The Path to Global War
The Imperial Age was marked by an ever-shifting web of alliances within Europe. Toward the end of the 19th Century, two major blocs began to form. These alliances became the base that led to the global confrontation of WWI.
France’s humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71 had left it searching for a strong partner. Initially, it had little luck.
At the time, Germany had a strong treaty with Russia aimed at keeping its Eastern borders secure. But in 1882, Germany signed the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy, a pact that would last until Italy’s desertion over WWI. And after Otto von Bismarck’s departure as Chancellor in 1890, Germany decided not to renew its Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. This was a secret pact signed in 1887 in which each country promised to stay neutral if the other got into a war with another major power.
Russia’s economy was in bad shape at that time. It was desperate for foreign capital. France stepped up with some big loans. This led to discussions about potential military ties. There was an exchange of letters in 1891 and a military convention in 1892. This evolved by 1894 into a formal treaty of alliance.
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This event was given star treatment in a French game. L’Alliance Franco-Russe has the familiar Game of Goose inward spiral track. The illustrations on each space radiate France’s joy at finally finding a friend among the Great Powers. Each square also has a caption consisting of two lines of rhyming verse.
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The very starting points of the game reflect France’s determination to avenge its defeat in 1870-71.
Spaces 2 and 3 are devoted to the lost provinces of Lorraine and Alsace. The first has a caption that reads, in effect, “Hope for imminent sovereign justice, Lorraine,” while the next reads: “The sons of Alsace, to the three colors of France, have pledged their hearts.”
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A decade later, France was to find another friend in its traditional foe, England. In 1904, Great
Britain, increasingly worried by the expansion of Germany's navy, decided to settle its many colonial disputes with France.
L'Entente Cordiale, as it became known, was not a formal alliance. Rather, it was a series of agreements that recognized Britain's control of Egypt and France's claim to Morocco.
There also were adjustments affecting French Guinea, Nigeria, Gambia, New Hebrides and Newfoundland. And the agreement split Siam (Thailand) between British and French zones of influence. The Germans were not amused.
Prominent English game publisher John Jaques and Sons celebrated the agreement with a new card game called L'Entente Cordiale.
This 55-card deck is divided into six suits of 9 numbered cards each. Each suit is based on a location around the house, while cards represent items typically found in each location. Each card shows the item and location in both English and French. Players must announce (in both languages) the name of each item as they place it.
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The 55th card is called the House/Maison, and whoever it is dealt to plays that first, followed by the 1 of any suit. Whoever has the 2 follows suit, and so on until all 9 have been played. The last player in a suit then starts a new one. The first player to run out of cards wins the game.
According to the old saying, the sun back then never set on the British Empire. The British Isles were a hub for both manufacturing and trade. The factories of the home islands depended on a steady flow of raw materials from abroad and foreign customers for the goods they produced. Its dense population meant that more than half of the food eaten within the United Kingdom in 1900 came from overseas. The British Empire was utterly dependent on naval dominance.
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In June, 1887, Grand Admiral Tirpitz persuaded Kaiser Wilhelm II that it was time to upset the European naval balance.
His strategy was to build a German navy big enough that any British attempt to destroy it would leave Britain vulnerable to a combined attack from France and Russia.
Germany passed the First Naval Act in March, 1898, which funded 11 new battleships. The beginning of the Second Boer War and the resulting seizure of a German merchant ship boosted public support for a strong German Navy.
The resulting Second Naval Act enabled Tirpitz to double his ambitions, to a force that would number 45 battleships and armored cruisers.
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The new German focus on navy-building led to the turn of the century game Marine-Spiel. The box cover features a magnificent portrait of a pre-dreadnought battleship slicing through the sea.
The game’s artwork takes considerable liberties with ship design. The ship on the cover looks very much like the 1898-commissioned battleship Kaiser Wilhelm III. However, the ship on the box has three funnels rather than the actual two.
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It also is missing one of the Kaiser Wilhelm’s side turrets. The ship shown on the board does have the correct two funnels, but is missing the barbette gun beside the main forward turret as well as one of the three side turrets. It also lacks the real ship's rear turret.
The cover art is signed with the initials SR, while the board art is unsigned, which may explain the differences in detail. The lack of publisher information is odd for a quality German game.
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The game’s board also is highly unusual. Initially, it shows the image above, with no clear game features. However, it has a flap that folds down from the main deck line. This opens a detailed schematic of the ship’s compartments.
A 46-space track runs from a bunkroom in the bow to the engine room in the stern. The game board artwork is a simple red outline on a white background, but offers detailed images of seamen at work and ship’s stores.
Britain did not worry much about the first phase of Germany’s naval expansion. Announcement of the second phase was a different story. In 1904, British First Sea Lord Admiral Jacky Fisher massively re-organized the Royal Navy. Its forces became much more concentrated around the home islands.
He also reacted to the Battle of Tsushima by pitching the design of a super-battleship, which became the Dreadnought. When launched, this ship was considered to be equivalent to two or three normal battleships, and its name came to represent any new-style battleship.
Dreadnought counters are featured in a pre-WWI British game, War Tactics: or Can Great Britain Be Invaded? The question mark in the title reflects an odd insecurity amidst the glories of empire. This was first seen in the form of a book, The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer, published in 1871.
It reflected the worry among many in Britain over Germany’s utter defeat of France in only a couple of months. The novella had two parts: the first about a battle . The first dealt with a battle around a British town against unnamed but German-speaking invaders. The second reflected an England still in ruins 50 years later.
“Fools that we were!” author Sir George Tomkyns Chesney writes as he begins his tale of woe. “We thought that all this wealth and prosperity were sent to us by Providence, and could not stop coming. In our blindness we did not see that we were merely a big workshop…. We were so rich simply because other nations from all parts of the world were in the habit of sending their goods to us to be sold or manufactured; and we thought that this would last forever.”
Chesney also writes about France as both England’s traditional rival and the military power on the continent. The trigger for the book was clearly the Franco-Prussian War, in which “the force so long deemed the first in Europe was ignominiously beaten, and the whole army taken prisoners.”
The success of this book spawned more than 400 other tales of hypothetical invasion and what might be done to prevent such events from happening. War Tactics was triggered by the German naval build-up, and reflected a potential naval and land war between the two empires.
“With this new game, you can immediately be placed in the theatre of war and become an Admiral or General, give your own orders as to attack and defence, and perhaps by this simple game you may be brought to realize the horrors which have to be faced, and the promptitude with which a decision has to be made,” says the introduction to the rules.
The movement rules are an odd combination of checkers and chess. Dreadnoughts, cruisers, torpedo boats and infantry move one space forward, left or right, but not diagonally or backward. They destroy an enemy piece by jumping over it to an empty space, as in checkers. Submarines and “flying squadrons”, on the other hand, must move exactly four spaces at a time. They may not double back, but may change direction with each space into which they move.
Instead of jumping enemy pieces, submarines and planes eliminate them by ending their move on the enemy space, as in chess.
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The game offers players great flexibility. They may choose equal forces, but the total number of pieces on each side can be set anywhere from 12 to 30. Within that total, each player may choose any combination of pieces within the available counter mix. The maximum available includes six Dreadnoughts, six Cruisers, four Torpedo Boats, two Submarines, two Flying Squadrons and 10 Land Forces.
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Naval pieces must be set up initially either on one of the four friendly Naval Bases or on a sea space within two of a friendly coastline. Land Forces may be set up anywhere on friendly territory. Belgium is included along with France as allied territory on the continent, while the Netherlands remains neutral, along with the Scandinavian countries and Luxembourg. Any piece moving into neutral territory is interned and removed from the game.
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Both major cities and naval bases are circles in the middle of four spaces. A naval base is captured by having ships in all four of those spaces. A city is captured by getting ground forces to each of those four spaces. Occupying the two spaces of a naval base closest to the land allows a player to make an amphibious landing, moving a land unit from anywhere on the board to the coastal space immediately in front of each of the two the ships.
The objective of the game is to occupy all four spaces of the enemy capital – London or Berlin. This makes a German invasion of France rather pointless. And while the British player could try to reach Berlin through Belgium, it is relatively easy for the Germans to force a stalemate on that narrow front. In that sense, the game correctly pointed to the actual result of trench warfare on the continent. The game fed on British fears of Germany achieving naval parity, and thus having an opportunity to defeat the British fleet and invade with land forces.
Also interesting is the way that the rules make submarines and aircraft the most powerful units on the board. As things turned out, U-boats were to do far more damage to the British than did the German grand fleet. And despite their limited capabilities, air forces were to play many roles, from reconnaissance and ground support to strategic bombing.
Britain, of course, never even came close to being invaded until 1940, and WWI featured only a single battle between the British and German battle fleets. But the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince in Serbia sent tremors throughout the web of European alliances, and brought the spider of war to the centre of the action.
In September, 1914, just weeks after the shooting started, Marschall Vorwarts was published in Vienna. On the surface, this is just a complex historical game about Napoleonic tactical warfare. The rulebook is 32 pages long. It includes drawings and descriptions of the board and the figures, set up, rules for the game, hints about strategy, examples of playing the game and finally suggestions alternate ways of playing.
Core to game play is an unusually sophisticated mechanism for simulating the friction of tactical warfare.
Players roll three dice on their turn, which determine the total number of movement points available. The pieces are valued from one to 10: 1 for line infantry; 2 for guards infantry; an officer and a standard-bearer, each worth 3; three cavalry worth 4 each; two dragoons worth 5; a cannon worth 7 and the field marshal worth 10.
Each side of the battlefield is divided into three ranks and five columns. Pieces first must be placed on the rear rank. This costs the value of the piece in movement points. Once placed, a piece may be moved forward or sideways. Moving forward to the second rank costs double the piece’s value. Moving to the foremost rank at the middle of the board costs triple. Moving sideways costs the same as moving into that rank. So the closer troops get to the enemy, the more difficult it is to manoeuver.
Before advancing into battle, one of the players must have at least 10 points worth of troops in each of the five columns. He must announce this fact, and from then on, players must ensure that they keep at least one piece in each of the columns.
From then on, a player may announce an attack in any column where he has at least one unit in the front rank. He indicates an attack by moving a piece onto the river space in the middle of the board. The other player gets to take his move, and may reinforce the attacked column before results are determined.
To do this, players add up the total value of all their units in the disputed column. As with movement, pieces in the front rank count triple their value; pieces in the second rank double; and pieces at the rear only their basic value.
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Whichever player has the highest total wins, and inflicts damage equal to the difference in total values. This damage must be applied first to units in the foremost rank, and as much as possible to the most valuable units. The losing player can choose to eliminate units or to make them retreat. Eliminating a unit counts for the basic, double or tripled value depending on its location. Retreating a unit from one rank to the next rank backward absorbs only the basic value of the unit in damage points. Units retreating may be sent diagonally backward into an adjacent column if desired, but the defender must if possible keep at least one unit in the column.
Once the combat has been resolved, the attacker gets to roll and move again (since the defender took a response move). He moves normally, but may not launch an attack on the same column in consecutive turns.
Attacks may occur in more than one column on a turn. An attack on a single column is considered a skirmish. Skirmishes on non-adjacent columns are resolved separately. When there is an attack on two adjacent columns, they are resolved as a single skirmish.
This is done by adding up the total value in both columns and applying the difference as casualties or retreats to the loser. An attack over three adjacent columns is considered a “battle”. Again, this is resolved as a single combat, adding up the unit values across all three columns.
Once three “battles” have taken place, either player may initiate the “decisive battle”. As with smaller combats, the defending player gets to roll and move once more before the outcome is calculated. The decisive battle uses the total value of all units on the board. In this case, though, the winner is paid the difference in total value by the loser (in whatever currency or tokens the players have agreed as the stakes).
If a player gets all remaining units into the front rank, the decisive battle is triggered immediately and the defender does not get a turn before the results are calculated.
The finely crafted and painted metal playing pieces reflect Napoleonic uniforms and units, from infantry and cavalry to artillery, headed by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and Field Marshal Gebhart von Blucher.
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But the title page of the game rules makes the purpose of the game clear. It reads: “Memorial Game: To raise a memory of the wars heroically led by Germany and Austria a hundred years ago and today”.
The era of empires was over. The War to End Wars had begun. The world would never be the same.
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