A statesman speaks

I'm Yertle the Turtle!
Oh, marvellous me!
For I am the ruler
of all that I see!


* * * * * * *


Your Majesty. Please…
I don't like to complain.
But down here below,
we are feeling great pain. 

                   - Dr Seuss

Thus it is...

“Thus it is our daughters leave us,

Those we love, and those who love us!

Just when they have learned to help us,

When we are old and lean upon them,

Comes a youth with flaunting feathers,

With his flute of reeds, a stranger

Wanders piping through the village,

Beckons to the fairest maiden,

And she follows where he leads her,

Leaving all things for the stranger!” 

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 

fromThe Song of Hiawatha

Hey, nonny, nonny

And so to the opera. Having seen a theatrical production of 'Much Ado About Nothing' earlier this year I have now been to see Charles Villiers Stanford's rarely performed opera based on the play. You might be starting to think that there are an awful lot of rarely performed operas being, well, performed; and you would be right. The summer is full of festivals whose main purpose seems to be to seek out obscure operas and stage them. In addition these things go in cycles; Handel for example was out of favour, in terms of his operas, until the 1990s and now they're everywhere.

As usual when I see something rarely done I thought it was perfectly good, and couldn't tell you why no one performs it any more. It's one of Shakespeare's more ridiculous plots and so lends itself to operatic treatment quite nicely. There's a balcony scene and the director placed Hero's traitorous maid on the actual balcony of the hall, but sadly chose not to have Borachio climbing a ladder up from the stalls to reach her. Professor Dibble, the world's foremost authority on Stanford no less, said before the performance that the composer was at his best in comic opera. Despite that I am sad to report that the whole Dogberry routine wasn't any funnier for being put to music than it is in the play. Perhaps that's what the Manchester Guardian had in mind when they wrote at the time of its first  performance: "Not even in the Falstaff of Arrigo Boito and Giuseppe Verdi have the characteristic charm, the ripe and pungent individuality of the original comedy been more sedulously preserved."

I can't tell you much about Stanford (1852-1924); the only book about him (by Professor Dibble naturally) is out of print and copies change hands for around £500, which speaking as an accountant suggests it might be worth reprinting. He taught composition to students who went on to be more well-known such as Holst and Vaughan Williams, plus others who no doubt would have gone on to great things had they not been killed in the Great War. He is undergoing a bit of a revival at the moment - if I understood Officer, sorry, Professor Dibble properly there are plans to stage another of his operas at Wexford - and there is plenty of his large output available on CD or indeed Youtube. I rather like this short setting of a poem by Mary Coleridge:

Mary Coleridge was of course related to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but she wasn't in any way related to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. To bring things full circle the latter studied under Stanford, who conducted the premiere of his pupil's most famous work 'The Song of Hiawatha'.

Incidentally, the librettist of 'Much Ado About Nothing', Julian Sturgis, also performed the same function for Sir Arthur Sullivan's single serious opera 'Ivanhoe'. However, perhaps what makes him unique amongst opera composers or librettists is that he also played in two FA Cup Finals. It was a different world in those days.

Potential whooshing noise

"Personally, I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms." - Dale Carnegie

These days what drives buzz around new wargames rules is the size of the marketing budget involved, usually promoting not just rules, but often an extensive range of miniatures as well. The denizens of the lower Wharfe valley are not immune to the effect of that. (I'm sure that we will at some point have a game of of Cruel Seas for example) but there is often a lag of a couple years before we get round to playing sets that have become fashionable (Black Powder being a case in point). One or two of these (To the Strongest! most notably) find a sufficient resonance to stick around as rules of choice for a particular period.

Nonetheless, we usually find ourselves returning to either original Piquet or its derivative, Field of Battle. Neither of those have ever had any sort of commercial push behind them or ever achieved a wide user base, although having said that, we are not the only ones still playing about with the toolbox: check out this for example (and incidentally he is using a variant of which I was previously aware, but have never tried). The reason for mentioning all this is that having had a few games with James' new Peninsular War collection using other rules we have now tried FoB a couple of times. Our decision? We weren't keen. And we weren't keen for a really quite old school reason: we didn't like the ground scale. 

In FoB there is the possibility of multiple moves - a bit like Black Powder (except that it actually predates the latter). We came to the conclusion that we were happy with this for the Crusades for example, because those battles were in fairly small areas and because one actually wants horse archers to sweep around the flanks of the Christians and the Saracens to be in peril from swiftly charging knights. In the Napoleonic era however the battlefields are much larger and one certainly doesn't want cavalry to be able to start on one flank and charge across to the other before the defenders have any chance to react. Our initial thought was to try classic Piquet, probably the version we use for the Seven Years War as amended for the peculiarities of Napoleonic warfare. However, there are a number of elements in FoB that we do like, so, after due consideration, Peter and I have tasked James with melding together the two versions of Piquet into a seamless, playable and period specific form and, oh, doing it by next week.

Don't Believe a Word

We're playing chase the comment a bit at the moment on this blog. However, I am going to ignore the opportunity to explore the difference between anarcho-collectivism and anarcho-syndicalism (and believe me I am tempted) and also ignore the rather hurtful suggestion that what I described as my 'sabre exploits' would have been better termed 'sabre antics'. Instead we are going to move from sabres to rapiers and mark the fact that it would have been Phil Lynott's 70th birthday today.

What about that Molly? Still, there's women for you, eh Phil?

Back to wargaming soon I promise.

Stranger, pause and look

“Because reading books and having them bound represent two enormously different stages of development. First, people gradually get used to reading, over centuries naturally, but they don't take care of their books and toss them around. Having books bound signifies respect for the book; it indicates that people not only love to read, but they view it an important occupation. Nowhere in Russia has that stage been reached. Europe has been binding its books for sometime.” 

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My sabre exploits (not rattling but waving?) took place in The Leeds Library, which is a fascinating place. It is older, both as an institution and a building, than the events whose bicentenary we were marking. Amongst its founding members was Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen.

It doesn't however predate the oldest book in its collection, which I had been privileged to handle just a few days earlier. That was printed in 1483, less than thirty years after Gutenberg had invented the process by which it was produced (*). The book in question is in Latin and is religious in nature. I also was able to look at one printed a couple of decades later, and in that case my 'O' Level Latin was sufficient to tell me that whoever wrote it really, really didn't like Martin Luther. So, within a few decades the new technology of printing was being used in support of religious hatred and persecution; who'd have thought it?

The printed pages of both books were original, but they had been rebound several times. I have always found bookbinding a fascinating craft, although I doubt it's usually as exciting as it is portrayed in Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel (which I recommend, but isn't as good as the Alatriste books). By an unexpected coincidence Conny Kreitmeier served an apprenticeship as a bookbinder before taking up music professionally. It has been too long (at least a week) since we had a video of Conny looking winsome, so here we go:

* As an aside, what was arguably the next major development in printing technology - the Wharfedale stop-cylinder press - was invented just round the corner from where I am writing this.

Peterloo 3

Not many people have yet read yesterday's post, but the complaints have already started coming in. It has been pointed out that I didn't find space among my sub-Marxist class war diatribe to tell anyone what the speaker (Dr John Rumsby - didn't find room for that either) actually said about the actions of the 15th Hussars on August 16th 1819.

The 15th were an experienced regiment, many of whom had served in the Peninsula - most notably at Sahagún - and obviously at Waterloo as well. It was a time of significant unrest in Britain and troopers and officers had served in support of the civil power on many previous occasions, especially against protesting agricultural workers in East Anglia. They didn't relish the role, but had regularly dispersed crowds (although obviously none as large) without causing any injuries. Their tactics were controlled use of their horses (rather like a modern mounted police officer) together with striking the 'mobbists' with the flat side of their sabres. The reason for the Hussars to move into the crowd were, in his opinion, both to rescue the Manchester Yeomanry and to stop them inflicting further casualties.

Dr Rumsby - whose main issue with the recent film seemed to be the wearing of busbies - had with him a British light cavalry sabre of the period, and the width of the blade showed how effective using it as a surrogate truncheon might be. He very kindly allowed me to handle it and it was only the fact that we were in a library - and his rapid intervention - which prevented me from giving it the full swing that I was tempted to. However, it was very interesting to experience how it felt in one's hand. It only weighs about a kilogramme, but the length is such that it's easy to understand the momentum that could be developed cutting down from above one's left shoulder against someone on foot to the right side of the horse. Dr Rumsby quoted a French cavalryman as saying that the British might miss with nineteen out of twenty sabre slashes, but the twentieth would cut your arm off.

Peterloo 2

I have been to a lecture on Peterloo from the perspective of the military; not of course the story as it is usually told. Entitled '15th Hussars: From Waterloo to Peterloo' it was the product of some detailed research into the officers and men present from that regiment, and also to some extent from the various other units present.

Despite being a military historian the speaker really had no alternative but to avail himself of the same type of class based analysis that all other commentators on the event employ. His thesis was that the divide between the working men in the ranks and the aristocratic officers didn't matter so much because the latter would have frequently come into contact with and therefore understood the equivalents of the former while managing their agricultural estates. He didn't stretch his hypothesis too far by claiming that the same officers also had any particular sympathy with the radical protesters, but he did the blame for what happened on the day firmly on the bourgeois members of the Manchester Yeomanry. To add to the usual accusations of panic and drunkeness he added one I hadn't heard before, namely that being shopkeepers and lawyers they couldn't ride sufficiently well to control their horses.

He told an anecdote which made it clear that the protesters were lucky it was the 15th Hussars and not the 7th who were on duty. Apparently the officers of the 7th were the Bullingdon Club of their day and on one occasion beat up 'Orator' Hunt while he was watching a play in Manchester, a criminal act for which - just like their modern day successors - they were never brought to account. Among the aggressors on that occasion was the Earl of Uxbridge, who of course had lost his leg at Waterloo (*). It is well known that Uxbridge had different false limbs for different occasions (riding, walking etc) so it rather begs the question as to whether he had a prosthetic leg specifically to wear when attacking people on a night out at the theatre.


* "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!", "By God, sir, so you have!"

Peterloo

It's the 200th anniversary. Others will write about it better and Shelley's poem will be reproduced widely so I thought I'd mark it with some obscure, but I think rather fine, prog rock:

And some Melvyn Bragg:

FoB2

So, my venture back into the life of work has ended, not with a bang but with a whimper, and I am able once again to turn my attention to wine, women and wargaming; obviously, due to my teetotality, without the wine. So it was that I found myself in the legendary wargames room having another bash at Peninsular Napoleonics. When I was last there we were playing Lasalle, and it was looking promising. However, in my absence it has been found wanting and put back on the shelf. Scanning along those same shelves James' eye lit upon Field of Battle 2, and it was decided to give those a go.

I have mentioned before that the Piquet family has two main strands: the original, of which we use a heavily amended version for the Seven Years War, and a newer, simpler adaptation called Field of Battle (known as FoB), of which we use a heavily amended version for Italian Wars, Crusades etc. The reasons behind the development of the newer version are essentially reduced complexity leading to quicker games plus the elimination of the large initiative swings (for which read long periods of one side standing around doing nothing) to which the original game can be prone (*).

At some point Brent Oman, Piquet head honcho, developed and released FoB2, but I had never previously played them. James' email summons to the game made it plain that for the first run through we would play them as written, without introducing any house rules. Anyone for whom this isn't the first of my blog posts that they have read will naturally know what to expect. Peter and I arrived to find that he had in fact changed the musketry ranges. His reasoning for that was that in his view they are really written for a mid-19th century, American Civil War type game and need tweaking for the dynamics of Napoleonic warfare, the validity of which view also became apparent as various cavalry charges swept across the table before infantry had even had time to consider forming square.

I didn't find anything that particularly irritated me. They are faster moving - both in terms of distances covered and casualties incurred - than any of the Piquet versions we have been playing, but I'm sure one can adjust tactics when one gets the hang of it. Given that further house rules are inevitable (**) it almost seems redundant to comment in great detail, so just a couple of first thoughts:

• There is a Peter Pig style pre-battle 'Fate' routine which affects setup etc. When we last tried the equivalent for 'Square Bashing' we rolled lots of dice and in the end there was not much impact on the game. Here we rolled somewhat fewer dice and there was not much impact on the game. Still, we rather liked it and will try it again.
• The unit classifications and how they manifest as defence and attack dice are quite elegantly simple to use, if not to generate.
• In what I think is a new rule, one can cause the withdrawal of units through ranged fire as well as melee. I think I approve, although the exact mechanics of their interaction with supporting units perhaps needs a bit of clarification.
• The fighting of melees to a resolution (similar to a number of other sets of rules) is welcome, but the benefits of attackers outnumbering defenders seem a bit lightweight.
• There isn't enough morale. I have an overall observation about Piquet which is that it is very difficult to judge what is the correct amount of morale chips that each side should have. However, whatever that level is, it's a lot higher than these rules say.

*    Although read here for an example of it happening in FoB as well.
** While compiling this post I have received from James a list of suggested house rules. As he says that he is going to make some new sticks for measuring ranges it would seem that the rules are going to be around for a while; having said that he made some beaten zone templates for Lasalle and they didn't last long.

Vor der Kaserne

Following the comments on yesterday's post there is only one way to go:

Tausendsassa

I have a had a range of responses to my posting of the Heimatdamisch video. It was pointed out that the correct term is not Oompah, but rather Oberkrainer; there was a request to know what I was smoking because that particular reader wanted some too; and there were a number of enquiries as to whether I had access to any more videos featuring Conny Kreitmeier, Bavaria's answer to Elkie Brooks. Well, indeed I do.

The audio quality in the first isn't up to much, and frankly nor is the music, especially by the end. But it does show Fraulein Kreitmeier's talents to good advantage.

As does this:

I'm not sure this final one shows anyone in a positive light, despite the admirably odd time signatures and weird chords which would normally be very much to your bloggist's taste. I have no idea what she is wailing about and include it merely so we can all admire the guitarist's barnet.

Autobahn zur Hölle

Your bloggist attempts to be comprehensive in the type of music which he features, but has been remiss so far when it comes to posting videos recorded in a children's soft play area of lederhosen-clad Oompah Bands covering AC/DC . Never fear, that is about to be rectified:

Their version of 'Sweet Child o'Mine' is a belter as well.

Featured posts

Nobody has ever said to me "Your featured post of the day is always so apposite, please tell me how they are chosen.", and yet I still feel the urge to reveal all. Well today's - and clearly this will be of no value unless you are reading it today - was chosen thus:

• There will shortly be some Fireball XL5 news on here
• Steve Zodiac's voice was that of Canadian actor Paul Maxwell
• Paul Maxwell also played Major General Maxwell Taylor, commander of the 101st Airborne Division in 'A Bridge Too Far'
• There is a brief mention of another, more notorious, Maxwell in today's featured post. 

"Don't jump."

Of course I could have chosen this one or, more obscurely, this one, but a double Maxwell was hard to resist. And do remind me to tell you my Robert Maxwell stories sometime.

The snow goose need not bathe

“He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.” -Lau Tzu

Maybe it's all worthwhile

"I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend than be one." - Clarence Darrow

Working has once again got in the way of pretty much everything else for a few days. However, I have now been paid and for that reason alone find that I am somewhat happier with the situation than I was previously. Last time I had a similar windfall I made all sorts of promises that I was going to splash out on some new toys, but naturally never did. So, don't watch this space.