In which the limitations of technological superiority are demonstrated with startling clarity.

The brief Flintlock War of 1879-1880 is notable mainly for demonstrating the power, and the limitations, of superior technology. The war got its name from the small arms carried by the Indian army: Ten-pound flintlock muskets with an effective range of perhaps a hundred yards against massed targets, a remarkable anachronism measured against the breech-loading percussion-cap rifles of the Milice di Venezia. That the Indians were nonetheless able to take the offensive, and even force their enemies to make peace without concessions, is a tour de force in the supremacy of strategy and logistics over tactics, and deserves close examination by every military man who worries about being outgunned by a more advanced enemy.

The “ten-rupee jezail”, as the Long Maharashtra-Pattern musket was not-so-affectionately known, had first been issued in 1722 (!), and remained a modern and effective weapon up until, perhaps, 1840; its survival as late as 1880 shows an immense conservatism on the part of the Indian War Ministry, which requires some explanation. Their inertia was, most likely, a disease of victory: In the global wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the armies of India had been successful and widely feared, spreading the dominion of Peshawar to the Iranian highlands in the west, through the Hindu Kush in the north, and well into China in the east. So successful were they in spreading the terror of their name that from 1820 until 1879, India fought no wars against major Powers; for two generations the only live-fire experience any Indian soldier got was in the successive partitions of the well-decayed state of Fandango, minor mopping-up actions hardly worthy of the name ‘skirmish’. Flintlock muskets, then, had been perfectly adequate for all the wars India had fought for well over a century; the expense and trouble of re-equipping something in excess of half a million soldiers clearly did not appeal to men accustomed to overawing the tiny armies of impoverished Fandango by simply showing up with ten times their number.

We may imagine, then, that the Venetian attack was something of a rude shock to these military bureaucrats, with their tradition of victory and their knowledge that their army, recruiting from the whole subcontinent, was twice the size of Venice’s. This fact turned out to be of somewhat limited usefulness when the Venetians, armed with breech-loading rifles with an effective range of around five hundred meters, could easily kill three, and in one celebrated case ten, for every man they lost. But that was in straightforward tactical encounters between divisions and corps. In the clash of armies, it was logistics that was decisive; and here the Indians, relying on tried-and-tested methods, were superior.

The Retrocarica Fucile M1863 was by no means a perfect weapon, even tactically. The elaborate loading procedure, involving a crank to open and close the breech, limited the rate of fire to six or at most eight rounds per minute. While it was accurate out to a full kilometer in the hands of an expert, practical battlefield ranges were much more limited because the black-powder paper cartridges had a muzzle velocity of only 300 m/s, which made for a curved trajectory; this made it necessary to aim well above the enemy at any but musket range, and drop the bullet onto him – a feat requiring considerable training in estimating ranges and overcoming the natural tendency to “point and shoot”. These problems, however, were only significant when the Venetians were fighting European armies with their own breech-loaders, which in any case had their own tradeoffs; the German pin gun, for example, had a higher rate of fire but a shorter range due to the imperfect gas seal. Against muzzle-loading smoothbore rifles the M1863 was a wonder weapon. The difficulty lay in keeping it supplied with those paper cartridges, not to mention spare parts; the Venetian army’s commissary had not caught up with its procurement, and delivered gunpowder and lead in amounts well suited to a much older firearm, which then had to be put into cartridges at the front. The much-mocked general’s concern, that a rapid rate of fire would cause soldiers to burn through their ammunition, turned out to be quite accurate when the ammunition had to be painstakingly assembled by the soldiers themselves from insufficient gunpowder. Several divisions were reported to use captured stocks of Indian gunpowder to eke out the miserly supplies shipped to them from Italy, and at least one regiment actually abandoned the M1863 and re-equipped itself with Indian muskets!

The limitation was not technological; the Venetian merchant navy was quite capable of shipping immense amounts of supplies either to the Levant, whence they could be moved by railroad to the fighting front in Persia, or through the Suez Canal straight into Persian ports, as they demonstrated in the later stages of the war when the shock of defeat had caused drastic reform – and multiple heads rolling – in Venice’s logistical arrangements. It was simple conservatism and failure to examine the implications of a new technology, precisely the same mindset that caused the Indian army to continue issuing muskets. The product of their mistakes was tens of thousands of Indians dead, their limbs blown off by the immense 17.5mm bullets of the M1863 from far beyond any range at which they could reply; and tens of thousands of Venetians captured, forced to surrender for lack of bullets to blow limbs off with.

Both sides rapidly corrected their mistakes: The Indians bought – at emergency prices – tens of thousands of modern firearms from Japan. The Venetians established cartridge-making factories in Italy – at one point the major patrician houses were assembling cartridges in their homes, as a display of patriotism – and drastically increased their supply shipments. However, it was India which had the depth of reserves to recover from the initial mutual disasters; numbers mattered in the end. The M1863, like all black-powder rifles, required long training to get the best out of it; the loss of two-thirds of the peace-trained regular infantry crippled Venice’s warmaking ability for at least two years. By dint of a scrambling retreat, partly across the Persian Gulf, general Salomone Aiello was able to establish a defensive line around Baghdad with the remnants of his army, which the Indians were unable to break; but its northern flank hung in the air. With nothing to stop the Indians from marching into Anatolia, and with other nations politely hinting at intervention in India’s favour, the Senate – in which the Trader party suddenly found itself in the majority after the spectacular end of some previously promising careers – sued for peace; the threat of the German alliance made it a peace on the status quo antebellum, with no concessions made by either side. But there was no concealing that the war had been a disaster for Venetian arms.

In all honesty, I wasn’t even that eager to go to war with India; the provinces just aren’t that good. The Persian border runs through Vicky states, so if I expand in the natural place I’m paying 11 infamy for one or two provinces, and have to do that twice before I can get a whole state; and when I do, it’s grain, cattle, wool. If I drop the requirement of nice borders and just bite at the coast, I can get some dye; but there’s no coastal state with more than one dye province in it, and the other resources tend to the meh. The one exception, South Bengal, is split between India and Japan. So, really, there’s not that much gain in it. But sour or not, they looked like such low-hanging fruits!

The Persian border. These Indian provinces are, honestly, quite meh; but the war looks like a picnic.

In 1879 India had literally five military techs, presumably the same five it started with. In other words, flintlocks, 25% tactics, no dig-in bonus to speak of. So with my 14 techs and 100% tactics, I should be able to walk right in. And, yes, I certainly had the casualty ratio going my way:

The Milice di Venezia demonstrates why you don’t attack a good defensive general with superior tech who is dug into mountains.

It turns out, however, that the maintenance slider actually matters in Vicky; who knew? My CB generation had been discovered, so the Indian player had plenty of warning; by the time I DOWed the border provinces were full of 30k stacks. Which then, in a move of startling audacity, actually attacked! In Kerman that didn’t go so well for him; but where the terrain was less favourable, my stacks would pile up 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 casualty ratios and then retreat because their low starting org ran out. And org regain in Vicky is immensely slow. So the Indian stacks followed mine, and the pattern repeated. In the narrow confines of the bit of Venezia-oltre-il-Mare that sticks into Persia, he was able to surround my stacks and wipe them before I realised what was happening.

I was able to evacuate my westmost stacks as well as a few that got into ships, and set up defenses around Baghdad. Not a flake of canned food was there in the world market, however – probably due to the renewed war between Fox and England, in which Fox is demanding bits of North America and the liberation of Mexico – and so there was no prospect of reinforcements. India’s economy was suffering, and he offered me a white peace. Now, I could have called in Germany to help me (and incidentally, Blayne, if you had DOWed, Germany would have crushed you like a bug), but as noted initially I wasn’t that into the provinces, and I felt that the skill and tenacity the Indian player had demonstrated should not just be swept aside by calling in a Great Power. So I took the white peace and tweaked my economy until I could rebuild my army on home production. Also, next time I go to war the maintenance slider will be at 100% some months before the attack.

I notice India has some more army techs now.

The Baghdad Line, near the end of the war. Note the casualty ratios!

World map, 1882. No major changes since last session; but Mexico and Vinland are occupied by the Red Empire.