Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

There are a few scholars here that are well versed in actual history. I would like to ask that they help me with a scenario.

In another forum, I was participating in a conversation about WHFB Dwarfs. I came to the conclusion that they are approximately equal in technology to the Victorian Age.

This brings me to my plead.

What would a combat between a Victorian army and a Renaissance ( ala Empire, or the Holy Roman Empire) look like? What would the result be?

I would think the Victorian Army would beat the Roman Army with the superior ranged weapon, but as soon as the Romans reached combat they might tip the balance.
It would be even closer between the Victorians and the Renaissance as firearms had come along not a lot. The only major advantage the Victorians would have is the Percussion revolver that the officers carry as it was semi-automatic compared to a flintlock.

Hope that's some help,

The OC-D

The Last Samurai is proof that guns kill ninjas and samurais. What chance do boy-touchers with bronze plating and marching formations have?

Two words.

Maxim. Gun.


Game over.

True Renaissance armies would have matchlocks. Even by the 30 Years War (well after the Renaissance) matchlocks were the primary infantry firearm, used in blocks with twice their number of pikes. So really, pikes were the primary weapon of Renaissance armies.

Victorian armies had effectively modern weapons that were significantly faster loading, more accurate, and much longer ranged. They could shoot pike blocks apart before they got into matchlock range, much less melee range.

I think you want to talk about Napoleonic era weapons - true flintlocks - rather than Victorians, though. And the flintlock weapons would be a significant problem. They were faster to reload than matchlocks - roughly twice as fast, IIRC - and thus obliviates the need for pike to support them in melee.

Romans against Renaissance would stand a good chance. The matchlocks would hurt them, but once they got used to the concept of gunpowder weapons they would hold up fine.

After all, Romans dealt with Macedonian phalanxes (pikemen) and Parthian bowmen (at least, while they had screening cavalry) just fine.


And movies never prove anything about history. They are stories told to entertain, and fact is more often than not bent to tell a better story.

Although I give you the point that samurai fighting in the classic duelist style would get slaughtererd by flintlocks. If the went old school and depended on archery, they might be able to give gunners a run for the money.

Ninjas would still win though. A sleeping gunner does not shoot... especially after you slit his throat.


Edit: Once you get to the Napoelonic era, much less the Victorians, though, the Romans are screwed - unless they decided to adopt the new weapons, which is something the Romans did a lot (like the Gladius Hispanicus, for example, the standard Romand sidearm, first made in Spain...)

The advance in technology would be insurmountable. The range and accuracy of rifles, the availability of rapid-fire weapons (the French mitrailleuse dates from 1867), and modern artillery would wipe any renaissance army off the map before it could do anything.

Truthfully a victorian would because as of battle formations of the time close quarters were the key. The inflicting of insurmountable heavy casaulties upon the other force no matter who you are causes a panick. If you really want to look at a similiar concept you can look at the Austro-Prussian war where the prussians had a bolt action vs the austrians black powder. The prussians fought in loose where as the austrians with still using black powder muskeets had to fight close. In the end of one battle the prussians lost 500 something where as the austrians lost 15000. Or even the final battle of the Hundred years war. France used crossbows and outnumbered the british 4 to 1. Were as the brits used long bows and utterly annilhilated the french thus winning the war.

Gen. Lee Losing wrote:There are a few scholars here that are well versed in actual history. I would like to ask that they help me with a scenario.

In another forum, I was participating in a conversation about WHFB Dwarfs. I came to the conclusion that they are approximately equal in technology to the Victorian Age.

This brings me to my plead.

What would a combat between a Victorian army and a Renaissance ( ala Empire, or the Holy Roman Empire) look like? What would the result be?

The Victorian era spanned the 1830s to the 1900s. During that time, western armies moved from the smoothbore flintlock, through several intermediate stages to the breech loading magazine rifle. Machine guns were introduced, and artillery made a transition from muzzle loading smoothbore with a range of 1,000 yards to recoil-compensated breechloading pieces with a rate of fire better than the ROF of the smoothbore musket.

Renaissance arms were the large bore matchlock, and small calibre field artillery, both of which had lower rate of fire than the early Victorian weapons.

In the field of tactics and drill, Victorian armies were hugely more advanced than Renaissance.

An early Victorian force would probably decimate a Renaissance force of equal size. A later Victorian army would simply slaughter it quickly with with overwhelming firepower.

The Victorian era saw enormuos advances in weapons technology.

Rifled muskets were commonplace in the earlier part of the era, and were eventually replaced by breech-loading rifles. By 1853, the Enfield Pattern 1853 Rifle-Musket was the common longarm of the British military.

The Enfield had a maximum effective (line infantry trained to hit a man sized target at) range of about 600 yards, and could fire (in the hands of a trained user) about 4 times per minute.

Now a pikeman-era fullout infantry charge covered about 100 yards/minute on average. In the time between entering the Victorian line infantry's range and actually making it into hand-to-hand combat, the Victorian infantryman would fire 24 times. Assuming (conservatively, given the excellent target a large block of charging pikemen makes) an accuracy of 50%, that's 12 combatants disabled over the course of their charge by each line infantryman.

Now, you may say that all the less advanced army has to do is outnumber the Victorian army by more than 12:1 and it would win.

You would be wrong. A charge into overwhelming fire is one of the most difficult things to execute fully. As the front ranks get scythed down like wheat before the reaper, panic starts to break out. A charge into this sort of fire would be almost certain to fail as the enemy turned and fled.

Let's assume that the Victorian army is ounumbered 16:1, and that both sides have only basic line infantry (pikemen in the case of the "Middle Ages" army, Rifled Musketmen in the case of the Victorian army). At a full charge, the pikemen will lose 75% of their number on the approach.

No army is going to be able to take 75% casualties in 6 minutes and stay on the field. They'll break and run.

Now at a certain point, the Victorian line infantry would be so heavily outnumbered as to simply be overrun. But pikemen, cavalry, and archers (archers are here ineffective because of their limited range and greatly slower speed to maintain a skirmish line-those don't charge you; cavalry are ineffective because a horse and man together are a large target that still only takes 1 shot to disable and are available in smaller numbers anyways) are all that the Medieval army has. Effective field artillery is not yet present.

The Victorians have a variety of force-multipliers.

Effective field artillery. A cannonball will cut a pike block in half, grapeshot has an effective range of about 700 yards and spreads over a decent area-nothing quite like hearing a rasping hiss an watching the man next to you lose his head to a fist-sized lump of steel and lead (multiply this by 20 per artillery piece across the formation); and canister has a range of 300 yards-and acts like a shotgun.

Automatic Weaponry.

The cranked Gatling gun was developed in 1861. It had a fire rate of 200 rounds per minute over a similar range as a rifle.
The Maxim Gun-the world's first truly automatic weapon-was developed in 1884. It was capable of firing 600 rounds a minute. To give you an idea of the Maxim Gun's effect, during the Battle of the Shangani in 1893, 50 soldiers fought off 5,000 Matabele warriors with just four Maxim guns.

So to sum up, any force relying on hand-to-hand combat to win battles would be utterly shattered by a Victorian army.


What about flintlock-era armies? They're really in the same boat. Field artillery was inferior (leading to an easy counterbattery) and cavalry still has the same vulnerabilities. So that leaves the line troops of a flintlock-based army against the entire Victorian army, including artillery and automatic weapons teams.

Flintlocks have an effective range of about 100 yards. A marching musket formation will cover 100 yards in about 2 minutes. So they take casualties at double the rate of the pikeman-based army against the Victorian army to move the 500 yards into range.

Do the math-they're fethed too.

tl;dr the Victorians kick the crap out of every previous era.

If the Renaissance level side has navigable rivers then the Victorians can win without casualty. Anchoring a late Victorian naval fleet in busy waterways will win the war before it starts.

'The ironclad will always get through' - paraphrased

Iron_Chaos_Brute wrote:The Victorian era saw enormuos advances in weapons technology.

Rifled muskets were commonplace in the earlier part of the era, and were eventually replaced by breech-loading rifles. By 1853, the Enfield Pattern 1853 Rifle-Musket was the common longarm of the British military.

The Enfield had a maximum effective (line infantry trained to hit a man sized target at) range of about 600 yards, and could fire (in the hands of a trained user) about 4 times per minute.

Now a pikeman-era fullout infantry charge covered about 100 yards/minute on average. In the time between entering the Victorian line infantry's range and actually making it into hand-to-hand combat, the Victorian infantryman would fire 24 times. Assuming (conservatively, given the excellent target a large block of charging pikemen makes) an accuracy of 50%, that's 12 combatants disabled over the course of their charge by each line infantryman.

Now, you may say that all the less advanced army has to do is outnumber the Victorian army by more than 12:1 and it would win.

You would be wrong. A charge into overwhelming fire is one of the most difficult things to execute fully. As the front ranks get scythed down like wheat before the reaper, panic starts to break out. A charge into this sort of fire would be almost certain to fail as the enemy turned and fled.

Let's assume that the Victorian army is ounumbered 16:1, and that both sides have only basic line infantry (pikemen in the case of the "Middle Ages" army, Rifled Musketmen in the case of the Victorian army). At a full charge, the pikemen will lose 75% of their number on the approach.

No army is going to be able to take 75% casualties in 6 minutes and stay on the field. They'll break and run.

Now at a certain point, the Victorian line infantry would be so heavily outnumbered as to simply be overrun. But pikemen, cavalry, and archers (archers are here ineffective because of their limited range and greatly slower speed to maintain a skirmish line-those don't charge you; cavalry are ineffective because a horse and man together are a large target that still only takes 1 shot to disable and are available in smaller numbers anyways) are all that the Medieval army has. Effective field artillery is not yet present.

The Victorians have a variety of force-multipliers.

Effective field artillery. A cannonball will cut a pike block in half, grapeshot has an effective range of about 700 yards and spreads over a decent area-nothing quite like hearing a rasping hiss an watching the man next to you lose his head to a fist-sized lump of steel and lead (multiply this by 20 per artillery piece across the formation); and canister has a range of 300 yards-and acts like a shotgun.

Automatic Weaponry.

The cranked Gatling gun was developed in 1861. It had a fire rate of 200 rounds per minute over a similar range as a rifle.
The Maxim Gun-the world's first truly automatic weapon-was developed in 1884. It was capable of firing 600 rounds a minute. To give you an idea of the Maxim Gun's effect, during the Battle of the Shangani in 1893, 50 soldiers fought off 5,000 Matabele warriors with just four Maxim guns.

So to sum up, any force relying on hand-to-hand combat to win battles would be utterly shattered by a Victorian army.


What about flintlock-era armies? They're really in the same boat. Field artillery was inferior (leading to an easy counterbattery) and cavalry still has the same vulnerabilities. So that leaves the line troops of a flintlock-based army against the entire Victorian army, including artillery and automatic weapons teams.

Flintlocks have an effective range of about 100 yards. A marching musket formation will cover 100 yards in about 2 minutes. So they take casualties at double the rate of the pikeman-based army against the Victorian army to move the 500 yards into range.

Do the math-they're fethed too.

tl;dr the Victorians kick the crap out of every previous era.

For a better look at musketry vs. mid Victorian era rifles look at the early/mid war battles of the US Civil War: and epitomized by the infamous Picketts Charge. Massed units employing Napoleonic era tactics went against entrenched rifled companies with supporting artillery. They were absolutely slaughtered.

Thank you all very much!
I have been given much to look up, and I am gratful.

I believe that dwarfs (with breach loading cannons, steam engines, ironsides, etc.) are early victorian. So this gives me a feild to work with.

Again, thank you!

It's also worth bearing in mind that Victorian armies (well British ones anyway) were commanded by idiots. This was due to a system where if you were rich enough you could purchase a commission (i.e. your rank) in the army.

A prime example of this was the Earl of Cardigan, an arrogant buffoon who prior to the Crimean War, negotiated himself the commission of Commander of the Light Cavalry. It was he who led the Light Brigade down the "Valley of Death", although to be fair, this disaster was more the fault of his brother-in-law, Lord Lucan (another rich idiot), who should have questioned the order in the first place.

For this reason alone, I'd have an outside bet on the Romans who were a lot more organised.

Flashman wrote:It's also worth bearing in mind that Victorian armies (well British ones anyway) were commanded by idiots. This was due to a system where if you were rich enough you could purchase a commission (i.e. your rank) in the army.

A prime example of this was the Earl of Cardigan, an arrogant buffoon who prior to the Crimean War, negotiated himself the commission of Commander of the Light Cavalry. It was he who led the Light Brigade down the "Valley of Death", although to be fair, this disaster was more the fault of his brother-in-law, Lord Lucan (another rich idiot), who should have questioned the order in the first place.

For this reason alone, I'd have an outside bet on the Romans who were a lot more organised.

Not a chance. Even the charge of the Light Brigade wasn't as dumb as it first appears based on the knowledge of the people involved in the actual battle.

The co ordered an attack on some russian guns.
The man responsible for carrying the order was imprecise about the location of the guns and died before he could correct the order.
The charging Light Horse actually accomplished what they thought was their objective. With the support they thought they had they might have held the position.
Cardigan did as he was supposed to by following what was a lawful order. As did Lucan.
Unfortunately over the top reporting made a poor battle seem much worse then it really was.

Flashman wrote:It's also worth bearing in mind that Victorian armies (well British ones anyway) were commanded by idiots.

That isn't exclusive to the period (unfortunately).

I think we're excluding hubris and incompetence as factors for either side. Anyone for Isandlwana (1879)?

Does the Renaissance army get magic?

The Renaissance army's sole advantage would be in heavily armoured cavalry, but this is mitigated by firearms. That said, if you somehow managed to pull old-school gendarmes or lancers into the close-combat fight(which is unlikely) a bayonet isn't incredibly useful against plate armour and barded horse.

Altered_Soul wrote:The Last Samurai is proof that guns kill ninjas and samurais. What chance do boy-touchers with bronze plating and marching formations have?

Holy Roman Empire does not equal Roman Empire as it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

Anyway as others said the Victorians would have longer range shooting, faster shooting, better artillery and better medicine (for a long campaign this is important).

The Rennissance would be better in CC but I don't see them getting close.

The Meiji Restoration in Japan (Last Samurai) is not a bad real life example.

I recommend the following jolly good read about Victorian military disasters.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Someone-Has-Blundered-Phoenix-Press/dp/0753821818/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264237550&sr=8-1


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Victorian armies had heavy armoured cavalry in the form of cuirassiers.

Cavalry had little chance against a steady infantry square armed with flintlocks.

The experience of the Franco-Prussian war showed that armoured cavalry had little chance against steady infantry in line armed with breech-loading rifles.

Empchild wrote:Or even the final battle of the Hundred years war. France used crossbows and outnumbered the british 4 to 1. Were as the brits used long bows and utterly annilhilated the french thus winning the war.

Umm, the hundred years war ended when the Plantagenets who controlled England were expelled from France. The English lost the 100 years war. That isn't to say Plantagenet didn't have some massive victories during the war, but at the end of the day the sheer numbers Valois could summon mattered a lot.

It actually goes to show that there is more to winning a war than the quality of the soldier and his gear. The ability to keep armies in the field in supply, to recover from losses and rebuild lost divisions is as important as the quality of the soldiers you field (ask the Russians and the Germans about that one). Which is something that Victorian armies developed considerably, while there were issues with leadership there always had been, it's that during Victorian times the increase in professionalism in the armed forces threw the amateurish command into stark contrast.

He's talking about Agincourt, which was indeed a battle in the 100 Years War. Though definitely not the final one.

dogma wrote:He's talking about Agincourt, which was indeed a battle in the 100 Years War. Though definitely not the final one.

It wasn't the final battle, nor did it result in its victor winning the war.

Clearly not, just thought I'd clarify for him. It's one of those battles which gets cited as "weapon X was awesome!" on the History Channel.

The ultimate truth about war is that given similar gear, the side with the most men wins. Battles can be won and lost on small margins of superiority in gear or tactics, but the war is won or lost on either wearing down the other side, or being able to match the other side everywhere they are strong... and hit them somewhere they are weak as well.

Both were pretty much the standard doctrine for the Soviet Army, 1942-1991.

Don't tell the ancient Romans, Huns, or Alexander that...

Vulcan wrote:The ultimate truth about war is that given similar gear, the side with the most men wins. Battles can be won and lost on small margins of superiority in gear or tactics, but the war is won or lost on either wearing down the other side, or being able to match the other side everywhere they are strong... and hit them somewhere they are weak as well.

Both were pretty much the standard doctrine for the Soviet Army, 1942-1991.

Compare the Red Army in 1941, which had overwhelming numerical superiority over the Germans but was poorly led and controlled, with the Red Army in 1944, which basically smashed the same opponent.

Command and control, the ability to respond to a changing battlefield, maintaining supply, training and morale are all very important factors.

Vulcan wrote:The ultimate truth about war is that given similar gear, the side with the most men wins. Battles can be won and lost on small margins of superiority in gear or tactics, but the war is won or lost on either wearing down the other side, or being able to match the other side everywhere they are strong... and hit them somewhere they are weak as well.

Both were pretty much the standard doctrine for the Soviet Army, 1942-1991.

mmm yes and no, as truthfully training has a lot to do now a days as well. The most successfull armies now adays are much smaller in size then the years of old, but are far more professional, and better trained. Though I do agree with you to a point I think using the example of the Yom Kippur War ( I think I misspelled that and I do apologize) where 5000 tanks were defeated by the isrealis who had far less in troops. Also look at Romel vs Patton. Romel with only 80 some odd tanks achieved far greater victories then patton with several hundred. Honestly it comes down to a mixture of better equipment+better training=greater army.

Patton had better victories than Rommel? Pah! Patton never lost. How about Rommel?
anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

Rommel was no good at logistics.

he sucked at making strudel as well. Thats what did him in.

Hans Guderian knew how to make strudel. Now there's a German general for you.