"SYW battalion gun question" Topic

I'm just finishing up my Prussian and Austrian armies and am adding battalion guns to all of my infantry battalions. Although I have done quite a bit of research I haven't found a definitive answer to the following.

Did all Prussian and Austro/Hungarian infantry battalions have attached battalion guns?

If not, which battalions didn't… Converged Grenadiers? Frei-korps, etc

Most sources seem to imply that all but some of the frei-battalions had them. I've also read where regiments sometimes grouped theirs into an ad-hoc battery.

Any info on battalion gun usage would be appreciated, including other sources I could consider.

2 btn guns per battalion in the Prussian army. Source: The Army of Frederick the Great, by Christopher Duffy (Emperor's Press), see page 118-119 for diagram.

I assume that the same holds true for the Austrian battalions. In general, I don't believe that grenadier battalions had battalion guns.

Thanks Fritz…

I was aware of the 2 per battalion. The second part of your answer gets more to the heart of my question.

If I interpret correctly you are saying the Prussian Grendiers had battalion guns but the Austrian Grenadiers did not (usually).

Any difference in the hungarians battalions and the Austrian Battalions?

I can't say for certain that the Prussian grenadier battalions had btn guns, althought they were a permanently established converged battalion so they might have the logistical support to have guns. My thinking is that they did not have the guns.

Austrian grenadier btns were created ad hoc prior to a battle as the grenadier companies were literally drawn from the ranks and amalgamated together as a reserve unit. Hence, they had no permanent logistical staff and thus were unlikely to have their own battalion guns. Now you could hive off some 6-pounders or 3-pounders from the artillery establishment and attach them to your ad hoc Austrian grenadier battalion.

Thanks for the info.

BTW… I'm doing 15mm and following an old post of yours am using hallmark's excellent battalion guns. I just got my order of 60 of them last week.

Hallmark has some nice wagons too. Every army needs a supply train.

Basttalion Guns. You must have some pretty big battalions to want to represent them. What figure ratio and ground scale are you using?

VR

Chris Parker

leidang

Only battalion guns for regular battalions, Hungarian and German.

The Grenz had their own little 'Amusettes', jury is out on how useful they were.

Alte Fritz is spot on (as usual) regarding the Grenadiers and freicorps.

K

Regarding the effectiveness of the light troops "Amusettes" I used to assume their prime service was to give the alarm signal and rather useless for anything else. But lately I've read those French light "Rostaing guns" were highly praised by the French light troops.

I'm thinking of adding Battalion guns instead of painting loads more men – I calculate saves 5 men per battalion :-)

The data in Kronoskaf

link

gives for the Royal Army in 1759 campaign the following:

"The greater part of the 7-pdr howitzers and of the light 12-pdr cannon were distributed among the first line of infantry and the grenadier battalions of Frederick's royal army in Silesia at a ratio of 1 piece per battalion. They now had effectively 3 guns each instead to the former 2. This army was initially destined to be the king's striking force and for that reason it was fitted out with much more heavy artillery then the other corps."

From this sentence it seems that the prussian grenadier battalion had the standard dotation of 2 guns.

It's too late for me to look up right now, but I'm pretty sure Duffy has the grenadier battalions with battalion guns. And unless I'm misremembering the part about the second line regiments having howitzers, I think the grenadiers had howitzers as their ones.