2020; CANCELLED.

                                       CANCELLED.

So for reenactment 2020 was pretty much a non event.

For the optimistic it went 'Maybe August will be okay.. September?  October?. Oh dear.'

I did plan on going to Austerlitz at the very end of November in Czechia (as the former Czech republic is apparently now known) but first UK travellers were banned, Then it was okay, then quarantine was imposed and unlikely undone in time so I cut my loses, with both sadness and relief, it is not a great time to be mixing it up and expected attendance at the event (not including public) had gone from 1000 to 3000 as event starved reenactors saw a big date that might be actually happening. At this moment I don't know if it still will. 

At the time of writing I have my doubts about 2021, it's like we've gone back to March in terms of rising infection numbers, international travel has ground to a halt again for many places unless you want to spend a fortnight each side of your trip in quarantine. I have heard the 200 years since the death of Napoleon event in St Helena has already been pulled.

How have we coped!? Some folk had zoom meetings, with most participants kitted up, some camped out in their own gardens particularly to mark big cancelled events like Waterloo. I only did a few zooms during lockdown, I find the stop - start -whose - talking? lack of social cues thing rather awkward. 

Some concentrated on making or researching kit and equipment for next year... See more below..

Me at virtual Bretten 2020. Just like it but without the crowds of people taking part, parades, (more than one) beer, food, markets, music, fireworks, and properly seeing friends in person, and not being in Baden-Württemberg. 

Friends. That is the main loss, none of my reenactment friends are local. Every year it's great to catch up and enjoy the social side of things. 

The closest I got to camping out was an overnight cycling excursion on the south downs  with a fair amount of Napoleonic gear for bedding and wearing a flouncy shirt.

In the brief glimmer of improved times there were actually a few events, one with redcoats and jacobites and one with Vikings that I know of, but the public were limited and at social distancing range and generally given a one way system to wander around the event.  

My own research has been in Napoleonic medical matters, much is made of the gruesome surgery of the day and that has been a part but I have mainly concentrated on the role of Doctors, not surgeons, so disease more than wounds although being generally overwhelmed by casualties most army doctors may well have had to roll up their sleeves and join in the bandaging, cutting and sawing.

If covid had come along in 1810.. It probably would not be recognised except as just another fever, such was the terrible mortality rate to sickness that we should all be thankful that covid isn't a patch on typhus or Smallpox which killed millions. Typhus killed more French soldiers in late 1806 Then the battle of Austerlitz itself due to the perfect storm of malnourished men being packed together in squalid conditions, for we know now that it is spread by tiks and parasites from one warm body to another. 

Stop there!  This is not a talk on contagions. Where was I? 

So what of 2021?  We will just have to see how the winter goes and of course hope for a vaccine.

 One suggestion has been more events without the public, which are more common in France, where to my observation it seems events are either over civilised with big hats at chateaux on what I call the champagne circuit or else it's out in the wilds stomping through the countryside, hoping to find some water. Here in the UK most events seem to be a partnership between the given reenactment society and some estate/museum/landlord who hosts the event in return for punters paying at the door. 

Smaller events like the two mentioned above could be a template, keeping visitors in their bubbles, but a bigger area for viewing a battle would be needed, possibly having spectators on three sides instead of one to spread them out. 

But what of the troops themselves? In an age where soldiers fought shoulder to shoulder could you get away with everyone in skirmish order? Or trust in declarations of not having symptoms? The trouble is you don't always know if you've got it until the symptoms come out. Maybe have a camp site re-enacting a camp site where cholera is present and where the chief medical officer is a contagionists (The contemporary term for those who believed in the theory of human contagion versus the anticontagionists) with historically correct face coverings and precautions in place.  Maybe! 

Who knows, maybe in 2120 people will be re-enacting the covid years. 

Ciao for now.