Featherstone's Franco-Prussian War

DONALD Featherstone had some intriguing ideas on refighting the Franco-Prussian War in his 1970 book War Game Campaigns.

Featherstone's War Game Campaigns … my copy long ago lost its cover

Chapter 11 is called "Re-fighting the Franco-Prussian War." In it he arranges 15 principal battles from the war into three columns, each containing five battles.
The two sides have an army for each column, with Featherstone pointing out "as they fight separately, this can be covered by using all your troops for each army."
Starting with, say, the middle battle of the central column, the army that loses the battle retreats to the site of another battle.
For example, if the French were to lose the refight of the Battle of Vionville it would likely retreat to the site of the battle of St Privat.
But under the campaign's rules it could also retreat 'west' to the Battle of Rezonville or 'east' to the Battle of Mars-La-Tour.
This sounds very interesting, but there are two flaws in the scheme. First, it is not explained what happens if an army retreats to a battlefield in an adjacent column that is already occupied by two other armies.
Secondly, Featherstone seems to have thought Vionville, Rezonville and Mars-La-Tour were separate battles, when they are different names for the same battle.
Neither flaw is insurmountable. The first could be solved by only allowing armies to retreat to a battlefield in their starting column; the second by drawing up a different set of battles.

Two of the book's photos … top is a skirmish from the Peninsular War and below is from a 'refight' of the 1870 Battle of Spicheren, but both are clearly posed dioramas rather than scenes from wargames

Chapter 13 is titled "Re-fighting an Actual Battle (Spicheren, Franco-Prussian War, August 1870)."
Featherstone starts by drawing a map of the relevant countryside equivalent to a 5x4 block of his wargames tables.
Each side is given identical forces (18 regiments of line infantry, three of light infantry, three of cavalry and six guns) and has to deploy them on the map in at least three of four possible assembly areas.
Dice are rolled to decide where the first battle takes place, with the losers retreating and the winners having the choice of following them or standing still. Casualties are not carried over so both sides return to full strength after a battle.
Featherstone writes: "Other than map-moving for relatively unopposed flanking forces, moves on maps for other troops will be largely a matter of expediency to give a good situation!"
So this system refights a battle as a campaign. Effectively the only similarity to the original battle is the terrain over which the campaign is fought, although it would be easy to adjust the two sides' strengths to reflect the real number of troops involved.
Chapter 23 is "A 'Potted' Campaign (Franco-Prussian War 1871)" and uses Featherstone's famed matchbox chest (I do not know if he invented this, but he was certainly keen on it).
The idea is that two players can fight a campaign that includes hidden movement but does not need the services of an umpire.
The chest consists of 36 empty matchboxes glued together in six rows of six, and a map is drawn and divided into 36 squares.
Each player has counters representing the 19 units of his army, and these counters are moved from matchbox to matchbox to correspond with movement on the map.
Players move alternately and out of sight of each other until one player moves a counter into a matchbox already occupied by counters from the opponent, at which point a battle occurs (unless the square is divided by, for example, a mountain range that means the two forces are not in contact despite being in the same box).
As Featherstone points out: "Such a (system) can be used for more or less any part of the horse-and-musket period or even up to modern times."
It could also be used for ancient campaigns, or at least those in which the two sides were spread out for some reason, eg Roman consular armies marching from different parts of the Italian peninsula.
I have here covered just three of the 29 chapters that make up War Game Campaigns. Many of the other chapters have material that could be of use in refighting the Franco-Prussian War, and all are stimulating for the keen wargamer.
Copies of the original hardback are available on Amazon from about £25, or you can buy a John Curry paperback reprint, retitled Donald Featherstone's Wargaming Campaigns, for under £15, including postage.