"Did the French Guardsmen "Age"?" Topic

Colonel,

You appear to have misunderstood; the data that I provided was based on the discharge records of the 1st Grenadiers in 1815 at the time of the regiment's disbanding; they were quite clearly Old Guard. It was only the Pontecoulant comment about the quality that was actually about the Young Guard.

Mauduit's quote is indeed evocative, although in an earlier paragraph he states how easy it was for Old Guard caporaux or sous-officiers to gain promotion into a line regiment or the Young Guard and mentions that three sergeants-majors of the 1st Grenadiers became captains in the Young Guard for the campaign of 1815. Perhaps many of the more experienced men of the regiment were transferred in such a way, which might explain the difference between the ages claimed by Mauduit and those seen in the discharge records.

Jurgen

Flecktarn, I had got a bit confused, thank you for the clarification.

'They weren't – 25 % of the soldiers took part in the Revolutionary Wars, anohter 25 per cent in the 1800 campaign the rest were conscripts.'

I'd like to see a source for your 'percentages.' All of the combat veterans in the Grande Armee of 1805 were veterans of the Wars of the French Revolution, as they had ended in 1800 after Hohenlinden.

Here's what I've posted already, so I have a question on your sources and numbers. Perhaps if you would post more information we could actually get a better number.

'-One-third of the soldiers were veterans of at least six years' service and this included almost all of the officers and NCOs.
-More than half of the cavalry and 43 percent of the infantry had seen combat.
-About 3 percent were veterans of the old Royal Army.
-A somewhat larger percentage were veterans of the volunteers of the volunteers of 1792-1794, but I don't have a number for those.
-The most numerous group of veterans were from conscripts of 1799-1800, but again I don't have a number.
-And a large group, again no numbers, were new soldiers without combat experience.'

B

'Mauduit's quote is indeed evocative, although in an earlier paragraph he states how easy it was for Old Guard caporaux or sous-officiers to gain promotion into a line regiment or the Young Guard and mentions that three sergeants-majors of the 1st Grenadiers became captains in the Young Guard for the campaign of 1815. Perhaps many of the more experienced men of the regiment were transferred in such a way, which might explain the difference between the ages claimed by Mauduit and those seen in the discharge records.'

Officers and NCOs from the Old Guard were routinely used to cadre Young Guard units, so that is an already recognized point, I think.

B

'shakos for 3e and 4e grenadiers of the guard in 1815, this is obsolete research which was corrected recently by Juhel –in 2006, the author looked into the archives, what was available in the depots and stores of the regiments, and seemingly there were enough bearskin caps available to kit out all units. so no shakos but fur caps for all 4 regiments, the cul de singe however of black leather not not any longer red.'

Do you have a citation from Juhel? If, indeed, there were bearskins in the inventory there would also have to be evidence that they were actually issued. If Juhel has that information that would be a good thing. Evidence that they were produced only does not prove the point as some orders for clothing were not filled by the time Nord went into Belgium. They were sent to the depots after the Nord marched north.

B

Brechtel198,

I agree that promotions from the Old Guard in that way were not unusual. However, 1815 was unusual in that the army was essentially being rebuilt so it is possible that many more were promoted. I supose that it would not be too hard to find out.

It is also worth noting that the non-wearing of bearskins was mentioned by officers of the Guard who were there, which I believe to be fairly definitive evidence.

Jurgen

Jurgen,

Agree on both points. Good analysis. To find out definitively on the Guard, the archives would have to be consulted, but I don't see Mauduit being incorrect in his eyewitness account. At least I haven't seen anything to discount what he said-yet.

B

I can't work out what vonW and Kevin are disagreeing about – the figures look reasonably similar at first glance?

My source is : Alombert & Colin : La Campagne de 1805 en Allemagne, volume 1, it starts at page 170

Here the authors clealry states (about the Grande Armée)

the in general a quarter of the army made all campaigns of the Revolutionary wars and another quarter the campaigns of Marengo or Honelinden, the rest conscripts, for more detail one has to read the above mentioned source.

Also of interest :
Il est vrai que bien des causes contribuent à produire la déstertion, qui est enorme. Depuis trois ans, il déserte environ 50 hommes par bataillon chaque année.

p. 173

It is possible to download that volume from google books

Von Winterfeldt,

Am I correct in assuming that the author states 25% of the Bolougne army had fought for France since 1791? That is to say they had 14 years of on and off active service.

Plausible would be stretching it.

Regards,

Kurt.

That is the statement given in Alombert and Colin, they even go into much more detail, looking into specific regiments.
There they used the registers of the regiments, I take their statement seriously, best is read it for yourself

I think the authors (Alombert & Colin) may be trying to say that 25% of the Grande Armee had been in one or more of the Revolutionary campaigns, not all of them. Indeed, it would be impossible for any individual to have been involved in all of them because several campaigns ran at the same time (Germany and Italy in 1796, for example) and mere mortals are only able to be one place at a time.* I suspect the unfortunate use of the word "all" may be a translation error.

Also consider that if 25% of the army was in all the campaigns, 25% at Marengo or Hohenlinden and the rest conscripts, there is no room for those who were in some, but not all of them. The probability of this is basically zero. It means that everyone drafted for the campaigns after Valmy had left the Army by 1805, leaving only the old sweats who had joined in 1792. I doubt very much this was the case.

* Tango may be an exception

In round numbers, let's assume the Grande Armee was 200,000 strong in 1805.
Alombert and Colin are suggesting that of that total, 50,000 were veterans that had served since 1792 with a maximum of 13 years service, another 50,000 were veterans that had served since 1799 with a maximum of 6 years of service, and the remaining 100,000 were conscripts with no service record.

These are round numbers not actual numbers, used for clarity on my part.

Alombert & Colin do indeed state that in general a quarter of the army made all campaigns of the Revolutionary wars and another quarter the campaigns of Marengo or Honelinden.

However, I agree with Mserafin that what they meant was that 25% of the soldiers had served in one or more of the revolutionary campaigns. It is clearly impossible for 25% to have served in all campaigns as that would, for example, involve a man being in the Netherlands, Spain, Piedmont, the Vendee and on the Rhein in 1795, which seems unlikely as his feet would surely be hurting a lot!

Jurgen