FRENCH LIGHT INFANTRY 1784-1815
◗ Terry Crowdy
◗ Helion & Company (2021)
◗ £29.95
◗ 174 pages (softback)
◗ ISBN:9781914059780
◗ helion.co.uk
Number 76 in the Reason to Revolution 1721-1815 series, subtitled ‘From the Chasseurs of Louis XVI to Napoleon’s Grande Armee’, offers readers a concise, yet detailed account of the origins and development of light infantry in the French army of the Ancien Regime from the eighteenth century, through the Revolution to the Napoleonic Wars, the Restoration and the Hundred Days’ campaign of 1815.
A useful two-page Glossary of French and Technical Terms and political and military chronologies precede the main text. There are separate chapters devoted to the King’s Army, the Wars of the French Revolution and the First Empire. Chapter 5 describes the uniforms and equipment and Chapter 6, Lilies and Eagles, the light infantry colours.
The author also describes the practice of detaching voltigeurs from their battalions to form ad-hoc advanced guard units or elite battalions of voltigeurs reunis and discusses why the French army never widely adopted rifles, concluding that “the two most important characteristics of the French tirailleurs were speed of movement and rate of fire” neither of which were enabled by rifles.
Twenty-four pages of colour plates in the centre of the book contain reproductions of contemporary depictions of light infantry; two plates showing the 1791, 1802, 1804 and 1812 patterns of light infantry colours; and six full page, modern illustrations of officers, men, a drummer and a partisan chief of 1814 by Patrice Courcelle. Monochrome reproductions of illustrations of light infantry uniforms and campaign scenes are distributed throughout the text. There are, however, no diagrams showing light infantry deployments, nor any maps.
Twenty-four tables display information such as Company/Squadron Structure in 1784; the Demi-Brigades of the First Formation and the Second Formation, 1796-1803; Formation of Light Infantry Regiments in 1803; Light Infantry Regiments Formed 1808-1812; Chasseurs a Pied, Garde Imperiale, 1804; Tirailleur Signals, 1811; the Tariff for General Effects, 8th February 1815, and Battle Honours on the 1811 Standards.
Wargamers will particularly appreciate Chapter 4, Light Infantry Tactics, in which quotations from contemporary sources are used to explain both petite guerre operations and battlefield skirmishing techniques, “with a development from independent skirmishers, acting almost as snipers … to great masses of skirmishers covering the advance of attack columns, operating as a cordon in extended order, using ‘buddy systems.’”
In ‘Battlefield Skirmishing – in Search of a Doctrine’, the author first examines the pre-Revolution ideas on light infantry: Mes Reveries by Marshal Maurice de Saxe, Guibert’s Essai general de tactique, Mesnil-Durand’s Fragments de tactique, and the provisional field service regulations of 5 April 1792, “the apogee of ancien regime military thought.”
He uses extracts from Duhesme’sEssai
sur l’infanterie legere to follow developments during the War of the Revolution and discusses General de Division Scherer’s instructions of 1793. From the Napoleonic Wars he offers Colonel Guyard’s Eclaireur instructions of Year XIII (1804/5); Duhesme’s Voltigeur instructions for his division in 1805; General Morand’s
Manoeuvres pour une compagnie de Tirailleurs ou de Flanquers, which so impressed Marshal Davout that he sent it to his infantry division generals in October 1811, ordering them to exercise their troops in that manner; and a system published in 1823 by General Rapp’s ADC, Colonel Schneider, who “confirms that no one system of skirmishing survived the Napoleonic Wars.”
An excellent examination of French light infantry and their tactics for Napoleonic wargamers.