"Infantry company question" Topic

BD,

As the general trend I've detected in my reading tells me a solid company commander or captain was expected to command in combat anywhere between 30-50 troops, the question becomes, if equalizing diminishes all of the companies into the 20‘s or lower, wouldn't a regimental commander rather temporarily consolidate to make sure that all of his senior company officers had 30-50?

All this was a balancing act between the number of viable companies and the number of available officers.

My gut feeling is that the number of fighting companies (as opposed to admin ones) would be maintained as high as possible for as long as possible. Drill just worked better that way and it gave more flexibility.

I think that 30 – 50 number is a good figure below which it became questionable.

Of course if you really want to add in some fun, you can start thinking about individual company and Captain's seniority.

Senior serving Captain should command A Coy, second senior Captain should command K Coy and so on.

Wonder how long that lasted? :o)

"Of course if you really want to add in some fun, you can start thinking about individual company and Captain's seniority."

Trajanus,
In the 8th NJ's case, I think the senior captain "unofficially" was the captain of Co. K. Captain Langston. At both Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, he took command when the colonel was wounded…and if there were more senior officers, it doesn't appear that any of them took up the issue. But I can imagine the difficulty that some regiments had especially early war in getting senior--yet incompetent--civilian officers out. McClellan took the initiative on that one I think. But it was definitely an ongoing balancing act. Remarkable.

Another thing I think is interesting about that 30-50 number is that it seems to apply regardless of the overall strength of the unit in question. Small and large regiments were interested in fielding combat companies at that strength. Indeed, perhaps combat strength could be measured more appropriately, if not readily, but with greater operational accuracy by identifying the number of combat companies in the regiment, rather than just calculating the raw aggregate numbers which don't necessarily tell the full story.

PS Found some more information online about the unequipped. According to a report July 1st : Field Music: 10, Officers Servants: 1, Hospital Dept.: 3, Quartermaster Dept.: 1, Teamsters: 9, Orderly for Commanding Officer: 1, Adjutants Clerk: 1, recommended for Invalid Corps: 1, Unarmed men for which a requisition has been made for arms and equipment: 7. Total: 34.

This gentleman and his website have been very helpful to me. Thanks, Mr. Riddle !

newarkmilitary.com/mainindex.php

Another question I would have is, how did the early war regiments of 700-800 plus fair with 10 companies at 70-80 men ? Was that organization too unwieldy in the field ? 70-80 for three officers too much ? Did they try and break the companies down into more manageable combat groups ? Or was that a moot point b/c it didn't take long for regiments to go down in strength ? A line of inquiry that would be interesting to look into.

Not unwieldy at all. Do not forget that there were not just 3 officers, but 5 sergeants and 8 corporals to run the company.

Combat-wise, it was easy to maneuver as well, and very effective, given that commands were transmitted by bugle. The Colonel, on horseback, also could see pretty well, and had the Lt Colonel and Major also on horseback on each flank for further control if needs be.

The regiment rarely moved in line unless in actual contact with the enemy. Almost all movement prior to combat was conducted in columns of division or columns of company, the regiment shaking out into line when the line of battle was reached.

Keep in mind as well that the brigade was the basic tactical unit on the field, though regiments could and did fight alone from time to time.

A full regiment with all it's staff and compliment of officers, NCO's, etc, was VERY maneuverable and, once trained, a pretty potent combat unit.

"Not unwieldy at all. Do not forget that there were not just 3 officers, but 5 sergeants and 8 corporals to run the company."

As easily maneuvered as a battalion of 300-400? Might they not have split a 700 or 800 man regiment into two separate combat battalions of 5 companies each ? It is, after all, a small brigade, worthy and capable of more strictly defined tactical action. See below.

"Keep in mind as well that the brigade was the basic tactical unit on the field…"

I've seen brigades defined as the basic tactical unit a number of times. I disagree with that characterization. The basic grand tactical or operational unit? Yes. The basic tactical unit? No.

For example, if the brigade were the basic tactical unit then the 4th and 5th Texas wouldn't have felt free to move away from the 1st TX, and the 48th and 44th AL would have thought twice before crossing over behind Law's advancing line to place themselves between the 1st TX and 4th/5th TX. Whereas two battalion commanders wouldn't be thinking or feeling free to order their combat companies to intermingle like that. In the former, I suspect the units were following orders, in the latter I would guess the units would be following the dictates of unavoidable circumstance, confusion in command, or combat attrition/disintegration.

PS One of these days I'm going to pick up some hard copies of the Field Tactics. Generally speaking, I can't stand reading books on computers.

Trajanus

Senior serving Captain should command A Coy, second senior Captain should command K Coy and so on.

Wonder how long that lasted? :o)

Seniority was a serious issue for ACW officers, from Lieutenants to generals. However, the actual establishing of seniority could be messy because both armies were:
1. Built on the fly…in the midst of war
2. A conglomerate of various state militias and state
raised regiments, all formed in a variety of ways
3. Different seniority systems could be used.

So the regulars would have the A company with the senior captain, but a state regiment might be a gathering of several companies raised in different areas. The most common practice for establishing the position and seniority of the companies in the US militia before the war was drawing lots. The practice was often continued in forming ACW regiments. That means that the senior captain in the regiment could end up commanding Company K instead of A.

Also from what I understand, companies had both numbers and letters. Numbers were for administrative purposes, and letters for combat formations positions in the line etc. [I'm doing this by memory.] For regiments in a brigade, it presendence in the battleline could be by state and regimental number, the brigade commander's state having presedence. Both sides also had state regiments in order of officer seniority rather than regimental number later in the war, particularly when regiments were being traded back and forth between brigades.

The deployments of regiments and divisions start to make sense if you can suss out the senority of the officers on both the Union and Confederates.

Bill H.

I think that one thing you may not have considered, is that even if you have a 12' wide board, packing 6000 plus figures into it leaves you absolutely no room to manouver.
It will be a simple game of attacking straight ahead with lots and lots of backup troops, and it will degenerate into a dice roll game.
If I read your first post correctly, you are talking about 10mm wide bases. That would be extremely unwise as below 1" is going to be extremely "fiddly", frustrateing and time consumeing.
I would strongly reccomend the standard 1" by 3/4" base for infantry, to which you could label it anywhere from 90 to a gazzillion.
But now you are entering into the realm of terrain. You can certainly have 100 or 200 yards per inch, and have your units nose to nose on combat. One of the things I really hated on original FnF was the 60 yards per inch where everyone uses 15mm figures and it looks more like a stare down contest. Houses occupy 120 yards, and the terrain seems extremely crowded.
I'm just saying, that you might want to consider going the other way by haveing a smaller ground scale with more stands per regiment.

However, the actual establishing of seniority could be messy

Thanks Bill, that's really as I expected! With such a small prewar army exploding into thousands of officers almost overnight and State loyalties thrown in the mix its a wonder that they even bothered.

It was bad enough in the British army where seniority on the Army List took precedence over time served in the Regiment but at least by the 1860's they'd had around 100 years to work it out! :o)

I always find it funny when I read about the Confederate government struggling with the seniority of their Generals and looking to solve it through 'Old Army' rank!

Excuse me dudes, isn't that the army of the Government you just Succeeded from ?

moonhippie3,

The eternal wargames conundrum summed up rather well, I think.

I agree with Moonhippie. In 15mm 1:20 fig ratio with 40 yard ground scale seems to be the most flexible in terms of getting numbers with maneuverability on the table. I do make a slight divergence in that I base 1'' x 1'' b/c it is easier to pick the stands by the base and less likelyhood of getting stabbed by miniature bayonets and/or breaking them off while doing so and it still looks good. Also, attacking striaght ahead is alright and can be fun, IMO, as long as you have a lot of tactical decisions to make while doing so.

IMHO, there was often official and unofficial seniority. Figuring out the one from the other is where, as Trajanus say, it can get fun :)

PS Read something written by Capt. Langston commanding after Gettysburg, which said the 8th took 159 equipped into combat. So, it looks like they procured some more rifles following the June 28th report.

PSS I bet the band was nursing Chancellorsville wounds. Also, following Gettysburg the regiment was consolidated officially into 1 company of 45 men under Capt. Langston.

Also, attacking striaght ahead is alright and can be fun, IMO, as long as you have a lot of tactical decisions to make while doing so

Also it tends to be the way most attacks were delivered. Sad thing is most of the Bobbing and Weaving that players love on the table top is in their imagination.

When you are not above the battlefield as gamers are, taking the risk of exposing a flank to an unseen enemy had to be well worth the risk before trying it.

Moving forward in line of battle kept this risk as low as possible.

We have found playing with larger units and a lot of terrain can make even a head on encounter entertaining, if you can make people worry about the difficulties of maneuver and support.

[q]Also from what I understand, companies had both numbers and letters. Numbers were for administrative purposes, and letters for combat formations positions in the line etc[/q]

Other way round. Letters for admin. purposes (a soldier in company B was always in company B for pay, rations mail etc.). When composite battalions were formed for battle, that same company B soldier could find himself in the First, Second…. Fifth….Eighth company. The company carrying the battle flag was called color company.

"Moving forward in line of battle kept this risk as low as possible."

Throwing a company of skirmishers out in advance on that flank could relieve fears… "flankers" I think they were called in the ACW. I believe they would do it in the defense as well to protect flanks in the air. But I do agree, they could be very nit picky about where the adjacent friendly battalion was or wasn't.

Thank you, for starting this thread Trajanus. I've learned a lot.

Its 3mm though, so a bit different. My original plan was a bit fiddly, so Ive back up to 40mm bases with 32 figs in two ranks. At a 3:1 ratio each base is 100 men on about a 33 m frontage. Three bases is 96 figs or 300 men, and I round up or down to the nearest hundred men, it gives me the ability to have regiments of varying strength and, with the painted maps im working on, accurate, hassle free game play. Plus, as I grow my collection Ill easily be able to expand the regiments out from the middle until I can get in some 1:1 division level games. As a matter of fact I already have enough figs for a large Confederate divison. If you do the math youll find a 12 foot table isnt needed; in fact I decided to do this scale specifically to have room to maneuver.

A 320 fig regiment would have a 40cm frontage, or the same as a 40 fig 28mm rgiment in two ranks on a 20mm frontage per fig. Peronally I think the 320 fig regiment looks cooler. Twelve regiments like that is a Black Powder game, and you could easily play that on a 5 x 8 foot board, although 12 would be better, of course. As i mostly play at hobby stores and at cons, finding a table that size isnt a problem for me.

ForwardMarch, apologies. Thank YOU for starting this thread. I've learned a lot !

I would lean heavily towards getting 80 men per stand across the tactical board in 15mm. That way moving up the echelon is relatively easy. But 100 men with 3:1 in 3mm is also in the ballpark. You can always insert incremental stands if you want a more perfected accuracy.

Apologies again, you may want to break your 3:1 frontage in half for ACW. 20mm w/ 16 figs. (Either way, you seem to be on the right track-)

Bd- thanks, no problem.

The thing is that I havent found any rules Id want to play that require me to go down to the tens of men. Honestly, I havent played a wargame in years. Mostly I paint and collect then sell, or like as not paint for other people. However, this micro scale project has appealed to me for some reason. Im probably going to use Black Powder for it, with the goal of getting together enough troops to put on a gigantic convention game one day, or maybe even just setting up a diorama at a con. I messed around with the idea of coming up with my own rules for using the things, but I ended up giving up on that. I figure there are enough home made rules out there already, plus I dont have the time to play test a set of rules at the moment. At any rate, Im excited to finish up a historic map or two of some battlefields and play a few games on them, just to see how they turn out. One nice thing about 3mm is that a line actually looks like a line, and the visual effect, once Im done, should be well worth the extra trouble of figuring out how to employ a relatively unused scale. Also, i need to work the bugs out now, before they release their Napoleonics….

Think of it this way. Painting 3mm should be a breeze. Shake can and spray :) So, you've got plenty of time to work the bugs out.

Or… would it be worth the trouble to try and go 16 figs per ? More interchangeability perhaps if you take the extra time… ?

The problem with 16 figs per base is that it becomes a bit much to move them all, plus they look a bit sloppy. When the collection gets big enough I could probably use them as "change," however. Ill have a bunch of 16 fig bases on hand since Im not going to be rebasing what I have. But from here on in itll all be on a 40mm frontage. Id even thought of going with 60mm bases, but thatd prob mean going up to 2:1 or higher…

Number4:

Thanks. I knew it was one way or the other…. Just running on a dyslexic memory.

Thanks Bill, that's really as I expected! With such a small prewar army exploding into thousands of officers almost overnight and State loyalties thrown in the mix its a wonder that they even bothered.

Trajanus:
Well, mostly because:

1. It served several purposes in knowing where folks were and generally putting the most experienced men in the most important manuever positions.

2. It also helped to quickly determine who was the ranking officer on the battlefield when two captains or whatever found themselves the highest rank in a unit or who should succeed into command if the commander was out of action.

3. Senority also kept just anyone from being placed in important positions. Remember, many officers were made colonels simply for raising a regiment or being politically connected during the war. Senority kept them from moving too quickly up the ranks. For instance, Chamberlain of the 20th Maine was made a lt. colonel at the beginning of his military career, but wasn't given command until 1863 because of senority issues, and then he gained command of the 20th by default. [The commanding colonel was out of action.]

It was bad enough in the British army where seniority on the Army List took precedence over time served in the Regiment but at least by the 1860's they'd had around 100 years to work it out! :o)

That practice was actually started only at the beginning of the Napoleonic wars, and then only for general officers and officers that moved between regiments.

I always find it funny when I read about the Confederate government struggling with the seniority of their Generals and looking to solve it through 'Old Army' rank!

Hey, experience is experience, even if it was with the enemy. It's a problem building an army from scratch.

Bill H.

ForwardMarch, yes, I see what you're saying now. What I've always found is that once one has the knowledge of what was or wasn't done, it allows one to work within the inaccuracies of their own collection. For instance, I altered some of my ACW flags in a way that I KNOW wasn't entirely accurate, but it works to my eyes and sensibility on the table top. So, once you know where you're departing from the historical road so to speak, it makes it ok to go for it even retroactively. It's when you don't know, that you run into difficulty. I'd stick with 40mm and have some incrementals of 20mm and perhaps even some 30mm.

Thanks Bill,

Actually the question was kind of rhetorical. I appreciate why they had to do it but it still must have been a nightmare! :O)

Hadn't realized it only started in the British army in Napoleonic times. I'd always imagined it had come in in the 18th Century.

It occurs to me it must have had some benefit where the British were concerned in mitigating against some of the negative elements of Purchasing commissions, by keeping more experienced officers on the flanks and junior ones under the eyes of the Colonel!

Trajanus wrote:

Hadn't realized it only started in the British army in Napoleonic times. I'd always imagined it had come in in the 18th Century.

Trajanus:
Well, yes and no. Even in the 17th and 18th Centuries, most all European armies including British armies worked on the proprietary system, where individuals raised regiments other than the few standing king's regiments. For Britain, who was very suspicious of a standing army after the 1642 Civil War and Cromwell's dictatorship, really only raised regiments during wartime and then wealthy men raised them almost as a business/social standing investment. They were often made the colonel of the regiment, though few actually followed them.

That meant that officers that joined the regiment were;
1. new or coming out of retirement
2. new to the regiment
3. placed/ranked at the whim of the colonel.

That is why officer's commissions were granted for a particular regiment, and not the army. Only ten years into the Napoleonic wars, @1795, did the army start dealing with 'army seniority' for field officers as well as the already existing seniority system for general officers.

And purchasing a commission was money in the colonel's pocket. The huge need for officers created by the Napoleonic wars, the increased officer mobility between regiments, and York's 1795 rules which included experience as a requisite for field-grade advancement opened up the officer ranks to middle-class candidates. Only about 1 out of every 3 field officers held purchased commissions during the Napoleonic wars, whereas during the SYW it was more like 4 in 5 were purchased, most often by wealthy gentry and noblemen for their sons.

An example is General Thomas Graham. In 1795, he spent 14,000 pounds to raise the two battalions of the 90th Light. He fully expected to receive command of the regiment as colonel, with full army standing. Unfortunately, York has just established the rules of advancement requiring that anyone advancing to the rank of colonel have 6 or 8 years military experience. [I can't remember which]. As Graham had none, he was granted the rank of temporary lt. colonel, which meant that he did not retain any seniority with the army OR his regiment.

Only eight years later, in 1809, after even being a brevet brigadier general did he receive not only his then 8 years senority in the army and the rank of colonel, but also a promotion to major general, all because General Moore requested it as his dying wish at Corunna.

It occurs to me it must have had some benefit where the British were concerned in mitigating against some of the negative elements of Purchasing commissions, by keeping more experienced officers on the flanks and junior ones under the eyes of the Colonel!

That's true, but purchased or not, the idea was that the most senior officers had the most important posts. Part of the problem had been not the purchase system per se, but WHEN those commissions could be purchased. Before 1795, a 9 year old could be granted a commission.

For instance, the famous Captain Cochran wrote that when he turned 15 and determined to go into the navy, he found that his father had purchased a midshipman's commission when he was 9, and his uncle an army officer's commission when he was ten. Though he never served a day, at 15 he had six years seniority in the navy and five in his regiment…

The Duke of York did a lot to modernize what was in many ways a very provincial and amateurish army system. It does amaze me and fascinate me how army systems evolved and why.

Bill H.

The Duke of York did a lot to modernize what was in many ways a very provincial and amateurish army system.

I agree Britian had a lot to thank him for.

BTW: Didn't the Purchasing process get overhauled in 1809/10 after his mistress was found to be involved in backdoor selling (nothing to do with him as it turned out).

Didn't the Purchasing process get overhauled in 1809/10 after his mistress was found to be involved in backdoor selling (nothing to do with him as it turned out).

No, actually it didn't. The problem was that his mistress, the alluring Miss Mary Anne Clarke, was placing men higher on the list of commissions, or for particular regiments for a fee.

All the commissions in question were free or appointed commissions. The regimental colonel or general officer would 'recommend' a young man for a commission OR as a candidate's name came to the top of a list of requests kept by the Horse Guards, the next regiment to need an ensign or lieutanent got that man, when approved of by the Duke of York.

The list that Miss Clarke messed with was this list of candidates waiting for an opening. The men paid to be at the top of the list or listed so they got a preferred regiment. And some regiments had more cache than others, and of course Guard and Cavalry regiments could be requesting officers, though not as often because many more of those commissions were purchased.

So, the purchasing process wasn't overhauled at all, just the Duke of York… until it was found that Miss Clarke had actually been paid by the Prince Regent to screw over his more popular brother [IIRC]. What happened during the war was that many officers with purchased commissions died or new regiment/battalions were created [an a whole boat-load were] few of the positions were purchased, and most were 'free' if only because there were so many officers needed and so few with hundreds of pounds willing to purchase commissions…

The purchasing process remained intact until the mid-1860s, though far fewer commissions were purchased.

Bill H.