Wednesday, November 13, 2013

His Majesty´s freeshooters of Denmark a.k.a. Snapphanar


Starting up our new Scanian War Project I and Søren decided to go for some Low intense warfar in the nothern part of Scania i.e. Guerilla warfare by the Danish Freeshooter or as they was called in Sweden Snapphanar.

The main reasons was to be able to start it all up as small skirmish games using the exellent Muskets and Tomahawks rules. Love them but as usual I always try to find the Swedish angle;)

Rules of choice:)

A short Snapphane background
A snapphane was a member of a 17th-century pro-Danish guerrilla organization that fought against the occupying Swedes in the Second Northern and Scanian Wars, primarily in the former eastern Danish provinces that had been Danish for the last 500 years, which in the course of these wars became southern Sweden.

The term snapphane, which was used as a derogative term by the Swedes to describe the pro-Danish rebels, was originally a word for gangs of bandits that lived in the woods. When Scanian exiled peasants were organized by the Danish king into bands that fought the Swedes with guerrilla methods, they were called Snapphane too.


Due to the movement's support of the Danish invasion during the Scanian War, Swedish authorities fought the snapphanes brutally, and if one was captured, he was usually executed and the corpse was impaled and shown where the locals could see it and be intimidated to obedience. Another common method was execution by having them broken on the wheel. The Snapphanes were initially rather successful, but as the war turned against Denmark the Snapphane war became more devastating.

The Snapphanes were defeated mostly by a Swedish campaign of compelling Scanian peasants swear allegiance to the Swedish king, effectively driving a wedge between Snapphane and most of the population. Instructed by the Danish king to kill loyalists the Snapphane bands turned on the local population undermining support for the Danish king.

A ruthless Swedification policy was reportedly so effective that when a Danish invasion army landed in 1709, in the wake of the Battle of Poltava, the local population was raised in a militia to fight against them. The last suspected snapphane, Nils Tuasen‚ was executed in 1700 for slaying a Swedish soldier in 1677. He had allegedly spent 22 years in exile in Denmark but ultimately returned, upon which he was arrested and put to death.

Next up, what minis will I use...

19 comments:

  1. Very interesting, I might give the musket and tomahawk rules a gander

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    1. Indeed do, they are very nice rules and work very fine with several players. Ve use the activation system for our "A Very Moderate Swedish Conflict"

      Best regards Michael

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    2. I guess my next pay check I will have to pick myself up a copy

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  2. Oh, that's an interesting story. Very much like the way you try to give your games a local/Scandinavian twist – that's how us "Continentals" should deal with Anglocentrism in wargaming. ;-)
    Fun fact that, apparently, a term used in Medieval Germany for highwaymen (schnappen = to grab, to snap; Hahn = a cock – or a man, of course…) became "recycled" in Scandinavian languages.

    Cheers, SG
    mountainsoflead.com

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    1. After several years of gaming anglocentric wars I decided to try to have a Swedish angle to all my wargaming project after all its much easier to find info about the conflicts and I also wanted to promot the Swedish history.

      The Swedish language have very much influences from German an so it was untill ww2 after that we get all influences from the Anglo-American sphere.

      Best regards Michael

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  3. Very good choice for the rule (and it did not because we did it!). I'm curious to see it. see you soon.
    Frédéric

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    1. Thanks Frédéric !

      M&T is a very good set of rules that turned out to work very well with several players aside, we will make some small adjustments for the use of pikes and ofcourse armylists, I´ll be glad to send them over when we tried them out a bit.

      Also looking forward to your Shakos and Bayonetts rules to use with my Finnish War projet, might be the thing to get the sleeping project to awake again:)

      Best regards Michael

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  4. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you and Søren come up with. And of course, playing when you've finished painting and building.

    I think M&T is an excellent choice for this part of the conflict.

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    1. Its not an option you will be forced to play;)

      I hope we can inspire you to add some thing to the project. We need some Snapphanar that have been impaled etc...

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  5. Very interesting Michael! I too think H&T is a good choice.

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    1. Glad you find it a interesting project and approve of our choise of rules!

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  6. I really like the way you are adapting the setting of these rule sets to stick with your theme. Thanks for another history lesson.

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  7. This certainly will be one of your splendid projects again. Thanks for the historical background by the way!

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    1. I realy hope so, especially now when we are at lest 3-4 that participate. Yes we got unexpectet reinforcements, more about that later.

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  8. Very interesting and a good choice of rules, Michael.

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  9. Fascinating background! Impaled or broken on the wheel, that is rough.

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    1. Indeed it is ! It seem to have been realy harsh times. and the Swedisfication of the region was very brutal during the years after the war, so when the Danes invaded in 1709 they didn´t get any support by the Scanians that no longer considered them selfs as Danes, Wich they had during the Scanian war 1675-79.

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