"What did Fusiliers do." Topic

Hi all, I know this sounds like dopey question, but in the Prussian army of the Seven Years War, ( or any other army for that matter ) what was the tactical role of the fusilier. I understand the different roles of Grenadiers, Musketeers and Jagers but don't know what function Fusiliers served. Thanks to anyone for any help, best wishes…CH.

Basically the same as the common Prussian line infantry. Just had a shorter version of the grenadier cap but they are not grenadiers in any sense.

Line infantry with cooler looking hats.

The origins of "fusilier" goes back to the days when matchlock muskets were the norm. A fusilier carried a fusil (a lighter flintlock musket) – they were considered particularly useful for guarding the artillery train because they were not wandering around gunpowder with lit match.

Incidentally in the song The British Grenadiers "our leaders march with fuzes and we with hand grenades" fuzes is a corruption of fusil – grenadier officers carried them instead of a spontoon (half pike).

In the days of matchlock muskets…a fusil was a flintlock, and a fusileer was a specialist infantryman who carried a flintlock.

The usual mission for a regiment of fusileers was to escort the artillery train. You didn't want musketeers burning slow match around all those powder barrels, so you raised a specialist formation of fusileers to help with the artillery.

Since the fusileers would often sling their fusils to help push a wagon or gun out of a mud hole, you issued the fusileers caps, like grenadier caps or marine caps, so they wouldn't knock their wide-brim hats off.

When Fritz the Gross started raising infantry regiments from shorter men, he wanted to make them look taller and more intimidating. So he issued them tall caps and called them 'fusileers'. The musket they used was shorter than the one issued to the old line regiments, so that was another justification for the name 'fusileers', since 'fusil' by that time had come to mean a lighter version of the military flintlock.

So. As said before, Fritz' 'fusileers' were just regular infantry regiments with shorter histories and shorter recruits than the older 'hat' regiments.

Thanks very much chaps, some very useful information there, much obliged. All the best …CH.

Always learn something new every day on this site.
Mark

Slight correction -- they were called fusiliers because they were armed with fusils, not because they were given the mini-grenadier hat. That cap was called a fusilier cap in the prussian army because it was worn by fusiliers, not the other way round.

Um, shoot stuff while standing in a line.

They Fusilied……..

Yes, Fusiliers fired their fusils whilst Musketeers fired their muskets.

While in some countries such as France fusilier became the name of the 'basic' infantryman when the flintlock / fusil was generalized, in some countries it kept an 'elitist' connotation. For instance in Great Britain, where fusiliers soon adopted a hat similar to that of the grenadiers, though lower.
It can be the case in Germanic countries where musketier was kept for the 'ordinary' infantryman. Maybe when Frederick had to raised new regiments mostly made of green recruits he tried to booster their 'esprit de corps' with a prestigious name and the corresponding distinguishing hat? Then iirc the new Fusiliers performed more poorly than the veteran Musketiers; as they gain experience any difference between them disappeared.

The British had a tendency to raise one fusileer regiment per army – Royal Fusiliers, Royal Scotts Fusiliers, Royal Welsh Fusileers, Royal Bombay Fusiliers, Royal Madras Fusiliers, etc.

The Austrians in the Seven Years Was maintained a three battalion regiment of fusiliers to help with the artillery. They wore a similar coat to the artillery, reh-braun trimmed red, carried the same flint-lock musket as the infantry and wore ordinary cocked hats. Go figure.

So many variations on a theme.

You've seen the Dublin Fusiliers,
The dirty old bamboozeleers,
De Wet'll kill them chiselers, one, two, three.
Marching from the Linen Hall
There's one for every cannonball,
And Vicky's going to send them all, o'er the sea.

They went to Monto in Zippy's song.

Weren't the Prussian fusiliers all from some annexed German area/principality, or am I mis-remembering?

Fusiliers in the British Army by the SYW was simply an honorific title. They carried standard musket and fought as a line regiment – though their origins may have been to help the artillery at some prior date.

By the mid to late 1700s a fusil is simply a smaller or lighter flint lock. Officers in the British army armed themselves instead of totting around the rather useless spontoon – at least in the North American wars.

Weren't the Prussian fusiliers from Silesia?

Between 1740 and 1743 on Frederick the Great raised 14 separate Fusilier Regiments (numbers 33-40, 41-43 and 45-48).[13] Except for the mitre caps, these new regiments were identical in appearance, training and role to the existing line infantry (musketeers).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusilier

Hi all, once again a very big thanks to everyone with a couple of exceptions, but a special thanks to :- John Armatys, Zippyfusenet, Abdul665lw, and historygamer, excellent information, thank you very much, all the best…CH.