GERMANICOPHOBIA

[Chris]

Gentlemen,

Here's a link (fingers crossed that it works) to a report on a recentely completed game involving - as the title suggests - a whole lot of Germans.

http://lonewarriorswa.com/germanicophobia

The rules used were IMPETVS. The wargame was played solo.

Here's hoping you find it an enjoyable read and perhaps worth a comment or two.

Thanks for your time.

Chris

[Patrick Waterson]

This reminds me of Germanicus' fights against the Germans during his campaign in AD16.  In each case Roman discipline saw off the 'barbarians' - at Minden the Germans did the attacking and were thoroughly trounced for their pains (Tacitus, Annals, 2.16-18); at the Angivarian Wall the Romans seized a German-held position and then warded off a furious counterattack (Tacitus, Annals, 2.20-21).

This incident seems particularly appropriate:

"Arminius, conspicuous among them by gesture, voice, and a wound he had received, kept up the fight. He had thrown himself on our archers and was on the point of breaking through them, when the cohorts of the Raeti, Vendelici, and Gauls faced his attack. By a strong bodily effort, however, and a furious rush of his horse, he made his way through them, having smeared his face with his blood, that he might not be known. Some have said that he was recognised by Chauci serving among the Roman auxiliaries, who let him go. " - Tacitus, Annals 2.17

The Red Leader in the game was not similarly fortunate.

Keep it up, Chris! 

[aligern]

What a slugfest. That sort of fits with impetus which do not seem to generate manoeuvre. It is small surprise that the Germans die frontally to the Romans. Indeed, one wonders how the Germans would fare in any set of rules unless they could either entice the Romans into rough ground or beat them on the flank and get cavalry behind them. That would accord  with history where the Germans really have to ambush the Romans to stand any chance.

As always with Romans, in the end you still have to meet an beat the legions. Opposing them meant coming up with some tactic or situation that would give you an advantage to counter their superiority in any straight fight.
Roy

[Chris]

Patrick and Roy,

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.

The excerpt from Tacitus does ring a bell . . . I seem to recall hearing or reading about the face-painting flight for survival at some point in the distant past . . .

And yes, I have found my games using IMPETVS to be rather large and short on finesse. (Perhaps I need to scale back and see what happens when there is more space and fewer commands/units?)

I confess that it might be an interesting exercise to stage something similar to the described action, but play it through with 3 or 4 different sets of rules.

Thanks again.

Regards,

Chris

[aligern]

Chris, how does Impetus' version of an impetuous advance or obligatory charge play into this? My recollection is that it would force the Germans into frontal attacks?
Roy

[Chris]

Good morning Roy,

Well, over here it's about quarter past seven. Anyway.

While I don't have the rule book in front of me, I think I can recall that once impetuous troops - such as German warband (either light infantry or heavy - most of my fielded units were light) are committed to advance on visible enemy once they are within 30 Us (whatever measurement that is; I used centimeters). It's essentially a required move, though as I understand the rules, just one move segment. For what it's worth, it seems more irregular or barbaric to have them try a second move and thus risk disorder. This would take a die away from the initial impact, but given their impetus bonus, I think it's acceptable.

To answer your question directly: Yes, there's not a lot  of  room for "fancy footwork" by large units of barbarians. Once they get within 30 centimeters or  inches, they are essentially "guided missiles." This does tend to cause some traffic  jams as units battle for  position. It also tends to push screening skirmishers out of the way. If the first wave is repulsed, their retreat also causes disorder in units that are within a certain distance, so in sum, it's pretty chaotic and messy with respect to trying to keep a battle line or any sort of formation, really.

Chris

[aligern]

Thanks Chris, I recall that the compulsion to charge applying to units that are separated from the enemy by a friendly unit struck me as weird as did the whole uncontrollable charging rule which s based upon an outdated view of barbarians. I don't think that barbarian armies fall into chaos when an enemy is to their front, but that is what happens in Impetus.
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

I don't think that barbarian armies fall into chaos when an enemy is to their front, but that is what happens in Impetus.

My impression is that there is a certain imperative to attack unless a defensive arrangement has been agreed beforehand because Germans has something of a culture of valour and declining combat could be equated with cowardice.

In Tacitus (Annals II.17) the Cherusci, who has been "posted by themselves on high ground so as to rush down on the Romans during the battle" seem to have acted prematurely:

"Caesar [Germanicus], as soon as he saw the Cheruscan bands which in their impetuous spirit had rushed to the attack, ordered the finest of his cavalry to charge them in flank ..."

This does look like an impetuous action, because no other troops on either side had yet engaged, but even so, I, like Roy, find the Impetvs insistence on units which are behind friendly units also having to charge a little unreal.  My preference would be to give them the benefit of the doubt and let them hang back.

Part of the problem may be that in a wargame system the Germans would tend to be grouped in discrete units while in real life they would all be part of the same enthusiastic Cherusci mass, so mutual interference between units would not be a problem, the entire contingent being one huge super-unit.

[Mark G]

Would they be an amorphous mass though?

They are a warrior culture based around what would become commitatus, joined by tribal social groupings.

That surely leads to a set of discrete formations or units.

[Duncan Head]

Would they be an amorphous mass though?
They are a warrior culture based around what would become commitatus, joined by tribal social groupings.
That surely leads to a set of discrete formations or units.

We do have:

Now, at last the Germans were forced to bring out their troops. They formed them up, by tribes ("generatimque" - by "gens"), at regular intervals - Harudes, Marcomani, Triboci, Vangiones, Nemetes, Sedusii, and Suebi.

And of the later stages of the same battle:

The Germans were accordingly defeated, though they did not turn to flight — not that they lacked the wish, but simply because they were unable to flee through helplessness and exhaustion. Gathering, therefore, in groups of three hundred, more or less, they would hold their shields before them on all sides, and standing erect, they proved unassailable by reason of their solid front and difficult to dislodge on account of their denseness; thus they neither inflicted nor suffered any harm.

So Ariovistus' men were formed either into tribal units of about 300 infantry, or into tribal units sub-divided into groups of about 300, depending how we interpret things.

We also have Tacitus:

Their number, too, is determined; a hundred from each canton
(centeni ex singulis pagis sunt)

Their line of battle is disposed in wedges.
(Acies per cuneos componitur.)

Each cuneus might perhaps be one of Dio's 300-man groups, but in any event this suggests more articulation than one "mass". The recruitment of picked troops from each pagus district also suggests a sub-unit of the gens "tribe".

[Patrick Waterson]

Gentlemen, you are quite correct about German tribal organisation; the difficulty comes when one tries to represent this with a set of wargame rules which transmogrify meldable sub-formations into distinct and separate battlefield entities.

To take our concatenated cantons of Germans ...

Each subunit of 100 or 300 will turn up to the main tribal muster, but once on the field the subunit will not be testing reaction, moving and fighting independently: it will have become part of a single tribal contingent which for battlefield purposes is the reaction unit which matters - it advances together, fights together and generally acts together as a unitary whole - at least until things go wrong.  It does not run around as a scattering of 300-man units getting in each other's way.

The ability to meld small contingents into larger super-commands so they can attack as a unified tribe is one of the advantages of the DBM(M) system.  It can also represent them breaking down into small contingents again (usually after a succession of recoils and advances).  The Impetus system seems to put them in half-way-house intermediate contingents which then get in each other's way.  That is the problem.

[Duncan Head]

it will have become part of a single tribal contingent which for battlefield purposes is the reaction unit which matters - it advances together, fights together and generally acts together as a unitary whole - at least until things go wrong.

That's an interesting point - the mass breaking up when things start to go wrong.

The ability to meld small contingents into larger super-commands so they can attack as a unified tribe is one of the advantages of the DBM(M) system.  It can also represent them breaking down into small contingents again (usually after a succession of recoils and advances).

True; it is one of the things I like about DBMM, the progressive degradation of control as the force breaks up.

[Mark G]

Of course the flip side of melding co tingents is that you lose all concept of a unit.

Win some, lose some

[aligern]

I think we may be missing the level of intermediate organisation in German armies. Ariovistus has 6000 cavalry, presumably in units of 300 to 500, on th basis that that is the sort of unit size that cavalry generally default to. He also has 16000 light troops, assuming that those who operate with the cavalry are in this total. Let us assume that the lights operate in units of 500 to 1000 men.  He then has a mass of heavy infantry say 30,000 strong divided by tribe into seven tribal units, averaging 4-5000 strong.

That gives us quite a bit of substructure in the German army. I know I am making assumptions about the lights and cavalry, but  there are  certain rules of thumb that can be applied to the size of units that can be controlled and  manoeuvred. Of course these can be concatenated into larger units for manoeuvre, but the description of say Ariovistus'  6000 cavalry and a like number of light infantry operating together is strongly suggestive of smaller units operating together.
Similarly, at Argentoratum the Allamanni have the forces of many sub- reguli  in their army and presumably each under king's forces  operated together as a unit.
Within these units there must be another llevel of organisation becuse each king or kinglet will have his gefolgschaft or comitatus of 100 to 300 men and then there are the hundreds, the free men of the tribe ....organised by 100s, but likely in units by canton.
So I suggest that there are units of substantial size in German armies, larger than 300 but smaller than whole tribes. Indeed, their tactics in the Tacitan period of launching assaults and then melting back into the forest via hidden paths are really only achievable if units can break down rapidly into their component parts to run off down the path....it not being practical for several thousand men to try and make it down a few paths at once.

Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

I think we may be missing the level of intermediate organisation in German armies.

Quite likely, and furthermore Ariovistus' 'Free Companions' might also differ in some respects from a fully mobilised tribe.  The question seems to be how this would work out in terms of battlefield employment: Ariovistus' forces deployed by tribe, and Arminius seems to have done the same when facing Germanicus.  Caesar (BG VI.23) notes:

"When a state either repels war waged against it, or wages it against another, magistrates are chosen to preside over that war with such authority, that they have power of life and death. In peace there is no common magistrate, but the chiefs of provinces [regionum] and cantons [pagorum] administer justice and determine controversies among their own people."

He adds a point which could complicate matters:

"And when any of their chiefs has said in an assembly "that he will be their leader, let those who are willing to follow, give in their names;" they who approve of both the enterprise and the man arise and promise their assistance and are applauded by the people; such of them as have not followed him are accounted in the number of deserters and traitors, and confidence in all matters is afterward refused them."

One gets the impression that a German tribe goes to war as one people with one leader, but if that leader leads them to defeat rather than glory, the fine mass of warriors he leads on the battlefield seems to break up into contingents based on the regio (gau?) or pagus (hundert?) from which each warrior came.  The default small unit would thus be based on the pagus and the intermediate unit on the regio, or rather their Germanic equivalents.