organized for Blenheim 2004.  In the event the Alliance had 7 brigades to 6 Bourbon brigades.  So the Alliance picked 5 brigades of foot and 2 brigades of horse.  The Bourbons had 4 foot and 2 horse brigades.

The action went several turns and allowed the Alliance to threaten both flanks of the deployed Bourbons who determined based on the losses sustained that a retreat was the best option so while not being defeated they nevertheless yielded the field.  Losses were approximately equal to both sides so a brigade of troops on each side was deemed ‘destroyed’ and the markers removed from the game map and placed into the respective force pools.

I only took a couple of pictures which I display below:

The initial Alliance surge into the villages

The turning movement on the other wing by the Alliance forces

The advance in support of the left flanking movement

As noted the casualties were light across the board and no particular contingent or unit did anything remarkable enough to warrant a mention in dispatches or promotion.

For the rest of 1689, the Bourbons seized Tournai through uninterrupted siege while William slowly strengthened his forces in Antwerp.  Edinburg fell to the Alliance and Marlborough moved to Ireland to take Dublin in the next campaign year.

The Alliance should have been able to take Strasbourg but unfortunate dice rolls (two ones in succession), left the fortress weakened but not taken when the first snows arrived and the Alliance forces under Charles of Lorraine had to retire across the Rhine.  Both the unsuccessful sieges at Tournai in 1688 and Strasbourg in 1689 highlight the need to get the army in place early in the year to allow you more than a chance or two to complete the action happily.

Startup of a Nine Years War campaign

The Nine Years War Campaign

Being a narrative of the events that transpire between the belligerents in our play of the Compass Games board game of the Nine Years War and using the situations presented to play period wargames with our 28mm figures using the Blenheim 2004 rules package (with thanks to all who contributed to the development of truly fast play large battle rules for the period).

1688 - the Initial Situation.

In the Grand Campaign scenario the Bourbons begin allied to England (Under James II) and with three armies poised to push the war into the Spanish Netherlands and the Empire.  These forces are under veteran leaders and prepared to march and seize counties and fortresses to increase the size, prestige and wealth of France.   They maintain small forces on the borders of Spain and Savoy as it is unclear what actions either of these powers will take when the war begins.  Our team of crafty and veteran gamers will begin with a good central position and with forces marshalled in advance and with purpose.  The only worrisome issue is the state of England under their Stuart monarch where his popularity is low and his staunchly Protestant subjects unhappy with the alliance with the ‘old enemie’ of France.

The Alliance powers, led by the Dutch under William of Orange, is gathering together its allies and armies as the game begins.  Already the Empire has provided subsidy forces, the Bavarians and Imperial forces have collected in Munich and the Tyrol, and Prince Eugene is en-route from Vienna to command in the Germanies or perhaps in Italy as the war opens and spreads.  A strong expedition to London might suffice to bring England back into its natural alliance with the other powers, but it risks short-term losses on the continent and is not guaranteed to succeed.  Our team of veteran gamers will try to maximize their opportunities while holding the initial Bourbon advances to a minimum. 

We use a random terrain table to setup our wargame battlefields and here is the current configuration (one shot looking from each side) that came up when the host rolled on the waterways column of the table.

The few troops in the corner are a sample force to give players an idea of how the 28mm units take up space on our twelve foot by four foot table.  They will likely be moved to their correct starting location and formations when our first table game is invoked.  One aspect of using random die rolls is that you occasionally do get the only two villages on the table within musket range of each other, and all at one edge of the table.  Something I would never consciously do if I was just placing down terrain tiles or blocks!

We will try to keep this narrative up to date over the next few months as battles rage and reputations are made and lost in the crucible of combat.  I will also try posting a mirror image at my blog which can be reached here:  http://myintreuefest.blogspot.com/ until public outrage forces me to withdraw it…

Some additional images from the Brown Collection of Max Emmanuel's Army

In addition to the three Blue King folios the Brown Collection also holds several miscellaneous folios of works by Anton Hoffmann and J.A. Drexler that concentrate on the early army of Bavaria.  Below are some examples, the first by Drexler:

Having multiple copies in different folios is common at the Brown Collection and as you can see by the following two the actual colors intended are often hard to determine due to different processes, differing light sources etc...

Also it must be remembered that during the period most people only ever saw black and white drawings or sketches such as the ones below so had no real appreciation of what the uniforms, or the major individuals actually looked like.  Here are three such views of Max Emmanuel.

Here is a sketch to explain the great relief of Vienna.  Max Emmanuel is the small figure in the top leftmost circle of the illustration.  Here he shares the glory with The Kaiser, the King of Poland and the Elector of Saxony who are the other characters shown.

And finally a couple of b/w illustrations of uniforms by Drexler and a couple of additional artists colored plates.

Next topic for Bavarian Uniforms will be the Army under Carl VII who was elected Emperor during the War of the Austrian Succession so 1740 till his untimely death in 1745.