Little Wars

Little Wars

(A Game for Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and
for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books)

With an Appendix on Kriegspiel

By H. G. Wells




CONTENTS

  I. OF THE LEGENDARY PAST
 II. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN LITTLE WARFARE
III. THE RULES--
       The Country
       The Move
       Mobility of the Various Arms
       Hand-to-Hand Fighting and Capturing
       Varieties of the Battle-Game
       Composition of Forces
       Size of the Soldiers
 IV. THE BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM
  V. EXTENSIONS AND AMPLIFICATIONS OF LITTLE WAR
 VI. ENDING WITH A SORT OF CHALLENGE

APPENDIX--
  LITTLE WARS AND KRIEGSPIEL




I

OF THE LEGENDARY PAST


"LITTLE WARS" is the game of kings--for players in an inferior social
position. It can be played by boys of every age from twelve to one
hundred and fifty--and even later if the limbs remain sufficiently
supple--by girls of the better sort, and by a few rare and gifted women.
This is to be a full History of Little Wars from its recorded and
authenticated beginning until the present time, an account of how to
make little warfare, and hints of the most priceless sort for the
recumbent strategist. . . .

But first let it be noted in passing that there were prehistoric
"Little Wars." This is no new thing, no crude novelty; but a thing
tested by time, ancient and ripe in its essentials for all its perennial
freshness--like spring. There was a Someone who fought Little Wars in
the days of Queen Anne; a garden Napoleon. His game was inaccurately
observed and insufficiently recorded by Laurence Sterne. It is clear
that Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim were playing Little Wars on a scale
and with an elaboration exceeding even the richness and beauty of the
contemporary game. But the curtain is drawn back only to tantalise us.
It is scarcely conceivable that anywhere now on earth the Shandean Rules
remain on record. Perhaps they were never committed to paper. . . .

And in all ages a certain barbaric warfare has been waged with soldiers
of tin and lead and wood, with the weapons of the wild, with the
catapult, the elastic circular garter, the peashooter, the rubber ball,
and such-like appliances--a mere setting up and knocking down of men.
Tin murder. The advance of civilisation has swept such rude contests
altogether from the playroom. We know them no more. . . .



II

THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN LITTLE WARFARE


THE beginning of the game of Little War, as we know it, became possible
with the invention of the spring breechloader gun. This priceless gift
to boyhood appeared somewhen towards the end of the last century, a gun
capable of hitting a toy soldier nine times out of ten at a distance of
nine yards. It has completely superseded all the spiral-spring and other
makes of gun hitherto used in playroom warfare. These spring
breechloaders are made in various sizes and patterns, but the one used
in our game is that known in England as the four-point-seven gun. It
fires a wooden cylinder about an inch long, and has a screw adjustment
for elevation and depression. It is an altogether elegant weapon.

It was with one of these guns that the beginning of our war game was
made. It was at Sandgate--in England.

The present writer had been lunching with a friend--let me veil his
identity under the initials J. K. J.--in a room littered with the
irrepressible debris of a small boy's pleasures. On a table near our own
stood four or five soldiers and one of these guns. Mr J. K. J., his more
urgent needs satisfied and the coffee imminent, drew a chair to this
little table, sat down, examined the gun discreetly, loaded it warily,
aimed, and hit his man. Thereupon he boasted of the deed, and issued
challenges that were accepted with avidity. . . .

He fired that day a shot that still echoes round the world. An affair--
let us parallel the Cannonade of Valmy and call it the Cannonade of
Sandgate--occurred, a shooting between opposed ranks of soldiers, a