Supplies roll in, one of the most important observations in a soldier's life, and yet one of the most neglected in history and general perception. There is a saying in war: "Without food, the soldier cannot fight". It reduces the complex process of supplying troops to what is essential for the individual soldier - food. And yet there is so much more to it. Such as ammunition, weapons, clothing, fodder for the horses or, in more modern conflicts, spare parts and fuel for the vehicles.
When we consider how often military victories or defeats have been caused by a lack of supplies, food or permanent supply bases, it is actually surprising that in most wargames the supply of troops plays no role. The games that most of us play focus on the climax of the respective conflict, and we tend to lose sight of the battle, its prelude or its aftermath. We forget that all too often a victory can lead to losing the war.
Magdeburg Wedding in 1631, the capture of the customs rampart and the suburbs by imperial troops in April 1631
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Take, for example, the siege and storming of Magdeburg during the Thirty Years' War on May 20, 1631 by the imperial troops under Tilly and Pappenheim. The city of Magdeburg had already managed to successfully withstand sieges twice before, namely in 1550/51 when Magdeburg successfully defied a siege by Emperor Charles V and in 1621 when the people of Magdeburg refused to accept an imperial infantry regiment that Wallenstein wanted to move into the city. Wallenstein, who then had the city surrounded and besieged, had to leave empty-handed when the other Hanseatic cities made preparations to support their sister city, as he was dependent on a good relationship with the Hanseatic League.
Building on these experiences, the people of Magdeburg also resisted the imperial troops in 1630 and 31, hoping that the Swedish king Gustav Adolf would come to their aid. Pappenheim had been waging a small war in the area around Magdeburg since 1630, but was not strong enough to take action against the city itself. It was not until the end of March 1631 that the situation for Magdeburg became serious, when Tilly,
after the losses of Frankfurt and Landsberg, saw no possibility of advancing to the Oder River, so he moved his troops to Magdeburg and began to besiege the city.
At this time, Tilly's troops comprised around 22.600 foot soldiers, 3,100 cavalry and 86 guns, while Magdeburg's garrison under the command of Dietrich von Falkenberg consisted of only 3,000 men, plus around 5,000 men from the civil guard. However, more than 500 of the defenders were killed defending the fortress's outer walls, so that the few remaining defenders concentrated only on defending the city itself.
After several calls for surrender from Tilly, the final assault on the city took place on the morning of May 20. The defensive walls were less densely manned in many places than usual, as the city assumed that Tilly wanted to negotiate, so many of the soldiers had gathered away from their positions for church services. So it happened that the attack of Pappenheim's assault columns in the early morning of May 20 caught the defenders completely unprepared and the attackers quickly managed to conquer the Neustadt Wall and penetrate the city itself through a gate on the Fischerufer.
Falkenberg led a courageous counterattack that put the attackers in great distress, so that Pappenheim gave the order to set fire to some houses along the city wall and thus force the defenders to choose between defending the city and fighting the fires. Furthermore, the thick smoke from the burning buildings offered the attackers cover from the effective defensive fire of the defenders. When Falkenberg and some of his officers had fallen, the resistance of the defenders collapsed and the battle was decided in favour of the Imperials, who now held on to the conquered city. An orgy of violence broke out over the city early in the morning and only ended in the evening when the rising wind fanned the fires into a wildfire that engulfed the entire proud city.
It is assumed that more than 20.000 of the city's 35.000 inhabitants died in the storming and the subsequent fire. By comparison, around 12.000 soldiers were killed in the Battle of Breitenfeld, the largest battle of the Thirty Years' War. Considering these figures, it is fair to say that the storming of Magdeburg, also known as the Magdeburg Blood Wedding, was the largest and worst massacre of the Thirty Years' War.
Tilly had won a brilliant victory, he had achieved what Wallenstein had not, and yet his reputation, which had been brilliant until then, was gone. While he had previously been known as the "monk in armour", after the fall of Magdeburg he was only known as the "violator of virgins". Worse than the loss of reputation, however, was the destruction of Magdeburg on a strategic level. Tilly had hoped to use the rich Hanseatic city on the Elbe as a permanent camp for the campaign against Gustav Adolf and to be able to supply his troops from the city's rich supplies. Both were no longer possible after the city was destroyed. So, he was forced onto the defensive and the reins of the trade passed to Gustav Adolf, who crushed Tilly in the aforementioned Battle of Breitenfeld on September 17, 1631, capturing all of the imperial artillery.
Thus, a victory on a tactical level became a strategic defeat.
But Magdeburg was not to be the last city to be burned down, turning a brilliant victory into a defeat. In this context, the fire in Moscow in 1812 should be mentioned; here too, a conflagration and the subsequent uncertainty on the part of the commander about how to proceed led to the destruction of an army. Even if in Napoleon's case, failure in Russia was only due to the lack of supplies combined with the bad weather conditions that led to the final destruction of the army.
It is often claimed that if Napoleon had immediately retreated to his supply bases in Poland after the fire in Moscow, which deprived him of his winter quarters, he would have been able to save his army, as he would have been able to cover the distance before the onset of winter. But the question remains whether he would have managed to adequately supply his troops in this case. Could he have taken a different route and obtained supplies from the country, or would he have been forced to take the route he had already chosen when invading Russia?
The campaign in Russia, like the one in Spain before it, revealed the weakness of the French army in terms of logistics and supplies. The French army usually requisitioned supplies from the population in the country it passed through. This type of supply worked well in the densely populated areas of Italy, as well as in Prussia and Austria, as it allowed the army to march with a small baggage train, which significantly increased the speed of march. However, it failed in the sparsely populated areas of Spain and the vast expanse of Russia, where there was often nothing to be had for a long distance.
Wargamers often underestimate the actual size of an army and its respective units. On the gaming table, the size of the units is usually reduced in a ratio of 1:20, so that for every twenty soldiers on the battlefield only 1 miniature is positioned. However, that is not all that is reduced. In order to supply the fighting soldiers, a large baggage train is needed, and we only find this on the battlefield in the rarest of cases.
To illustrate the size of the troops we are talking about, which we tend to ignore, here is a small example: Let's just take a French mounted artillery battery. A French battery usually had six guns, four of which were 8-pounder cannons and two 6-pounder howitzers. Of these six guns, however, most players only position two to four per battery on the table. Now and then you can also find the stunners on the game table, but this is quite rare. If we now look at this picture on the game table, such an artillery battery is actually quite small. At least on the game table.
In reality, things are very different. In reality, each battery consists of around 200 soldiers, of which 120 men were needed to operate the guns and 80 for the supply train. Each gun required a limber, and there were two spare limbers, one for the guns and one for the howitzers, plus 14 ammunition wagons (eight of which were for the cannons and six for the howitzers). The battery also had three supply wagons and two field forges, which makes a total of 27 vehicles, pulled by over 220 horses.
If you consider that each horse needs either 10 kilograms of hay or 1.5 kilograms of oats a day, your maths quickly reaches its limits. This gives you an idea of the huge quantities of supplies that are needed to supply an army. If you then consider losses due to enemy action, it can make you dizzy.
Given these numbers, one may wonder why more games are not played that aim to disrupt supply lines and capture supply depots, when logistics are actually the decisive factor in strategic operational planning.
But supplies can also become a problem at a tactical level. Let's take the example of the Battle of Isandlwana, where the slow distribution of ammunition, along with the failure to set up defensive positions, was a major reason for the British defeat against the Zulus. And this was not due to a lack of ammunition, because after the battle the Zulus captured more than 250.000 rounds of ammunition, but to the rigid guidelines of the British Army regarding the distribution of ammunition and the solid packaging of it. The quartermaster of the 2/24th Bloomfeld was condemned by history for refusing to issue ammunition to soldiers from other units.
And Lieutenant Horace Smith-Dorren wrote that since the heavy ammunition boxes had a sliding lid secured with a single 2-inch screw, and screwdrivers were in short supply, he began smashing the lids of the ammunition boxes with stones, rifle butts, and anything else he could get his hands on to dispense the ammunition. However, the boxes could not be broken open quickly enough, and the supply of ammunition fell far short of the ever-increasing demand. So it was that the British were simply overrun by the Zulus and suffered one of the worst defeats in their colonial history, all because the army had not supplied enough screwdrivers.
If you look at the examples above, you might realise how important logistics and supplies are for the positive outcome of a battle and maybe I could give you an idea for a new scenario in which the ability of the defenders to successfully hold a position depends on the arrival of the required ammunition at the right time or the number of screwdrivers available.
I hope you enjoyed my little excursion into the vastness of logistics and hope to see you here again soon.
Yours, Martin