"SYW Russian Light Infantry????" Topic

A while ago I purchased a lot of SYW 15mm OG Russians on ebay that included a bag of them. I thought nothing about it at the time because I was not ready to start that project. Now that I am getting in to it, I am going through my Russians and trying to sort them out with the help of the Osprey for that period. Unfortunately there is no mention of lights. What are they? How do they figure in the Russian Army?

They don't figure. I know of one instance of jaegers fielded at the siege of Colberg. Some Pandour units were sent to border garrisons to relieve regular line units for service in the war. There was a battalion of dragoons (without horses) fielded on foot at Zorndorf, and these might have formed up as light infantry – who knows. Nope, if you want an army with light infantry the Russians are not for you.

Here's a picture of my Russians. Not a skirmish infantryman in sight!

olicana beat me to it, kronoskaf has a lot more info to support that.
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No skirmishers in a pitched battle and the other functions of lights such as causing havoc in the area between battles were done by Cossacks.

I suspect you can only use the light infantry in the wars against the Turks, like the Austrians,they seem to have kept these irregular troops mainly along the Turkish border.

PS, that is a lovely looking Russian army, Olicana!

I think the OG 15mm Russian light infantry castings are Pandours, who look a lot like Austrian Grenzer, and Jaegers. As has been noted above, neither troop type participated in SYW field battles in Germany. However, if your wargames rules allow the Russian army to have light infantry, these are the figures you paint up. You can use them for hypothetical scenarios, they won't appear in any historical OBs.

A Russian SYW army should have clouds and hordes of cossacks for their light troops. This is one feature that distinguishes the Russian army from every other bunch of guys in tricorne hats.

Thanks for the help guys. Looks like I have a bag of useless minis, bummer.

Are these guys wearing a Pandour hat? If yes, then use them, they are not 'useless'. They did not play around on the battlefield perhaps but they were there lurking in the background doing naughty things with Prussian baggage……..see this
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That is the best looking Russian SYW army that I have ever seen, James. Simply gorgeous!

I'll figure out something to do with them

I could always be misinformed…so I'd like to know the details of any incident where Pandour light infantry in Russian service got close to Prussian baggage in the SYW. I've never heard of any such.

There might be confusion due to loose use of the term pandour. Originally it was a common noun meaning a Balkan bandit. Most were Serbs, but any ethnicity could apply; there were renegade muslims among them. The Croat equivalents were often called haiduks = cowboys. They marauded as individuals or in small or big gangs, afoot or mounted. Some claimed to be patriotic rebels against the Turks or other authority. Ballads were sung about the most famous.

Pandours were sometimes recruited for war, and the Austrians employed many of them in the WAS, where they wreaked havoc on Prussian outposts and supply trains. Baron Trenck's Panduren were especially notorious. The Austrians also fielded many Hussars, some regulars, some irregulars, who were mostly Hungarian Magyars, and Grenz infantry, who were mostly Balkan Slavs but had a different, permanent relationship to the Austrian state. All of these more-or-less Balkan, more-or-less irregular troop types looked and behaved a lot like pandours proper, and were often all described by that name in contemporary accounts, regardless their nationality or terms of employment, especially by civilized and terrified German speakers who couldn't tell one mob of babbling bizarrely costumed foreign savages from another.

After the WAS, the Austrians dismissed most of the irregular light troops and tried to regularize the rest as permanent formations of Hussars and Grenzers. Note that there were Grenz Hussars, who were uniformed and trained much like the Hungarians, but were ethnically Serbs, Croats, Wlachs, etc., from the Militargrenz, not Magyars from the Kingdom of Hungary.

At the same time, the Russians, who had been very impressed by the Austrian Pandours, recruited entire Serb communities to migrate and re-settle in southern Ukraine to form a 'military frontier' on the Austrian model.

The cavalry regiments raised from this transplanted Serb population were designated Hussars, and were uniformed and trained exactly like the Magyar regulars in Austrian service. Several Serb Hussar regiments accompanied the Russian armies to Germany for the SYW, and served alongside the cossacks as more reliable, 'regular' light cavalry.

The infantry regiments raised for border guard duty on the Ukrainian military frontier were officially designated Pandour regiments, and as far as I know, remained on the Turkish border throughout the SYW. They were uniformed very much like Austrian regular Grenzer of the same era, you could just about use the figures interchangeably.