-^^ ^'/ ^*^'.?^\**' "°^'^--/ ^*.'-3^\/ "o^' A .^^ ^.^^ <^ *onO^ <^ '-0 .0" "-^.^0^ ^^°^ .0^ ^•n. ^j ^ - ' . . » Y* ^^•^<^. ^p.^ * O X o ' ^ ' '\'^^ '^^ V^' .••■"'•■■■ \/ '"■■'t: "^-^^^ -^-^.. .■ ^Jfev %.^ :?^^-\ \./ /"^^ ^ *'=<:^- v^^ :• > I LITTLE WARS A Game for Boys FROM TWELVE YEARS OF AGE TO ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY AND FOR THAT MORE INTELLIGENT SORT OF GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS' GAMES AND BOOKS H; G. WELLS THE AUTHOR OF * ILLUSTRATIONS rACIMG PACK A country prepared for the war game . Frontispiece Countries prepared for the war game 20 The war game in the open air 26 The war game in the open air 30 The war game in the open air 40 Sketch Plan of the Battle of Hook's Farm ... 99 Fig. I. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. General view of the battlefield and the Red Army 112 Fig. 2. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. A near view of the Blue Army 114 Fig. 3. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. The Red Army is in the foreground 116 Fig. 4. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. The affair is developing rapidly 118 Fig. 5a. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. Red Cav- alry charging home over the Blue guns . . . . 120 Fig. 5b. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. After the cavalry melee 122 Fig. 6a. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. Three Red Cavalry prisoners are being led to the rear . . . 124 Fig. 6b. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. Position of armies at end of Blue's third move 126 ^ y ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Fig. 7. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. Showing the frantic rush of Red's left wing across the open to join the main body 128 'i Fig. 8. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. The Red Army suffers heavy losses 130 ** Fig. 9. — The Battle of Hook's Farm. Complete victory of the Blue Army 132 Section I OF THE LEGENDARY PAST OF THE LEGENDARY PAST <« Little Wars'' is the game of kings — for players in an in- ferior social position. It can be played by boys of every age from twelve to one hundred and fifty- — and even later if the limbs remain sufficiently supple — by girls of the better sort, and by a few rare and gifted women. This is to be a full History of Little Wars from its recorded and authenticated be- ginning until the present time, lo LITTLE WARS an account of how to make little warfare, and hints of the most priceless sort for the re- cumbent strategist. . . . But first let it be noted in passing that there were pre- historic " Little Wars.'' This is no new thing, no crude novelty; but a thing tested by time, an- cient and ripe in its essentials for all its perennial freshness — like spring. There was a Some- one who fought Little Wars in the days of Queen Anne; a garden Napoleon. His game was inaccurately observed and insufficiently recorded by Lau- I OF THE LEGENDARY PAST ii rence Sterne. It is clear that Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim were playing Little Wars on a scale and with an elaboration exceeding even the richness and beauty of the contemporary game. But the curtain is drawn back only to tantalise us. It is scarcely conceivable that any- where now on earth the Shan- dean Rules remain on record. Perhaps they were never com- mitted to paper. . . . And in all ages a certain bar- baric warfare has been waged with soldiers of tin and lead and wood, with the weapons of 12 LITTLE WARS the wild, with the catapult, the elastic circular garter, the pea- shooter, the rubber ball, and such-like appliances — a mere setting up and knocking down of men. Tin murder. The advance of civilisation has swept such rude contests altogether from the playroom. We know them no more. . . . Section II THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN LITTLE WARFARE THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN LITTLE WARFARE The beginning of the game of Little War, as we know it, be- came possible with the inven- tion of the spring breechloader gun. This priceless gift to boyhood appeared somewhen towards the end of the last cen- tury, a gun capable of hitting a toy soldier nine times out of ten at a distance of nine yards. It has completely superseded all the spiral-spring and other makes of gun hitherto used LITTLE WARS n playroom warfare. These spring breechloaders are made in various sizes and patterns, but the one used in our game is that known in England as the four-point-seven gun. It fires a wooden cylinder about an inch long, and has a screw ad- justment for elevation and de- pression. It is an altogether elegant weapon. It was with one of these guns that the beginning of our war game was made. It was at Sandgate — in England. The present writer had been lunching with a friend — let MODERN BEGINNINGS 17 me veil his identity under the initials J. K. J. — in a room littered with the irrepressible debris of a small boy's pleasures. On a table near our own stood four or five soldiers and one of these guns. Mr J. K. J., his more urgent needs satisfied and the coffee imminent, drew a chair to this little table, sat down, examined the gun dis- creetly, loaded it warily, aimed, and hit his man. Thereupon he boasted of the deed, and is- sued challenges that were ac- cepted with avidity. ... He fired that day a shot that 1 8 LITTLE WARS Still echoes round the world. An affair — let us parallel the Cannonade of Valmy and call it the Cannonade of Sandgate occurred, a shooting between opposed ranks of soldiers, a shooting not very different in spirit — but how different in re- sults ! — from the prehistoric warfare of catapult and garter. ''But suppose," said his an- tagonists; "suppose somehow one could move the men!'' and therewith opened a new world of belligerence. The matter went no further with Mr J. K. J. The seed lay MODERN BEGINNINGS 19 for a time gathering strength, and then began to germinate with another friend, Mr W. To Mr W. was broached the idea: " I believe that if one set up a few obstacles on the floor, volumes of the British Encyclo- pedia and so forth, to make a Country, and moved these soldiers and guns about, one could have rather a good game, a kind of kriegspiel^ . . . Primitive attempts to realise the dream were interrupted by a great rustle and chattering of lady visitors. They regarded the objects upon the floor with 20 LITTLE WARS the empty disdain of their sex for all imaginative things. But the writer had in those days a very dear friend, a man too ill for long excursions or vigorous sports he has been dead now these six years], of i a very sweet companionable disposition, a hearty jester and full of the spirit of play. To him the idea was broached more fruitfully. We got two forces of toy soldiers, set out a lump- I ish Encyclopaedic land upon the carpet, and began to play. We arranged to move in alternate moves : first one moved all his 5s. o MODERN BEGINNINGS 21 force and then the other; an infantry-man could move one foot at each move, a cavalry- man two, a gun two, and it might fire six shots; and if a man was moved up to touch another man, then we tossed up and decided which man was dead. So we made a game, which was not a good game, but which was very amusing once or twice. The men were packed under the lee of fat volumes, while the guns, ani- mated by a spirit of their own, banged away at any exposed head, or prowled about in search 22 LITTLE WARS of a shot. Occasionally men came into contact, with remark- able results. Rash is the man who trusts his life to the spin of a coin. One impossible paladin slew in succession nine men and turned defeat to vic- tory^ to the extreme exaspera- tion of the strategist who had led those victims to their doom. This inordinate factor of chance eliminated play; the individual freedom of guns turned battles into scandals of crouching con- cealment; there was too much cover afforded by the books and vast intervals of waitin MODERN BEGINNINGS 2^ while the players took aim. And yet there was something about it. . . . It was a game crying aloud for improvement. Improvement came almost simultaneously in several di- rections. First there was the development of the Country. The soldiers did not stand well on an ordinary carpet, the Ency- clopasdia made clumsy cliff-Hke ^^ cover," and more particularly the room in which the game had Its beginnings was subject to the invasion of callers, alien souls, trampling skirt-swishers, chat- terers, creatures unfavourably 24 LITTLE WARS impressed by the spectacle of two middle-aged men playing with ^'toy soldiers" on the floor, and very heated and ex- cited about it. Overhead was the day nursery^ with a wide ex- tent of smooth cork carpet (the natural terrain of toy soldiers), a large box of bricks — such as I have described in Floor Games — and certain large inch- thick boards. It was an easy task for the head of the household to evict his offspring, annex these ad- vantages, and set about plan- ning a more realistic country. MODERN BEGINNINGS 25 (I forget what became of the children.) The thick boards were piled up one upon another to form hills; holes were bored in them, into which twigs of various shrubs were stuck to represent trees; houses and sheds (solid and compact piles of from three to six or seven inches high, and broad in pro- portion) and walls were made with the bricks; ponds and swamps and rivers, with fords and so forth indicated, were chalked out on the floor, garden stones were brought in to rep- resent great rocks, and the 26 LITTLE WARS ^^ Country" at least of our per- fected war game was in exist- ence. We discovered it was easy to cut out and bend and gum together paper and card- board walls, into which our toy bricks could be packed, and on which we could paint doors and windows, creepers and rain- water pipes, and so forth, to represent houses, castles, and churches in a more realistic manner, and, growing skilful, we made various bridges and so forth of card. Every boy who has ever put together model villages knows how to do these fcu5 ** •^ ^ ■ S-*: J: -^ $^ "2 S 5 S ^ 5 S. S-2 '5 " MODERN BEGINNINGS 27 things, and the attentive reader will find them edifyingly rep- resented in our photographic illustrations. There has been little de- velopment since that time in the Country. Our illustrations show the methods of arrange- ment, and the reader will see how easily and readily the ut- most variety of battlefields can be made. (It is merely to be remarked that a too crowded Country makes the guns in- effective and leads to a mere tree to tree and house to house scramble, and that large open 28 LITTLE WARS I spaces along the middle, or rivers without frequent fords and bridges, lead to ineffec- \ tive cannonades, because of the danger ot any advance. On the whole, too much cover is better than too little.) We de- cided that one player should plan and lay out the Country, and the other player choose from which side he would come. And to-day we play over such landscapes in a cork-carpeted schoolroom, from which the proper occupants are no longer evicted but remain to take an increasingly responsible and less MODERN BEGINNINGS 29 and less audible and distressing share in the operations. We found it necessary to make certain general rules. Houses and sheds must be made of solid lumps of bricks, and not hollow so that soldiers can be put inside them, be- cause otherwise muddled situa- tions arise. And it was clearly necessary to provide for the re- placement of disturbed objects by chalking out the outlines of boards and houses upon the floor or boards upon which they stood. And while we thus perfected 30 LITTLE WARS the Country, we were also elimi- nating all sorts of tediums, | disputable possibilities, and deadlocks from the game. We decided that every man should , be as brave and skilfbl as every i other man, and that when two j men of opposite sides came into ^ contact they would inevitably kill each other. This restored strategy to its predominance over chance. We then began to humanise that wild and fearful fowl, the gun. We decided that a gun could not be fired if there were not six — afterwards we Sn ^3 1?. I MODERN BEGINNINGS 31 reduced the number to four — men within six inches of it. And we ruled that a gun could not both fire and move in the same general move : it could either be fired or moved (or left alone). If there were less than six men within six inches of a gun, then we tried letting it fire as many shots as there were men, and we permitted a single man to move a gun, and move with it as far as he could go by the rules — a foot, that is, if he was an infantry-man, and two feet if he was a cavalry- man. We abolished altogether 32 LITTLE WARS that magical freedom of an un- assisted gun to move two feet. And on such rules as these we fought a number of battles. They were interesting, but not entirely satisfactory. We took no prisoners — a feature at once barbaric and unconvinc- ing. The battles lingered on a long time, because we shot with extreme care and deliber- ation, and they were hard to bring to a decisive finish. The guns were altogether too pre- dominant. They prevented at- tacks getting home, and they made it possible for a timid MODERN BEGINNINGS 33 player to put all his soldiers out of sight behind hills and houses, and bang away if his opponent showed as much as the tip of a bayonet. Monsieur Bloch seemed vindicated, and Little War had become impossible. And there was something a little absurd, too, in the spec- tacle of a solitary drummer-boy, for example, marching off with a gun. But as there was neverthe- less much that seemed to us ex- tremely pretty and picturesque about the game, we set to work — and here a certain Mr 34 LITTLE WARS M. with his brother, Captain M., hot from the Great War in South Africa, came in most help- fully — to quicken it. Mani- festly the guns had to be reduced to manageable terms. We cut down the number of shots per move to four, and we required that four men should be within six inches of a gun for it to be in action at all. Without four men it could neither fire nor move — it was out of action 5 and if it moved, the four men had to go with it. Moreover, to put an end to that little resistant MODERN BEGINNINGS 35 body of men behind a house, we required that after a gun had been fired it should re- main, without alteration of the elevation, pointing in the di- rection of its last shot, and have two men placed one on either side of the end of its trail. This secured a certain exposure on the part of con- cealed and sheltered gunners. It was no longer possible to go on shooting out of a perfect security for ever. All this fa- voured the attack and led to a livelier game. Our next step was to abol- 36 LITTLE WARS ish the tedium due to the elabo- rate aiming of the guns, by fixing a time limit for every move. We made this an out- side limit at first, ten minutes, but afterwards we discovered that it made the game much more warlike to cut the time down to a length that would barely permit a slow-moving player to fire all his guns and move all his men. This led to small bodies of men lagging and '' getting left,'' to careless exposures, to rapid, less accu- rate shooting, and just that eventfulness one would expect t MODERN BEGINNINGS 37 in the hurry and passion of real fighting. It also made the game brisker. We have since also made a limit, sometimes of four minutes, sometimes of five minutes, to the interval for adjustment and deliberation after one move is finished and before the next move begins. This further removes the game from the chess category, and approximates it to the like- ness of active service. Most of a general's decisions, once a fight has begun, must be made in such brief intervals of time. (But we leave un- ^IuIuIilJII3 38 LITTLE WARS limited time at the outset for the planning.) As to our time-keeping, we catch a visitor with a stop-watch if we can, and if we cannot, we use a fair-sized clock with a second-hand: the player not moving says " Go,'' and warns at the last two minutes, last minute, and last thirty seconds. But I think it would not be difficult to procure a cheap clock — because, of course, no one wants a very accurate agreement with Greenwich as to the length of a second — that would have minutes instead MODERN BEGINNINGS 39 of hours and seconds instead of minutes, and that would ping at the end of every minute and discharge an alarm note at the end of the move. That would abolish the rather boring strain of time-keeping. One could just watch the fighting. Moreover, in our desire to bring the game to a climax, we decided that instead of a fight to a finish we would fight to some determined point, and we found very good sport in sup- posing that the arrival of three men of one force upon the back line of the opponent's \\tM 40 LITTLE WARS side of the country was of such strategic importance as to de- termine the battle. But this form of battle we have since largely abandoned in favour of the old fight to a finish again. We found it led to one type of battle only, a massed rush at the antagonist's line, and that our arrangements of time- limits and capture and so forth had eliminated most of the con- cluding drag upon the game. Our game was now very much in its present form. We considered at various times the possibility of introducing some .5s. MODERN BEGINNINGS 41 complication due to the bring- ing up of ammunition or sup- plies generally, and we decided that it would add little to the interest or reality of the game. Our battles are little brisk fights in which one may suppose that all the ammunition and food needed are carried by the men themselves. But our latest development has been in the direction of killing hand to hand or taking prisoners. We found it neces- sary to distinguish between an isolated force and a force that was merely a projecting part 42 LITTLE WARS of a larger force. We made a definition of isolation. After a considerable amount of trials we decided that a man or a de- tachment shall be considered to be isolated when there is less than half its number of its own side within a move of it. Now, in actual civilised warfare small detached bodies do not sell their lives dearly j a considerably larger force is able to make them prisoners without difficulty. Accordingly we decided that if a blue force, for example^ has one or more men isolated, and a red force MODERN BEGINNINGS 43 of at least double the strength of this isolated detachment moves up to contact with it, the blue men will be con- sidered to be prisoners. That seemed fair; but so desperate is the courage and devotion of lead soldiers, that it came to this, that any small force that got or seemed likely to get isolated and caught by a superior force instead of wait- ing to be taken prisoners, dashed at its possible captors and slew them man for man. It was manifestly unreasonable to permit this. And in consider- •""^^ttHiiiMi '^''■■^=^^^^ _^ 44 LITTLE WARS 1 ing how best to prevent such inhuman heroisms, we were re- minded of another frequent in- cident in our battles that also erred towards the incredible and vitiated our strategy. That was the charging of one or two isolated horsemen at a gun in order to disable it. Let me illustrate this by an incident. A force consisting of ten in- fantry and five cavalry with a gun are retreating across an ex- posed space, and a gun with thirty men, cavalry and in- fantry, in support comes out upon a crest into a position to MODERN BEGINNINGS 45 fire within two feet of the re- treating cavalry. The attack- ing player puts eight men within six inches of his gun and pushes the rest of his men a little for- ward to the right or left in pur- suit of his enemy. In the real thing, the retreating horsemen would go off to cover with the gun, while the infantry would open out and retreat, firing. But see what happened in our imperfect form of Little War! The move of the retreating player began. Instead of re- treating his whole force, he charged home with his mounted 46 LITTLE WARS desperadoes, killed five of the eight men about the gun, and so by the rule silenced it, en- abhng the rest of his little body to get clean away to cover at the leisurely pace of one foot a move. This was not like any sort of warfare. In real life cavalry cannot pick out and kill its equivalent in cavalry while that equivalent is closely supported by other cavalry or infantry 5 a handful of troopers cannot gallop past well and abundantly manned guns in ac- tion, cut down the gunners and interrupt the fire. And yet MODERN BEGINNINGS 47 for a time we found it a little difficult to frame simple rules to meet these two bad cases and prevent such scandalous possi- bilities. We did at last con- trive to do so; we invented what we call the melee^ and our revised rules in the event of a melee will be found set out upon a later page. They do really permit something like an actual result to hand-to-hand encounters. They abolish Ho- ratius Codes. We also found difficulties about the capturing of guns. At first we had merely provided 48 LITTLE WARS that a gun was captured when it was out of action and four men of the opposite force were within six inches of it, but we found a number of cases for which this rule was too vague. A gun, for example, would be disabled and left with only three men within six inches j the enemy would then come up eight or ten strong within six inches on the other side, but not really reaching the gun. At the next move the original possessor of the gun would bring up half a dozen men within six inches. To MODERN BEGINNINGS 49 whom did the gun belong? By the original wording of our rule, it might be supposed to belong to the attack which had never really touched the gun yet, and they could claim to turn it upon its original side. We had to meet a number of such cases. We met them by requiring the capturing force — or, to be precise, four men of it — actually to pass the axle of the gun before it could be taken. All sorts of odd little diffi- culties arose too, connected with the use of the guns as 50 LITTLE WARS a shelter from fire, and very exact rules had to be made to avoid tilting the nose and rais- ing the breech of a gun in order to use it as cover. . . . We still found it difficult to introduce any imitation into our game of either retreat or the surrender of men not actu- ally taken prisoners in a melee. Both things were possible by the rules, but nobody did them because there was no induce- ment to do them. Games were apt to end obstinately with the death or capture of the last man. An inducement was needed. MODERN BEGINNINGS 51 This we contrived by playing not for the game but for points, scoring the result of each game and counting the points towards the decision of a campaign. Our campaign was to our single game what a rubber is to a game of whist. We made the end of a war aoo, 300, or 400 or more points up, according to the number of games we wanted to play, and we scored a hundred for each battle won, and in addition i for each in- fantry-man, iV^ for each cavalry- man, 10 for each gun, '/4 for each man held prisoner by the 52 LITTLE WARS enemy, and Vi for each prisoner held at the end of the game, subtracting what the antago- nist scored by the same scale. Thus, when he felt the battle was hopelessly lost, he had a i direct inducement to retreat any guns he could still save and sur- render any men who were under the fire of the victors' guns and likely to be slaughtered, in order to minimise the score against i him. And an interest was given I to a skilful retreat, in which the loser not only saved points for himself but inflicted losses upon the pursuing enemy. MODERN BEGINNINGS 53 At first we played the game from the outset, with each player's force within sight of his antagonist; then we found it possible to hang a double curtain of casement cloth from a string stretched across the middle of the field, and we drew this back only after both sides had set out their men. Without these curtains we found the first player was at a heavy disadvantage, because he displayed all his dispositions before his opponent set down his men. And at last our rules have 54 LITTLE WARS reached stability, and we regard them now with the virtuous pride of men who have per- sisted in a great undertaking and arrived at precision after much tribulation. There is not a piece of constructive legislation in the world, not a solitary attempt to meet a com- plicated problem, that we do not now regard the more chari- tably for our efforts to get a right result from this appar- ently easy and puerile business of fighting with tin soldiers on the floor. And so our laws all made. MODERN BEGINNINGS 55 battles have been fought, the mere beginnings, we feel, of vast campaigns. The game has become in a dozen aspects ex- traordinarily like a small real battle. The plans are made, the Country hastily surveyed, and then the curtains are closed, and the antagonists make their opening dispositions. Then the curtains are drawn back and the hostile forces come within sight of each other; the little companies and squadrons and batteries appear hurrying to their positions, the infantry deploying into long open lines, 56- LITTLE WARS the cavalry sheltering in re- serve, or galloping with the guns to favourable advance positions. In two or three moves the guns are flickering into action, a cavalry melee may be in prog- ress, the plans of the attack are more or less apparent, here are men pouring out from the shelter of a wood to secure some point of vantage, and here are troops massing among farm buildings for a vigorous attack. The combat grows hot round some vital point. Move follows move in swift succession. MODERN BEGINNINGS 57 One realises with a sickening sense of error that one is outnum- bered and hard pressed here and uselessly cut off there, that one's guns are ill-placed, that one's wings are spread too widely, and that help can come only over some deadly zone of fire. So the fight wears on. Guns are lost or won, hills or villages stormed or held; suddenly it grows clear that the scales are tilting beyond recovery, and the loser has nothing left but to contrive how he may get to the back line and safety with the vestiges of his command. . . . 58 LITTLE WARS But let me, before I go on to tell of actual battles and campaigns, give here a sum- mary of our essential rules. Section III THE RULES liMiBilWiSSarJS3rT^..&>aa5-.£is»r<-»=.. — ^>— — THE RULES Here, then, are the rules of the perfect battle-game as we play it in an ordinary room. The Country (i) The Country must be arranged by one player, who, failing any other agreement, shall be selected by the toss of a coin. (2) The other player shall then choose which side of the field he will fight from. 62 LITTLE WARS (3) The Country must be disturbed as little as possible in each move. Nothing in the Country shall be moved or set aside deliberately to facilitate the firing of guns. A player must not lie across the Country so as to crush or disturb the Country if his opponent ob- jects. Whatever is moved by accident shall be replaced after the end of the move. The Move (i) After the Country is made and the sides chosen, then (and not until then) the THE RULES 63 players shall toss for the first move. (2) If there is no curtain, the player winning the toss, hereafter called the First Player, shall next arrange his men along his back line, as he chooses. Any men he may place behind or in front of his back line shall count in the subsequent move as if they touched the back line at its nearest point. The Second Player shall then do the same. But if a curtain is available both first and second player may put down their men at the 64 LITTLE WARS same time. Both players may take unlimited time for the putting down of their men; if there is a curtain it is drawn back when they are ready, and the game then begins. (3) The subsequent moves after the putting down are timed. The length of time given for each move is de- termined by the size of the forces engaged. About a minute should be allowed for moving 30 men and a minute for each gun. Thus for a force of 1 10 men and 3 guns, moved by one player, seven minutes THE RULES 65 is an ample allowance. As the battle progresses and the men are killed off, the allowance is reduced as the players may agree. The player about to move stands at attention a yard behind his back line un- til the timekeeper says ^'Go." He then proceeds to make his move until time is up. He must instantly stop at the cry of ^^ Time." Warning should be given by the timekeeper two minutes, one minute^ and thirty seconds before time is up. There will be an interval be- fore the next move^ during 66 LITTLE WARS which any disturbance of the Country can be rearranged and men accidentally overturned re- placed in a proper attitude. This interval must not exceed five or four minutes, as may be agreed upon. (4) Guns must not be fired before the second move of the first player — not counting the ^^ putting down" as a move. Thus the first player puts down, then the second player, the first player moves, then the second player, and the two forces are then supposed to come into efl^ective range of each THE RULES 67 other and the first player may open fire if he wishes to do so. (5) In making his move a player must move or fire his guns if he wants to do so, be- fore moving his men. To this rule of ''Guns First" there is to be no exception. (6) Every soldier may be moved and every gun moved or fired at each move, subject to the following rules: Mobility of the Various Arms (Each player must be pro- vided with two pieces of string. 68 LITTLE WARS one two feet in length and the other six inches.) (i) An infantry-man may be moved a foot or any less dis- tance at each move. (2) A cavalry-man may be moved two feet or any less dis- tance at each move. (3) ^ §^^ ^^ ^^ action if there are at least four men of its own side within six inches of it. If there are not at least four men within that distance, it can neither be moved nor fired. (4) If a gun is in action it can either be moved or fired THE RULES 69 at each move, but not both. If it is fired it may fire as many as four shots in each move. It may be swung round on its axis (the middle point of its wheel axle) to take aim, pro- vided the Country about it per- mitsj it may be elevated or depressed, and the soldiers about it may, at the discretion of the firer, be made to lie down in their places to facili- tate its handling. (Moreover, soldiers who have got in front of the fire of their own guns may lie down while the guns fire over them. At the end of 70 LITTLE WARS the move the gun must be left without altering its elevation and pointing in the direction of the last shot. And after firing, two men must be placed ex- actly at the end of the trail of the gun, one on either side in a line directly behind the wheels. So much for firing. If the gun is moved and not fired, then at least four men who are with the gun must move up with it to its new position, and be placed within six inches of it in its new position. The gun itself must be placed trail forward and the muzzle point- THE RULES 71 ing back in the direction from which it came, and so it must remain until it is swung round on its axis to fire. Obviously the distance which a gun can move will be determined by the men it is with; if there are at least four cavalry-men with it, they can take the gun two feet, but if there are fewer cavalry-men than four and the rest infantry, or no cavalry and all infantry, the gun will be movable only one foot. (5) Every man must be placed fairly clear of hills, build- 72 LITTLE WARS ings, trees, guns, etc. He must not be jammed into inter- stices, and either player may insist upon a clear distance be- tween any man and any gun or other object of at least one- sixteenth of an inch. Nor must men be packed in con- tact with men. A space of one-sixteenth of an inch should be kept between them. (6) When men are knocked over by a shot they are dead, and as many men are dead as a shot knocks over or causes to fall or to lean so that they would fall if unsupported. But "^idl THE RULES 73 if a shot strikes a man but does not knock him over, he is dead, provided the shot has not already killed a man. But a shot cannot kill more than one man without knocking him over, and if it touches several without oversetting them, only the first touched is dead and the others are not incapaci- tated. A shot that rebounds from or glances off any object and touches a man, kills him ; it kills him even if it simply rolls to his feet, subject to what has been said in the previous sentence. ^' M 74 LITTLE WARS Hand-to-Hand Fighting AND Capturing (i) A man or a body of men which has less than half its own number of men on its own side within a move of it^ is said to be r'sc- lated. But if there is at least half its number of men of its own side within a move of it, it is not isolated ^ it is supported. (2) Men may be moved up into virtual contact (oner-eighth of an inch or closer) with men of the opposite side. They THE RULES 75 must then be left until the end of the move. (3) At the end of the move, if there are men of the side that has just moved in contact with any men of the other side, they constitute a melee. All the men in contact, and any other men within six inches of the men in contact, measuring from any point of their persons, weapons, or horses, are supposed to take part in the melee. At the end of the move the two players examine the melee and dispose of the men con- 76 LITTLE WARS cerned according to the follow- ing rules: — Either the numbers taking part in the melee on each side are equal or unequal. (a) If they are equal all the men on both sides are killed. (b) If they are unequal then the inferior force is either iso- lated or [measuring from the points of contact^ not isolated. {I?\) If it is isolated (see i above) then as many men be- come prisoners as the inferior force is less in numbers than the superior force, and the rest kill each a man and are killed. THE RULES 11 Thus nine against eleven have two taken prisoners, and each side seven men dead. Four of the eleven remain with two prisoners. One may put this in another way by saying that the two forces kill each other off, man for man, until one force is double the other, which is then taken prisoner. Seven men kill seven men, and then four are left with two. {h^) But if the inferior force is not isolated (see i above), then each man of the inferior force kills a man of the supe- rior force and is himself killed. 78 LITTLE WARS And the player who has just completed the move, the one who has charged, decides, when there is any choice, which men in the melee^ both of his own and of his antagonist, shall die and which shall be prison- ers or captors. All these arrangements are made after the move is over, in the interval between the moves, and the time taken for the adjustment does not count as part of the usual in- terval for consideration. It is extra time. The player next moving THE RULES 79 may, if he has taken prisoners, move these prisoners. Prison- ers may be sent under escort to the rear or wherever the capturer directs, and one man within six inches of any number of prisoners up to seven can es- cort these prisoners and go with them. Prisoners are liberated by the death of any escort there may be within six inches of them, but they may not be moved by the player of their own side until the move follow- ing that in which the escort is killed. Directly prisoners are taken they are supposed to be 8o LITTLE WARS disarmed, and if they are liber- ated they cannot fight until they are rearmed. In order to be rearmed they must return to the back line of their own side. An escort having conducted prisoners to the back line, and so beyond the reach of libera- tion, may then return into the fighting line. Prisoners once made cannot fight until they have returned to their back line. It follows, therefore, that if after the ad- judication of a melee a player moves up more men into touch with the survivors of this first THE RULES 8i m^Iee^ and so constitutes a sec- ond meke^ any prisoners made in the first melee will not count as combatants in the second melee. Thus if A moves up nineteen men into a melee with thirteen of B's, — B having only five in support, — A makes six prisoners, kills seven men, and has seven of his own killed. If, now, B can move up four- teen men into melee with A's victorious survivors, which he may be able to do by bringing the five into contact, and get- ting nine others within six inches of them, no count is made of the 82 LITTLE WARS six of B's men who are prison- ers in the hands of A. They are disarmed. B, therefore, has fourteen men in the second melee and A twelve, B makes two prisoners, kills ten of A's men, and has ten of his own killed. But now the six prison- ers originally made by A are left without an escort, and are therefore recaptured by B. But they must go to B's back line and return before they can fight again. So, as the out- come of these two melees^ there are six of B's men going as released prisoners to his back THE RULES 83 line whence they may return into the battle, two of A's men prisoners in the hands of B, one of B's staying with them as escort, and three of B's men still actively free for action. A, at a cost of nineteen men, has disposed of seventeen of B's men for good, and of six or seven, according to whether B keeps his prisoners in his fight- ing line or not, temporarily. (4) Any isolated body may hoist the white flag and sur- render at any time. (5) A gun is captured when there is no man whatever of its 84 LITTLE WARS original side within six inches of it, and when at least four men of the antagonist side have moved up to it and have passed its wheel axis going in the di- rection of their attack. This latter point is important. An antagonist's gun may be out of action, and you may have a score of men coming up to it and within six inches of it, but it is not yet captured ; and you may have brought up a dozen men all round the hostile gun, but if there is still one enemy just out of their reach and within six inches of the THE RULES 85 end of the trail of the gun, that gun is not captured: it is still in dispute and out of ac- tion, and you may not fire it or move it at the next move. But once a gun is fully cap- tured, it follows all the rules of your own guns. Varieties of the Battle- Game You may play various types of game. (i) One is the Fight to the Finish. You move in from any points you like on the back line and try to kill, capture, 86 LITTLE WARS or drive over his back line the whole of the enemy's force. You play the game for points; you score loo for the victory, and lo for every gun you hold or are in a position to take, 114 for every cavalry-man, i for every infantry-man still alive and uncaptured, y^ for every man of yours prisoner in the hands of the enemy, and y^. for every prisoner you have taken. If the battle is still undecided when both forces are reduced below fifteen men, the battle is drawn and the 100 points for victory are divided. .^^^i^^^-r ^- \^^^^^McAn^ THE RULES 87 Note, — This game can be fought with any sized force, but if it is fought with less than 50 a side, the minimum must be ID a side. (2) The Blow at the Rear game is decided when at least three men of one force reach any point in the back line of their antagonist. He is then supposed to have suffered a strategic defeat, and he must retreat his entire force over the back line in six moves, /. e, six of his moves. Anything left on the field after six moves capitulates to the victor. Points A DRAW/ 88 LITTLE WARS count as in the preceding game, but this lasts a shorter time and is better adapted to a cramped country with a short back line. With a long rear line the game is simply a rush at some weak point in the first player's line by the entire cavalry brigade of the second player. Instead of making the whole back line available for the Blow at the Rear, the middle or either half may be taken. (3) In the Defensive Game, a force, the defenders, two- thirds as strong as its antago- nist, tries to prevent the latter THE RULES 89 arriving, while still a quarter of its original strength upon the defender's back line. The Country must be made by one or both of the players before it is determined which shall be defender. The players then toss for choice of sides, and the winner of the toss becomes the defender. He puts out his force over the field on his own side, anywhere up to the dis- tance of one move off the middle line — that is to say, he must not put any man within one move of the middle line^ but he may do so anywhere on 90 LITTLE WARS his own side of that limit, — and then the loser of the toss becomes first player, and sets out his men a move from his back line. The defender may open fire forthwith j he need not wait until after the second move of the first player, as the second player has to do. Composition of Forces Except in the above cases, or when otherwise agreed upon, the forces engaged shall be equal in number and similar in composition. The methods of handicapping are obvious. A THE RULES 91 slight inequality (chances of war) may be arranged between equal players by leaving out 12 men on each side and toss- ing with a pair of dice to see how many each player shall take of these. The best ar- rangement and proportion of the forces is in small bodies of about 20 to 25 infantry- men and 12 to 15 cavalry to a gun. Such a force can ma- noeuvre comfortably on a front of 4 or 5 feet. Most of our games have been played with about 80 infantry, 50 cavalry, 3 or 4 naval guns, and a field gun r^-^^^ ^i^;^-^-' 92 LITTLE WARS on either side, or with smaller proportional forces. We have played excellent games on an eighteen-foot battlefield with over two hundred men and six guns a side. A player may, of course, rearrange his forces to suit his own convenience; brigade all or most of his cav- alry into a powerful striking force, or what not. But more guns proportionally lead to their being put out of action too early for want of men 5 a larger pro- portion of infantry makes the game sluggish, and more cav- alry — because of the difficulty THE RULES 93 of keeping large bodies of this force under cover — leads simply to early heavy losses by gun-fire and violent and dis- astrous charging. The com- position of a force may, of course, be varied considerably. One good Fight to a Finish game we tried as follows: We made the Country, tossed for choice, and then drew curtains across the middle of the field. Each player then selected his force from the available soldiers in this way: he counted in- fantry as I each, cavalry as iV2y and a gun as lo, and, AT One 4.kOVK S »-*A« P . . .. /U.L OROiNAQY TOArFtt . . . 94 LITTLE WARS taking whatever he liked in whatever position he liked, he made up a total of 150. He could, for instance, choose 100 infantry and 5 guns, or 100 cavalry and no guns, or 60 in- fantry, 40 cavalry, and 3 guns. In the result, a Boer-like cav- alry force of 80 with 3 guns suffered defeat at the hands of 1 1 o infantry with 4. Size of the Soldiers The soldiers used should be all of one size. The best Brit- ish makers have standardised sizes, and sell infantry and cav- THE RULES 95 airy in exactly proportioned di- mensions; the infantry being nearly two inches tall. There is a lighter, cheaper make of perhaps an inch and a half high that is also available. Foreign- made soldiers are of variable sizes. Section IV THE BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM ^ n ^-f, B ^B ^o'"""""/»r/, » ii6 LITTLE WARS Strategic mistake of Red, and is going to fling every man at the farm. His right, of 5 cavalry and 1 6 infantry, will get up as soon as possible to the woods near the centre of the field (whence the fire of their gun will be able to cut oflT the two portions of Red's force from each other), and then, leaving the gun there with suffi- cient men to serve it, the rest of this party will push on to co-operate with the main force of their comrades in the inevi- table scrimmage for the farm. Figure 3 shows the fight >. <, '5 3Q 1> 1 BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 117 after Red and Blue have both made their first move. It is taken from Red's side. Red has not as yet realised the danger of his position. His left gun struggles into position to the left of the churchy his centre and right push for the farm. Blue's five cavalry on his left have already galloped forward into a favourable po- sition to open fire at the next move — they are a little hidden in the picture by the church; the sixteen infantry follow hard, and his main force makes straight for the farm. ii8 LITTLE WARS Figure 4 shows the affair developing rapidly. Red's cav- alry on his right have taken his two guns well forward into a position to sweep either side of the farm, and his left gun is now well placed to pound Blue's infantry centre. His in- fantry continue to press for- ward, but Blue, for his second move, has already opened fire from the woods with his right gun, and killed three of Red's men. His infantry have now come up to serve this gun^ and the cavalry who brought it into position at the first move -^ •I" % ■^ ^ "3 •x BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 119 have now left it to them in order to gallop over to join the force attacking the farm. Undismayed by Red's guns, Blue has brought his other two guns and his men as close to the farm as they can go. His leftmost gun stares Red's in the face, and prevents any ef- fective fire, his middle gun faces Red's middle gun. Some of his cavalry are exposed to the right of the farm, but most are completely covered now by the farm from Red's fire. Red has now to move. The nature of his position is becoming ap- I20 LITTLE WARS parent to him. His right gun is ineffective, his left and his centre guns cannot kill more than seven or eight men be- tween them; and at the next move, unless he can silence them. Blue's guns will be mow- ing his exposed cavalry down from the security of the farm. He is in a fix. How is he to get out of it? His cavalry are slightly outnumbered, but he decides to do as much execu- tion as he can with his own guns, charge the Blue guns be- fore him, and then bring up his infantry to save the situation. BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 121 Figure ^a shows the result of Red's move. His two effec- tive guns have between them bowled over two cavalry and six infantry in the gap between the farm and Blue's right gun; and then, following up the ef- fect of his gunfire^ his cavalry charges home over the Blue guns. One oversight he makes, to which Blue at once calls his attention at the end of his move. Red has reckoned on twenty cavalry for his charge, forgetting that by the rules he must put two men at the tail of his middle gun. His infan- r w -■'' 122 LITTLE WARS try are just not able to come up for this duty, and conse- quently two cavalry-men have to be set there. The game then pauses while the players work out the cavalry melee. Red has brought up eighteen men to this 5 in touch or within six inches of touch there are twenty-one Blue cavalry. Red's force is isolated, for only two of his men are within a move, and to support eighteen he would have to have nine. By the rules this gives fifteen men dead on either side and three Red prisoners to Blue. By the <, c BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 123 rules also it rests with Red to indicate the survivors within the limits of the milee as he chooses. He takes very good care there are not four men within six inches of either Blue gun, and both these are out of action therefore for Blue's next move. Of course Red would have done far better to have charged home with thir- teen men only, leaving seven in support, but he was flurried by his comparatively unsuccessful shooting — he had wanted to hit more cavalry — and by the gun-trail mistake. Moreover, JiiJ^LdA^ 2C3=^^' 124 LITTLE WARS he had counted his antagonist wrongly, and thought he could arrange a melee of twenty against twenty. Figure ^b shows the game at the same stage as 5^, imme- diately after the adjudication of the melee. The dead have been picked up, the three prisoners, by a slight deflection of the rules in the direction of the picturesque, turn their faces towards captivity, and the rest of the picture is exactly in the position of 5^. It is now Blue's turn to move, and figure 6a shows the BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 125 result of his move. He fires his rightmost gun (the nose of it is just visible to the right) and kills one infantry-man and one cavalry-man (at the tail of Red's central gun), brings up his surviving eight cavalry into convenient positions for the ser- vice of his temporarily silenced guns, and hurries his infantry forward to the farm, recklessly exposing them in the thin wood between the farm and his right gun. The attentive reader will be able to trace all this in figure 6^, and he will also note the three Red cavalry prisoners go- 126 LITTLE WARS ing to the rear under the escort of one Khaki infantry-man. Figure 6h shows exactly the same stage as figure 6^, that is to say, the end of Blue's third move. A cavalry-man lies dead at the tail of Red's middle gun, an infantry-man a little behind it. His rightmost gun is aban- doned and partly masked, but not hidden, from the observer, by a tree to the side of the farmhouse. And now, what is Red to do? The reader will probably have his own ideas, as I have >3 ^ oq 5^ s -5i BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 127 mine. What Red did do in the actual game was to lose his head, and when at the end of four minutes' deliberation he had to move, he blundered des- perately. He opened fire on Blue's exposed centre and killed eight men. (Their bodies litter the ground in figure 7, which gives a complete bird's-eye view of the battle.) He then sent forward and isolated six or seven men in a wild attempt to re- capture his lost gun, massed his other men behind the in- adequate cover of his central gun, and sent the detachment ■y-x 128 LITTLE WARS of infantry that had hitherto lurked uselessly behind the church, in a frantic and hope- less rush across the open to join them. (The one surviv- ing cavalry-man on his right wing will be seen taking refuge behind the cottage.) There can be little question of the entire unsoundness of all these movements. Red was at a dis- advantage, he had failed to cap- ture the farm, and his business now was manifestly to save his men as much as possible, make a defensive fight of it, inflict as much damage as possible with BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 129 his leftmost gun on Blue's ad- vance, get the remnants of his right across to the church, — the cottage in the centre and their own gun would have given them a certain amount of cover, — and build up a new position about that building as a pivot. With two guns right and left of the church he might conceivably have saved the rest of the fight. That, however, is theory; let us return to fact. Figure 8 gives the disastrous conse- quences of Red's last move. Blue has moved, his guns I30 LITTLE WARS have slaughtered ten of Red's wretched foot, and a rush of nine Blue cavalry and infantry mingles with Red's six surviv- ing infantry about the disputed gun. These infantry by the definition are isolated'^ there are not three other Reds within a move of them. The view in this photograph also is an extensive one, and the reader will note, as a painful ac- cessory, the sad spectacle of three Red prisoners receding to the right. The melee about Red's lost gun works out, of course, at three dead on ^ s St a; >~ .HO. 0° °o . V , " « . .-.o- .^^ '^^ ^ " ° * ^^ ." .'1 A o V ,0' V '^tv v-^ *• ^°-n^. 0' .I'.o. %> v^ 5*» t *^^-