The French Military Game, sometimes called Hare & Hounds, is the smallest and most simple of all hunt games. It originated in 19th century France, and became popular with French military officers during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.

An article by Martin Gardner in the journal Scientific American generated further interest in the game in 1963, and it has become popular with computer programmers due to the ease of implementing its simple rules.

Other versions are played on a 8*8 chessboard with 4 hounds. 1 Contra 4 is a game released in 1976 which replaces the chessboard with an own created board, but there is no difference in gameplay.

From the Rodent Roundup version:

The chase is on! It's three crafty cats against one tricky mouse. Who will outsmart whom in this game of chase?

One player controls the three cats. That player's job is to trap the mouse so it can't make a move (cats win). The other player controls the mouse. The mouse must try to scurry past the cats and get free (mouse wins).

The cats may only move forward, sideways, and forward diagonally along the inscribed lines on the playing surface. Only one cat may move per turn. The mouse may move in any direction, including backwards, one move per turn.

In the chessboard version, the pieces are placed on the black squares, the hare on a square on its back row, the four hounds on their back row. Pieces move diagonally one square; the hare forwards or backwards (thus to four squares if in the middle of the board), the hounds forward (thus to two squares). Pieces cannot move to a square occupied by another piece, and there is no jumping.

The object is for the hare to get to the back row of the hounds - since the hares can't move backwards, the hare has won once it passes the hounds. The hounds aim to prevent this by trapping the hare between all four hounds, or hounds and the edge of the board.

Since the hounds move forward, there is a maximum number of moves in the game, and someone must win.

The best way to learn is by taking turns being hare or hounds, but you should fairly quickly develop a winning strategy for the hare. However, moving the starting position of the hounds forward tilts the game in their favour. I do not know at what point this becomes a winning position - perhaps one day I'll write a computer program to find out.