Wargaming Miscellany

This afternoon Sue and I will be visiting the Royal Hospital Chelsea to attend a special talk and to see a number of exhibits that tell the stories of some of the Chelsea Pensioners.

The event has been organised by the Royal Hospital Chelsea Heritage Department as part of London History Day, and is in several parts:

• Before they fade: A talk by author and illustrator Robin Ollington in which he will recount stories of courage as told by Chelsea Pensioners for the short biographical series of the same name.
• Courageous women of the Royal Hospital Chelsea: An exhibit that will cover the stories of the women in the British Army from those who served clandestinely as men (e.g. Hannah Snell, Christian Cavanaugh) to the arrival of the first female Chelsea Pensioners.
• Semper audax (You can’t teach an old dog new tricks): A short video that will explore some of the 'adrenaline fuelled antics' of the modern Chelsea Pensioners.
• Great War Portraits: A photographic record created by Keith Collman (greatwarportraits.com) of veterans he has met on trips to the battlefields, during visits to their homes, and at reunions. The photographs will be accompanied by biographies of the subjects.

It sounds as if it will be an interesting way to spend a few hours, especially as we will be given access to parts of the Royal Hospital that are not normally visited by the public.

THE MADASAHATTA CAMPAIGN has been published and is now available for purchase from Lulu.com.


The book should be on sale from other online booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble within a matter of weeks.

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THE MADASAHATTA CAMPAIGN was originally devised and written by Eric Knowles and has been edited (with additions) by Bob Cordery. It is published in hardback by Eglinton Books and costs £14.99 (ISBN 978 0 244 38509 5).

The final proof reading of my gridded naval wargaming book has taken place and any errors have been corrected. The text and layout were then rigorously checked several times, and a PDF of the text was created, prior to being uploaded to Lulu.com. However, when I tried to do that this morning problems began to arise.

Each time I tried to upload the PDF, it was rejected on the grounds that not all the fonts used were embedded. It has taken me over six hours (including some breaks for refreshment and to restore my personal comforts) to embed the fonts and upload the PDF ... which is a bit of a record, even for me. The book is now at the stage where I can print a couple of proof copies, and once I have received and checked them, the book should be ready for publication.

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On a separate matter ... the problems with email notifications of reader's comments continues to afflict Blogger, and judging by the Blogger Open Forum, a lot of people are very unhappy that this has happened, and that Blogger does not seem to be doing anything to fix the problem.

We can but hope that they will manage to find a solution, but in the meantime, if I don't answer a comment, please be patient and I'll do so as soon as I can.

Blogger does not seem to be doing anything to sort out the sudden demise of the comment notification emails that used to arrive in my inbox when a regular blog reader wrote a comment on my blog. Someone on the Blogger Help Forum has suggested a 'fix' that I am going to try. It involves me creating a post (this one!) and sending myself a comment about it.

It might work ... but if it doesn't, I'll find out quite quickly!

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Well I ticked the 'Notify me' box next to my comment, and an email duly arrived to tell me a comment had been made. Now I need to see if a comment by someone else will generate a notification email!

I am reaching the stage where I have almost run out of room to store my books and wargames stuff. As a result I am giving serious thought to downsizing my collections. (This is likely to be necessary in the near future anyway, as my wife and I are thinking about moving to a smaller house or bungalow outside London, possibly on the Kent coast.)

I am beginning with my collection of books, and I have already identified some that either duplicate what others cover or which are about topics that no longer interest me. Once this has been done, I will think about disposing of them. If possible, I might sell them on eBay or to a dealer; if not, I might just list them somewhere on my blog so that regular readers can identify any that they might want to take off my hands for the cost of postage and packing ... and a small donation to my moving fund.


Once that has been done, I will move on to my wargame collections. I know that I am very unlikely to use some of them in the foreseeable future, and disposing of them makes sense. Like the books, this might be done using eBay or using less formal channels.

I have no idea how long this process is going to take (weeks, if not months is a reasonable estimation) but I will keep my regular blog readers apprised of my progress.

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I did read an very helpful article about how to downsize ones library. The rules were quite simple:

• Get rid of it if it's falling apart
• Get rid of it if it was a gift, and you are only keeping it out of guilt
• Get rid of it if it's a school or college textbook ... and you are no longer at school or college
• Get rid of it if you’ve read it — and you didn’t like it!
• Get rid of it if you’ve had it for more than two years and you haven’t read it
• Get rid of it if you have more than one copy

Sound advice ... just as long as I can keep to it.

As I have another two books in the last stages of publication (THE MADASAHATTA CAMPAIGN and GRIDDED NAVAL WARGAMES) I decided to update the Publications page on my blog.

The list of books is now split under several headings:

• Wargaming Books
• Military History Books
• Masonic History Books
• Fiction

Below an image of each book's cover are the prices at which the various editions (hardback, paperback, or eBook) are currently on sale via Lulu.

The General Data Protection Regulations came into force today ... and email copies of comments made on my blog are no longer being sent to my email account.

Are the two events related? I'm not sure, and I'm looking into it. In the meantime, if regular blog readers write comments and I don't reply within a day or two, please be patient. I'll answer comments as soon as I can.

Besides everything else I have been doing over the past few days, I seem to have spent quite some time doing admin tasks on behalf of Wargame Developments.

As is normal at this time of year, I am chasing up members who have booked places at COW (the Conference of Wargamers) but have yet to pay in full. I need to do this about four weeks before the date of the conference so that I can pay the cost of booking Knuston Hall for the weekend. On top of this I am having to try to cope with the new General Date Protection Regulations (GDPR) that comes into force tomorrow.


As the Treasurer and Membership Secretary (and now Data Manager and possibly the Data Protection Officer as well!), I hold the group's database in a computer file, and the situation would be very simple if we just published THE NUGGET and did nothing else. The data would fall under the category of data that does not require specific consent for me to hold as it is merely a subscription list. However, because we run COW and must share that data with a third party for Health and Safety reasons – in this case Knuston Hall – and because any member of Wargame Developments can book and attend, it was easier to ask for positive consent from every member of Wargame Developments to hold and share that data in accordance with a written policy ... which I also had to write! (This involved reading the new Regulations which are – in my opinion – very badly drafted and seem to contradict themselves in places.)

The statements of positive consent have been coming in, and each one has to be recorded and stored so I can show that consent has been given by each individual member. The Data Protection Policy has been written and is about to be published online and in the next copy of THE NUGGET ... and as far as I can see, everything is compliant with the new Regulations. This probably puts us ahead of many organisations, some of whom have had teams of people working on this for some time.

As far as I am concerned it has all been very time-consuming, and I can hardly wait to get back to something approaching normality ... such as finishing the final stages of publishing my next couple of books.

Last Saturday was a very important day (and I am not referring to the Royal Wedding or the FA Cup Final!) as it was the date of the Victorian Military Society's Seminar: INVASIONS SCARES AND THE 'BATTLE OF DORKING'.


Unfortunately, I was unable to go, but I understand that during the lunch break, the Battle of Dorking was re-fought using 15mm figures, my PORTABLE WARGAME rules, and a purpose-built terrain board. I have seen some photographs of both the figures and the terrain, and it all looked very, very impressive. These can be seen on the Society’s Facebook page.

I hope that more information about the game will become available in the fullness of time as it is exactly the sort of wargame I envisaged being fought using my rules.

I have a busy couple of days ahead of me.

One of the people proof reading my gridded naval wargames book has sent me several pages of notes that I need to go through in detail so that I can correct the mistakes he has found. (The mistakes are mainly typos and sentences with mixed tenses.) I will then send him back the corrected proof so that he can do one final check before I have some proof copies of the book printed.

I also have to attend two Masonic meetings, one in London (this afternoon) and the other in St Albans (on Tuesday). The London meeting is a Third Degree ceremony, but due to the sudden and unexpected death of a senior member of the Lodge, I fully expect to be asked to take an active part in the ritual rather than sit on the sidelines as a spectator. The Tuesday meeting is the Installation of a new Worshipful Master into the chair of his Mother Lodge, and he invited me some time ago as he serves as the Inner Guard of the Hertfordshire research Lodge of which I am currently Worshipful Master.

In addition to all of this I am also trying to ensure that Wargame Developments (of which I am the Treasurer/Membership Secretary) is fully compliant with the General Data Protection Regulations by the deadline ... which is in four day's time.

Have I taken things easy since I retired? I don't think so!

Besides having a bit of a tidy up of the detritus that seems to have accumulated of late in my toy/wargames room, I spent part of yesterday afternoon designing the cover for my forthcoming book about gridded naval wargames. I chose a navy blue colour for the cover and an image taken from one of my Zubian mini-campaign battles. The result looks like this:

Be warned ... the following blog entry might appear to be rather whinging in content and express views that some people of a certain disposition (or dispositions) might find offensive ... or even boring!

Within about ten minutes of waking up this morning I realised that I didn't have any work to do on my latest book. The draft text has gone off to my proof readers, I have already selected the photograph I want to use on the book's cover, and the book's blurb is ready. I am not yet in the mood to start my next writing project (it will be about the members of the Hertfordshire Masters' Lodge who served during the First World War) and I just want to spend the day doing very little. Unfortunately for me this has happened on the day of a royal wedding and the Football Association Cup Final, which means that chilling out in front of the TV is going to be a bit of a problem.

Before I get accused by my wife and others of being a GOM (Grumpy Old Man), I would like to state that I have nothing against either Prince Harry or Meghan Markle, both of whom I am sure are nice young people, and I wish them a happy married life. I am glad that I live in a constitutional monarchy rather than an elected one (I have yet to see a republic where the President is not an elected monarch ... some of whom have been 'elected' by a very small electorate indeed!) and I think that the majority of the Royal Family perform useful roles and help to boost the country's tourist trade enormously.

What does annoy me about today's royal wedding is the media hype and coverage that we have had to endure over the past few months, and particularly the last few days. It will culminate in what looks like blanket TV coverage on all the major channels, starting at around 9.00am and continuing for most of the morning and afternoon ... and followed by edited highlights this evening. I may well watch the actual ceremony, and possibly the procession to and from St George's Chapel, but do I really need to listen to all the 'talking heads' and interviews with people who are going to be in Windsor etc.?

Once the wedding is over, the TV coverage seems to be switching over to the next great 'event' of the day ... the FA Cup Final. I used to follow football, but once big money got involved in the 'sport', I lost interest. Everything seemed to become a version of Moneybags United vs. Bigwallet City, where success appeared to be due to how much a team could spend 'buying' the 'best' players from around the world rather than nurturing local talent. The players and managers became 'celebrities' whose every action and opinion (or lack of opinion) was deemed worth of media coverage, and whose employment and importance seemed transitory at best.

Luckily I do have a few DVDs and the Talking Pictures Channel I could watch (the Talking Pictures Channel is owned by the British Film Institute and features lots of old black and white films from my youth and even earlier), and my wife has already intimated that there are several programmes on the Drama Channel she would like to see, so things might not be so bad after all ... and if I cannot chill out that way, there is always the possibility of fighting a wargame.

Things are already looking better ...

Wednesday was a rather busy day for me. I was trying to get more work done on my book about gridded naval wargames as well prepare for an important Masonic meeting. (We were installing a new Worshipful Master into the Chair of my Mother Lodge, and as one of the older and more experienced Brethren, I was expected to perform certain parts of the ritual … including singing the Master’s Song!) As a result, the last chapter of the book – which is an explanatory battle report – remained incomplete until yesterday.

The chapter is now finished, and although I won’t spoil matters by telling my regular blog readers the result, I can say the Mimi and Toutou did go forth with a degree of success.

SMS Kingani under attack by HMS Mimi. By attacking from astern, HMS Mimi is outside the limited arc-of-fire of SMS Kingani's 6-pounder gun.

All I have to do now is to finish adding books to the bibliography before doing a grammar and spelling check. I’ll then do a final read-through myself before sending copies of the text to my trusty team of proof readers. With luck they will get back to me within a fortnight, and then I can proceed to make any necessary corrections before I have the proof copies printed. Once that is done and final checks are made, the book will be published … and then I can move onto my next project!

I am about to start writing what I think will be the last chapter of my book about gridded naval wargames, and it will feature an explanatory battle report about the fight between the British gunboats Mimi and Toutou and their German opponent, Kingani.

The models I am using are approximately 1:600th-scale and were built from various bits and pieces I had in my spares box; in other words, some spare ships' boats and light guns from Airfix warship kits. For ease of handling they were stuck on pieces of Plasticard and labelled. They are not the most beautiful models I have every built, but they serve me well enough in several tabletop battles.

Mimi


Toutou


Kingani


The story of how Mimi and Toutou got to a lake in the centre of Africa is an epic tale that inspired C S Forester to write THE AFRICAN QUEEN and would make a wonderful film.

The model battleship featured in yesterday's blog entry was HMS Empress.


I built her nearly six years ago (doesn't time fly when you are having fun!) from basswood, bamboo skewers, and pine dowel and she has served me well in several tabletop battles ... although not always under her given name!

Her design was based on that of HMS Victoria (hence the name HMS Empress) ...


... with a touch of HMS Rupert.


The former sank after accidentally colliding with HMS Camperdown in the Mediterranean on 22nd June 1893, and the latter spent most of her career in reserve or serving as a port guard ship around the world (Hull, Pembroke, Gibraltar, Port Said, and Bermuda).

It was my intention to end my book about gridded naval wargames with a chapter that covered coastal operations, particularly how my PORTABLE NAVAL WARGAME rules work in conjunction with my PORTABLE WARGAME rules.

What started out as a couple of pages has grown into a full-blown battle report that covers how the rules work together. For inspiration I went to Donald Featherstone's NAVAL WAR GAMES and have adapted his THE RAID ON THE KRIEGSTAATZ BATTERIES scenario from the imaginary Anglo-German War of 1885. In my case the battle is entitled THE ATTACK ON THE KRIEGSTAATZ FORTRESS, and the tabletop looks like this:



I am several turns into the wargame, and it is developing into quite an interesting battle. I have no idea how it is going to end, but hope to find out later today. Once it is concluded, I will be able to finish this chapter, which will leave only one other to write before the book's text can be sent off for proof reading and correction.

The latest issue of Miniature Wargames arrived in the post on Friday, and I have been reading it on-and-off over the past two days.


The articles included in this issue are:

• Welcome (i.e. the editorial) by John Treadaway
• Forward observer
• Send three and fourpence: With cat-like tread by Conrad Kinch
• To think again ...: Wargaming the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion by Alex Webster, with photographs by John Treadaway
• St Crispin's Day: 1415: North East France, on 25th October by Jon Sutherland, with photographs by Diane Sutherland
• Show Report: Salutations: A tired shuffle around Salute 2018 in London by John Treadaway
• Darker Horizons
• Fantasy Facts
• Heading West: The story behind Wild West Exodus
• K9 Gun Dog Painting Guide
• Leave 'em for the vultures: An exclusive scenario for Wild West Exodus
• Into the woods: Two scenarios with options a plenty by Robert Piepenbrink, with photographs by John Treadaway
• Recce
• Well trained: The continuing tales of a wargames widow by Diane Sutherland
• Thukela & Blood River: The Boers and Zulus clash in South Africa by Dave Tuck and Malc Johnston
• Club Directory

So what did I particularly enjoy in this issue?

At first glance I thought that this was going to be one of the less interesting issues for me to read. The addition of a sprue of Wild West Exodus K9 Gun Dogs to the front of the magazine was rather off-putting for me (I am not sure what I am going to do with this 'free gift' worth £17.00!!!), as was the related articles in the Fantasy Facts. However, once I had overcome my initial reservations I discovered that there were several articles that I will probably want to keep for future reference. Conrad Kinch's Send three and fourpence was good value as ever, and Dave Tuck's and Malc Johnston's Thukela & Blood River was very much up my street. I also enjoyed Diane Sutherland's Well trained article as I have done similar conversions of cheap Christmas train sets myself, and her article included one or two ideas and techniques I had not though of using.

Final judgement ... not an outstanding issue, but the magazine still remains worth its subscription cost.

I have just finished reading the printed proof copy of a small, hardback book that I have compiled about the late Eric Knowles's famous Madasahatta Campaign. I created it as a tribute to Eric's pioneering work in the world of UK wargaming, and the book will be published in due course. In the meantime I am having copies printed for Eric's family and friends.

As can be seen from the images of the front ...


... and back covers ...


... the book contains all the background information to the campaign as well as copies of the campaign newspaper and reminiscences of some of those who took part.

By sheer coincidence I happened to see a reference to a battle report that featured the downloadable version of my PORTABLE NAVAL WARGAME rules ... and I just had to read it.


I've not come across the RED IN THE MORNING blog before and I don't think that the writer is one of my regular blog readers. He used the rules to re-fight the Battle of Manila Bay ...


... using a Chessex gridded mat and counters from Avalanche Press' board game, REMEMBER THE MAINE.

I thought that the summary of his thoughts about the rules and ideas for developing them were very interesting, and they have reinforced my own thinking and will help me as I continue to write my book.

For some reason best known to themselves, Lulu.com have revised my book sales figures for last month ... and the chart now looks like this:


In detail, the changes are from this ...


... to this.


Interestingly, the vast majority of the increased sale were for paperbacks, with total sales rising from 1,236 to 1,288, an increase of 52. It was also interesting to see that sales of the hardback edition of LA ULTIMA CRUZADA have risen by four, and that the total book sales figure to date has broken the two and a half thousand mark.

I needed to explain how I have used a 3:2 ratio for ships moving diagonally on a squared grid. In other words, that for every three grid areas the ship could move orthogonally, it may only move two grid areas on a diagonal course.

(Note: On a grid, all counting is done from the centre of one grid area to the centre of another grid area.)

The 3:2 ratio is relatively close to the ratio between the hypotenuse of a right-angled isosceles triangle and the other two sides. In other words, when the length of the non-hypotenuse sides of the right-angled isosceles triangle is 2, then the length of the hypotenuse is 2.83 (i.e.√((2 x 2) + (2 x 2)) = 2.828 ... which is close to 3).

The geometry behind this can be shown thus:


I hope that this is much clearer in the following diagram:


(The original diagram I designed looked like this ...


... which I though was less than helpful in trying to get the concept over!)

Lulu.com have just sent me my latest book sales figures, and they look like this:


As I would have expected, sales of THE PORTABLE WARGAME and DEVELOPING THE PORTABLE WARGAME continue to grow, although not as fast as they once did. This is hardly surprising as I suspect that majority of people who were going to buy a copy would have done so by now.

One thing that does surprise me is that no one has yet bought an electronic copy of LA ULTIMA CRUZADA. Judging by my other book sales, I expected the electronic version to out sell both the hardback and paperback editions, but as yet that does not appear to be happening. It might well be related to the fact that Amazon has only recently begun to list it.

As to Amazon's sales of the hardback and paperback editions of LA ULTIMA CRUZADA not seeming to appear on the sales figures I received from Lulu.com, this has not been cleared up. They were there ... but listed as being sales made by Ingram (Print), which is part of Amazon. Simple really ... but nonetheless confusing to the uninitiated.

Yesterday I managed to fight a battle using the latest version of my PORTABLE NAVAL WARGAME: PRE-DREADNOUGHTS rules. I used Heroscape hexes for my terrain (lots of water hexes and a few painted ordinary hexes) and some of my old, homemade, Fred T Jane-inspired, 1:3000th-scale model ships.

The scenario
Growing tension between Greece and Turkey is about to boil over into open warfare. In order to ensure that the Turkish Navy is unable to interfere with Greek naval operations and to protect Greek merchant ships from attack, the Greek Navy has begun to maintain a discreet blockade of the Mediterranean exit from the Dardanelles.

Unbeknownst to the Greeks, the Turks have been planning to send one of the cruisers into the Mediterranean to do exactly what the Greeks feared that they might. Because of the Greek blockade, the Turkish Navy’s High Command plan to force a passage through the blockade using some of their larger ships. Once the cruiser is in open waters and free to begin operations, the larger ships with return to the Dardanelles.

The Greek blockade is being maintained by (left to right in the following photograph):

• The Coastal Defence Battleship Hydra
• The Modern Pre-dreadnought Lemnos
• The Armoured Cruiser Georgios Averof

The Turkish force includes (left to right in the following photograph):

• The Coastal Defence Battleship Messudieh
• The Older Pre-dreadnought Torgud Reis
• The Protected Cruiser Hamidieh

This was a very enjoyable battle to fight, with the advantage swinging in favour of one side and then back again. The battle report will form part of my forthcoming GRIDDED NAVAL WARGAMES book, but to whet your appetites, here are some photographs of the early stages of the battle.

I am just finished the chapter about the advantages, disadvantages, and usefulness of using grids in naval wargames, and a large part of it is devoted to explanatory diagrams.

Over the years I have learnt that in many case people are more likely to understand a simple diagram than a long section of text, which is why I spend so much time trying to produce appropriately simple and informative diagrams. Here are some of the ones I am using, along with their captions.

Turning on a hex grid. The white arrow indicates the direction that the ship was sailing in. It may turn to port (left) or starboard (right) by 60-degrees.

Turning on a square grid. The white arrow indicates the direction that the ship was sailing in. It may turn to port (left) or starboard (right) by 45-degrees.

In the above example shown above, the distance between the firing ship and the target ship on the hex grid is 5 hexes.

In the example shown above, the distance between the firing ship and the target ship on the square grid is 6 squares (2 orthogonally upwards and 4 orthogonally across).

They may not be as glossy or professional as diagrams in other wargame books, but I think that they do the job.

I had hoped to finish writing my latest book by now, but real life (and other non-wargaming diversions) have slowed my progress ... but not stopped it. With luck I should be able to fight and record a battle using my PORTABLE WARGAME: PRE-DREADNOUGHT rules over the forthcoming weekend for inclusion in the book. After that I need to do something similar for my MIMI AND TOUTOU GO FORTH rules and to write a chapter about how to develop and extend my rules for other historical periods, and another chapter about how to use my rules for coastal bombardment, coastal defence, and naval support for landings.

My revised timetable is to finish the book by the end of the month ... assuming that there are no more diversions!

Back in what my wife likes to call 'eighteen hundred and frozen stiff'* (in other words, a long time ago) when I could still fix my old cars with some spanners, a couple of screwdrivers, and some swearing, I used to own copies of the relevant workshop manuals published by Haynes.

Over the past few years they have begun to publish a range of workshop manuals about a wide range of types of transport, including the RMS Titanic, the AVRO Lancaster bomber, and Saturn V rocket. One of this series that I had not come across before was the manual for the T-34 tank, but as I saw it on sale for only £4.00 in a local branch of THE WORKS, I just had to buy a copy.


The book is subtitled '1940 to date (all models)' ... and it certainly seems to do exactly that. Its chapters include:

• The T-34 story
• T-34 at war 1941-45
• Operating the T-34
• T-34s in post-war foreign service
• Anatomy of the T-34/76
• T-34 weaponry and firepower
• Appendices
• T-34 variants including SPGs
• The T-44
• T-34 turrets

I have several books about the T-34, but this one seemed to cover the technical aspects of the design and its variants better than the rest ... and at the price being charged, it was a bargain.

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T-34 TANK: OWNER'S WORKSHOP MANUAL was written by Mark Healy and published by Haynes Publishing in 2018 (ISBN 978 1 78521 094 5).

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* This expression was used in an episode of DAD'S ARMY by Private Walker when referring to Corporal Jones's service in the Sudan Campaign.

The latest copy of SOTQ (Soldiers of the Queen, the quarterly journal of the Victorian Military Society) arrived in the post on Monday, and I have been reading it over the past couple of days.


The articles included in this issue are:

• 'With a master eye he saw what was needed and did it': Kitchener's Indian Army reforms 1902-1909 by David Snape
• In Defence of a Forgotten General: Lieutenant-General Sir Edwin Alfred Hervey Alderson (1859-1927) by Dr Andrew Windrow
• Letter to the Editor
• Captain Willingham Franklin Richardson RE (1843-1875): From Hampshire to the Himalayas by Richard Voss
• Book Reviews by Dr Roger T Stearn
• Officers of the Victorian Military Society

This was yet another issue full of interesting articles. I particularly enjoyed David Snape's 'With a master eye he saw what was needed and did it' as it explained why the reforms were necessary and how they laid the foundations of the British Indian Army that took part in the First and Second World Wars.

Dr Negrin tried to sue for peace, but General Franco demanded nothing less than unconditional surrender.

Juan Negrin, the last Republican Prime Minister of Spain.