"Battle of Vitoria OOB" Topic

Hi, I'm thinking of starting a French army for the battle of Vitoria. So far I've only been able to find an Order of Battle down to regiment level. Does anyone know where to find a battalion level OOB or a list of French Regiments that had unusual amounts of battalions?

Oman is your friend. Mine's in storage currently.

link

Specifically look at 813FSAC & 813FSAD

Here are the OOBs link in Oman. I don't think it has the detail below regiments for the French, however.

I don't think Nafziger shows it either: PDF link

(and the Allies: link

Actually, this isn't too hard – these Nafziger Orders of Battle for slightly earlier give the details of the battalions present in these armies:

So, Army of the Centre: PDF link
Army of the South (previously Army of the Midi): PDF link
Army of Portugal: PDF link

Obviously, not all of the units were actually present at Vitoria, but you can easily work out those that were.

Hope that helps

I have researched this for a game I ran in 2013. In fact none of the detailed OBs show the position at the battle. Some units suffered losses beforehand, others were reinforced by regiments of march. Oman and Sarramon reconcile these OBs to what they think were the overall numbers – but not at unit level.

Using Nafziger mainly, working forwards from the May OBs and working back from the August OBs and casualty stats I have come up with my own OB down to regimental level. This involves a fair amount of educated guesswork (especially the artillery) – but it is better than anything published by anybody else that I have seen. I have taken strengths to the nearest 100 men (not wanting to offer a false level of precision). There is no battalion level data – except that many of the regiments were reorganised into a single, large battalion. You won't be far wrong if you assume the battalions are of roughly equal strength within the same regiment though.

You can find my stuff here: diningtablenapoleon.com/battles

Sorry this OB is at brigade level, not regimental. I did do workings at regimental level, and I will post these – but I have to dash and can't do it until tomorrow!

Here is my spreadsheet of French regimental strengths, including how they reconcile to the published OBs. This includes all French troops in the general vicinity. Precise numbers of men are shown – but this accuracy is spurious.

PDF link

There is no battalion level data – except that many of the regiments were reorganised into a single, large battalion.

This is very noticeable for a number of the regiments, and I've always wondered how they were organized tactically.
The six company battalion at full establishment was 840 all ranks, so how they arranged a unit that had considerably more men than that would be interesting to know. I've wondered, given the number of officers present, whether they fielded eight or even nine companies, each with close to 120 other ranks. In this case, with that number of companies the battalion would still conform to the 1791 regulations to some degree. Or would they merely have increased the number in each company, by increasing the number of files, and had a bunch of spare officers and NCO's sitting it out.

Anybody know?

I don't know the answer. But the organisation was the outcome of stripping out cadres so that new battalions could be formed back home for the war in Germany. So I imagine that they would not have had enough officers for more than the regulation number of companies.

What I suspect happened though was that companies fought independently more often, or in ad hoc groups of two or three.

Interestingly these units still seemed to fight effectively enough. They put up a good resistance at Vitoria until ordered to retreat. They may have been short of cadres but they weren't new conscripts either.