The Education that is Empire Total War (Part 2)

One of the best things about computer war games is that on the strategic level they can get you very familiar with who all the players are in a historical period, and they can get you into the head of a ruler of a given land.

After I had played Empire Total War a number of times, I began reading about the period. I read Joseph J. Ellis' biography of George Washington, "His Excellency." I read David Fraser's biography, "Frederick the Great." I read Virgina Rounding's "Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power." (No, there never was an actual Potemkin Village, and no, Catherine did not die as a result of having sex with a horse.) I read about half of Paul Douglas Lockhart's "The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron de Steuben and the Making of the American Army" (I should have bought it instead of reading it sporadically at Barnes and Nobles). I was even curious enough to want to know what Prussia was all about and read Christopher Clark's "Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947." I also read a small biography of the Duke of Wellington.

As I was reading these books, they talked about some very old governments that aren't on the map any more: Prussia, the United Provinces, the Ottoman Empire, the Marathas. And some governments that are still around but in greatly different form with greatly different borders: Great Britain, Spain, Austria, Sweden, Poland, Russia, and the USA. But thanks to playing the game, I knew where these countries were on the globe and what their continuing strategic objectives were that were shaping their relations with their neighbors.

This came to me from playing a campaign for each faction of Empire Total War. I learned that Great Britain was destined to become a great naval power and thereby a world power. The continental Europeans tended to be fighting amongst themselves so often that their strategic attention was monopolized by the continental landmass to the detriment of their navies. Britain's natural isolation by sea guaranteed that the Royal Navy would always be her main arm. And, as Rr. Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan was later to point out in his "The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1660-1783)," sea power is the key to world power.

Prussia was an upstart new nation consisting of the Duchy of Prussia (nearer to Poland, Sweden, and Russia) and the Margraviate of Brandenburg (nearer to France), and with great swaths of Poland between the two. Prussia's strategic goal is to avoid being eaten by the older, larger states around it. France wants a piece. Sweden wants a piece. Poland wants a piece. Russia wants a piece. And in particular, Austria (the Austro-Hungarian empire in embryo) wants a piece. And so the Prussians must scramble to survive. And thus Prussia becomes "not a country that has an army, but an army that has a country." They have the finest army in Europe. And at Valley Forge, Baron Steuben was later to transfer some of the "DNA" of that army to the nascent American army.

Russia's big strategic goal is to grab Istanbul (and the lands surrounding it) away from the Ottoman Empire so as to allow their ships to go from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean, while also clearing the naval pathways from the Baltic Sea into the North Sea. Why? Trade. Russian has plenty of natural resources, but needs to import the goods needed for a more modern civilization. Overland, any old country can step on her trade lanes and impose tariffs. The sea is Russian's vital lifeline and future. Rr. Adm. Mahan again.

And so on and so forth. As I read these books, again and again I saw things that would have escaped me had I not played Empire Total War. Why was Frederick the Great so upset that Marie (soon-to-be-headless) Antoinette had married the heir to the throne of France? She was an Austrian Archduchess, and the marriage meant an alliance with France and Austria against Prussia. Why was Frederick the Great so interested in partitioning Poland? A smaller Poland meant a larger and more connected Prussia. Why did the American Marines land on "the shores of Tripoli?" Because the Barbary pirates had made sea trade through the Mediterranean extremely expensive and trade was the United States life-line to finished goods from Europe.. Rr. Adm. Mahan, yet again.

These are the connections that playing a game like Empire Total War allowed me to make. I could actually get inside the head of a European ruler and while reading a biography about him or her, mentally say "Yes, I understand why you did that." This is something different from stuffing your head full of old dates and old names, and old battles. This is the stuff of true education.

On a side note, Prussia, being a new kingdom in this period, gave me a glimpse into what a kingdom is in essence. In the modern age, we tend to think of the old kings and queens as being exalted persons of great power and long linage. The Sun King, Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, Czarina of all the Russias. Etc.

(but there are some amusing titles as well: Ethelred the Unready. English King, c. 968 – 23 April 1016. He lost a battle.)

But on reading the history of Prussia, I began to realize that these long-lived titles that evolved into great nations where all originally started by what can only be called entrepenuers. And entrepenuers of marriage in particular.

"Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!" sayth the Bible (Isaiah 5:8) But that's exactly what these entrepenuers of marriage did.

They started out as minor nobility with set pieces of land and they intermarried until their descendents were handed down parcels of land big enough to be a duchy. (The Habsburg rulers of Austria in fact bragged about doing this. At one point their motto was "What others achieve by war, let you, happy Austria, achieve by marriage.")

With two duchy's, you could qualify for the title of king. Which is apparently what the first "King IN Prussia" managed to do. The first King IN Prussia (he settled for being a king IN Prussia instead of King OF Prussia so as not to alarm the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire - who happended to be the ruler of Austria) not only had a first name, Frederick, but a last name, Hohenzollern. Think of it. The Kingdom of Prussia was started by a guy named Fred Hohenzollern because he got permission to call himself "King IN Prussia."

Who's at the bottom of these other European kingdoms? Let's use a short hand of archetypes. Louie Bourbon? (France) Charlie Habsburg? (Austria), Gus Vasa (Sweden), Pete Romanov? (Russia). Could the whole of European history in the 1700's be envisioned as Fred Hohenzollern, Louie Bourbon, Charlie Habsburg, Gus Vasa, and Peter Romanov being put in a small, crowded backyard and commencing to have a great big poop-kicking party? I leave to you, my readers, to decide.