Bonjour Jean-Pierre
J'ai commencé à chercher sur mon disque dur.
HYVRON Jean-Pierre a écrit:Des sources indiquent bien une ou deux compagnies équipées de Rifles, ce qui donnerait une organisation à la KGL.
Par hasard, je suis tombé sur le fichier ci-dessous qui parle des rifles dans la KGL, bien sûr, c'est une conversation extraite du forum de « Napoleon Series ».
Bon, ce n'est pas vraiment ce que tu cherches, mais en attendant mieux…
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KGL Flank Companies
Rod MacArthur, Saturday, 29 September 2007
I know from my research into establishments and various other sources that when the KGL were first formed most battalions had 8 Companies although the two Light Battalions only had 6 each in December 1803 and 5 KGL had only 4 on formation in November 1805. By December 1805 all ten KGL battalions (that is 2 Light and 8 Line) had identical organisations of 8 centre companies (all on standard British 100 Rank & File establishments) with no Grenadier or Light Companies. Skirmishers were provided by the Hanoverian system of detaching 6 men per company as Sharpshooters (and these were rifle armed) plus a number of Officers, NCOs and a bugler to provide command and control.
This 8 company structure continued until December 1811 (the only change being in Dec 1807 when some battalions increased their 8 companies to 120 Rank and File each). From 25 December 1811 the number of companies in all ten battalions was increased to 10 and all reverted to 100 Rank and File per company. Oddly however the authorised establishments are for two more standard centre companies per battalion, these having two Lieutenants and 1 Ensign each as opposed to Flank Companies which had no Ensigns but three Lieutenants. Also a Grenadier Company had 2 Fifers (as well as their 2 Drummers) and were the only Company in the battalion to have fifers. The KGL were not authorised Fifers, another indication that the two extra companies were Centre Companies.
Why they were not authorised Flank Companies is not clear. All other foreign battalions (Roll, Meuron, Watteville, Chasseurs Brittaniques, Brunswick etc) had one Grenadier and one Light Company. Every 10 Company British Battalion also was authorised one Grenadier and one Light Company, oddly including all the Light Infantry and Rifle battalions.
This KGL 10 company structure, with no established Flank Companies, continued for the rest of the wars, although there was a re-organisation to 6 Companies (which in 1814 had been reduced to 10 x 60 and so the re-organisation made them than 6 x 100) each for the 8 Battalions in the Netherlands during the Waterloo Campaign.
However there is clear evidence that the KGL did in fact have Flank Companies from 1812 onwards. The best evidence is in "Adventures of a Young Rifleman, in the French and English Armies, during the War in Spain and Portugal, from 1806 to 1816" by Johann Christian Maempel, who joined 7 KGL from being a prisoner of war. In July 1812 he relates:
"In each company of the battalion there were at that time six riflemen, but an order arrived from England, that in future each battalion should have a rifle and a grenadier company. Upon putting this order into execution, the company to which I belonged was dissolved, and the rifle company formed out of it". Pages 255-256.
Further evidence is in "The Wheatly Diary". Edmund Wheatly was a British Officer serving with 5 KGL from 1813 to 1816 and several times he mentions being in the Grenadier Company.
I was wondering whether anyone had the exact wording and date of the 1812 order to form Grenadier and Light Companies as mentioned by Maempel, or can suggest where I can find it.
Rod
The KGL originally had just 8 companies per battalion with skirmishers provided by the Hanoverian system of detaching a few files (6 men per company plus a few officers, NCOs and a bugler) who were rifle armed sharpshooters. There were also a couple of KGL Light Infantry companies attached to the KGL Line brigade. From 25 December 1811 the KGL were increased to 10 companies per battalion. Although these extra companies were on a centre company establishment, memoirs indicate that they in fact were organised as flank companies. There is there is the contemporary evidence of Edmund Wheatley’s memoirs (The Wheatley Diary - pages 2, 53 and 60) in which he clearly records that he was an officer in the grenadier company of 5th Battalion KGL. Furthermore the memoirs of Johann Maempel (Adventures of a Young Rifleman in the French and English Armies - page 256), who served in 7th KGL, state that whilst the unit was in Sicily in July 1812, an order arrived from England to form Grenadier and Light companies and in consequence the sharpshooters were all concentrated into the new Light company, which therefore became exclusively armed with rifles.
Rod
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Rod/Bryn
It is not surprising that the KGL Brigades formed LI ad hoc battalions under the May 1809 General Order. Other than the men of the Light Battalions left behind in Portugal when Moore's army went into Spain, there were no other purely Lights in the KGL Brigades.
The two Light Battalions only arrived back in Portugal in March 1811, and although assigned to the 7th Division, they served with Hill's Corps as an independent brigade. They joined the 7th Division after Albuera and only finally joined the KGL Brigade in the 1st Division in December 1812.
Ron
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Ron,
I have not really thought about these KGL Light companies before, and had not realised that their source was those left behind at Lisbon when the remainder of their battalions took part in the retreat to Corunna. I can see from the Orbats in Oman's "History of the Peninsular War" that they are variously described as one or two companies (I suspect the reason for this discrepancy was that they comprised a detachment from each of 1st and 2nd KGL Light Battalions, but their strength was only that of a single strong company, 106 at Talavera (25 Jul 1809), 96 at Bussaco (27 Sep 1810) and 86 at Fuentes de Oñoro (5 May 1811).
I note from Beamish's "History of the King's German Legion" volume 2 page 4 that "The detachments of the light infantry brigade of the legion, which, it is to be remembered, had been attached to the northern army, as an independent corps of skirmishers under major von Wurmb, were also transferred...and, after an absence of more than two years from their brigade, joined it at Campo Major on the 21st [of June 1811].
Beamish (Volume 1 page 189) also gives a May 1809 Orbat for the Legion in the Peninsula which includes under the title of "Riflemen" commanded by Major von Wurmb: Skirmishers of the four line battalions, Detachments of the 1st and 2nd light battalions. His note says that to each company of the German line regiments were attached ten men armed with rifles, who uniting in action, formed a corps of skirmishers, and were called scharfschützen (sharpshooters). I have elsewhere seen it stated that there were only six per company, but this figure seems a little low and may not include NCOs. The actual figure is probably somewhere between those two. The 1803 Hanoverian Army, on which this system was based, had 12 sharpshooters per company (plus officers and NCOs) but only 4 large companies per battalion, operating as two platoons.
Rod
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“The plan of organizing a distinct body of men to act as skirmishers, was followed with great success, in the King's German legion during the Peninsular war, when ten picked men, armed with rifles, and called sharpshooters (Scharf- schutzen) were attached to each company of the line infantry. These riflemen, uniting in action, were thrown out as feelers, or charged in an independent body, and under the lamented major von Wurmb, were always distinguished. A gallant friend, to whom 29 years' experience as a cavalry officer in various quarters of the globe, including war service in India —— has proved the value of well drilled skirmishers,* ....
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* Lieutenant and Adjutant Dynon, 16th (Queen's) Lancers.”
Page 134, On the uses and application of cavalry in war from the text of Bismark by Friedrich Wilhelm Bismark, translated by North Ludlow Beamish. Published by T. & W. Boone, 1855:
Steven H.Smith