"Austrian Skirmishers" Topic

What did the Austrians throw out in front of their formations as a skirmishing screen? Circa 1800-1807
Any information would be appreciated as I am basing an Austrian army up for Grande Armee miniature rules

From 1800 to 1807 there would be very few skirmshers. they would come from the attached Jaeger battalions or from Grenz battalions. The thinking of the Hofkriegsrat ( high command),was a minimal number of skirmishers as a defensive screen against French skirmishers. They were to covered formed troops allowing them to close with the enemy. They were not used offensively to wear down and soften up the enemy as was the French practice.

I forgot to add this befoe, a good book is "Napoleon's Great Adversaries; The Archduke Charles and the Austrian Army 1792 - 1814" by Gunther Rothenberg.

As far as I know the austrian infantry also used the third rank as reserve or skirmishers although they were not as good as the french in skirmishing they had skirishers.
The 1807 austrian regulation is one of the few official regulations who mention skirmishing but this doesn't mean that there was no skirmishing before that.

I have gone over this in my Osprey Warrior 24 on the Austrian infantry and 81 for the Hussars. As far as the infantry were concerned, two things get confused - the grenzers and Freikorps were used as light infantry, deploying far out from the main battle lines. They would harass the French infantry and draw them on to the main lines (See Duhesme). However, the large Zugs (platoons) which were formed from 1769 onwards from the third rank for a variety of purposes, were deployed as skirmishers throughout the period (sometimes a shit squads and sometimes as a acreen) and it was not unknown for whole regiments to break down into open order. However, Austria tended to use light cavalry to screen the armies where possible. As a rule, no more than a third of an infantry unit would deploy since, as Charles put it "All this skirmishing decides nothing".

Much of what you have read about French skirmishers is mythology. From Jemappes onwards, they used overwhelming numbers to smash through - until they ran out of men.

Here is some information from Napoleon's Great Adversary: Archduke Charles and the Austrian Army 1792-1814 by Gunther Rothenberg:

'In the Austrian army, light infantry missions, scouting and skirmishing, commonly were entrusted to the Grenzer, though there were complaints that training them as line infantry had spoiled their natural aptitude for these duties. As Fieldmarshal Lacy put it in a memorandum dated 5 December 1782, 'it must be decided once and for all whether the Grenzer are to be considered regular troops or a mere militia. If they are considered regulars they must be properly exercised and trained and this will give them little time to devote to agriculture.' Lacy, of course, conceived military efficiency not in terms of light infantry, but in the framework of linear tactics. Nonetheless, training and organization of the Grenzer continued to conform to that of the line and their combat performance declined. After the first campaign against the French Revolution even General Klein, a strong advocate of the Military Border institution, wondered why as late as the Seven Years' War the semi-irregulars of the Border had provided 'a much better light infantry that the present regulated and drilled Grenzer.'-page 33

Interestingly, Napoleon made generally the same remark on the decline of the quality of the Grenz as light troops. See also Rothenberg, The Military Border in Croatia for further information.

'...despite occasional efforts to promote an effective combination of light and linear tactics, the predominance of close order fighting remained undiminished. While a noted Austrian military historian [Peball] has claimed that 'by 1798 the Austrian army had learned how to fight in open order supported by closed formations,' this contention is not substantiated by the evidence. On one occasion, to be sure, during the battle of Novi in November 1799, the Austrians deployed in open order, but were driven from the field in disorder. Thereafter, the regulations once again stressed that skirmishing was to be employed only in a limited fashion.'-page 70

'In action troops must remember not to lose time with firing. Only a few tirailleurs are necessary to screen the front. If these are followed up by troops advancing courageously in closed formation, with bands playing, and keeping their formation, such an advance cannot be repulsed by an enemy fighting in open order.' -Zach quoted, page 70.

'...on 13 April [1800], another army order stated that 'recent actions have shown that unnecessary skirmishing can only be detrimental...but a determined charge delivered in close order, screened by only a few skirmishers, will certainly result in victory with very few casualties. The Austrians had not abandonced linear tactics and the campaigns of 1799-1801 again revealed that they could not match the French in broken, wooded, or hilly terrain nor that their generals had overcome their concern with secure lines of communications and retreat.'-page 70

'...[Charles] drew up instructions for his generals, the Observationspunkte. A mixture of the old and new, the instructions gave considerable attention to skirmishing. The problem was that although on paper the Austrian service had adequate light troops, 17 Grenz regiments as against 60 of the line, the Frenzer had not been able to field their full complement and only weak battalions and some volunteer corps were available. At that, Charles held that skirmishers were only auxiliaries to the main battle line, and that even light units should never be deployed entirely in skirmish formations. his instructions warned against the pernicious habit, adopted occasionally in the broken Flemish terrain, to disperse entire units in loose skirmish order. 'This misuse must be opposed because it weakens the impetus of the attack,' Skirmishers, he maintained, 'lacked strength...unless they are supported by a formed body of troops giving them drive, persistence, and steadiness.' While during an attack on a village or a wood it was permissable to use a few companies of skirmishers, they always had to be backed by formed troops. 'Regular, trained, and solid infantry, courageously advancing in closed ranks at a rapid pace, supported by artillery, cannot be impeded by scattered skirmishers...it should close with the enemy as rapidly and in as good order as possible, overthrow him and decide the battle.'-pages 57-58

'Rigidly controlled and regimented, the Austrian skirmishers rarely were equal to the French. Some observers blamed this on national aptitude. The able Redetzky, probably the best young general to come out of these wars, observed ruefully that 'operations en tirailleurs can only be conducted in a very limited manner because we do not understand that kind of fighting.'-pages 145-146

'The regulations of 1807 also provided instructions for fighting in open order and skirmishing but the two sections dealing with these matters gave skirmishers little scope. Such tirailleurs were to be found from the third rank composed of the 'brightest, most cunning, and reliable' soldiers in the battalion. Skirmishing was conceived as basically defensive, screening the closed formations against hostile skirmishers. Though the individual skirmisher was given some latitude in the use of terrain and in loading and firing, the skirmish screen was tightly controlled with order transmitted by the battalion drums.'-page 145

'There was little effort to return the Grenzer, the original light infantry, to their skirmish role. A new manual for Grenz infantry, published in 1808, merely was a modified version of general infantry regulations. Even the Feldjager operated without receiving any instructions specially designed for their service. A short maunal, Instructions of Skirmishers, appeared in 1810 but consisted merely of instructions for the individual man with no tactical content.-page 146

The Austrian didn't employ skirmishers as an offensive weapon the way the French did, as part of an integrated tactical system. For more information from Scharnhorst, see Charles White's The Enlightened Soldier which is based almost wholly on primary German material. White is the authority on Scharnhorst and the Hanoverian's study and viewpoints on the period, including French and allied use of light troops and tirailleurs is most informative and enlightening. They contradict almost everything stated on the forums supporting the improved use of Austrian light troops during the period. The bottom line is that even contemporary Austrian officers either state their use of skirmishers was inferior to the French or that they didn't need to use them.

You wiull no doubt appreciate that the late Dr Rothenberg's reading was somewhat limited, since the examples which I used in my Warrior were found in a random check in the British Library. The French used light infantry because their light cavalry was, as Parquin put it,"no good at these tasks" - Austria deployed its light cavalry much more effectively and they were the masters of der kleine Krieg. In addition, the French knew that their column formations would gets eriously shot up, so it was a case of putting in a thicker screen in some cases. However, this was any regualtion - since there wasn't one! So units developed their own ideas and in most cases certainly did not use any thick screeen (because this is not much more effective than the thinner screen and weakened the main line as wella being vulnerable to light cavalry. In particular, despite all hte claims made for the French system, there is not one action where skirmishing was decisive and by 1809, such screens seem to have disappeared in the big setpieces.

As for the usual quotes trotted by Kevin, these are selective quotations and do not reveal the full picture. In particular, here is a quote from Duhesme the celebrated French light infantryman: "These advanced guards, well handled, only disputed their ground long enough to make us waste time and men. They brought us from one position to another till they reached that which they really meant to defend. There they let us use up and scatter our last battalions whose ardour generally shattered itself against their intrenchments. Then fresh troops issued from them in the most perfect order; they, in their turn, threw out skirmishers upon our flanks, and thus they charged at advantage troops dispersed and fatigued, corps in disorder and unable to rally most of their men."

This was the nub of he debate about skirmishing and light work, epsecially in realtion to the Grenzers. Going back to 1757, Laudon recommended that the Grenzers should unsettle and draw in the enemy line on to a line of Grenadiers, the Grenzers continuing in their usual irregular way. However armies were getting bigger and the Grenadiers were being amssed in battalions by 1769 and then reserves from 1790. So, the problem was what were the Grenzers actually going to do? The solution, which Rothenberg wrongly disparages, was to make the Grenzers into line units, who would then draw the enemy in with the "third" on to the rest in formed line - to replace the Grenadiers. In the meantime, they woudl also be used on light tasks in hte old way. This was the solution that the French adopted with their own legere units. Of course, over time, the legere became no different from the line, who then had to find their own skirmishers. It was no different from Austrian practice.
Unfortunately, those who cannot read history emananting from east of the Rhine are always looking for the secret ingredient and have often picked on "skirmishing". Do we all remember that until recently, the mythologiucal line was that the Austrians did not skirmish until 1807? We don't believe that now! Of course, actually reading the 1807 reg would show the skirmish section as being a manual called "how to train your brighetr recruit and NCOs in skirmishing" as part of the overall Exercier reg.

As Archduke Charles wrote in his 1796 instructions, (and the next two days of course mark the 195th anniversary of his victory over the French at Aspern), "all this skirmishing decides nothing". Perhaps rule writers might bear this in mind.