Background
The Battle of Malplaquet, one of the bloodiest of modern times, was fought near the border of France on 11 September 1709, by the forces of Louis XIV of France commanded by Marshal Villars against a Dutch-British army led by Duke of Marlborough. After a string of defeats, failure of the harvest, and the prospect of invasion, Louis XIV had appealed to French patriotism, recruited fresh soldiers, and instructed Marshal Villars to use the country’s last army to give battle against Marlborough’s formidable force. After a series of manoeuvres, Villars settled on a position in which both his flanks were anchored in woods. Even though the French were outnumbered, Marlborough’s by-now-familiar tactics of flank attacks to draw off troops from the centre incurred serious attrition by massed French musketry and skilful use of artillery. By the time Marlborough’s assault on the denuded enemy centre came, his Allied army was badly weakened, and there was no attempt at pursuit by the Allies when the French retreated in good order. The Allies lost 20,000 men, twice as many as the French, and what was regarded by contemporaries as a shockingly large number of casualties caused Britain to question the sacrifices that might be required for Marlborough’s campaign to continue. The Battle of Malplaquet is often regarded as a Pyrrhic victory because its main effect was to prevent the nominal winners from invading France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Malplaquet
The Game
Our wargame depicted the Battle of Malplaquet, fought in September 1709. This battle saw the Allied army under the joint command of Marlborough and Eugene attacking the French army in its field fortifications, seeking a decisive victory to end to the war. Historically, the Allies were able to capture the French lines, but at the cost of very heavy casualties. The French army was able to withdraw from the battlefield and thus prolong the war, while the Allies became politically demoralized by their losses.
The primary source for the scenario was Charles S. Grant’s book, “Wargaming in History, Volume 5: Marlborough’s Big Four” supplemented with other sources. The rules were our home-grown rules for the War of Spanish Succession, which have continued to evolve with each game. We had three players on each side, and the game ran for four hours (12 turns).
Scale: For this game, a base of 15mm figures represented 600 infantry (roughly a battalion), 360 cavalry (about three squadrons), or 6-8 guns. Infantry and cavalry bases were 1.5 inches wide (40mm); gun bases were 1 inch wide. The ground scale on the table was one inch = 100 yards. The table size was 8 X 5 feet. Each game turn represented 30 minutes.
Terrain: The dominant terrain features were two large woods. The Bois de Lanieres anchored the French right, while the Bois de Taisnières (aka Bois de Sars) anchored the left. The Bois de Taisnieres had two streams running along its edges, which disordered movement. The French center was on a low open ridge between the two woods — this ridge was too low to have an effect in the game. Movement in woods caused infantry to become disordered. Cavalry and artillery could also move through woods (as they did historically in this battle), at half speed and disordered. The French positions were covered by a nearly continuous line of field works and abbatis thrown forward along the woods on both flanks and crossing the center. These works provided a cover and combat bonus. Crossing continuous lines of works would disorder cavalry, while crossing the part of the line with stand-alone redoubts would not disorder cavalry.
In the game, the Allied army was under the joint command of Marlborough and Eugene, who, as senior commanders, could command any divisions or brigades in the army. Other senior generals were the Prince of Orange, (commanding the left wing), Wurttemberg (commanding the cavalry reserve), and Schulenberg (commanding three “divisions” of six brigades on the right wing). The Allied army was divided into 8 cavalry divisions (with 19 brigades) and 8 infantry divisions (with 20 brigades), supported by 8 heavy guns and 5 light guns. The Allied force in total had 21 generals, 84 cavalry bases, 107 infantry bases, and 13 gun bases, representing roughly 95,000 men with 100 guns.
The French army was under the command of Villars, who took personal command of the left wing, and Boufflers, who was in command of the right wing. The French also had 10 divisional generals commanding 5 cavalry divisions (with 11 brigades) and 5 infantry divisions (with 21 brigades), supported by 10 medium guns. The French force in total had 12 generals, 87 cavalry bases, 85 infantry bases, and 10 gun bases, representing about 83,000 men with 80 guns.
The French were placed in their historical positions. The right wing, in two fortified lines along the front of the Bois de Lanieres, was held by D’Artagnan’s large infantry division of six French and Spanish brigades with one gun, under the supervision of Boufflers. The center, from right to left, had three guns in position to provide enfilade fire against any enemy moving to their right, then the lines of works contained the Swiss brigade and the Guards brigade, with three guns to their front. Then a line of five redoubts had the Irish brigade and the Bavarian brigade, with two guns to their front. These were all under the command of DeGuich. Two French infantry brigades formed the center’s reserve under Chemerault. The left wing was angled forward 90-degrees along edge of the the Bois de Taisnières, then made another short 90-degree turn inside the woods. This front line was held by four French brigades and one gun under Gosbriand. A second line of defensive works was located to the immediate rear of the forest, held by four French brigades under Albergotti. The French cavalry reserve, in four divisions with 10 brigades of heavy cavalry stretched across the entire rear of the French lines, and a final reserve division of two large dragoon brigades was further to the rear, held off table due to lack of space.
The Allies were also placed in their historical starting positions. Under the concealment of an early morning fog, the Allies were able to move close to the French lines before the battle started. Also, during the night, the Allies erected an artillery redoubt in the center of the field which protected 40 heavy guns within effective range of the French positions. On the Allied left, the Prince of Orange had two Dutch infantry divisions with three gun bases and a Prussian cavalry division to attack the Bois de Lanieres. In the center, Orkney had two British and one Hanoverian brigades and 5 gun bases in the artillery redoubt to engage the center. To Orkney’s right, Lottum’s division of two Prussian and one British brigades prepared to attack the French left along the Bois de Taisnières. Within the woods, Schulenberg’s right wing of three divisions composed of Imperial and German infantry with three guns threatened the extreme left of the French line. Massed in reserve in the rear were seven divisions of Allied cavalry.
The only choice the Allied commander had to make was where to send Withers’ division of three infantry brigades and one small cavalry detachment. Historically, this force was supposed to march to the left wing to support the Prince of Orange’s attack on the Bois de Lanieres, but Marlborough halted that move and redirected Withers on a wide move around the right flank through the Bois de Taisnières. In the game, the Allied commander chose to have Withers make the historical flanking move to the right, and was informed that Withers would arrive halfway along the right edge of the table on Turn 8. This off-table move was kept secret from the French.
In the game, on the Allied left, Orange’s first line of infantry aggressively charged the French field works and was repulsed with loss. Enfilading artillery fire from the French center caused additional casualties. Orange’s second line succeeded in pushing the French out of their first line of defenses, but was stopped by the second line within the woods. The fighting in these woods bogged down into a slogging match with both sides taking heavy losses. An attempted flank move through the woods by the Prussian cavalry served to extend the battle lines but was not decisive. By the end of the game, the opposing forces on this flank were exhausted, holding roughly the same positions in the woods.
Orange’s isolated command was vulnerable to a flank charge from the French center, and the French player in the center moved his reserve cavalry brigade of Gensdarmes forward to threaten such a charge, but then hesitated and the opportunity passed. Seeing the danger, Marlborough ordered two cavalry divisions from his reserve to move forward to the left wing and support the Dutch. When the French cavalry later decided to sally out in force, one brigade containing the Dutch Guard cavalry defeated in succession the French Gensdarmes and two more brigades of Maison du Roi cavalry, leaving the Dutch covered in glory. Their command base had “Malplaquet” written on it as a permanent battle honor.
In the center, the Allied “grand battery” in the artillery redoubt took three game turns to eliminate four of the five French guns opposing it and then turned its attention to the Irish brigade in the redoubts. Under several turns of heavy bombardment, and despite attempts to rally and recover, the Irish brigade finally succumbed to the effect of heavy casualties and departed the field. This left the already thin French center even weaker. Marlborough then ordered Orkney’s division along with the British brigade of Lottum’s division to advance and attack the sections of works held by the French/Swiss Guards and the Bavarians. This attack at first met with mixed results, but a renewed effort saw the Allies capture the works. One remaining French infantry brigade in the second line was all that stood between the Allies and a breakthrough, as the Allied reserve cavalry moved forward to exploit this success. The Swiss brigade, standing on the far right of the French center, had not been involved in this fight; however, a Dutch cavalry brigade, perhaps jealous of the glory won by the Dutch Guards, attempted to charge the Swiss in their works. This probing charge was repulsed with ease, leaving this section of the French line still holding strong.
On the Allied right, Eugene ordered Schulenberg’s large command of three divisions to make an immediate attack on the extreme left of the French line in the woods. The first effort was stopped, but the second attempt carried the abattis. Schulenberg kept the pressure on the French while swinging some brigades around their open flank. He was assisted by Lottum’s two Prussian brigades attacking obliquely from the center. The first Prussian brigade was caught in a cross fire, received heavy casualties, and halted before making contact, but the second brigade was able to pass through unscathed and its attack carried the corner of the works. The forward line of the French left wing was now being pressed on three sides, taking losses and slowly falling back. Schulenberg’s advance around the flank was so rapid, it outpaced Withers’ off table flank march. When Withers’ division finally arrived, Eugene ordered it to support Schulenberg. In retrospect, Withers’ division was too much force on this side of the table, and would probably have been better employed supporting Orange’s attack, where it could have broken the stalemate on that side of the table
In desperation, Villars, commanding the French left wing, ordered his first line of reserve cavalry to move forward to try to halt the advance of Eugene’s infantry. Rather inexplicably, the French cavalry moved into the woods and halted, where they were sitting ducks for the volleys of the Imperial infantry. After a change of commanders (the French player had to leave, which nicely depicted the historical wounding of Villars), the new French commander ordered his beaten up cavalry to withdraw from the woods and regroup behind the still fresh second line of reserve cavalry. The fresh cavalry charged the disordered Allied infantry as it debouched from the woods, driving the leading brigade back with heavy losses. However, this charge was the lone success for the French on this flank. Four more lines of Allied infantry were prepared to press the advance, supported by three guns that Eugene had managed to move through the woods. Only the French second line of infantry, holding field works behind the woods, provided a solid base of resistance in this sector.
At this point we called the game after 12 turns of play, which would have left us in the mid-afternoon of the actual battle. We assessed that the Allies would have enough daylight to break through on the French left and in the center, and they had received fewer total casualties than the French, thus making this a better-than-historical victory for the Allies. However, given that the French were still holding some parts of the field, and given that the mass of Allied cavalry had yet to make its way to the front, we assessed that the defeated French army would have been able to successfully withdraw from the battlefield. Thus Marlborough and Eugene won their victory, but the war would go on.
- TJ
Super looking game. Big battle in 15mm leaves plenty of room for maneuver.