"Hessian Fusiliers" Topic

Are these classed as light infantry in the AWI?

No.
They are regular line infantry.
The only difference between them and musketeers is that they wear the classier hat. They can also have a grenadier company too, BTW.

Jaegers are the light infantry.

the much more useless classier hat..

Well, yes.
The utility is inversely proportional to its classiness.

Did they wear the fusilier mitre or did they wear tricorns in the field?

The souvenir collectors at Trenton brought a few back to the museum!

Hessian Fusliers wore their classy mitres in the field.
At least there never wore pimp-hats, thanks! Landgraff.

John;
I'm going to get you for starting the Pimp Hat thing…

Your lager shall be replaced by Sam Adams.

Eric

Don't blame "pimp hats" on me!
Blame the Delancey's reenactors!

link

Ohhh, suit you sir !

I want a pimp hat, but more of a mitre style!

Hi,

the Fusilliere were wearing the "gestützte" Mitra which is shorter than the Grenadier Mitra.

Greetings

The Hessians did tell off scratch 'light infantry' companies to support the jagers around New York City in 1778 and 1779, and around Providence, Rhode Island while the British garrisoned that place.

The men for these companies were drawn off the line companies of all the Hessian regiments, and as far as I can tell, didn't have any extra training. Sgt von Krafft from the von Donop regiment even mentions carrying his halberd while with such a company.

And more interestingly, at Long Island in 1776, the regiments again, threw out parties of 'volunteers' to patrol the woods in front of the Hessian positions (they brought back American prisoners).

There's a lot more going on than anybody's game-rules manage to model.

Roger that. How do you guys organize your Hessian units? IIRC they were stronger than Brits or Continentals, but with four large companies…

All Hesse Kassel & Brunswick Regiments had five companies of fusiliers, or musketeers, or garrison soldiers and five companies in the standing Rall Grenadier Regiment, with the sixth company (grenadiers) of the regiments already detached to converged grenadier battalions before leaving Germany for America. The Hesse Hanau, Anspach Bayreuth and Anhalt Zerbst regiments sixth (grenadier) company remained with their regiments and served along side the regiments five ordinary companies. Leading to the early misconception that the Hesse Hanau Musketeer Regiment Erb Prinz was an all grenadier regiment.

Ah well. Now you get into a problem of history vs. gaming.

The Hessians told their battalions off into 8 firing platoons, of some number of files, which might vary with the strength of the regiment, but always trying to have the same number of firing platoons.

How one organizes one's troops depends on the rules being used.

So they followed the same drill as the Prussians under Frederick? We are using home brewed club rules (I believe influenced by fire & fury to a degree). I have read that they used the British two rank system rather than the conventional three ranks in America. Anyone confirm this?

The "big three" – Hesse Cassel, Hesse Hanau, Brunswick – all followed Prussian drill, organisation etc pretty much to the letter. Possibly the Ansbach-Bayreuth guys as well; not sure about what the Waldeckers and Anhalt-Zerbst contingents did, as they came from different spheres of influence.

Rodney Atwood ("The Hessians") seemed pretty certain that the Hesse Cassel troops went to two ranks – but retaining close order at the Landgraf's insistence – from the moment they arrived. However, I believe this has been challenged and it is possible they kept three ranks until late on in the war. We do know that the Brunswick and Hesse Hanau line troops followed their British comrades, though, as the Brunswick commander Riedesel says so in his journal.

Hmmm sounds like it's going to be four bases of six figures with a separate color guard stand….

The Hessian infantry regulation of 1768 is practically a word for word copy of the Prussian regulation of 1743.