"Typical Frontage Occupied by Infantry & Cavalry in the WSS?" Topic

Hi All – continuing on from the great help I got with my WSS Advice Appreciated: OOBs, Artillery, Grenadiers, Figures query, I'm hoping people can help me out with this latest?

We recently did a Refight of Blenheim and to calculate the scaled down (or bathtubbed) OOB, as this was just a quick and dirty game, we just used an arbitrary number of men per unit (i.e. we chose a maximum number of units for the French, the largest army, and divided it's strength by that to get 'X' men per unit to work out the Allied army's relative strength – then we split the units proportionately into Cav & Inf.

HOWEVER – now we are looking to replay the game again this weekend and I wanted to start getting a bit more accurate on how much of the battlefield was occupied by Cavalry versus Infantry. We recognise that Cavalry probably occupy more frontage than Infantry – so don't think a straight numbers comparison is quite accurate?

e.g. if Infantry occupy 3' per man, and Cavalry 6' per man, and 500 Infantry usually form in 3 lines they cover 500' (i.e. 500/3 x 3') while 500 Cavalry (which I assume usually form in just 2 ranks) will cover 1500' (i.e. 500/2 x 6')… So for every 500 Infantry (1 Wargame Unit) there should/could actually be 3 Cavalry "Units" representing 500 Cavalry to accurately cover the 'equivalent' area they'd occupy…?

Since we are heavily bathtubbing the Blenheim OOB for example it's important to get the frontages right rather than number of men to get the proportion of unit types (Inf & Cav) right across the whole battlefield…

So can anyone shed light on what the typical frontage per man was for Inf & Cav in the WSS and/or how many ranks Infantry & Cavalry usually deployed in? For the latter I'm assuming mostly 3-deep with some more archaic formations 4-5 deep, and for Cavalry I'm guessing at squadrons each deploying 2-deep (i.e. in 2 ranks) for British & Dutch – but maybe deeper for French, Germans, Imperial, etc?

Any help would be much appreciated…

John
Wargaming.info

Hi John,

While there are many folks who are much more conversant, I spent a little time researching this recently. The standard width per man in an infantry battalion formation was just over 2 feet. At least in the early period (and for much of the WSS, including Blenheim)the French, Austrians, and Bavarians deployed either 4 or 5 deep. English, Dutch, Prussians, Hanover, Danes 3 deep. Which, BTW, explains the greater initial effects of platoon fire…a generally larger battalion firing all 3 ranks simultaneously instead of a smaller battalion firing 1x4/5 or 2x2, 1x1. A 500-man French Battalion might thus occupy as little as 217 feet (but with almost a battalion width between it and its neighbors), while a 600-man 3-liner would occupy 433 feet!

Horse closed up to charge would be about 4 feet apiece, and generally deployed in 2 lines…so a squadron of, say, 150 would occupy 300 feet of frontage. Many references to spacing between units of approximately their frontage, but I have not been able to drill down on that yet.

Now I'll leave it to the experts!

Try these links for unit frontages:

link

link

Remember no cadence marching so all advances were done with the ranks several yards apart. Also it was common to open the files up. All battalions left a battalion wide gap to maneuver in and to allow the second line to cover and support. Every one moved slow and stopped alot to re-align the units.

Good links, NCC1717.

Thanks Guys that's all exactly what I needed.

I must confess I somehow missed the www.spanishsuccession.nl reference when I browsed the site recently. But that and the great www.wargames.co.uk link by Dave Millward from @NCC1717 should do the job!

Cheers

P.S. @doug redshirt – yep – up to speed with the no cadence thing cheers – it's one of the things that attracts me to the period… But I didn't realise how large the gaps were the left between the formations…

Should note, however, that theoretical frontages don't always fit on the historical battlefields. The guy who organized full games (not "bathtubbed") of Blenheim in 2004 and Ramilles in 2006 for the Enfilade NHMGS convention, found that the width of the battlefield was not long enough to allow individual battalions and squadrons to occupy their theoretical frontages. So his basing was a bit less wide than the theoretical frontages.

Chandler claims 3 feet per man for French infantry outlined in a diagram in his "Art of War in the Age of Marlborough." I think this is a reasonable estimate for moving troops. When forming a firing line, however, you will line up shoulder to shoulder, at least for platoon fire doctrine. There is no moving parts. Rank fire troops are always moving however so they probably never line up shoulder to shoulder. 2 feet per man for platoon fire and 3 feet per man for rank fire.

Horse of the time did not ride "stirrup to stirrup." 6 feet per trooper seems reasonable. 7YW changed with regiments performing high speed charges at closer order. 4-5 feet per trooper is about right.

Of course, you could save yourself the headache and make all units notional representations of the real thing and skip the frontage.