This game dates back to at least 1861, when it was published by John Jaques & Son as The Royal Garrison Game. It is an extension of The Siege Game, a.k.a. German Tactics which itself seems descended from Fox and Geese. In this game, 17 points of its 67-point game board are set aside as a garrison. Three officers begin play in the garrison, and fifty attackers begin play on all the remaining points of the board. Officers can move in any direction along any lines and jump over attackers to remove them from the board; attackers move only along vertical or diagonal lines towards the garrison and cannot capture officers, but instead merely try to swarm the garrison. To win, the attackers must occupy every point in the garrison, while the officers must capture enough attackers to make such occupation impossible.
This game has been known in English-speaking countries by a number of names, including Officers and Sepoys, The Royal Garrison, The Three Guardsmen, The Three Musketeers, Yellow Peril, and Bataan: The Battle of the Philippines!. In continental Europe it has usually been known as some variation of Belagerungsspiel “Siege Game” or Festungspiel “Fortress Game” and was sometimes published together with its immediate ancestor under the same name.