"Austrian Landwehr at Wagram" Topic

I am putting together an order with Irregular Miniatures and will be buying some Austrian Landwehr: the chaps in the grey uniform and turned up hats.

Roughly (don't need precise figures: to the nearest thousand would do as the figure scale is 2,000 to a base of infantry) how may of them fought at Aspern-Essling and Wagram, not counting those other volunteer/insurrection units who had their own distinct uniforms)?

Thanks,

Alan

At Wagram, most Austrian Infantry Brigades had two regular infantry regiments of three battalions and two landwehr battalions. This would give a total of about 20 landwehr battalions. Assuming about 500 per you would get 10K.

Mark

No landwehr at Aspern-Essling. 21 battalions at Wagram on a quick count from Gill – seem to average a bit over 500 though. Probably about 13k overall.

Landwehr drawn from both Austria (dressed in grey) and Bohemia-Moravia (brown).. There may others. Some interesting stuff has been posted on TMP about 1809 landwehr.

There were probably about thirty battalions of Landwehr in the Order of Battle at Wagram. There were also some Freikorps and 'Legion' battalions.

They were scattered around in a seemingly random manner. Some brigades had some, some had lots, and others had none! The First Corps, for example, had only one Landwehr battalion and one battalion of the Archduke Karl Legion. The rest of the First Corps was regular.

Uniforms also varied a lot. As matthewgreen has said, those from Austria tended to have grey coats and those from Bohemia had brown. Trouser colours seem to have varied from unit to unit. Hats also came in a variety of shapes and styles. All in all, a colourful addition to your Austrian army!

This list of Landwehr Battalions is from our OOB back in 2009. I count 26, I painted up 13 of them…..
My calculator count is 16,925 or about 17,000.
Please do a count for yourself as my calculator skills are not great.

5/6/Vienna Volunteers (525/675)
2/Znaim Landwehr (800),
3/Hradisch Landwehr (750),
1/3/Brunn Landwehr (750/900)
2/Erzherzog Karl Legion (875)
4/Erzherzog Karl Legion (450)
1/OMB Landwehr (450)
3/Erzherzog Karl Legion (775),
1/OWW Landwehr (625)
3/Moravian Landwehr (925),
3/4/Vienna Volunteers (475/225)
1/2/Vienna Volunteers (575/550), 4/UMB Landwehr (450),
1/2/UWW Landwehr (625/475), 3/UMB Landwehr (550)
1/Iglau Landwehr (850),
1/Znaim Landwehr (825)
1/Erzherzog Karl Legion (1000),
4/OMB Landwehr (700),
4/UWW Landwehr (550),
2/Moravian Volunteers (575),

As already noted there were quite a lot of Landwehr at Wagram. At Aspern Essling, the Landwehr units present looked like this:

1st Column (VI Corps) Hiller
-----------------------------

Nordmann's Advanced Guard

1st Vienna Volunteers – 544
2nd Vienna Volunteers – 610

Kottulinsky's Division

4th Vienna Volunteers – 269

Vincent's Division

3rd Moravian Volunteers – 1,057
3rd Vienna Volunteers – 547

2nd Column (I Corps) Bellegarde
--------------------------------

None

3rd Column (II Corps) Hohenzollern
----------------------------------

None

4th Column (part of IV Corps) Dedovich (under Rosenberg)
------------------------------------------------------

Dedovich's Division

2nd Moravian Volunteers – 933

5th Column (part of IV Corps) Hohenlohe (under Rosenberg)
-------------------------------------------------------

Rohan's Division

Carneville Freikorps (Infantry) – 208
Carnevile Freikorps (Cavalry) – 115

Note: These were "irregular" troops, not technically Landwehr

I Reserve Corps – Liechtenstein
---------------------------------

None

Source: John H. Gill – 1809 Thunder on the Danube – Volume II – Aspern; Ian Castle – Osprey Campaign Series #33 – Aspern & Wagram 1809

Note: Bowden & Tarbox – Armies on the Danube 1809 is a much older piece of research (1st Edition 1980; 2nd Edition 1989) and for Aspern lists most of the above Landwehr formations but not all and also presents a different, older interpretation, of the Austrian command structure.

Nick

My figures did not include the freikorps (Vienna Volunteers, EHK Legion, Moravian Volunteers).

Plus there are a few missing from wgmr1's list, according to Gill:
5/6 UWW (544/683) – Avant Garde
1 Hradisch (732) I Corps
1/2 Combined Prague (746), 1/2 Beraun (576/591) III Corps – brigaded together
1 Combined Upper Austria (Innviertel) (948) – VI Corps

According to the same source, the 3 Moravian Landwehr are freikorps

Matthew

Many thanks.

Alan