Advent Day 13 – post number 300 or 301 – finishing a draft Bronte Gamer Blogpost at last.
The Art of The Brontes is a thick Thames and Hudson by Christine Alexander and Jane Sellars, an expensive illustrated book which I thankfully managed to borrow through my local lending library.
It covers every known sketch, painting and doodle by each of the four Bronte children from their youngest childhood drawings to their adult drawings and paintings.
I won’t infringe copyright of paintings or drawings from private or museum collections by featuring them here.
Steel engraving lowered the cost of prints making them more affordable for the likes of the young Bronte sisters.
Tropical Yorkshire in the Pacific?
I thought this might give me a clue to the possible backgrounds, terrain and landscapes for their fictional works of Gondal, Angria and Glasstown, upon which I have based some of my Imagi-Nations game scenarios recently.
Many of their fictional countries in the North and South Pacific or tropical West Africa are a bizarre blend of Yorkshire moors, the fashionable gothic or romantic art of their day with an element of the exotic gleaned from prints and journal illustrations of foreign countries.
I couldn’t quite get this blend of British or Yorkshire Tropical right in my head until I visited some of the sheltered and temperate gardens of Southwest England. Here you can see Victorian houses set in parkland with exotic planting brought back from many foreign countries giving that jungle or Himalayan valley and mountain pass impression. No doubt there must have been such bizarre juxtapositions in Yorkshire big houses that the Bronte family might have known about or visited, being on the edge of gentry as a vicar’s family. These would be big early Victorian houses with their greenhouses, botanic gardens, plant introductions and sheltered walled gardens.
I know this makes this Yorkshire Bronte Tropical fusion sound almost as authentic as filming Carry on Up The Khyber Pass in Britain, with North Wales standing in for the foothills of The Himalayas.
Some of the sketches of landscape appear to be copies of prints, illustrations and drawing exercises as they learnt how to draw in the style of their day.
Bronte Gaming Scenarios
Some of the PECO Landscapes seem very suited to Bronte country and fictional terrain – the mountain scenes or the seaside with ruined castle, for example.
Branwell Bronte, owner of the original twelve soldiers that gave rise to many of the children’s fictional countries and campaigns, wrote and illustrated some interesting early “Battle” books as well with ancient or Napoleonic ‘toy’ soldier drawings.
It has been a few weeks since I ran a solo game bigger than sword fighting and Bartitsu duelling. I feel that I have neglected my Peter Laing figures of late. To be fair I’ve been busy making the fortified Signal Tower as well.
I wanted to get a quick evening game in, based on the Bronte family’s Imagi-Nation of Angria, having read more of Charlotte Bronte’s Tales of Angria and the Oxford Companion to the Brontes. Both these books are slowly helping me work out maps and scenarios based on more of Bronte’s fictional realms or paracosms.
Turn 2 – Angrian 5th Infantry supported by Dragoons cross the river to rescue the waggon from MacTerrorGlen’s Scottish troops. Ashantee bowmen line the rock opposite.
Small Angrian Skirmish Scenario:
By March 1836 – half of Angria is “in possession of our foes”.
During 1835-37 The Second Angrian War, Civil War between Angria and the Verdopolitan Union is happening at the same time as the Ashantee threat.
Early 1836, Angria, Western Central Africa: A group of invading Ashantee bowmen, part of Quashia Qamina’s forces, have discovered an abandoned Angrian supply waggon and remain in ambush on the rocks overlooking the crossing.
They are backed by a small sword and musket group of Sir Jehu MacTerrorGlen’s rampaging Scotsmen and Highland Warriors, led by one Captain Scotte, who are aiming to capture the river crossing and loot the abandoned Angrian supply waggon.
Location: The river crossing eventually feeds into one of the many tributaries of the River Olympia or Calabar, running down to the sea.
This waggon was part of a supply column along one of the many roads to the regional or provincial capital of Adrianoplous, all aid and supplies to The Duke of Zamorna. Zamorna is fighting to protect the Angrian province (that he is named after) against this invasion of Ashantees and MacTerrorGlen’s unruly Scots.
A rebellious and unruly kilted Highland Regiment in Africa? Many of the original settlers of the Bronte’s fictional realm of GlassTown and Angrian area of West Africa were of Scots, Irish and Yorkshire origin.
Coming to recover the waggon of supplies are Angrian forces under the Blood Red banner of the Rising Sun. These include a dismounted group of smart red-coated Angrian “Dragons” or Dragoons, along with some men of the “Fighting Fifth” (or “Filthy Fifth”), the 5th Angrian Infantry Regiment in homespun and motley campaign dress, led by a young Lieutenant called Prunty.
The scruffy nature of the Angrian Regiments on campaign in the ‘East’ in the Angrian Civil War is reminiscent of Confederate Butternut Infantry towards the end of the American Civil War. Their scruffy dress is commented on by one of Charlotte Bronte’s cynical narrators in the smart Regency Colonial society of the cities.
The Angrian dragoons had dismounted, leaving their horses up the valley and with the 5th Angrians in two groups were scouting the river, half their number in reinforcements a mile or two behind.
D6 dice rolls saw these troops delayed arriving, until the 5th and 6th turn in area 5 and 6 on the Angrian baseline.
The turns were short and brutal, mostly involving fast melee, using the Kaptain Kobold modification or d6 dice version of Gerard De Gre’s Lunge Cut and Stop Thrust melee or duelling rules.
1-2 Attacker Hit
3 Both Hit
4 Neither Hit
5-6 Defender Hit
Melees occurred from group stage in adjacent hexes or who have charged into their opponents. The Pell-Mell, Hell for Leather pace of the game meant that there were few casualties from rifle or musket fire, many more from Highland claymore, bayonet, short sword and rifle butt (and no doubt boot and fist).
Turn 1 and 2 saw rapid movement through the cluttered terrain towards the first shots and melees of Turn 3.
Turn 3 saw 9 Angrian troops and 12 of MacTerror Glen’s Scots killed, mostly when the Highland claymore warriors charged the Angrian troops.
At the start of turn 4 (as shown in photo by a d6 Turn Dice) the few Angrian infantry over the bridge are outnumbered by Scots.
By Turn 4, some of the outnumbered Angrian forces on the board retreated to await their reinforcements (D6 dice roll 1-3 Retreat, 4 Stay, 5-6 Advance).
This didn’t stop one party of three Angrian 5th Infantry being surrounded and outnumbered on two sides by Scots around the bridge. Luckily supporting fire from the Angrian command party and standard bearer picked off two further Scots musketeers.
Engaged on both sides by Scots, this small cohort of Angrian 5th Infantry are wiped out.
In Turn 5 the advancing Scots moved into Melee with the Angrian Command and Colours party, leading to a doubly fatal duel between Highland claymore against Angrian officer’s broadsword.
Angrian Officer Lieutenant Prunty charges down the hill to engage with his Highlander enemy in a fatal duel.
Thankfully the rest of the Angrian Dragoons and Fifth Regiment arrived in Turn 5 and 6. Just in the nick of the time …
These Angrian reinforcements pushed back and pursued the last of MacTerrorGlen’s troops and the Scots command party and colours back over the bridge. They made their last stand outside the crossing hut. The Scots colours were lost when the command and colours party decided to fight to the finish (dice roll d6 roll 1-3 surrender, 4 – 6 fight on).
Throughout the early part of the battle, the Ashantee Bowmen on the high ground rocks were out of range and sight of many of the Angrian troops. Overall they played very little part in the whole battle, not even firing many volleys of arrows before they were engulfed in melee. Their officer or chief Khla managed to escape to carry on the invasion with the other invading Ashantees under Quashia Qamina.
Ashantee bowmen move into range of Angrian troops.
At the end, the Angrian Armed Transport Corps hitched the abandoned supply waggon to their horses and slowly dragged this back up the valley to where the dismounted dragoon horses and horse holders would provide further armed escort back to Adrianopolis, Zamorna or Edwardston as needed.
Detail of map of Angria by Christine Alexander (Oxford Campanion to the Brontes)
Discarded weapons and the captured colours of MacTerrorGlen’s Scots are sent back onboard the supply waggon as victory trophies to inspire the flagging Angrian forces.
The remaining two Angrian Dragoons, Angrian standard bearer and drummer remain behind in the bridge crossing hut. Suitably armed with discarded carbines, muskets and ammunition, they make themselves busy fortifying this outpost and guarding the crossing until further Angrian reinforcements arrive. Burying the dead will have to briefly wait, but not too long in these African “Yorkshire Tropic” climes.
The Rising Sun banner of Angria flies victorious over the captured river crossing hut as the surviving Ashantee officer flees on the opposite bank.
Arise Angria! Raise the Blood-Red Banner of the Rising Sun! Huzzah!
Figures and Terrain
All the figures are from the sadly now discontinued Peter Laing range of 15mm figures.
The Ashantee bowmen are from the Ancient Egyptian range (Nubian Archers F452 and their officer F453 Nubian Spearman).
MacTerrorGlen’s rogue Scots troops are from the Peter Laing ECW and ’15-’45 ranges. I especially like his kilted Highlander charging with Claymore (F1006) and small shield but his Highland musketeers ( F1008) are fine figures too. https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/04/more-peter-laing-scots/
The “Angrian Dragons” are ECW dismounted dragoons firing, F515, one of my favourite Peter Laing figures.
The homespun 5th Angrian Regiment in campaign dress are the ACW butternut infantry advancing F3012, along with the Boer Rifleman advancing at trail F622.
I quickly made and coloured an Angrian flag and added this to one of the Boer figures to make a standard bearer.
The Heroscape hex terrain terrain on my two portable gaming boards tries to create that curious mix of European and African or Yorkshire Tropical that exists in the Bronte’s limited but imaginative view of the world outside their native Haworth and Yorkshire. This was backed by PECO Scene Backgrounds Medium SK 44 Country with River with its great view of mountains and stone bridges over streams and slightly incongruous European stone farm houses, obviously in the Yorkshire / European influenced Angrian settler style.
Pine trees, impassable rocks, a raging stream or river form all part of a rugged and Romantic, almost Gothic landscape of hills, fields and craggy mountainous peaks of how the Bronte children saw Angria (West Africa). This fits well the restricted routes and impassable labyrinths of trees, logs and rocks that suit Donald Featherstone’s original Close Wars rules for forest skirmish that I have tweaked for hex board or garden games. https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/close-little-wars-featherstones-simplest-rules/
The waggon was an underscale diorama piece from the 54mm Safari figures Wild West Settlers Toob. Its eventual escorts were Peter Laing Boer War cavalry M603 or M605 Imperial Yeomanry figure.
Post-mortem:
This was a great fun game for an evening. Using the Gerald De Gre duelling rules in Kaptain Kobold’s simplified dice version for the first time as the Melee section with the rest of the Little Close Wars rules led to quick fast and murderous melees.
The look of the board / game?
I like the portable hex game boards but I would like to flock or sand more of the Heroscape hex pieces, and glue and flock some of the pine tree bases permanently to hex bases.
Part of the early evening was spent tidying up the portable game boards, removing the temporary masking tape letters and grid numbers and sanding the edges before rewriting them in a neater fashion. Eventually I think I will wood stain the outer edges and possibly acrylic paint (sap green) the inner sections of game board that show up as bare wood in the middle and edge. Hopefully they will look less intrusive but still allow each board to be used separately.
Outcome:
A swift outcome of a minor skirmish in the Angrian Civil War, a minor victory in a disastrous campaign.
This campaign led to Angria’s defeat at the Battle of Edwardston 26 June 1836, which saw Zamorna exiled and Angria savagely occupied by Ashantee and MacTerrorGlen’s forces throughout the rest of 1836. Angrian troops fight on in the hills.
Victory does not come until Zamorna returns and leads his forces to victory at the Battles of Leyden, Westwood and Evesham throughout 1837.
Hopefully Charlotte and Branwell Bronte would approve, their imaginary worlds having been sparked by a gift from their father of a box of toy soldiers.
The suitably scruffy standard bearer of the “vermined and victorious” Angrian forces in the East, holding its Rising Sun banner.
“What news is stirring in your parts?” I asked.
“Nothing special” was the answer. “Only March has left the Angrians madder than ever.”
“What, they’re fighting still are they?”
“Fighting! Aye and every man amongst them has sworn by his hilts that he’ll continue fighting whilst he has two rags left stitched together upon his back.”
“In that case I should think peace would soon be restored”, said I.
Mr. Saunderson winked. “A very sensible remark”, said he. “Mr. Wellesley senior [Charlotte Bronte’s fictionalised Duke of Wellington] made me the fellow to it last time I saw him”.
“The sinews of war not particularly strong in the East?” I continued.
Mr Saunderson winked again and asked for a pot of porter. I sent for the beverage to the Robin Hood across the way and when it was bought Mr Saunderson, after blowing off the froth, took a deep draught to the health of “the brave and shirtless!” I added in a low voice “to the vermined and victorious!” He heard me and remarked with a grave nod of approbation, “very jocose”.
After soaking a little while, each in silence, Mr. Saunderson spoke again –
Mr. Saunderson did not speak again. He departed like the fantastic creation of a dream. I was called to hear a lesson and when I returned to my desk again, I found the mood which had suggested that allegorical whim was irrevocably gone …
———————————————-
This is not a couple of beer raddled gamers sitting in the pub talking about their fictional campaigns.
This interrupted fictional conversation is a snippet called “My Compliments to the Weather” section 5 from Charlotte Bronte’s The Roe Head Journal. This snippet, on p.168-9, is published in The Brontes – Tales of Glass Town, Angria and Gondal. Selected Writings Oxford, OUP 2010, edited with notes by Bronte scholar Christine Alexander.
As a young student teacher at Roe Head School, miles away from her Haworth parsonage home from 1835-38, Charlotte Bronte was partly exiled through the demands of her teaching work from her full part in the fictional Imagi-Nations that her brother Branwell and sisters Emily and Anne had created together. Her frustration is obvious!
“No more. I have not time to work out the vision. A thousand things were connected with it, a whole country, statesman and kings, a revolution, Thrones and princedoms subverted and reinstated.” Section 3, the Roe Head Journal, Charlotte Bronte.
I like the arch, snarky irreverent tone of Charlotte’s narrators like Charles Townsend casting scorn on the elsewhere heroic struggles of her brother or sisters’ creations, in this case the character Zamorna (also known as King of Angria, Marquis of Douro and fictional son of the Bronte’s fictional Duke of Wellington).
Very helpful annotated 2010 map by Christine Alexander with Angria added from her book (based on map by Branwell)
The Angrian Wars 1831-39
Compiled from notes in Christine Alexanders book (Oxford, 2010) and Heather Glen’s Tales of Angria (Penguin, 2006) further detail of clarification will be added as discovered.
According to Christine Alexander, in 1831 Zamorna was struggling to defeat an Insurrection or the Great Rebellion.
This was caused or led by one of Branwell Bronte’s main characters, the balding former pirate, drover, gambler and serial seducer Northangerland (also known as Alexander Percy, Ellrington or Rogue) that is part of the First Angrian War of March 1831. This flares up again in 1832 by Northangerland’s renewed insurrection or Rebellion in The North (Sneakysland). Northangerland may have been aided at this time by the shadowy figure of Sir Jehu Macterrorglen (formerly cloth trader Jeremiah Simpson).
Zamorna leads a Constitutionalist Army, aided by Fidena, Wellesley and Warner Howard Warner, overthrowing his rival Northangerland’s Republican or French Revolutionary Government in the Glass Town capital Verdopolis.
This revolutionary situation, along with most of the wars, was Branwell’s creation, his earlier chosen characters included a version of Napoleon.
1833/34 The War of Encroachment
In 1833/4 the War of Encroachment saw the Ashantee tribes to the East of Verdopolis attack Verdopolis, Angria and the other allied countries of the Great Glass Town Federation. It is fought mainly in ‘the East’ around the city of Angria and provinces of Northangerland and Zamorna, after whom Zamorna and Northangerland are named Duke and Earl respectively once victorious.
Zamorna and Northangerland have a love-hate relationship throughout the Angrian sagas but during the War of Encroachment are working together against external threats and encroachment.
The Ashantee tribe were joined by Arab Troops from the North (the Sahara desert and Jibell Kimmri or the Mountains of the Moon above Sneakysland and Angria) and the Frenchtroops (from offshore island / colony of Frenchyland) led by a “Napoleon” figure.
The French troops are also led by General Massena, Commander of French Forces against Verdopolis. Massena later returns to campaign with Ardrah and Northangerland against Zamorna.
The Battle of Velino near Freetown was a decisive battle in the War of Encroachment c. November / December 1833. Velino and the Velino Hills was Headquarters for Fidena’s troops during this war. Popular Angrian Field Marshall (and horseman “The Chevalier”) Sir Frederic Lofty, Earl of Arundel (Arundel the Angrian Province) was thought to have died or become missing in action during this battle. His younger brother Macara Lofty adopts his title and becomes active in the Verdopolitan Government under the Reformist Ardrah.
Zamorna was assisted in defeating the Ashantees by Joachim Murat, the flower of French chivalry who was rewarded with a post as an Angrian Minister (named after Napoleon’s cavalry commander).
Zamorna ‘s role in suppressing this invasion led to him being granted in parliament on 9 February 1834 the disputed land to the East of Verdopolis, a new kingdom of Angria where he is to be known as King of Angria.
Angria is eventually formally added as a Kingdom (after parliamentary battles) to the Glass Town Federation, which became known as The Verdopolitan Union.
Percy (or Rogue / Ellrington as he was formerly known) is rewarded for his role in defeating the Ashantee threat. He gets to be known as (the Duke of) Northangerland and is appointed the Angrian Prime Minister under Zamorna as King.
As in Russian novels and literature (War and Peace, Chekhov plays) what gets confusing in the Bronte sagas is the complex relationship between characters and the many names and honorary titles that they acquire over time and to different people.
1835-37 – The Second Angrian War
December 1835 Angria is expelled from the Verdopolitan Union by Ardrah and his Reform Party.
1835 – Northangerland as a Prime Minister is denounced as a traitor and forced to resign his seals of office by Zamorna.
1836. Verdopolitan Union plunged into Civil War! Angria is expelled from the Verdopolitan Union! Zamorna outlawed to his remote Hawkscliffe estate in the Sydenham foothills Northern in Angria! Or outlawed to the Ascension Isles …
By March 1836 – half of Angria is “in possession of our foes”.
Adrianpolis in Angria is invaded by Ashantee Forces under Quashia Qamina, briefly an ally of the Verdopolitan Government ruled by Zamorna’s ally Ardrah and His Reform Ministry.
Arthur, the Marquis of Ardrah and Prince of Parrysland, was a Commander or Admiral in the Verdopolitan Navy. Leader of the Reformist Party in Verdopolis, Ardrah was opposed to Zamorna and the creation of the Kingdom of Angria.
The Marquis of Harlaw, Edward Tut Ross, son of John King of Rossland, is one of Ardrah’s allies against Zamorna in the civil wars. Another of Percy ‘Rogue’ Northangeralnd’s Colonels in the Rebel Army is Arthur O’Connor, former cattle dealer.
Civil war between Angria and the Verdopolitan Union is happening at the same time as the Ashantee threat.
June 1836 – Zamorna is defeated at the Battle ofEdwardston in Angria on the 26 June 1836, leaving his country to be marauded by the victorious Ashantees, Arabs and the Provisional Government of Northangerland.
At Edwardston, Zamorna’s forces are defeated, losing 18,000 men (Captured? Killed? Wounded?) against the assembled forces of MacTerrorGlen, Massena, Quashia’s Ashantees and Lord Jordon / Sheik Medina’s Arabs.
Native Angrian hero, Squire of Ardsley in Angria, George Turner Grey (as described in the novelette The Return of Zamorna) called his tenantry around him after the Battle of Edwardston for a memorable last stand, to the motto “Ardsley to the Van!”
“The Angrian army … ruined, the Angrian nation enslaved and the Angrian King disgraced.” (Five Novelettes)
From June 1836 to September / autumn 1836, Northangerland was in control of the new French style Provisional Government of the Grand Republican Union (formerly the Verdopolitan Union). He has direct control over Angria where his allies (Ashantees,French and Bedouin forces) wreak a reign of terror. The Arab troops are led by Lord Jordon, in Byronic ‘Turkish’ dress and known as Sheik Medina.
Further bickering between Northangerland and Zamorna (now his son-in-law) about family and government seemed to have led to this further Republican rebellion by Northangerland against Zamorna.
July 1836 – Northangerland’s troops storm Rivaulx near Hawkscliffe on the edge of a royal forest, a hunting lodge where some of Zamorna’s family and followers are sheltering. One of Zamorna’s young sons Ernest Fitz-Arthur is captured and killed.
Zamorna has been deposed into exile after The Battle of Edwardston by Northangerland, but is rescued or reinstated by Constitutionalist Forces in December 1836.
August to October 1836 – Constitutionalist allies of the deposed Zamorna fight on, Fidena and Warner Howard Warner fight on in the hills, whilst Angrian Commander in Chief the Italian general Henri Fernando Di Enara ‘The Tiger’ fights on at Fort Gazemba.
Warner Howard Warner, governor of an Angrian province and then Prime Minister of Angria, appears to have waged a guerrilla war with his “blackguards and boors” in the Yorkshire Moor-like Olympian Hills of Angria, in support of Zamorna. He rallies the “War worn” troops of Angria to avenge Zamorna’s dead son Ernst Fitz-Arthur.
The Constitutional Forces of the former Verdopolitan Government (under Wellington and Fidena) eventually retake Verdopolis where Northangerland had his capital in December 1836.
Zamorna returns from exile in December 1836.
January to June 1837 – Northangerland’s retreating allies are routed by forces loyal to Zamorna. The Revolutionary troops of Northangerland that invaded Angria were routed at the Battle of Leyden near Alnwick in Angria and at the Battle of Westwood.
1837 – the Battle of Leyden. Zamorna and his troops won a victory over the Ashantee forces of Quashia, Montmorenci, MacTerrorGlen’s troops and the Arab troops of Lord Jordon / Sheik Medina. The battle is fought around the Village of Leyden near Alnwick in Angria.
Branwell Bronte’s narrator figure Captain Henry Hastings (Angrian soldier, poet and historian) has deserted from Zamorna’s own 19th Regiment (“The Devil’s Own”) and is now fighting against Zamorna.
General Lord Edward Hartford and Captain Sir William Percy (an officer in the Angrian 10th Hussars ) fought on Zamorna’s side against Northangerland. Sir William Percy is Northangerland’s disowned second son.
Zamorna’s enemy Lord Jordan (Sheik Medina) is killed in the battle.
1837 – The Battle of Westwood – Zamorna and troops rout Northangerland’s army of Montmorenci and MacTerrorGlen’s troops.
In the muddled chronology of Angria and its Civil Wars, this may be situation that Saunderson (Fidena) and the Narrator may be discusssing in the exceprt above, round about March 1837, according to Heather Glen.
One of the Angrian’s most infamous infantry regiments are The Bloodhounds (Glen, p. 501) led by the Italian ‘Tiger’ Enara.
“A host of Dark whiskered and bearded warriors such looks of savage and relentless ferocity I never held before … their great Raven banner bore in silver blazonry the single emphatic syllable. “DEATH” at their head … accompanied by 8 vast liver coloured dew lapped red eyed bloodhounds held in leashes stood the second commander of their Army Colonel Henry Fernando Enara. (Branwell Bronte, Angria and the Angrians)
Zamorna had some unusual generals including Henri Fernando di Enara, an Italian known as ‘the Tiger’, whom he created Baron of Etrei and Governor of this Angrian savanna province of Etrei. Other generals include Sir John Kirkwall and Frederic Lord Lofty.
Gazemba, June 1837 – The troops are reviewed before the final Battle of Evesham by Zamorna at Gazemba, a frontier town (population 59,000) in the desert on the East bank of the Calabar River. The Calabar river also links back to his capital Adrianpolis and Fort Adrian his mansion / fortified castle on its east Bank. The Calabar River has its source in burning and desolate and hostile African desert. Gazemba was the centre of Zamorna’s operations against the Ashantees.
Zamorna finally achieve peace using Angrian troops to defeat Northangerland and his retreating Allies during the ‘Campaign for the West’ at the Battle of Evesham, 30 June 1837 on the banks of the Angrian River of Cirhala.
Led by General Thornton and Zamorna, Angrian troops and their allies retake Evesham, despite the town being fortified by Northangerland’s Revolutionary troops.
General Wilson / Wilkin Thornton, an Angrian farmer with a strong Yorkshire accent, became Commander in Chief of the Angrian Army. He was an ally of Zamorna, related through his marriage to Julia Wellesley, Zamorna’s cousin.
Northangerland is exiled to Monkeysland. For a while …
1838 – Angria is at peace, Zamorna’s enemies scattered. Northangerland returns to his country seat and third wife.
1839 – January / February – disgraced soldier Captain Henry Hastings makes an attempt on Zamorna’s life, having drunkenly already killed his superior officer and deserted to the enemy in Paris.
21-23 February 1839 – Zamorna and Northangerland are publicly reunited at his Zamorna Palace in Adrianoplos in Angria, despite angry crowds who blockade the place when they discover Northangerland is there.
This timeline was pieced together from the notes in Christine Alexander’s and Heather Glen’s editions of the Bronte’s early works.
Gaming possibilities
Plenty of imaginative gaming scenarios should present themselves, based on the Angrian and Glass Town sagas of a mixed Colonial Central West Africa / European fusion, along with the North and South Pacific islands of Gondal and Gaaldine.
They were written by the Bronte family at a time (1820s – 1850s) of European Insurrection, nation building and independence, Latin American revolution, industrial revolution, strange alliances, Civil Wars and colonial expansion and exploration. This was the post-Napoleonic background that the Brontes were growing up in and reading about in journals and newspapers.
Post-Napoleonic Peninsula and Waterloo veterans as elders / generals
North African troops and desert arabs, led by a Byronic European in Turkish dress,
French colonial troops, African Ashantee warriors, insurgent and guerrilla forces.
Charlotte’s quick character sketch of Saunderson
Mr. Saunderson is later revealed to be John Sneachie, Duke of Fidena, speaking under an assumed name of “John of The Highlands”, Sneachisland or Sneakysland being one of the Glass Town Federation Imagi-Nations to the North West of Angria. It is the equivalent to the Scottish Highlands, albeit laid by Branwell and Charlotte Bronte over a fictional map of Central West Africa!
Many of the early settlers into this fictional colony are from Scotland and Yorkshire.
Saunderson is a dark haired, brooding character, with cane, black neckerchief and wearing a “blue surtout and Jane trousers” a Regency Trench Coat or Greatcoat with twill cotton trousers, or Jeans, according to The OED and Christine Alexander. How dashingly military today it still feels buying cavalry twill trousers, rather than jeans.
The narrator or the I is Charlotte Bronte and / or one of her many personas, her irreverent Angrian Narrator Charles Townsend.
Hopefully the bizarre tropical fusion of Africa with the Scottish Highland aspects of The Bronte Imagi- Nation settlers, the characters of Sanderson, MacTerrorGlen and such will allow kilted Scottish Highlander type troops to be used in gaming scenarios, albeit possibly in tropical dress. Scottish New Zealand troops and militia memorably wore of fashioned kilts for bush fighting and River wading during the later Maori Wars.
There is even the rogue Scotsman, MacTerrorGlen, leader of a drunken Scots brigade and leader of the Verdopolitan Reform Army fighting with Ardrah and the Ashantees against Zamorna’s and the Angrians. Known as Sir Jehu MacTerrorGlen (a reinvention of himself from his other life, as a roguish linen trader Jeremiah Simpson). After the defeat at the battle of Evesham, MacTerrorGlen is hunted down by Captain William Percy and the Angrian Government Police.
Having recently acquired several other Bronte books, including the encyclopaedic The Oxford Companion to The Brontes and Heather Glen’s edited edition of Charlotte Bronte’s Tales of Angria, there looks to be plenty more details of places, characters and events to flesh out the maps and timeline for future gaming scenarios.
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