Kriegsspieler of the Month - Carl von Müffling (1775 - 1851)

by Jorit Wintjes

The first Kriegsspieler of the Month is Carl von Müffling (sometimes also “Karl”, though he published as “Carl von Müffling”). He is arguably the most important figure in the history of the Prussian Kriegsspiel, as without him the invention of a Prussian artillery lieutenant (more on the latter in next month’s instalment) the Kriegsspiel would likely have remained the pastime of its inventor and his friends, and, soon forgotten, would then have joined all the earlier late 18th and early 19th c. Kriegsspiel in their obscurity; that the Prussian Kriegsspiel was instead put on a trajectory eventually resulting in wargaming being not only a standard means of training and educating military decision makers but also a hobby supported by a sprawling industry - in 2020/21, British miniature wargames producer Games Workshop alone could show a revenue of more than 350 million GBP in his books - was entirely Carl von Müffling’s doing. It is therefore only appropriate to begin the Kriegsspieler of the Month series with him.

Müffling was born in 1778 into an old noble family; both his grandfather Carl Friedrich and his father Friedrich Wilhelm had served in the Prussian army, as would his younger brother Wilhelm, who also rose to the rank of general. The career of Müffling’s father had spanned half a century; after entering Prussian service in 1755 he had fought in the Seven Years’ War and in the Revolutionary Wars, eventually commanding an infantry regiment in the ill-fated Jena-Auerstedt campaign of 1806. Gravely wounded in the battle he would eventually succumb to his wounds two years later.

By that time, Carl von Müffling, his eldest son, had already 16 years of service in the Prussian army behind him. At the age of 13 he had entered the Prussian army, gaining a commission as second lieutenant in 1790. He then served during the Revolutionary Wars before being assigned to the Prussian army’s Generalquartiermeisterstab, the predecessor of the later general staff, as he was fluent in French and had a considerable interest in - and, one has to assume, talent for - Mathematics; it was probably the latter that caused his involvement in the Generalquartiermeisterstab’s survey activities in Thuringia and Westfalia. After service under Blücher and Hohenlohe in 1805/1806 he briefly left Prussian military service before returning in 1813 to serve again as a member of Blücher’s staff. In 1814 he briefly served as the governor of Paris before being assigned to Wellington’s staff in order to coordinate British and Prussian operations; he would remain with Wellington for nearly three years.

From 1818 onwards he directed the first complete survey of a Prussian province, resulting in the Topographische Aufnahme der Rheinlande, the first large set of truly topographical maps produced in Prussia. Originally initiated by Napoleon, the project of surveying the Rhineland provinces, at the time under French control, had been undertaken by the French geographer Jean Joseph Tranchot, but was far from finished by the time work ceased in 1814 due to the course of the war. In 1815, Prussia not only gained the Rhineland provinces, but France was also compelled to hand over all the maps so far produced by Tranchot and his team; Müffling, deeply impressed by the French work, then continued with the survey, and in 1828 an atlas was finally published. He was also instrumental in establishing the topographic bureau of the Prussian army, and while in 1821 he was promoted to chief of Prussia’s general staff, he was also arguably Prussia’s premier topographer.

As chief of the general staff, Müffling’s impact on the Prussian army was considerable. A follower of Scharnhorst who had secured him his position among Blücher’s staff nearly a decade earlier, he initiated a formalized system of training for staff officers that included the so-called Übungsreisen or staff rides, excursions to battlefields where particular emphasis was put on the impact of the topography on the course of battle, theoretical exercises and military history classes. He also started to formalize staff operation, laying the foundation for the efficient war machine admired and copied by contemporaries in the aftermath of the War of 1870/71. From 1838 onwards he served as the military governor of Prussia’s capital Berlin before retiring in 1847 following a final promotion to field marshal and after more than half a century of military service; he died four years later. Throughout his career he had also been an active military writer, producing several histories of the 1813, 1814 and Waterloo campaigns, a handbook on Übungsreisen as well as a study on Germanicus’ campaigns of AD 14 to AD 16.

As noted in the beginning, Müffling’s importance for the history of the Prussian Kriegsspiel can be hardly overestimated – it was him who Reisswitz and his friends managed to convince of the usefulness of the Kriegsspiel, and it was he who then convinced the king to issue an edict within weeks instructing all regiments to acquire a set of the Kriegsspiel. Looking closer at Müffling’s activities during the late 1810s and early 1820s shows how incredibly lucky Reisswitz and his friends had been: with his deep interest into topography and officer education Müffling probably was the single most receptive officer for something like the Prussian Kriegsspiel throughout the whole Prussian army. Had anyone else been in his position in that fateful spring of 1824, it is likely that the Kriegsspiel would have never been introduced into the Prussian army.

Although some of his papers survive there is at present no in-depth study on Müffling and his role in the transformation of the Prussian army extant; the Neue Deutsche Biographie includes a useful but very brief biography (J. Niemeyer. 1997. “Müffling, Karl Freiherr von”. NDB 18, 266-267). In 1844 Müffling himself completed work on two volumes of memoires in 1844 which he instructed his son Eduard von Müffling to publish only after his death; they appeared in redacted form in 1851. Currently the best source for information on Carl von Müffling is the 2003 edition of his memoirs (H.-J. Behr. 2003. Karl Freiherr von Müffling. Offizier - Kartograph - Politiker (1775-1851). Köln: Böhlau) which includes sections on the campaigns of 1813 to 1815 which were not published in 1851 as they were deemed to be too critical.

So much for this month’s Kriegsspieler. Next month we will look at Georg Heinrich von Reisswitz, the - at the time - young artillery lieutenant who actually invented the Kriegsspiel. For more on that (including on why “invention” is actually the correct term) see next month’s instalment of Kriegsspieler of the Month.