Monday's entertainment was one of the latter. The Serbo-Turkish War of 1876 was a kind of prequel to the much larger and better-known Russo-Turkish War. Serbia declared war because of popular outrage at the Turkish response to outbreaks of rebellion in the neighbouring Ottoman provinces. Serbia's war plan was a rather incoherent 'cordon attack', advancing tentatively and ineffectually in several divergent directions. The Turks reacted by massing their forces to drive up the main axis from Sofia towards Belgrade. The Serbs had established a line of redoubts around the town of Alexinatz (modern spelling Aleksinac). In a series of actions spread over two weeks, the Turks drove in the Serbian outpost line and attacked first (unsuccessfully) on the Serbian left, then with better fortune on the right. Their lines of communication being threatened, the Serbs were forced to retreat.
While the subsidiary actions taken in isolation may be interesting in themselves, by combining them into a single BBB scenario a much richer and more challenging game can be had. The battle resolves itself into distinct phases, punctuated by night intervals in which the protagonists reorganise and redeploy. The game is no longer a simple attack-defence. It becomes instead a delaying action and fighting withdrawal, so the Serbian players have far more interesting things to do than just rolling their firing dice.
Looking north on the Turkish axis of advance along the River Morava.
The four objectives are marked: Trnjani, Alexinatz, the Sumatovac mountain and Katun.
The photo above shows the battlefield before the Serbian players deployed their troops. They chose to mass their forces centrally in front of Alexinatz and on the plain just west of it, including all their artillery, in the position shown as "Serbian line" in the photo. One solitary brigade was posted forward, just out of shot on the eastern flank, to delay the Turkish advance.
The Turks therefore decided on a double envelopment. On their left the Turks raced through the vineyards in column of march, then shook out into line along the foot of the hills and pushed east. The Serb garrison had inexplicably vacated the entrenchments of Trnjani, so on the second day this key objective fell virtually uncontested.
On the right, the difficult terrain made the Turkish advance much slower, but they mauled the one isolated Serbian militia unit, then on the second day were able to set up a line in front of the Sumatovac and start pounding its defenders. Meanwhile a single brigade pushed up the main road east of the Morava to give the Serbian guns target practice. It was sorely pummeled but managed to recover overnight and join the line on the right.
On Day 2 the Serbs did receive reinforcements, one unit in the NW corner that distracted a Turkish unit for the rest of the game, and three brigades entering from the east edge to menace Katun. The Turks had held back quite a lot of troops to cover this threat, and rather than pick on a weak point, the Serbs chose to march into the centre of a cauldron of fire, with predictable results.
Thus, early on Day 3, the Turks had snuffed out the Serb counterattack in the east and ignored an irrelevant Serb foray in the centre (marked on the photo). Their own rear at Katun was secure. They already held Trnjani. They blew away the remaining Serbs on Sumatovac, leaving it open for them to occupy. This meant they held the key points either side of Aleksinac, and the Serb army had its head in a tightening noose. As the Serbs were so weakened that they had no realistic prospect of a successful counterattack, they conceded victory to the Turks.
Our post-battle discussion identified some significant Serbian strategic errors. Historically, the Serbs had contested outpost lines well forward of Alexinatz. In our game they ensconced themselves in their entrenchments and waited. This meant the Turks could tramp confidently forward in march columns, particularly in the west, and take Trnjani improbably quickly; and could mostly avoid the central position where the Serbs had massed all their artillery and much of their strength, and take a lightly defended Sumatovac with relative ease. A better strategy could have been to post a cordon of infantry units forward initially, supported by artillery distributed across the front. This would have obliged the Turks to deploy and fight their way forward much more slowly, and/or to take more circuitous routes to avoid tough delaying positions. The Serbs could then have used the two Night Intervals to fall back and reorganise their lines, forcing the Turks to renew their advance and close in all over again. With the Turks being Passive and having to cross Difficult Terrain, they could have been kept at bay longer and suffered more, and the Serbian reinforcements might have had more significant effect.
I was actually rather relieved by this Serbian debacle. Before the game I was worried that the scenario was skewed too heavily against the Turks, because of their passivity, the difficult terrain, and the Serbian entrenchments, which I thought might more than outweigh the Turkish 5:4 numerical superiority and superior troop quality. As it is, I think the scenario may be reasonably balanced after all. And whether or not it is balanced, it was definitely an interesting one that offers both sides plenty of choices about how to play it, and the boys are keen to give it another go and try different plans.
As usual, the scenario is posted in the files of the BBB Yahoo group.
It is also on Flickr along with a lot of annotated photos of the game.
For a decent recent book on the war see here.
But for next week our attention moves west to the American Civil War, as we will be trying Andy Bailey's scenario for Chickamauga - one of the ACW's Biggest and Bloodiest Battles!
Hi Chris. Good battle. I cannot follow the link on the book.
ReplyDeleteThanks, good spot. Link fixed now.
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