Woods are a common feature in European battles, and even more so for battles in Eastern America. They weren’t an ideal spot to actually conduct the fighting but wooded terrain in some shape could not be avoided. I want to think about the European context especially – but some of the observations will apply more widely.
It is natural to think of wild forests as dense, impenetrable and overgrown and contrast them with navigable, managed woodlands- indeed such a contrast is the basis of what little Clausewitz has to say on forests in On War. It was often the reverse – which shows how little even military people took to consider the matter. So we need to start by trying to understand what woodland is.
Real woods
Woods are collections of trees. Our natural understanding of how trees look is based on the ones we see on their own – with all round foliage coming down nearly to the ground – and model trees typically follow this. Trees in woods are different; they compete with each other to reach the light, growing on upwards, and not wasting foliage where the light is poor. Typically they comprise a long trunk with a relatively thin canopy of branches and foliage at the top. The visual impression in a wood is of a dark place with lots of bare tree trunks. The canopy blocks out the light, inhibiting growth in the lower storey, which is often also kept in check by forest animals as well. How easy this is to traverse depends on the development of this understory, how close the trees are to each other, and any other terrain covered by the wood. In the case of many European wild woods (from Poland eastwards), there is little understory and the trees are reasonably spaced – and I expect this is true of North American woods too. So it is actually quite easy to traverse, except at the margins, where there is more light and vegetation, or where other types of terrain – rocks, slopes, marshes, streams – intervene. Hardly a parade ground, and close formation isn’t possible, but not necessarily slow going. Horses would have little difficulty (ancient forests were roamed by big beasts) – but horses with riders perhaps not so much. The main problem is maintaining a sense of direction, as there would be little in the way of external reference points and few tracks.
It is not quite as simple as that for wild woods, of course. There is a reason that Clausewitz describes them as impenetrable: that is because they are often associated with other difficult terrain, such as steep slopes. That is why they are left uncleared or unmanaged in much of Europe. But in the American Civil War we often find infantry pushing through ancient forests, little managed by man. Uncultivated does not mean impenetrable. Of course as in all terrain, there would be some areas more difficult to traverse than others.
In Western and Southern Europe, there was little in the way of wild wood in well-populated regions. Woods were a resource used by a rural population that was often much denser than in modern times (not counting commuters and retired people in villages). One important land use was wood pasture – where animals such as pigs would roam the forest eating what they could. This was often common land (like the New Forest in Hampshire now). There was little in the way of understory, and the trees were generally well-spaced. In Southern Europe I believe this type of woodland was commoner – and certainly accounts of the Peninsular War suggest that Iberian woods were relatively open (the French retreated through one with little difficulty after Salamanca). Cork forests, where the pigs roam to eat acorns while the trees are harvested for their bark, are often so open that they can’t be considered to be woods at all. It may also be that regular fires kept any undergrowth in check – something that doesn’t happen further north.
Otherwise woods would be managed for the trees themselves to be harvested by felling. We typically think of timber, for use in building and carpentry, coming from the felling of mature trees. But in pre-industrial times charcoal, firewood and hurdles were very important. Hurdles were an important building material, latticed for fencing and even walls of buildings (e.g. in wattle and daub construction). These last products came from poorer quality wood, from smaller trees. These were typically harvested using coppicing – with smaller trees such as hazel cut to the stump, and growing into a thicket of small branches, suitable for hurdles. Another method was planting potential timber trees such as oak densely and thinning them out as they grew – with the thinnings used for firewood and charcoal. My father managed such a wood in the traditional style, and did both. The significance for our purposes was that these woods were (and are) dense, except for the odd clearing where recently harvested, because the understory has economic value. This made them hard to traverse, and impossible for cavalry. This is mitigated to an extent because they would be traversed by a network of trackways (“rides”) so that the resources could be accessed, but it was still very easy to lose any sense of direction – as I know from walking in my father’s wood. This type of wood is the default in Northern Europe.
The two types of wood – common land with a history of wood pasture, and the much denser managed woods, can be illustrated in the Waterloo campaign. The Forest of Soignes, to the north of battlefield, was an example of the former. It was quite open, and some troops, including cavalry, traversed it to avoid the congested main road on the approach. Napoleon’s famous comment that it blocked Wellington’s line of retreat was mistaken – though doubtless artillery and baggage would have been challenged. The Bois de Paris, through which the Prussians advanced to the battle seems to have been an extension of this, as cavalry units seemed to have traversed it. On the other hand the Bois de Bossu at Quatre Bras was a managed wood. Cavalry avoided it, and even the infantry often struggled. The British Guards were able to push through, but took heavy casualties.
In more modern times there are conifer plantations, used purely for timber. These can be extremely dense when recently planted, but when mature the pine needles kill any undergrowth and they become much more open – though the trees might be planted quite close together. Sometimes these are planted in rows, allowing you to see quite a distance when looking between them. The Reichswald in Germany, site of one of the 1945 battles in Germany, was such a place. These typically use non-native species, and would not have been around in Napoleonic times or before.
Then there are orchards and olive groves – though it is probably not correct to call these woods. The trees are spaced widely enough apart so that they can branch sideways as well as upwards, and typically they are managed so that there is no undergrowth; the trees aren’t very tall, and may be pruned so that the fruit is easier to harvest (as my grandfather did with his apple trees). These are quite easy to traverse, though the lowness of the trees might give cavalry pause. They are often surrounded by fences and walls. Closely related, but definitely not woods, are vineyards. Wargamers need to be careful about how they represent these, as viniculture has evolved rapidly in the last two centuries. Modern vineyards look nothing like the older ones. My knowledge of how these older vineyards looked is very sketchy. I understand that they consisted of mounds of vine, and not trained into neat rows until later in the 19th century. If a reader can point me in the direction of some research on this, I would be interested! For wargames purposes they are quite similar to orchards, but probably provide less cover. Vineyards would be much less of an obstacle in winter, when the vines died or were cut back; at Austerlitz cavalry was able to penetrate them. This would be true of temperate orchards too.
Combat effects
The main importance of woods is that they make it hard to see and control troops, and impossible for them to hold close formation. Clausewitz didn’t like them because they might conceal an enemy advance, and advised woods to be kept in the rear when on the defensive – unless they are impenetrable and block and canalise the enemy. In more modern times, concealment is a much greater virtue (amply demonstrated by the current horror in Ukraine), as it makes it much harder to attack with artillery or from the air – and close formations are irrelevant. Woods do stop most vehicles though.
The extent to which woods provide cover to small arms fire (or mortars and artillery if they do find you) is perhaps exaggerated in our imaginations. There is typically not a great deal of undergrowth, and the wood can give off nasty splinters. By breaking up close formations they would have made hand-to-hand combat more deadly. In modern times you definitely still need to dig in.
On the table
The commonest way to represent woods on the wargames table is with patches of dark green cloth or textured paper, with or without model trees scattered across them, as in my Shiloh terrain at the start of the piece (an excellent subject for a war-game, incidentally). This does the job, but lacks something visually. Another method is to have loose groups of model trees placed straight on the table. All these model trees, of course, represent stand-alone rather than forest trees – but at least they are easy to move around to make way for you model soldiers. A few people have constructed detachable canopies with which to cover an area of woodland. This offers the benefit of concealment. What you can’t do, though, is represent a wood by populating it with a realistic quantity of model trees (even if you could find models with long trunks), as that would leave no room for the troops.
My favoured compromise is that used by my hero Bruce Weigle. Here is his Kissingen board, representing a battle in 1866 in Germany:
He represents the edge of the wood with a line of touching tree models whose foliage comes practically down to the ground. The interior wood is represented by foliage-coloured cloth. I particularly like this because it replicates the denser foliage usually found at the edge of woods, which is a genuine physical obstruction. This may work a bit better in his 5mm scale. Here’s how it looks in one of my games with 18mm figures:
The dark green felt looks a bit ropey, I admit. One question when modelling the interior of a wood like this is whether it should be coloured like the canopy – green, or grey in winter – or the forest floor – various shades of brown.
The loose model tree method works much better for orchards and olive groves, where the models look more like the real thing. Boundaries can be represented by fences or walls. Vineyards are much harder. Bruce Weigle simply paints in rows of dark green on the base cloth (by the time of his later 19th Century battles doubtless this was how they looked). For larger scales you could try something more textured, or else movable models for the vines.
In the rules
Most wargames rules recognise two types of wood: dense and open. The latter category would include orchards. Troops move more freely in open woods, and cavalry is (usually) permitted, but not artillery. Usually movement is slower in woods for all types of troops, except perhaps skirmishers. This is fair enough. Even where the ground and vegetation is less of a physical obstacle, the need for orientation would slow troops down.
In all rules woods block line of sight; there is usually a reduced vision distance within a wood. Thicker vegetation at the margins, and the light contrast, make it hard to see into woods from outside, and within the you had to push right to the edge to see outside the wood. Visibility in woods is limited in even the more open ones, unless the trees are in neat rows – a rarity. There should be more visibility in orchards, where trees are much more likely to be in rows, but these are usually relatively small, and not worth making special rules for.
I am more sceptical of any defensive advantage given to troops in woods as cover against various forms of fire, or in close combat. I don’t think this is worth bothering with – except that the edges of woods can realistically be treated as hedges. Having said that, at Quatre Bras the British Guards suffered heavy losses when pushing through the woods – and it is safe to assume that the French suffered much less. These French troops would have been light infantry, though, and much more skilled at this type of warfare – and the Guards were in a hurry.
A further consideration is the way that woods would break up close formations – and even make looser formations harder to maintain because of reduced visibility. If advancing through woodland, troops would need time to sort themselves out once they emerge, if in any bigger unit than a platoon.
And finally it is worth remembering the effect of woods on command and control. There is much more friction for troops deployed in woods. It is harder to see where they are; it is harder for them to know where they are, or where anybody else is – and it is quite easy to lose your sense of direction unless you are familiar with the ground. Where woods feature as relatively small patches – which is typical for most games – then obviously it is less of a problem.
Conclusion
The main thing to learn from all this is that it is important to do research on any woods that feature in your historical battles. See how the armies used them, or not, at the time. If they didn’t feature at all, then they are likely to be dense. Also be aware of other terrain features – such as slopes – which would impact their use. If woods are extensive, consider how the affected command, consider how to reflect this in the scenario. The Waterloo campaign shows that both dense and open woods can be in the same landscape, and can look very similar from a distance.
Next time – built-up areas.
