Wargaming With War and Peace

To celebrate passing the halfway stage in this very entertaining book (I'm on page 797 out of 1358 at the time of writing), I thought I might share a couple of Mr Tolstoy's views on history in general and military history in particular. And if you didn't already know, Tolstoy was a Russian artillery officer in the Crimean War.

I thought that would get your attention. Lily James as Natasha Rostov.
Lily James is officially the best looking woman in the world. Apart from my wife.

His account of Austerlitz occurs quite early in the book and is notable for its description of the confusion and chaos of a Napoleonic battle. Take this passage for example:

After riding up to the highest point on our right flank, Prince Bagration started off downhill, where a continuous rattle of gunfire rang out and nothing could be seen for the smoke. The further they descended into the hollow the less they could see, but the more sharply they could sense the proximity of the actual battle. They began to come across wounded men. [...]. They crossed the road and started down a steep incline, where they saw several men lying on the sloping ground. Then they were met by a crowd of soldiers, some of them not wounded. These soldiers, gasping for breath as they hurried uphill, took no notice of the general and went on shouting to each other with much waving of their arms. Ahead of them through the smoke they could now see whole ranks of grey coats, and once the commanding officer set eyes on Bagration he ran off after the retreating mass of soldiers, shouting for them to come back. Bagration rode up to the ranks, where noisy sporadic fire drowned all speech including the officer's shouted commands. The air was thick with gunsmoke. The soldier's faces were all animated and smudged with gunpowder. Ramrods plunged in and out, powder was poured into pans, charges came out of pouches, guns fired. What they were firing at couldn't be seen for the smoke that hung undispersed by the wind. (p.192).

And much later in the book he writes this:

A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced that that he lost because he made a mistake, and he goes back to the opening gambits to find what that mistake was, forgetting that his every move throughout the whole game involved similar errors, no move being perfect. The mistake that he concentrates on attracts his attention only because it was exploited by his opponent. How much more complex than this is the game of war, which has to be played out within specific time limits, and where there is no question of one man's will directing events through his control of soulless machinery, because everything develops from the interplay of infinitely varied and arbitrary twists and turns! (p.787).

My point being, when you are playing Honours of War and you throw a 1 for your command roll, stop bitching! It's realistic!