"Database of Napoleonic regiments..." Topic

Does anyone have a good source of a comprehensive database of Napoleonic regiments? Ideally, I am looking for an Excel file, with one row for each infantry, cavalry or artillery regiment, by country, with columns available for adding information about # of figures, Morale, Fire or Melee ratings, etc…

Any help would be gratefully appreciated!

Cheers,
Daniel

Well, I have the classic on Napoleon's regiments, but it focuses on history, colonels, etc. – not much on morale or melee ratings

That would be nice and could probably piece together but it would be huge since numbers, morale, fire and melee would change drastically by year and campaign would it not?

Yes, it would be nice, and yes, it could potentially change by Year. THAT is why Excel would be so valuable, as I could have a different set of columns for each year.

It would also change drastically based on whatever rules it was done for.

That and for individual regiments no one really has any clue how the bulk performed, that is why people give one value to "all French Line Regiments except XYZ units".

Cheers,

The Bandit

Import some Nafziger OBs…

Two rulesets that contained such information (ratings by unit by year) were Legacy of Glory and Houserules Napoleonics. Of course, both rules listed ratings by exception as The Bandit described.

Oooo thats a difficult one! Just think of the men who were the bulk of Boney's Old Guard at Waterloo. Not the match of the men who marched with him in 1809! Just veteran infantry who had seen too much, and who had all most likely ran from the British before they were sucked up into Le Guarde!
Yes it would be great to see such a list, but who could truley put one together and get it right – see point above. Can't see many gamers letting their precious Guards be rated as C class veterans or whatever the equal is in their chosen rules set
Remember, Victory isn't just written by the Victors!

Big ask…. Britain alone had 104 line regiments, 3 guards regiments, over 30 odd cavalry regiments. Many of multiple battalion serving in esperate theatres. I also agree that morale levels and quality of a unit could fluctuate over time. Add to that judging exactly to what extent would be subjective… I think completing the list for one nation alone could be a fairly long project of several years. Add to it the entire armed forces of Spain, Portugal, France, Austria, Russia, Prussia, The Netherlands, Bavaria, Naples, Sweden,Denmark, Hanover, Brunswick, Italy, USA, Sardinia, Baden,Saxony, Hesse, Nassau and god alone knows how many other minor Germanic states…. Your looking at a mammoth labour of love.. Way too much for one man, most likely a team of historians.

Much easy to do one for just on nation I reckon.

RE: Way too much for one man, most likely a team of historians.

Actually, it has already been done, multiple times, in multiple rules sets. I am just looking for a digital implementation….

Empire V has a comprehensive list of nations and unit types but again, specific units are the exception, rather than the rule.

Also, they do things like 1812 Line Infantry, 25% Elite, 50% Crack Line, 25% Veterans, etc. Again, specific units are called out based upon historical achievements.

Firstly Good Luck

Secondly why?

Bruce Quarrie's Napoleons campaigns had entries for Guard, Line and Light Infantry, Cuirassiers, Dragoons, Chasseurs, Lancers, Hussars and Irregular cavalry and any Guard incarnations of the same, along with several different types of artillery as appropriate to each nation, for Prussia, he had two sets pre and post 1806? (That did not matter as most Prussian commanders used the better ones in my experience!). Using the rules on the Wargames table brought an element of "accuracy" if you believed his factors, but meant that a full days battle only consisted of five or six moves and you got a headache! It also meant that nobody bothered with Spain or Naples, and everyone had masses of the Old Guard

In at least one rule set, Cossacks are less good at butchering routing troops than other cavalry, which is not how I have read the accounts, in some rules, Russian Artillery are second rate, in others they are first rate. In some rules the British are superhuman in others the standard French battalion column is all but invincible, it is going to be so subjective and a huge amount of work.

Whatever year your "battle" is, the commander will try to use the best figure for that unit regardless of the years data available and will there actually be a point in distinguishing between the 109th and the 27th Infantry regiments.

As far as I am aware, there is not even a full list of all the units that did exist, and there is debate about some that may only have existed on paper or only for a short period. The Neapolitan Dragoons and their Yellow Hussars and the Saxe Weimar Hussars to name but three. Did a unit fight or was it a Police unit? Did it ever get together in one place; did it have a flag?

Also Excel has a size limit, it is big, but there is a limit, one of my gaming buddies (who does excel for a living) has been doing a list of all our groups painted Napoleonic figures and he has hit the limiter!

As I say Good luck, but be careful what you wish for

rabbit

Just to be clear, do you mean a database with every single individual regiment in, or one with every distinct type of regiment in?

Regards

RE: Secondly why?

Well, truth be told, I am trying to reproduce every regiment that fought or could have fought in the Napoleonic Wars… in 5mm. I am about 2/3rds done, but honestly I have only a vague idea how far I have to go.

I will say this: While there were quite a few regiments in the Nappy Wars… (150+ French Line Infantry being the most numerous, I would guess…) I don't see how anyone hits the limit in Excel (my verison goes to 1048576 rows)

I also use Excel extensively, and use it to track miniature purchases, painting and mounting (and unit IDs on the underside of each base, too) and I am not even close to hitting a limit.

I like your style Daribuck ! Thats cool stuff there, esp the individual labels on the underside of each unit base. (I like painted unit flags under each base, with the regiment name / number)

And you are perfectly right about the capacity of Excel (or any computer file) to handle the volume of data. Its a no-brainer.

I would second the recommendation of Empire V as a good starting point for the ratings database. Revolution & Empire takes that another step further, and includes all the Empire ratings, plus lots of additional ratings for even more.

ie :
- Quality of muskets and powder
- Street fighting ratings
- Individual regiments by year
- Differences for elite companies in different regiments, by nation and by year
- Which formations and drill manual they can use, by nation and year
- Commander ratings, including professional skill at army level, corps level, and inspiration rating
- Includes lots more nations, such as the USA, Indian states, Persia, plus tonnes of minor powers
- Its put together by a team of historians

Lots of really cool data in the appendices. Whilst it doesnt list every single regiment individually, it does have enough info to extrapolate and derive the ratings for any given regiment in any given year.

Note that the Year is just as important as the Nationality, and more important than the regiment number. The changes that occur in units of a Nation from one year/campaign to the next are quite radical, as pretty much every army gets a significant overhaul following the dramatic events of the last campaign.

You need to think carefully about how to model and structure the data for this before doing the data entry. You could do it as 1 large sheet, or a collection of sheets by Nation or by year. Have a good look at the dataset before deciding on a particular structure – as a design mistake up front could be a painful thing to correct later on.

As far as excel goes … thats just a data entry issue, and ultimately you are going to want to use your own format, so get typing !

I would suggest the best way to get it happening is create a collaborative project online, and invite other data fanatics to collaboratively enter ratings. Something like a wiki would work. Maybe google docs has a way of doing this easily as well, dont know, but it would mean storing it in OpenDocument format rather than excel's proprietary format. Not a huge problem.

I have a similar project underway, that includes all OOBs for all nations in all theatres … with ratings. The resultant dataset is a bit messy to model as a simple 2D array …. so instead of using a spreadsheet, I am modelling it as a collection of JSON format documents. That approach is working really well.

Included in that project is the modelling of significant battlefields as well – which are 2D grids of significant objectives on the field, plus some terrain stats for the surrounding area.

The purpose of all this is to feed the data into a campaign management tool that allows you to build highly accurate OOBs for games by selecting units from a nice web interface. ie – You select the year, select the map, and then select a few Corps per side, and plonk them on the map. Done.

The ratings and other details for the commanders and units then allow the same computer at the backend to run all the book-keeping for the game itself. If you want more chat on how all that hangs together, best have a look at the VLB yahoo group, and get involved in the crazy talk over there.

The JSON data format is a natural fit for this sort of use, since its dead easy to edit in a text editor, and it loads into a computer backend without any parser code. (ie – its just native javascript arrays).

Keep in touch on this as you go – it will require several years of effort to build up and refine all this data. But that is several years very well spent I think.

Something like these?

Not every regiment….but most nationalities covered by time and theater in some cases. 45 lists in all.

French Imperial period (sample list): link

What the CMR values represent: link

Complete nationality lists at (scroll down to find nation or minor state): link

Note: Some are large .pdf files, especially the major powers.

WR

Sorry maybe I misunderstood.

You want a generic list of stats for each type of regiment? That would be comparitavely easy.

Or for every single regiment/battalion on a yearly basis for every nation over a twenty year period of warfare… Huge undertaking, I've never seen a rules set with that in. Select orders of battle yes, generic tables for different troop types yes.

Something like these?

Insanely great work there WR .. thanks for posting this, and all the work you have put in. Brilliant !

Sorry I don't see what you're trying to achieve.Rather than reading someone else's interpretation of combat effectiveness, read some first hand accounts and make your own mind up. It's all subjective anyway – no-one knows ! And even if they did, it can't be quantified. The High Command had more of an effect on overall army performance anyway.

If you must, spend your time researching command and control rather than morale stats for individual battalions.

whew!!! Seems like a major headache and way too much time needed. Even if I had access to such a resource, I wonder just how much I'd use it. Still, I admire the determination to accumulate the data.

And if you are carrying out a comparison you need to establish the max – min aka best and the worst, e.g. for the French Line it has to be the 57th Line Regt for the best Line unit……but I second Bretwalda's comments…….

However, good luck and keep us posted, it should be interesting to see what you have come up with.

Follow up:

First of all, TMPWargamerabbit, the amount of data you provided is impressive. I have downloaded only a couple of files, and they are chock full of goodies. Also, Steve64, I need to digest your note as well.

Secondly, in general, I am confused as to why this seems so arduous. Several rules sets have this information in a different presentation: At the top of my head, I can think of Empire V, Legacy of Glory, Houserules Napoleonics, Garde du Corps, and From Valmy to Waterloo. I am sure there are others. IIRC, Napoleon's Battles even came with a CD, but I think that was for making labels.

What I ultimately would like to do is cross reference my database, which I would like to claim will ultimately have every regiment, against an "authorative" database, which actually will have every regiment. I know there will be problems: Holland regiments that became French regiments, dragoons that became lancers, etc… But I have to start somewhere…

Thanks again for all the input!

Daniel

Good luck to you mate. This could possibly be the most epic project ever.
My hat is doffed to you.

Secondly, in general, I am confused as to why this seems so arduous. Several rules sets have this information in a different presentation: At the top of my head, I can think of Empire V, Legacy of Glory, Houserules Napoleonics, Garde du Corps, and From Valmy to Waterloo. I am sure there are others. IIRC, Napoleon's Battles even came with a CD, but I think that was for making labels.

Do these rules list all the regiments that participated in the Napoleonic Wars with discrete information and ratings for all of them??

RE: Do these rules list all the regiments that participated in the Napoleonic Wars with discrete information and ratings for all of them??

No, but it is a start. We've agreed that many opt them list the information (which is subjective) and then quantifies special cases (also subjective.)

How would you even get discrete information for each specific regiment? Isn't the vast majority going to be entirely fictitious?

Is there *any* documented history on the mêlée performance of the some random line regiment that only saw battle once if ever?

I think this level of granularity becomes impractical fast.

Assuming one could find enough information about every regiment, will it differ enough between the majority to be useful?

Cheers,

The Bandit

Ah, understood.

In that case can I recommend:

link and link

They do contain lists of all the regiments in practically every army which fought during the wars and the major actions they fought. Using that in conjuction with one of the rule sets should work fine (Or if you by any chance play Polemos Napoleonics I'll post my version of those on that forum)

Regards

How would you even get discrete information for each specific regiment? Isn't the vast majority going to be entirely fictitious?

Is there *any* documented history on the mêlée performance of the some random line regiment that only saw battle once if ever?

I think this level of granularity becomes impractical fast.

Assuming one could find enough information about every regiment, will it differ enough between the majority to be useful?

Well, I did something a little similar to this for the Peninsular War, and basically used my knowledge of what had happened to each unit during and between battles to decide whether a unit had increased or decreased in quality before the next one. Obviously it was all subjective assumption, but as long as the criteria were consistent then it seemed to work okay. Heavy casualties were always bad, so the units most involved at Albuera for example (Fusilier Bde, most of French V Corps) had lost a 'level' when they re-appeared in their next battle.

Regards

Whirlwind did you factor in to your analysis attrition through marches, health small skirmishes etc and the take on of replacements / recruitments between battles, factors that would have had an impact on quality of the unit?