"Strength of Prussian Landwehr 1813" Topic

Does anyone have any info on the battalion strength of the Prussian landwehr after the armistice in 1813? I'm looking to do a couple of units using the lovely Calpe figures and trying to work out if typical units would be more like 24 figures or 32 figures at 1:20 scale.
I know that they would have been fairly fresh units in August 1813 but also read that they suffered high attrition rates due to the vigours of cmpaigning, their inexperience and their ages. Many thanks

Hardly any Landwehr units took an active part in the 1813 spring campaign, so they had not yet been subject to attrition. Still, their strendth varied a lot.

You will find a list of the strength of all the Landwehr formations in August 1813 in Peter Hofschröer's "Prussian Landwehr & Landsturm" (not the Osprey).

This list had been taken from vol. 2 of "Das preussische Heer der Befreiungskriege", Berlin 1914.

Oliver, many thanks for your info, I knew that they did not take an active part in the spring campaign but think that inexperienced units suffered attrition from disease and the effects of long marches more than experienced troos.

Was hoping to find out the info without having to buy a book, hehe

Simon, would this link assist:

link

Just select via the drop-down at the bottom of the home page, and then scroll down to find the Prussians…

thanks for the link but I couldn't find any unit strengths on the drop down menu, am I looking in the wrong place?

Is interesting though that many of the landwehr regiments only fielded 1 or 2 battalions.

It is my understanding that many of the Landwehr battalions were at or even in excess of their regulation strengths for the fall campaign. But you are correct that they did suffer heavily from attrition due to the rigors of campaign. So I guess that safest thing would be to build them at full strength and then you can always reduce them.

Nafziger shows battalions as varying between about 500 and about 700 towards the end of the armistice; I am not sure how solid his data is though. By Leipzig they seem to have been much weaker.

I do apologise – I thought you meant the Landwehr cavalry squadrons.

Have a look at this source:

link

Simon, as Oliver says, the Hofschroer book (published by RAFM) but now out of print) is a useful source. If you have any particular Prussian brigade in mind, I could pull out the relevant figures from it fro you.

Simon
You will find over 60 OOB in my two books on the Prussian Infantry with most having the number of men indicated.

Stephen Summerfield (2009) Prussian Infantry 1808-1840, Vol 1 & 2, Partizan Press.

I would recommend the Nafziger RAFM book or the earlier edition for the Napoleonic Association. Both I have.

Stephen

Stephen

Martin, many thanks for your kind offer. I'm mostly interested in the landwehr units in the Army of the North.

Simon, the Hofschroer book provides numbers for August and December 1813. Bulow's III Corps is listed as including the following landwehr infantry elements at that point. I've put August figures first and then December figures in brackets

3rd brigade: 3rd East Prussian regiment: 1st battalion: 777 (487) men, 2nd battalion: 790 (675) men, 3rd battalion: 770 (785) men, 4th battalion: 791 (545) men. (NB: to keep things simple, I've excluded the jager detachments that served with this regiment).

5th brigade: 1st Kurmark regiment: 1st battalion: 800 (679) men; 2nd Kurmark regiment: 2nd battalion: 794 (725) men, 3rd battalion: 797 (873) men, 4th battalion: 791(827) men.

6th brigade: 1st Neumark regiment: 1st battalion: 681 men, 2nd battalion: 644 men, 3rd battalion: 609 men, 4th battalion: 820 men. For December, only a regimental total of 2,489 men is provided.

You can see that the battalion sizes fluctuated over this period and in many cases would have dipped lower in the middle of the campaign.

I'm gradually building the 5th brigade and, for what it's worth, I'm starting by doing 24 figure battalions and then I'm going to add the extra figures to make them up to 32 figure battalions afterwards.

"… the Hofschroer book provides …."

Is it permisable to quote a banned person here on TMP?

Big Al

Big Al –

No.

Your is firm research,

Bags

Martin, many thanks for the info, they do indeed fluctuate somewhat. I had expected the strength to have gone down by december but some of them have actually gone up!

Simon, I expect the most likely explanation for the sizes of some units actually going up is that they did suffer from losses during the campaign but subsequently received new drafts of troops by December. I've no evidence to support this theory though – it's just my personal speculation.