Introduction

The so-called Horse & Musket period is the post-gunpowder, pre-industrialisation period in European history, with regular, drilled armies of the traditional three arms: infantry, cavalry and artillery. In truth I have left a bit of a gap between Ancient & Medieval and Horse & Musket, because there was a sort of gradual change-over period of methods of warfare. This interim period is represented by the Renaissance wars (e.g. the Italian Wars), the Thirty Years War, the English Civil War, etc. This was a change-over from ancient methods of warfare (armour, bow, horse, feudal) to more modern methods of warfare (musket and bayonet, artillery, drilled regulars). Anyway, Horse & Musket is the classic period for wargaming, and ideal for the tabletop. It encompasses in particular the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars, but also a host of others.

With increasing industrialisation, firepower became deadlier, armies became bigger, the musket gave way to the rifle and eventually to the machine gun, and so in due course another revolution in fighting method occurred.

Anyway, I have variously collected the following armies:

• Seven years War Prussian and Austrian (c. 1760)
• Napoleonic Russian and Bavarian (c. 1812)
• Victorian British Colonial - Sudan, Egypt and Natal/Zululand (c. 1880)
• English Civil War Parliamentarian New Model Army (c. 1645)

Rules

There is a large number of rules available for this popular era for wargaming, too many to mention, and of course new ones appear all the time. Even so, for the Seven Years War I found myself writing my own rules (see below) because the only popular commercial set for this particular sub-period just didn't meet my needs.

Seven Years War

My most recent project is the Seven Years War in 15mm. You can see the model forces developing through my painting table log. My rules for this period By Fife & Drum are currently a work-in-progress, but well advanced. They are being playtested at the moment (mainly with blank wooden stands until I get my models painted up!).

The main motivation for developing them was that having made the decision to raise armies in 15mm and bought some figures, I needed to know very quickly how to base them. A quick search told me there was no such thing as a standard basing regime, and I was not keen on the system in use by the most popular rule set (called Warfare in the Age of Reason). So I started sketching what I wanted and started researching, and before long this project had grown into a full rule set.

To see how I am basing and organising my troops, I have published the Base Sizes, Stands and Units sections from By Fife & Drum in the Downloads page.