"American Light Infantry - how did they fight?" Topic

My impression is that much like their counterparts on a battlefield, they fought in formation and not as skirmishers.

So I'm thinking of Maxwell's or Deerborn's, Maxwell's or Lafayette's Lights. Thoughts? Facts?

About five or six years ago, the Brigade of the American Revolution lost one of its older members who had been devoting all his research time to this very question. Sadly, it seems his work died with him.

There seem to have been units of "rangers" or "scouts" from the off, with Knowlton's and Leitch's little bands in the NYC campaign (until Knowlton's death, when it all seems to have gone quiet). I would imagine some effort was made to copy anything the British did (bear in mind some of the units at Lexington in Percy's brigade had "marksmen"), although this might be one area where the Americans had their own ideas possibly.

Dearborn's unit sounds like it was "musket-and-bayonet" protection for Morgan's riflemen, which was standard procedure in all European armies for rifle-armed troops. Maxwell's just seems to have been picked men who could be trusted to act in a dispersed manner, and still fight in line when needed to. I've never come across any training manual for American lights – anything in the Blue Book?

La Fayette seems to have brought a lot of uniform items over from France to the Corps of Light Infantry, so perhaps they had some French influences – the battalions under his command certainly had some French officers leading them (eg Gimat).

I think as the war went on, the British used both grenadiers and light infantry as elite assault/advance guard troops, and both seemed to act in smaller groups, often just a company or two. Possibly American light troops became a mix of grenadier and light infantry (eg Stony Point is a classic grenadier action); one of Wayne's officers after Green Spring laments that as the British formations became looser, the Continentals adopted the "stiff German order" – possibly this was a dig at Steuben, who was not always popular, and his influence over the Continentals' training.

Years ago, Napoleonic gamers wrote rules for the AWI that had light infantry acting like Napoleonic skirmishers.
They even gave untrained militia skirmishers super powers. Thankfully you don't see that anymore.

To the degree there were units of American "light infantry" and there were relatively few, they usually were treated as elite infantry not traditional light infantry.

American riflemen and some militia units actually performed the same duties as British light infantry, skirmishing, scouting, etc. rather than light units. American commanders did assemble groups of "picked men" who might also act as advance guards, skirmishing and scouting. I think riflemen probably were the closest thing to British light infantry.

I mount my US and Brit Light Inf similar to my regular Inf but with only 3 figs to stand compared to 4-6 figs to stand for regular Inf they are also mounted in a loser pattern and not the standard line. They can fight both as a line and as skirmishers. Due to size their fire power and stamina is less than a similar size Inf unit but morale is high.

From past experience most players play/fight them more often as regular Inf than as skirmishers…In fact I think I am the only one in past 2-3 years that has put them in skirmish order? :)

Right now we are playing Black Powder.

SFC Retired

American Light units give me a headache, they way they came and went, and came back again. I guess their high water marks were Stoney Point and Yorktown. Maybe I'll just base them like the rest of my American infantry then, and keep the Militia and riflemen more flexibly based.

I think they were used primarily as an elite strike force, much like the British flank battalions; as Winston rightly points out, they weren't an American version of Moore's/Craufurd's Light Division.

How I use my Light Infantry on the table. They travel lighter so are faster, better trained and more aggressive than your average line troops. So they can be used in battalion formations all the way down to platoons scouting or covering the flanks.