The Battle of Freeman's Farm on September 19, 1777 put a stop to General Burgoyne's attempts to march south towards Albany. He ordered his army to dig in on the old battlefield, erecting redoubts on several hills facing the American army. Though they received news of Howe's victory at Brandywine, the situation for the British army slowly grew worse. On October 7, Burgoyne ordered a reconnaissance in force towards the American lines.
Charles XII: Warrior King was favourably reviewed in a recent issue of the Swedish history magazine, Militär Historia. In issue number 8 from 2019, author Olle Bergman provides his take on the recent anthology edited by John Hattendorg, Augustus Veenendaal, Åsa Karlsson, Margriet Lacy Bruijn, and Rolof van Hovëll tot Westerflier. Below is a rough translation […]
On October 3rd, 2018, Charles XII: Warrior King was officially released. The launch event was held in Stockholm, Sweden at the House of Nobility (Riddarhuset). Attended by an international audience, the official presentation included a panel discussion. This was moderated by John B. Hattendorf, Charles XII’s chief editor, and included contributions by several of the book’s […]
Even though it’s a few years old now, we’re very happy to see that many people are still reading (and reviewing) Edge of Empire, Jona Lendering and Arjen Bosman’s comprehensive look at Roman influence on Germany and the Low Countries. Recently, we found out about a new review in Britannia, the journal of the Society for […]
Rails to the Front recently received a fabulous review in the 2018 January edition of the Lexington Quarterly. As Gregory P. Ames concludes about the book: “this is an authoritative work, engagingly written, attractively designed, and given its nice price, easily recommendable as the go-to work in its field.” You can read the complete review […]
Rails to the Front: The role of railways in Wartime was recently reviewed in the fall-winter 2017 edition of Railway History. Col. Don Woodworth, Jr. Provided a thorough review of the work by Guus Veenendaal and Roger Grant, and concluded it was an excellent value for money and a fine introduction to the topic: “This book […]
Karwansaray was fortunate enough to acquire the rights to publish a second edition of Romanian artist Radu Oltean’s book on the Dacian Wars. You probably know Radu from the centrefolds that have illuminated (almost) every issue of Ancient Warfare magazine from issue VII.6 (on Marcus Aurelius) onwards. You can get an idea of how Radu […]
There is no advertising as good as a testimonial from a happy customer. When I met photographer Stef Verstraaten last weekend at the Nijmegen Roman festival, he told me someone had put a video on Youtube of his first impressions of Romans – Clothing from the Roman Era in North-West Europe. Obviously, I checked it immediately […]
Last year saw the publication of the first hardcover special of Ancient Warfare magazine, Edge of Empire, written by Jona Lendering and Arjen Bosman. I recently interviewed Jona on the book, in case you missed it. This year’s Ancient Warfare special will be another hardcover book, entitled Henchmen of Ares: Warriors and Warfare in Early […]
I recently had a talk with Jona Lendering, co-author of Edge of Empire: Rome’s Frontier on the Lower Rhine, a hardcover book on the Roman occupation of the Low Countries that was published as last year’s special of Ancient Warfare. What follows includes some background information on the book and one of its authors, as well as […]
Marlborough: Soldier and Diplomat received a special mention over the holidays when Janice Murray, Director General of the National Army Museum, praised it as one of the best military books of 2012 in an article for The London Times. You can read her pick, along with those of other notable experts, in this copy of […]
The Dutch academic journal, Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis, has just published another favourable review of De Ruyter: Dutch Admiral. You can read their review here (in Dutch).
On Thursday, 27 September 2012, a landmark new book exploring the life and times of John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, was launched by Karwansaray Publishers. Marlborough: Soldier and Diplomat offers uniquely diverse insights from twelve eminent international historians and experts on a man long regarded as one of Britain’s greatest generals. This key […]
A number of new reviews for Michiel De Ruyter: Dutch Admiral have recently appeared in a variety of North American magazines and journals. The Northern Mariner, The Mariner’s Mirror and Naval History magazine have all published very positive and encouraging reviews of the book. To read what each of these publications had to say, you […]
De Ruyter: Dutch Admiral has been nominated for the Boerhaave Biography Prize, an award given out by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KHMW). This prize is brand new in 2012 and De Ruyter will be competing against 19 other outstanding Dutch biographies for the award. For more information and a complete list of the […]
A review of De Ruyter: Dutch Admiral appeared today in the book section of the NRC Handelsblad, one of the most prestigious newspapers in the Netherlands. The reviewer calls the book “a rich and instructive book with nicely reproduced illustrations, a lovely calling card for this new publisher”. You can read a complete reveiw on […]
Cindy Vallar is an enthusiast of all things piratical. She provides a great resource via her website, Pirates and Privateers. Here you can find articles, book reviews and links to other sites all related to the history of pirates from ancient times to the present. She has recently published a review of De Ruyter, which […]
Historyofwar.org has posted a review of De Ruyter: Dutch Admiral on their website. Unlike earlier press, this new review is in English. You can take a look at it here.
Today, Rolof van Hövell tot Westerflier, one of the co-editors of De Ruyter: Dutch Admiral, discussed the book on Graven aan de Amstel, a weekly history program presented by Amsterdam FM. In the hour-long interview, the host, Laurens van der Heijden, discussed various aspect of De Ruyter’s career and life with Rolof, along with future […]
De Ruyter: Dutch Admiral was officially introduced to the press and public as part of the Admiral’s Lecture Series, a bi-annual presentation given by the Royal Dutch Navy. The book’s introduction was combined with a lecture by noted Oxford professor, Nicolas Rodger. He spoke on the subject of how history was often used to understand […]
Cavalry combat will be difficult to model. I would like to begin this section with some quotations for several books that give a flavor for cavalry combat and provide a few useful details. Connolly: Greece and Rome at War (P 224): “In the second half of the 2nd century BC the Romans made the momentous […]
Over the centuries of its existence, the Roman army used a variety of cavalry support units. The early legions were supported by 300 equites formed into a unit. In the latter years of the Republic Caesar, for example, employed thousands of allied cavalry. At times, during the empire, the role of the cavalry amounted to a […]
Using the formulas and other data described in Camp Sizes, it is calculated that the Generic Army needs about 196 a.q. of space. A camp drawn to that size is illustrated here. The red band around the camp is the line of fortifications. Inside it is the intervallum, the open space between the strigified space […]
Introduction Alan Richardson has written a series of articles in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology in which he develops the mathematical basis for determining the size of the Roman camp. He worked from ancient descriptions and from modern archaeological studies of camp sites. The result is a rather elegant rule of thumb that can be […]
Pseudo-Hyginus wrote sometime in the last half of the second century AD, between the reigns of Trajan and Septimius Severus. He says that what he has prepared is an explanation of his new way of laying out a camp which, he hopes the emperor will agree, is an improvement upon the customary way. In modern […]
As an introduction to the topic of the Roman camp, we could not do better than this description from Livy. He puts this speech in the mouth of Aemilius Paullus just before the Battle of Pydna in the summer of 168 BC. Paullus is addressing his senior officers who are critical of his decision to construct a […]
The challenge is to translate these new ideas about how the Romans fought into visual images of what it might have looked like. One faces several problems when trying to create a visual model. Drafting detailed images requires a lot of guesswork. It is one thing to say “they stood back from each other.” It […]
Sword or Spear? The generally accepted view has been that the legionary was primarily a sword fighter and that his use of the pilum was restricted to the initial charge. This view has been strongly challenged by the work of Dr. Alexander Zhmodikov (Historia, 2000). He cites plentiful ancient evidence of missile warfare continuing long […]
Considering that the Roman army was arguably the greatest military force the world has known, that pretty good eyewitness descriptions have come down to us and that it has been extensively studied for hundreds of years, it is somewhat amazing that no one really knows exactly how it looked or functioned. This section lays out […]
The new infantry model At about the same time that I first developed The Roman Army web page Adrain Goldsworthy’s book, The Roman Army At War was published. It was followed by articles by Dr. Philip Sabin: ‘The Mechanics of Battle in the Second Punic War and The Face of Roman Battle’; and by Alexander […]
Introduction “Getting there is half the fun” would not describe the Roman army’s experience. Army travel was brutally hard work. In the previous pages the march is described in some detail. As the daily march was described and illustrated in that section the daily march averaged about 10 miles, took some nine hours from the […]
This page is an attempt to reconstruct a ‘typical’ day’s march for the army. Before showing the marching column there are a few basic considerations. Distance between camps There was surely no standard distance between camps. Estimates of the normal day’s march vary but 10 miles seems to be fairly standard. That is the distance […]
The order in which the various units moved is uncertain. Delbrück, who devoted over 600 pages of his 4-volume work on the History of Warfare to Rome only wrote a single sentence about the march saying that he didn’t have enough information to speculate. More recent authors do give some opinions about the order of […]
In the previous section the elements that would constitute a single legion were explored. When several legions were assembled into an army there would be some additional units that are described here. Bodyguards At least by the late republic the commander employed professional body guards made up of paid mercenaries. It seems that the number […]
Scribes In addition the legion would have scribes to keep its records and accounts. I have found no sources that give an estimate of the numbers of scribes. I arbitrarily assigned sixteen to the legion: one for each of the ten cohorts, one for the ala, one for the fabri, one to keep the supply […]
The next several sections describe the men, animals and equipment that were associated with the legion; that is, the numbers of these units were more or less related to the number of legions in an army. Units more directly associated with the army as a whole (headquarters staff and auxiliary cavalry, for example) are described […]
Roads The Roman roads were constructed for military purposes. It is obvious that, whenever possible, the army moved along the roads. Therefore the width of the paved roads determined the width of the Roman column. Most descriptions ignore this factor. Judson, for example, describes the army marching on a 40 foot front. There were […]
Sections Standards Some of the types of standards used by the Roman army are shown in this illustration. The top part of the illustration shows the standards in profile, below each is an overhead view of the standard-bearer as he appears in the illustrations. From left to right the standards are: aquila, vexilla, three signa, […]
For modeling the Roman Army on the march I have used three main sources for the constituents of the army and the order of march:: Harry Pratt Judson, Caesar’s Army; Peter Connolly, Greece and Rome at War; and John Peddie, The Roman War Machine. Supplemental information about mules as pack animals, horse-drawn carts and ox-drawn wagons comes […]
Developing a complete model of a representative Roman army on the march is more complicated than might be thought. Delbrück, who wrote over 500 pages on the Roman army, has just a single sentence about the march. He simply says that he does not know enough about how the army moved to speculate. However there […]
The following schematic shows two post-Marian armies of four legions each with thin lines of skirmishers deployed in front of each army. In the post-Marian legion the auxiliaries used were funditori and sagitarii who had a much greater range than velites and, consequently, the armies would have had to deploy further apart.The two lines of […]
The following schematic shows two pre-Marian armies of four legions each with thin lines of skirmishers deployed in front of each army. In the early pre-Marian legion the auxiliaries used were velites who were armed with short spears or darts. The range for a hand thrown missile weapon could not have been great.The skirmishers are […]
Veles, funditor and sagittarius Three types of skirmishers are shown in this drawing. The first three figures are velites used in the early republic. They were skirmishers who threw light javelins and were protected by a shield. They wore animal skin headdresses. The center three are funditori, slingers, and the three on the right are […]
Model of the charge of an individual in the first rank This drawing requires some explanation. It is a time and distance graph of the charge of a single soldier. The horizontal (X) axis is time, divided into seconds before contact with the enemy. The vertical (Y) axis is distance marked off in 5 and […]
The model of what the charge of the legion may have looked like is based on three fundamental building blocks. They are: how fast did the soldiers march and run, how far and at what distance could the pila have been thrown, and how far apart did the ranks and files need to be during […]
The fundamental formulas for the parabolic path of a missile can be entered into an Excel spreadsheet to product a Trajectory Calculator. The actual spreadsheet cannot be placed in an HTML page but an image of it can. The illustration on the left shows the initial part of my calculator. The items in red are […]
The configuration for the century most frequently given is an arrangement of 10 files and 6 ranks with the files on 0.9m (3’) intervals and the ranks on either 0.9m (3’) or 1. (4’) intervals. Delbrück suggests that each rank was offset to cover the gaps between men and to provide more room for maneuver. […]
There is an ongoing question of the spacing required by legionaries. Vegetius says that each soldier required 1.83m (6’) of space. Most texts describe the legionary formation with spacing between the files of 0.9m (3’) and between the ranks of either 0.9m (3’) or 1.22 (4’). Some authors acquire additional space by spreading the close […]
Hans Delbrück presents a detailed analysis of the question of gaps in the line. He believes that the description in Livy should be regarded as a drill maneuver used in training but not a combat maneuver. He then argues for an “articulated phalanx.” As it evolves over time, the maniples and cohorts gain more autonomy […]
The following schematic shows two pre-Marian armies of four legions each with thin lines of skirmishers deployed in front of each army. In the early pre-Marian legion the auxiliaries used were Velites who were armed with short spears or darts. The range for a hand thrown missile weapon could not have been great. The skirmishers […]
Peter Connolly, in his book Greece and Rome at War, describes how the legion closed the gaps between units by having the rear centuries move into the gaps once the skirmishers had retreated. The second line exchanged places with the first by reversing the process, bringing the second line into the re-opened gaps, withdrawing the […]
Following Livy and Polybius, many authors describe a legion formation with gaps between the maniples or cohorts equal to the width of the unit itself so the units of the second line could advance through the gaps while the first line retreated. Yet, such a formation seems implausible. Other authors argue that the legion could […]
The Earliest Army The earliest Roman army is usually described as composed of about 1,000 men per tribe drawn in 100 man levies. The soldiers were armed as Greek Hoplites and fought in a simple Phalanx. The drawing below shows the phalanx with 125 files and 8 ranks with 0.46m (18″) for the files and […]
Purpose The Roman Legion represented a unique tactical formation that proved superior to all other ancient armies. Among the elements that contributed to is superiority was its unique configuration; that is, the physical arrangement of the soldiers and units and the way in which they moved in relationship to each other. Considering that the legion […]
The last time we dove into the Great Wargaming Survey results (see: What Inspires You?), the analysis focused on dissecting primary wargaming inspiration to see what sparks motivation. Today’s analysis examines a related survey question. That question asks about media sources of inspiration. As in the inspiration question looked at last time, today’s question allowed for up to […]
Wargamers take inspiration from a variety of sources. A spark for inspiration may originate from a quick conversation with a friend or a manufacturer’s advertisement. Perhaps a blog entry or a film triggers inspiration? Whatever the source, a kernel of inspiration can spawn a new project or breathe life into an old project. The 2021 […]
In 1796, an ambitious young French general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte marched into northern Italy with a ragged army of Republican forces. In July, his troops invested the city of Mantua and the Austrian garrison within it. Over the next seven months, the Austrians launched four campaigns to lift the siege. Napoleon's fortunes waxed and waned, but in the end, the Austrian armies were defeated and Mantua taken. Austria sued for peace. This article allows you to replay the campaign with your own armies at whichever scale you prefer.
In 1796, an ambitious young French general by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte marched into northern Italy with a ragged army of Republican forces. In July, his troops invested the city of Mantua and the Austrian garrison within it. Over the next seven months, the Austrians launched four campaigns to lift the siege. Napoleon's fortunes waxed and waned, but in the end, the Austrian armies were defeated and Mantua taken. Austria sued for peace. This article allows you to replay the campaign with your own armies at whichever scale you prefer.
Plastic Soldier Company has released starter boxed sets for Battlegroup Northag. Currently, there are two, the Soviet and British army starter sets. Each set provides you with enough miniatures for a decent starter force to game with, although I can see gamers soon wanting to expand their forces even further. The sets have been reviewed […]
Rebels and Patriots is the latest release from the Osprey Wargames series. It is the 23rd in the OWG series. Each book follows the standard and now familiar 64 page Osprey format. The Rebels and Patriots (R&P) rulebook covers battles in North America from the French Indian Wars to just after the American Civil War (the French […]
Rubicon Models have sent us samples of their new metal World War 2 Soviet Infantry. We had a request on Twitter to show pictures of the infantry. I hope the following will be informative. Are the actual models as good as the 3D images we’ve all seen? I think the answer is yes, they are. Up until […]
Accompanying the recently reviewed 8th Army plastics, are the Afrika Korps from Warlord Games. They are available as a Starter Army (with plastic and metal support options) or a 30 figure boxed set.The boxed set contains five frames of plastic troops. Each frame has six torsos and an assortment of equipment. There are enough rifles for […]
The latest plastic set from Warlord Games is their 8th Army set, available as a Starter Army (with metal support options) or a 30 figure boxed set. The boxed set contains five frames of plastic troops. Each frame has six torsos and an assortment of weapons. There are enough rifles for each model. Also included […]
Warlord Games have released The Good, the Bad and the Mutie the starter set for their new Strontium Dog game. There will be a full review of the game in the next issue. The Strontium Dog game is set in the 2000AD universe, where bounty hunters battle it out with outlaws and mutants in a Sci-Fi version of the Old […]
Warlord Games have re-released their range of US army jeeps, which include a .30 Cal Jeep, the .50 Cal Jeep and the Armoured Jeep. The models are remastered with some modifications. The most notable thing is their size increase. The original range was spot on 1/56, the new ones are slightly larger (at roughly 1/52). The slightly […]
Rubicon Models has brought out a set of fences for modellers and gamers. The set consists of four sprues, each containing four sections of fence (105mm or 4.13″ long) plus a gate (30mm or 1.18″ wide). The fence stands just over an inch or 28mm tall. In total that gives 168 cms (66″) of fencing, excluding […]
Warlord Games have re-released their US WWII American GIs in plastic. The set is a complete redesign of the original American Infantry set released in 2013. With each new set, Warlord has refined their design and process. The most obvious improvement is the weapons, which now come with arms attached, which makes assembly much easier. The weapons […]
Warlord Games (with Italeri) has released an 8.8cm Flak 37 AA gun in 1/56, the classic early war dual purpose gun which saw service until 1945. The kit comes as two plastic sprues with a metal gun crew. The crew are one piece castings (no separate heads). Transfers are included (for kill rings) and a Bolt Action […]
Blood on the Aventine is the new scenario starter set for Gangs of Rome. It gives you everything you need to start playing, including miniatures, rules, dice, markers and even MDF scenery. The set contains six gangers with their cards, jigsaw bases, coins and dice, plus one ‘Incola’ character and card (a special NPC character – […]