"Hesse-Darmstadt skirmishers (1809 and earlier)" Topic

Having received the wisdom of the TMP collective, I'm buying a couple of brigades of 1806 Prussian musketeers to paint as Hesse-Darmstadt Musketteer (4) and Fusilier(2) battalions for the 1809 campaign.

In the In The Grand Manner (ITGM) rule set you get a skirmish screen for every three battalions. So I'm looking for a couple of skirmish screens (2 x 6 figures), and wondering which figures to use.

I'm getting the Hesse-Darmstadt troops from Elite minatures

link

Hoping that the 1806 head wear is a bicorne for all of these, there are the following options

- Musketeer Schuetzen Standing Firing

or

- Musketeer Standing Firing
- Musketeer Kneeling Firing

or

- Jager Kneeling Firing
- Jager Officer Standing

Now it occurs to me that I don't actually know who would be out skirmishing in front of these units.

I guess the Schuetzen (I suppose in the uniform of their parent unit – blue or green) were rifle armed and that there were very few of these lads, but they seem likely to be out front. Would they have been joined by Musketeers from the parent unit, or Jaegers (green uniforms) from somewhere else?

This is further complicated by the fact that Prussian Jaegers had plumes on their bicornes, whereas the Musketeers had pom poms. I found a Knotel plate showing HD light troops with a plume. Then again, green stuff can make a pom pom a plume if needed.

I think that the fusiler battalion skirmished; they were the light element in the "brigade" I suppose that the musketeer battalion had no schützen.
So instead of schützen there is a light battalion in the HD brigade of 3 battalions

Hi,
According to the 1806 regulations, there were only 7 shutzen per company, about 84 in a 3 battalion brigade, so depending on the scale of your rules, they may or may not be worth representing.

As far as I can tell in the musketeer bn's there would only be 28 shutzen at Table of Org strength if they were to be detached to take position forward of the parent unit.

The fusilier bn's were detached in full to perform the light infantry functions where required, and to my understanding would be used to screen the brigade in the manner of French tactics if that was to be done on a particular battlefield.
Best,
Rob

In that case there would be no need to represent the two light battalions as formed battalions, just a couple of skirmisher screens.

ITGM has a 1:20 figure ratio. As you say, it isn't worth having a full rifle armed screen. But it would perhaps be OK to have one or two rifle armed skirmishers in a screen that counts as being musket armed (just for looks).

Would the Schutzen be in blue in Musketeer battalions?

Yes, blue for Musketeers, and green in the Fusilers, I believe so-

I would not simply relegate all the fusiler bns to skirmishing, if that is what I understand you are saying, however? Most of the time they would have been employed as much as the regular infantry, so you you would be depleting the formed combat power of the brigades. I don't know what constructs and abstractions ITGM uses for combat though…so I'm not sure what is best there…