The Lace Wars 

Gaming in a more reasonable age

The 18th century in Europe was the time of "Age of Reason", when the scientific method and rational, rather than religious thought came into vogue. Because the armies of this period were largely professional, the trained troops were seen as expensive assets, and generals tried to minimise casualties - the slaughter of the mass armies of the Napoleonic Wars and after are not for us, in this period warfare was the Sport of Kings (and Dukes, Princes, MarkGrafs and so on....). These armies attempted to defeat each other by rational means - manouevre, tactics and tours de force that the other side, reasonably, would not contest as the casualties would be too high. The armies, being expensive assets, were also gorgeously (if not gaudily) attired, and for this reason the wars of the period are often called the "Lace Wars". As a modelling spectacle they are hard to beat, especially in the larger 25/28mm scale.

As a wargaming period this sees the adoption of "horse, shot and guns" as the primary means of warfare and over the century nearly all the troop types and tactics of the later periods emerged - light infantry and cavalry,  horse artillery, line, column and square. It is also the period of the first real "World War" as France and Great Britain fought each other in Europe, the Caribbean, North America, India and Africa and across the high seas in the Seven Years War (1756 - 63). In fact Britain's victory over France in Quebec rebounded on them as the American colonies, feeling they no longer needed military protection, were emboldened to revolt and with French help they seceded in the American War of Independence, which was the birth of the United States of America.   

This was also the period that many early wargamers started to write rules for, (Charles Grant’s rules are on the web over here by the way) so there is wargaming tradition involved in the period as well.

Not only that, but those early wargaming writers left a tradition of "Imaginary Nations" to fight their campaigns. That is understandable in this period, as there were literally hundreds of little German, Italian and other statelets in Europe (never mind the colonies) in the 1700’s, with their own armies, flags and uniforms. The Holy Roman Empire alone had 300 principalities/duchies/free cities/etc that had to contribute troops. The variety of possible uniforms/flags/silly names for an imaginary country are enormous. Charles Grant created the Vereinigte Freie Städte -a kind of Hanseatic League- with troops in a variety of uniforms (some historical from various origins, some of his own design; original flags with a black eagle) and the Grand Duche de Lorraine (basically historical French uniforms, flags and names).  Brigadier Peter  Young (Charge!) created the Electorate of Teutoberg-Althaufen, the forces of which he divided when playing his 'Emperor vs. Elector' campaign - figure uniforms were from a diversity of sources, including Napoleonic RHA (in those dasy there were far smaller ranges of figures, one had to re-use and convert a lot more), but at least one unit of original design. Don Featherstone made use of 2 imaginary countries – the French influenced Fromagerie fighting the Prussian satellite Alemark.

Thus it is only proper that anyone gaming the period should have both a "proper" army, as well as an "Imagi-nation".  Mine are detailed below with links to their respective pages:

• French Seven Years War (ish) - lost most of its battles, but who could not love an army that was totally heterogenous, largely run by the king's mistresses, and where deserting one's watch to dance the minuet was the norm?

• Dreaming of Byzantium - an Imaginary Nation - what if, after the defeat of the Turks at Vienna and their subsequent decline, and with Austrian and Russian help, a New Byzantium arose?