Bloody Big (Taiping) Battles: A Partial Playtest of 2nd Hukou

Preamble

While this blog has generally been devoted to Japanese subjects since its inception, with a smidge of WW2 thrown in, my actual historical specialism has generally been late imperial and modern China, with my graduate research having focussed on the Taiping. Unsurprisingly, then, the Taiping have been a long-considered but also long-dormant wargaming project of mine, unfortunately abandoned during Covid when I was separated from my collection (a mix of Irregular, Khurasan, and Blue Moon minis that I had eagerly acquired in the closing months of 2019) and pivoted to the Boshin War. Inconveniently, this was also the same time that a set of rules came out that, had I actually gone and painted the figures I had, I might have made some use of: Taiping Era by Graham Evans, a.k.a. "Trebian". I still want to have a go at these one of these days, but in 2023 I started corresponding with Chris Pringle, the author of Bloody Big Battles, who himself also had a dormant Taiping project.

While my own studies have forced my own attempts at a set of Taiping scenarios onto the backburner most of the time, by the start of the year I had managed to at least draft up a scenario for the battle of Hukou in December 1860, which Chris and the Oxford Wargames Society were gracious enough to do a test run of in February. This weekend, during my final session at the HKSW this summer before heading abroad, I decided I'd have a go at an updated draft of the scenario, dragging my dad in as my opponent and and sending out an (unheeded) offer for more players to join. With just two players and some time constraints, we knew we'd probably not get to the end, but we did manage a good five turns of fairly intense action which we considered a moral victory in itself.

To lay out the context, the Second Battle of Hukou on 22 December 1860 was part of a Taiping attempt to make up for their weakened control over the Yangtze by launching a major attack on the city of Wuchang, far upriver from their western front, which might give them a base from which to sweep back east against the loyalist Hunan Army. In practice, the entire plan turned into a shambles, with unexpectedly stiff resistance from the imperial armies leading to Taiping columns arriving at their destination weeks behind schedule, if they ever did at all. One version of the Taiping plan, as communicated to the British consul at Hankou in a moment of naïve frankness by another general, Chen Yucheng, would have seen a corps under Yang Fuqing capture not just Hukou, but also any ships and boats that were docked there, and then use these to sail upriver towards Wuchang. In designing this scenario, I assumed that this version of the overall operational plan was still being kept in mind.

The problem, basically, is that none of the secondary literature actually gives this battle much focus. In truth, it was indeed fairly inconsequential. But any discussion is also hampered by problems with source material. The one detailed account is a rather self-aggrandising one by a British volunteer, Augustus Lindley, and his claim that he was there under Li Xiucheng contradicts Li's own memoirs which show him to be several kilometres away. Jen Yu-Wen, who generally regarded Lindley as reliable, decided to favour Li's account, perhaps unaware that there was actually a battle there fought by Yang Fuqing and Huang Wenjin; Cui Ziqing simply mentions that a battle happened, but seems to have been unaware of Lindley's account or otherwise unwilling to use it. As such, my version of Hukou is largely a personal reconstruction that attempts to map Lindley's (slightly muddled and almost certainly partly or even wholly exaggerated) account onto both the more reliable strategic and operational picture offered by the modern scholarship, and the topography of the area. The end result is what I believe to be a pretty reasonable reconstruction of the battle, at least in terms of its rough physical layout.

The setup

After poring over some maps, and then tracing over them, and then a couple of rounds of topographic simplification, this is what I ended up with. The northwestern edge of the battlefield is blocked off by the Yangtze, while the north shore of Poyang Lake defines the southern limit. Steep, partially wooded hills divide the main part of the battlefield from Hukou and the rest of the riverbank. While in a previous draft I allowed L1 and L2 hills to be passable, in practice the L2 contour was made by tracing the 200m line, which I decided was just impracticably high of a climb to expect troops to make and so blocked off that level.

The Taiping army comprises two corps, plus a small flanking force, facing obliquely towards a Qing trench line that terminates a little ways away from the foot of the hills. The Qing have an infantry line about equal in size to the Taiping force that is strung along the trenches, and a cavalry force about half that size again which starts out in the mouth of a valley which serves as the main approach to the city of Hukou itself, which also houses a small imperial garrison.

The Taiping force has a broad qualitative advantage: all of its troops are rated Aggressive (giving a bonus in melée), it comprises a mix of Veteran and Trained units, and it has a half-sized battery of European artillery that is a bit more mobile and grants an additional bonus to any firing action it contributes to. The Qing force starts the game entirely Disrupted, its troops are a mix of Raw and Trained, all are Passive (giving a penalty to movement), and some of its infantry are Fragile (giving penalties to both melée and rallying) to boot.

Counterbalancing the Qing disadvantages is the fact that their objectives are quite modest. Up to 7 points are up for grabs: one each for the town of Hukou, the village of Sanlijie, the north end of the levee across Lake Poyang, and each of the three strongpoints on the Qing line; the Qing also get a point for evacuating four of their infantry units through Hukou before the end of the day. The Qing need just 3 points for a draw and 4 for a win.

The Game

We tossed a coin at the start, giving me the Qing and my dad the Taiping.

Our battlefield. The hills were a bit of a rough approximation due to us building them mostly out of rectangular cardboard pieces placed underneath the mat, which is made of a slightly stretchy cloth that conforms to what is underneath.

Taiping deployments in front of the Qing lines. From this angle, it's clear I ought to have been able to squeeze in another 2-base-wide unit to the right of the middle stockade.

Unsurprisingly, the Taiping began with an immediate attack against the Qing left flank with around two thirds of their force, while masking the movement of the rest of their troops through the open. That said, some disappointing movement rolls slowed up what could have been a much more general assault.

Taiping positions on the eve of the assault phase

The aftermath of the Taiping assaults: both the leftmost stockade and the trench line over have been cleared of imperial troops. Note also the limbered Taiping artillery on the right.

As expected, the Qing cavalry is slow to come into action, while the infantry achieve mixed results while attempting to rally.

To add injury to insult, one Hunanese unit rolled a double 1 on its rallying roll, which with the -1 from being Fragile meant they lost a base and withdrew!

The Qing forward line continues to crumble, but can the cavalry save the day? Well, the Taiping's European guns on the northern hill were able to stall some of them with some accurate fire, a sign of things to come...

Remember the limbered Taiping guns? One of these came into action alongside a veteran musketeer unit, which together fired a thunderous volley into the leading imperial cavalry brigade.

The end result was a loss of two bases, immediately rendering it Spent and reeling in confusion.

In a stroke of good luck for the imperials, the follow-up attack by one of the Taiping cavalry brigades resulted in a draw, removing one base from each unit and causing both to disperse. Still, losses had mounted.

From the Taiping perspective, things were looking good. Although the rather complex geometry down the middle had meant that some individual units were getting outflanked, on the whole they were justifiably confident that they had enough advantage in both quality and numbers to absorb the initial hit and counter-attack effectively.

Sensing danger, the imperials began attempting to mobilise their garrison units in an attempt to bolster their defences around Sanli, where whatever troops remained in good order were now gathering. What remained of the Qing force in the plain were now at serious risk of getting encircled, not helped by a succession of bad movement rolls.

In a 1-in-1296 occurrence, both of the 3-base Hunanese units rolled a double 1 for movement (which, being Passive, actually ought to have disordered them, but we forgot.)

Final dispositions (with measuring sticks included in case we want to resume at a later point) – although the remaining Taiping cavalry are rather out of position, they have destroyed another imperial unit, and the Taiping army is now sweeping through the plain and likely to destroy any loyalist forces left in the open. The graveyard on the south shore of Lake Poyang attests to the degree of Qing losses compared to the mere three bases of Taiping casualties at the upper end of the table.

With our time limit at the venue fast approaching, we called it a day at the conclusion of Turn 5, which on paper was about halfway through the scenario. In practice, the degree of Qing losses and our growing familiarity with the rules meant that subsequent turns would have played a lot faster, not that we had time to find out anyway. Still, this was not a definite Taiping win. 5 turns remained on the clock, in which they would need to secure two more objectives for a win. Even as the Qing player I had to admit that it was unlikely they would fail, but I was cautiously optimistic that if the Taiping tried to fight through the valley, they might have a harder time breaking through without the opportunity to outflank my men.

Lessons and Takeaways

We came away with a good appreciation of the underlying rules and thinking we had a solid basis for a scenario, but three issues did spring to mind:

1. A lot might hinge on the first couple of turns. Bad rolls by the Taiping that prevent a breakthrough could spell disaster, or at least a real headache.
2. The Qing really have to commit to a retreat early if they want to go for it, because otherwise they lose too many units to make the evacuation objective possible.
3. Looking ahead to the breakthrough phase after the Taiping clear the Qing trenches, it's clear that the remaining objectives are too widely dispersed for the Qing to realistically hold with the forces they are likely to have.

Still, there were also some more positive takeaways:

1. The historical plan works! If the Taiping immediately commit aggressively, then on balance they should be able to achieve a few local breakthroughs, and the Qing will still be a good turn or so away from bringing their forces fully under control.
2. The historical plan can work! If the Qing player (er, that is to say, me) had been less focussed on trying to use the infantry to counter the Taiping attack and instead swapped in the cavalry, it might have been possible to establish a stronger fallback position.
3. It can be very useful having a reserve of artillery. I had noted that Chinese artillery in the traditional style, in addition to being a bit weaker, takes a full turn to limber up and becomes Silenced a bit differently. The result was that the unlimbered Taiping guns on their left flank never really did much after the initial assault, whereas on the right, one of the originally limbered batteries was able to come in and do some decisive damage to the Qing cavalry. However, in subsequent turns it might not be able to do much to continue supporting the attack into the valley.

Some further modifications will need to be made, but as it stands it seems like there's a solid basis for a scenario here.