Forest combat

Does anyone have any suggestions for how an army would go about attacking a rebel force in a temperate forest?

Some basics:

The setting uses both muskets and bows. And magic.

The forest is very very large.

The rebels are firmly entrenched and have a good supply of weapons and food. Plus, with the abundance of natural food sources, they can last indefinitely. There are about 500 of them.

The army division is well equipped and have a form of low grade artillery. There are about 1500 of them.

edited 25th Dec '10 8:41:39 PM by Carbonpillow

Well, I would imagine the Army would split into three groups and surround the Rebels, setting ablaze the forest with magic to trap them in that spot. Can they use the magic for that?

What is the military make up of both sides? What does the rebel base look like? Tell me those and I think I could sketch up something like a battle plan.

In a temperate forest, setting a fire might be problematic as temperate climates tend to see a lot of rainfall...I live in one and it rains a great deal.

Since you mentioned muskets, an important thing to keep in mind is the inability to form ranks in a forest. Armies that used muskets depended upon massed fire to win engagements; this was because muskets were less than accurate and a wall of them was more likely to hit something important.

rebels could negate this advantage by luring their more tradition-bound opponents into a forested area and ambushing them with melee weapons - which was a common tactic during the analogous historical period that used the firearms you describe. A musket with a bayonet is a poor substitute for a sword, and most soldiers had only rudimentary training in how to use a bayonet-equipped musket for self-defense.

I thought of setting the woods on fire too, but its a large forest. Think Fangorn from Lo TR.

The rebels have their base deep in the forest interior, and it is comprised mostly of tents and makeshift lookouts on trees. It is designed so they can move quickly and easily in case of attack.

The army soldiers are stationed in and around a local village. They have a small force of calvary, but are wary of risking them in the woods.

The rebels are the good guys.

^^ Some temperate forests are different. The ridiculously dense forests of the Wet Mountains (which are the densest in Colorado) easily burn. Either by lightning strike or human activity. Fire is an essential part of the ecosystem there. (The same occurs all along the Rocky Mountains, Basin and Range region and the Sierras/Coast ranges of California)

Edit:

For fighting in the type of terrain described at a similar technology level (sans magic of course) see the battles of the French and Indian War. Quite a few of them take place in more or less exactly the conditions you ask.

edited 26th Dec '10 7:01:02 AM by MajorTom

Could a musket, or any firearm, be fired when wet (rain)?

Also, are the ones camped in the forest good or evil and are the ones assaulting the forest good or evil?

If they're evil, they could also poison a river or some such. Or burn the forest. Or use deception in some manor like a fake peace-offering that ends up being poisoned food. Most war tactics are rather evil, to be honest.

Could a musket, or any firearm, be fired when wet (rain)?

Lever and bolt action rifles can fire when sopping wet easily provided the bullet and action did not rust or leak through into the primers. Quite a few automatic weapons can as well.

Muskets and really old school rifles are dependent on the powder staying dry. If the gunpowder is dry you can fire the musket in any weather.

The easiest way to attack these rebels would be by locating the water source somewhere in this forest sufficient for the water and hygiene needs of five hundred men. That should lead you straight too them (this is based on the assumption that the rebels are largely based in one area, and smaller camps would be more viable). Also, with regards to your rebels having bows, do bear in mind that given the amount of time needed to train reliable archers and bowers, if you intend to fight in a forested enviroment where bows cannot easily be used this is largely a wasted investment. Something similar applies with muskets, as while a musketeer can be trained to be as accurate as the weapon allows in fortnights, obtaining metal in a forrest is difficult, and the trees will still present a serious obstacle. If weaponry is purchased then the rebels can be located by tracking the people lugging large amounts of weaponry through the forest. Also important are how magic affects combat and why the professional army cannot wait for the rebels to attack (which they presumably do from time to time, to have a war being fought against them) and use their massed numbers, superior firepower and presumably defendable towns and cities to fight from a position of strength? If i were them i would wait in a position i could defend and which substantially reduced the chances of losing soldiers to enemy projectiles (read:somewhere with mannable walls) with a flat terrain available, which enemies have to cross to attack the fortified area, and mow them down with my 3:1 fire superiority. the ideal location to fortify would be an outlying town of the sort the rebellion would be likely to strike at for supplies etc., fortifying overnight a la roman camp. If such a location were not available sending my troops into enemy territory would still not be my first choice, barring exceptional circumstances.

Army division's going to need to call reinforcements. They are NOT in a good strategic position here, the defenders will be well-supplied and will know the terrain a lot better than they do. Their artillery and cavalry won't count for shit in the woods, and as has been said, they can't form musket lines.

They'll probably be forced to do a slow grind of attrition through the woods, taking a lot of casualties from booby traps and ambushes. In that case, they'll want an overwhelming numerical advantage and 3 to 1 is just not enough in this situation.

They should burn as much as they can though, they just can't count on that to really achieve decisive results.

Dogs might be useful to bring in, they can help with finding the rebels a lot easier and sniff out ambushes. And in such close quarters, they do have a good chance of chasing down lone rebels and mauling them, although the imperials will probably not want them getting needlessly killed in melee.

Furthering my idea of finding the rebels by finding their water source, if said water source was a river, and the rebels were downriver of the empire, the empire could easily poison the river at minimum risk to themselves, also serving as a moral event horizon to establish that the villains actually are vilainous. Alternatively, simply sailing/boating downriver would help avert the whole slowly-getting-picked-off-as-they-struggle-through-the-woods situation mentioned above, allowing the empire to move very fast without trees and such impeding them, and with the flow of the river acting in their favour, both advantages over the rebel scouts speedwise. They could very easily arive too fast for the rebels to properly prepare, and if they wanted to try the kill the forest and everything in it with fire approach on any enemy troops being on water provides some protection against being hoist by their own metaphorical petard. Some questions: What sort of signals do rebel scouts use, and is the empire familiar with them? Is a magician in battle in this setting roughly equivalent to another soldier? To a siege engine? How much influence do they have on battle, and how many are available to each side? Could you break down your large numbers of "infantry" into numbers of musketeers, talented archers, competent archers and beginning archers (Archery requires far more skill than musketeering, especially as skilled archers can, under ideal circumstances, aim for and hit specific body parts rather than specific regiments. However skilled archers take generations to train) Plus any other troop types of note, such as magicians, polearm infantry, anti-polearm infantry etc.

What can the magic do anyway?

Okay,so here's how the battle goes, if you see any flaws, blast away.

The Army is staged just outside and around a small town. The camp consists of tents and a enclosure for the horses. The rebels need to rescue a large amount or prisoners held within the town.

Night time. Two groups of rebel archers use arrows wrapped in straw/linen/something flammable and dipped in oil. They set these on fire and shoot them into the army camp to cause disarray and panic. they also aim for the horses and try to kill as many as they can. They draw the army soldiers away from the encampment and away from the town.

Three groups of rebels, armed with a mix of weapons from swords to muskets, attack the town and kill the remaining army forces. They release and gather the prisoners (Takes some time) and makes for the forest.

The army soldiers arrive back and those on horseback give chase. One group of rebels decide to give a You Shall Not Pass! and stay behind to slow them down. Their Heroic Sacrifice is averted by the arrival of a allied calvary force (long story, but it's a Gondor Calls for Aid moment).

The rebels escape to the safety of the forest.

The Army sets up just outside of range and brings in some wizards (more or less wizards under any other name.) who proceed to magicfire a path into the forest. The sides of this path are covered in flames, so the rebels can't harass the invading army force. The army follows the trail of the prisoners back to the rebel camp.

The wizards are killed. The army withdraws and just decides to burn the entire forest down with non-magical fire.

Lacking any other options, and not wanting to wait for the fire to reach them, the rebels escape the forest through a secret and dangerous path.

edited 5th Jan '11 8:25:26 PM by Carbonpillow

I'm wondering, since you have a magic system in use, if anyone in-universe has found out the beauty of ariel reconnisance. Levitate a platform high above the ground, scout out ahead, and make reports on what is observed. Distant smoke, birds scattering from certain areas, sounds, stuff like that. The platform doesn't have to move around, it just has to go up, linger for awhile, then come back down without crashing. Hot air balloons were used way back in the Civil War. I'd imagine, if someone was inventive enough to come up with it, that the army would try to employ it in order to figure out where in the forest they should sent scouting parties so they can find the rebel encamplent quickly.

The army will use scouts (with or without air recon) to reconnitor the forest interior, maybe use some locals that are politically dependable for the lay of the land, and figure out where the rebels are hiding out.

Also - the rebels might have food and water for an indefinite period of time, but they will have to be supplied for other things, like musket shot, tools, powder, stuff like that. If the army can discover their supply routes, they can then find their base of operations easier.

As mentioned, they'll need a lot of troops to actually pull off an assault. But that assault is best employed only after they have a clear objective laid out on a map, after the rebels have been scouted out.

The rebels would be wise to have their own scouts and pickets stationed along key approach routes (trails, streams and creeks and the like) in order to counter the army's usage of scouts. This will inevitably lead to small skirmishes between rival scouting parties. Traps are good, but due to the sheer scale of the forest, they'd best be employed along trails and stuff where the army is expected to move along. Stuff like pitfalls, magical traps, warning runes, whatever.

Knowing this, the army would probably not march into the forest along a convenient trail, despite it taking longer to march, as they'll know that the rebels will be expecting the to use those trails.

ultimately, it's up to the commanders of either force to implement such tactics at al. If either force is led by a tactical buffoon, the other side gains a significant advantage in hwo things go down. So, my question is this: What sort of leaders do the two forces have? Figure that out, and the rest will more or less follow.