"Austrian Help" Topic

As mentioned in a previous topic that after some 5 years or more we have all decided to restart our Naps . We havn't yet settled on a rules set although Black Powder is the bookies favourite at the moment :)

what we also did, and this may seem a daft way of doing things, is that we all decided to do a new Naps army based on drawing a nation from a hat. Oh yes you guessed it I drew Austria.

I'll be honest with you Naps really isn't my thing and I am clearly outside my comfort zone here . I am really a WW2 nut and a treadhead but its going to be an interesting experiment at how quickly a novice can get to grips with a new army and really a new era as well .

So first things first.

Scale will be 28mm

The miniature ranges I have selected will be Victrix and Perrys. I only found out this morning that Perrys do a plastics Austrian set. I am also very impressed with the metals range and it looks comprehensive. Price doesn't bother me too much as I prefer to buy quality.

Now returning to this Victrix box that I started work on this weekend . The box contains a couple of mounted colonels and a couple of Standard bearers /foot Officers . For reference it is the Shako style infantry . so for starters here is a few questions .

1) I plan on using the General De Brigade unit sizes for my troops and therefore a battalion/regiment will be around 48 men.I presume this will be acceptable? Circa will be around 1809

2) How many standard bearers will I need for this unit.

3) There are 2 types of flags on the coloured instructions . How do I use these ?

4) Will the mounted Colonel be the correct Rank to lead this unit and placing the Bicorn head on him is the correct choice of head?

5) The Grenadiers around this time( 1809) were still formed in separate units is this correct.

6) If not were they creamed off from the Infantry units?

7) If so would they have uniforms depicting my chosen infantry regiments so for arguments sake could you therefore have Grenadiers say with black facings in with a unit with pink etc?

Thanks for your patience guys and would also like you to recommend any books that would be of benefit for this project

Hi, welcome to the joys of painting hordes of white uniforms.
1) Sounds about right.
2) One per battalion.
3) One of the battalions in a regiment has the white flag. The rest (1 or 2, usually 1) have the yellow one.
4) Not sure.
5) Correct. They will have a yellow flag.
6) They were creamed off from the infantry to form the separate units.
7) Each grenadier company has the original parent regiment facing colours, including the colour of the helmet cloth bag thingy.

For books check out the Osprey Austrian volumes to begin with, from then on you can dig deeper.
Cheers,
Aksu

BTW, if you are going 1809, only Hungarian infantry would be in the Shako. German units had the helmet.

Mark

Just a few elaborations;

1. Austrian battalions were really that big on their establishment. Campaigning would soon whittle them down. Battalion and regiment are different things in the Austrian Army. There were two field battalions in a regiment.

2/3. In 1809 the first battalion carried the white flag, the Leibfahne,and the second the yellow flag, the Ordinarefahne.

4. A mounted officer is quite correct to lead a battalion. He would be a colonel, lieutenant colonel or major. Though the shako or helmet was the regulation wear, the bicorne was common and popular.

5/6/7. Each regiment had two companies of grenadiers. These would be brigaded together with two more pairs from another two regiments to form a battalion of six companies. In turn these usually formed their own brigades and even divisions. The battalion would carried an extra yellow Ordinarefahne from the senior regiment. Therefore, you could have three different sets of facing colours in the same battalion. There are sources to give you who went with who in 1809. The only clear rule seems to be that Hungarians were only brigaded with Hungarians.

Hope that helps.

Additionally the Grenadier companies were smaller than the fusilier ones. A battalion of 36 is about right for grenadiers.

There are answers to many of your Austrian questions on my 1809 blog including OOB:

link

I have made personal choices like having one flag per regiment rather than battalion and two rather than three facing colours per grenadier unit. But my units are smaller than yours, I guess.

In campaign, there wasn't a standard regiment, therefore battalion size. However, battalions work out at generally the same or larger than French battalions, French as same or smaller. For something like your intended Black Powder rules, French would have tiny, small and medium sized units, Austrian tiny, small, medium and large units. See my "1809 Knapsack".

Cheers, Michael

Artilleryman is incorrect about the number of battalions. There were 3 battalions per regiment, usually all in the field. Two regiments to a brigade, two brigades to a division.

Number of battalions per regiment varied at different times. For much of the wars there were two field battalions per regiment, but in 1809 there were three!

If you really want to be confused, ask about Landwehr……

At Aspern-Essling 17 'German' and Hungarian infantry regiments had 3 battalions present, 11 had 2, and 1 had 2⅔ and another 1⅔. Therefore, variety was the rule in the field. Likewise, the number of men in the battalions.

Assuming you'll be doing the 1809 Austrians, you might find my posts on the Landwehr, Volunteers and Insurrectio helpul; (Perry do great figures for all of these, including the Insurrectio)

Inner Austrian Landwehr:
link

Upper and Lower Austria:
link

Bohemian and Moravian Landwehr, plus the EHK Legion
link

The Hungarian Insurrectio:
link

Just the thing when you start to go snow-blind, LOL!

Peter

Many thanks guys . I guess my first unit will have to have the newly introduced Shako as I don't think the Victrix plastics will be suitable to represent Hungarians as the trousers were different and I don't think from what I have seen they have the boots either .

Thanks again for your support and all those wonderful links.

Couldn't help noticing there have been many Austrian Helmet V Shako discussions for circa 1809 without any firm conclusion . I presume because nobody is 100% certain.

The policy I will adopt is that all my Hungarian infantry units will have the Shako and perhaps most of my German units will have the helmet except for a couple , with the unit I am currently building being the first .

There have been a couple of references to a so called list of when units changed over to the Shako, does any one have access to this list?

Cheers Guys

Would be glad to have such a list, but alas there aint such a thing.
The change started in 1806 and was done by regiments, Hungarians starting. Still servicable helmets were given to regiments still equipped with this headgear.
Your "helmet policy" sounds quite right.

I use helmeted and shakoed Austrians interchangeably. If you want a real headache try to understand the 1805 organization.

Why do you think I picked 1809 on onwards :)

Thanks guys for all of your support and encouragement