"How to represent skirmishers?" Topic

I want to write a brigade level game (that is, a brigade a side) and am unsure as to how to represent skirmishers. I know a french battalion had a company of light infantry, how were these used on the battlefield (I'm guessing they skirmished ahead of the battalion), how best to represent this on the wargames table then?

JT

Hi JT,

Skirmishers worked in pairs, one ideally had their musket loaded at all times. You would have half the light company in reserve ahead of the rest of the battalion but behind the skirmishers. As your doing brigade level it might be interesting to represent this sort of detail, making the deployment and organisation of skirmishers more important. Hope this helps.

Porthius

Depending on the level game, either individual figures or small numbers of figures on wide stands.

The formed troops are going to be in double or triple ranks and skirmishers will take twice the frontage as one close-order rank or more. So figure they will take at least 4 - 6 times the frontage of a similar number of formed troops.

While skirmishers could inflict a lot of casualties if left to pot away for a while, figure their main effect should be to draw the fire of formed troops and possibly to disorder them, perhaps goading them into a bayonet charge to clear the pests away. I find letting troops shoot with moderate to low odds of a hit vs. troops that can't effectively reply should do it.

Do you think the skirmishers should be a seperate unit, and perhaps just stay within a certain distance of their parent unit?

Thanks for the replies.

JT

At our club we game G de B and some guys base up on separate skirmish bases a duplicate light company which can be detached from the main battalion and sent ahead to act as a skirmish screen. Several light companies can be used in this way to form an effective screen for a brigade attack.
Obviously the battalion based light company of each unit is removed when this is done.
G de B also has "grande Bande" rule which allows entire battalions to be deployed as skirmishers

The French and Austrian systems are explained in their respective Osprey Warriors. The Hungarian Hussars are also dealt with the Hussar Warrior.

Hi

I just use standard bases...deployed with more than a stand width of EMPTY SPACE between stands.

R

JT,

What ratio of figure to actual men are you going to use?

Mike.

I'm not sure, I guess about 1:20.

Thanks for all the replies.

JT

OK,

If 8 figures to a company then (in two ranks?). For French, I suggest basing the voltigeur companies in half bases, with an additional one, or two bases per unit with a total of 4 figures "deployed" in skirmishing poses in pairs (staggered: 1 up, 1 back). One of the voltigeur bases remains as a reserve.
I think that with the Prussians, two half-bases could be placed on table, one on each flank to represent their skirmishers and reserves generally drawn from their third ranks (bit detailed that - perhaps Dave Hollins could confirm that?)

You may have to compromise a bit here as you may find it difficult to represent skirmishing in detail even at 1:20.

Anyhow, why not try it out with unpainted figures on temporary bases to see how it looks?

Mike.

Ooops!

Sorry, Dave`s expertise is, of course, in Austrian matters!

Mike.

Thanks for the info.

JT

If I were writing a brigade level game, I would be tempted to treat each stand (element, whatever you wantto call it) as a company. You will have maybe 30-60 companies in an average infantry brigade. Companies vary a lot in size, of course, so you might want to use 1 element = 1 platoon/zug/wahtever, since this actually varies a bit less.

If you do this, then you don't want to get into too much detail, you would typically only have a single company skirmishing in front of each battalion, so you would just want to be able to wave your hand at a single stand and say 'they are skirmishing'. Matters like the placing of individual skirmishers in the chain, or supports and resrves between the deployed skirmishers and the battalion line are a matter for a lower-level game than this.

You can force players to support their skirmishers through a very simple rule - if they don't have a formed body to rally behind within a certain set distance, then have them rout off table if threatened by formed troops.

Abstraction will help here.

Andrew

Depending on scale and rules, it may be easier to simply abstract skirmishers

Gentlemen,

Just as a minor footnote, I have just gone through Crowdy's three Osprey's on the French infantryman, and the French tactical system is mentioned, with an excellent description of how large numbers of skirmishers were constantly used, but the French tactical system as a whole is not covered. Most notable is the absence of how infantry and artillery were coordinated and how that doctrine was taught in the excellent French artillery schools.

One of the portions that does mention tactics is on page 63 of French Revolutionary Infantryman in the right hand column. It states that the use of large numbers of skirmishers was a tactical innovation of the period and that previously the light infantry role was in the 'little war' of raids, ambushes, etc., and on the flanks of the main army during battle.

However, unless I missed it (in that volume and in French Napoleonic Infantryman) the French tactical system really isn't explained in full, merely in a few bits and pieces.

Adsarf,
"Skirmishing" invloves the use of sub-unit supports anyhow.
In brigade-level games they are often "factored in" and some nations may get bonuses to firing and/or range for being better quality or better organised or for being more numerous. Trojan Bunny`s scale is a brigade on each side - a different game of soldiers!

Gandalf,
A French Napoleonic Innovation? Just one example but about 25 years previous - the Austrians used large numbers of Croat Light Troops against Frederick`s Prussians at Kolin, I believe.

Mike.

Mike,

I have no doubt that the Croats were engaged at Kolin. But the question is how were they engaged? They were used on the flanks during major battles and actions and were not used in conjunction with line troops in the manner the French developed after 1763. Duffy is very explicit on this point in The Military Experience in the Age of Reason. You can also check the last chapter in Quimby's The Background of Napoleonic Warfare as a verification.

Gandalf,

Agreed.
Mistook you to mean "skirmishing was a French Napoleonic innovation".
Clearly, this is not the case.
As to the scale of "skirmishing", different matter entirely.

Re. Kolin, I was under the impression that Croats were "deployed" in advance of the main Austrian lines.
Exactly how, I am not sure.
Although, I would guess that entire battalions were not in open order, but that reserves would be formed?

My point is that even when "whole units" were used to "skirmish" there would be formed reserves. There is the notion that skirmishing was chaotic, unstructured and not at all formalised.

I would suggest that the use of formed reserves and the need to maintain control of your own light troops is applicable to all periods?

Mike.

Mike,
No, skirmishing wasn't a French innovation, nor were the use of light troops. However, the coordination of light troops/skirmishers/troops fighting in open order along with troops in formation and artillery definitely was. It was one of the ways the French experimented with in the 1770s in Normandy to find a way to beat the Prussian linear tactics.

Troops fighting in open order would usually be supported by troops in formation. Skirmishing might appear to be chaotic, but there was method in the apparent madness. The French 'method' was much more open and fluid than the other continental armies. The Austrians and Prussians were almost in lockstep when they were to do it and before 1806 the Prussian skirmishers were kept on a very short leash, as were the Austrians. Radetzky remarked late in the period that neither the Russians nor the Austrians could match the French in open order fighting(Scharnhorst said the same thing about the Prussians before 1806).

This was institutionalized in the French armies, and never became that way in the other continental armies. The British army after their experiments with light infantry was a completely different story as they understood what they were doing and what they had to face and that combined with Wellington's tactical ability was an excellent combination.

I can only assume Kevin missed Plate E in Terry's Warrior 57 on the Imperial infantry and the associated material. It is not the whole tactical approach as that is not what the book is about, but we are discussing skirmishing here. Oliver Schmidt looks at skirmishing in his Prussian Infantry Warrior.

The skirmishing debate is another one of these discussions where smaller changes are emphasised to suggest some kind of novelty French approach and thus a battle-winning tactic. The Austrian approach in the 7YW was to use Grenzers, light guns and Hussars to unsettle the Prussian line, so there is nothing new in the French approach of the 1770s.

The difference is more in terms of the French focusing more on the organic use of skirmishers from within the unit, rather than relying on separate light battalions. Nevertheless, we get the usual inconsistencies - the Grnezers were more regualted in the 1780s so that they could fight both a light and line troops, which damages their effectiveness, but when Nap reins in the legere battalions to fight also as line, this is some brilliant multi-skilled troops use. Nevertheless, the Austrian 1769 regs do envisage the use of the 3rd rank for various tasks, although not specifically as a skirmish screen. These and the 17993/4 hit squads develop from there, while the Austrian command is always asking for separate light battalions (hence the Freikorps).

The key is really that in Belgium, the French turned up in overwhelming numbers and thus, using a proportion of men as skirmsihers, they looked like they were using overwehelming numbers of skirmishers and though the defeats were down to numbers, some Austrian comamnders put them down to skrimishers. However, Duhesme recognsied the superiority of the (too few) grenzers and took his lessons from there. Austrian battalions could break down completely into skirmish order when required, but the comamnders trie dto limit this to stop them being unporepared for their main line job.

While Radetzky is one of those reformers, who says "the enemy is better than us, we must be like them", the French did have advantages of practice - either at Boulogne for 2 years or from being at war constantly. The Austrian 1807 reg thus tried to address this by providinga training manual to make an intelligent recruit into a skirmisher - of course this used to be cited as evidence that eth Austrians did not skirmish before then!

Dear Mr. Hollins,

Please refrain from using my name in any of your postings. I have asked you before, and you have ignored my requests. As I stated to you in March of this year, I would be more than happy to converse with you in a civilized manner, but since that is not possible, please refrain from using my name in your postings. I don't care for the way you talk to people with whom you don't agree.

For your information, I have missed nothing in the Osprey booklet to which you refer. I don't agree with it. It is not referenced, and since there is no official French reglement on skirmishing, it may or may not be correct. From all the work I have done on the French tactical system over the years, I believe the depiction to be incorrect. It is too formal and has more in common with the Austrian and Prussian methods than that of the French.

Your statement that 'The French and Austrian systems are explained in their respective Osprey Warriors' regarding the French system is therefore not correct by your own admission ('It is not the whole tactical approach as that is not what the book is about, but we are discussing skirmishing here'). A few paragraphs are in two of the booklets, but the 'system' is not explained unless I have missed something.

If you look closely at the three booklets in question, neither the French method for employing skirmishers nor their system is explained in full, though the author does explain quite well how they integrated skirmishers with troops in formed order, something they did first (see Duffy's The Militlary Experience in the Age of Reason).

Again, please leave my name out of your postings, unless you want to discuss things in a polite, gentlemanly manner without rancor.

Sincerely,
Kevin F. Kiley

I will not take lessons from someone, who has engaged in a bizarre campaign on Amazon against my work and the work of others for the past 6 years. Indeed, I now find both my artillery and generals books are flagged up by you - who have not read the relevant texts - as "handle with care!". Don't play the "poor little reasonable me" as it does not wash.

If you participate in a debate, you should expect your posts to be mentioned - you had made a factually inaccuarte claim and I recommend you read the caption to the plate, where Terry points out that there is no French army reg and so individual units had their own approaches, one of which he shows hooked up to my 1807 Austrian reg in Warrior 24. You might disagree with him, but when we are discussing skirmishing and the system is discussed, albeit we would all prefer greater detail. However there is a Plate on the specific point and that is not "an excellent description of how large numbers of skirmishers were constantly used".

Anyone who participates ina denbate can expect to have their points questioned or disputed.

Trojan Bunny
While trying to avoid the skirmishing between published writers. see above. go to a ruleset and check out what they write. Shako is fairly abstract and Elan uses figures to represent skirmishing for example. This will give you some ideas.
Can you guys knok off the arguing? I thought this site had a policy gainst flaming.

I was only pointing out that if you participate in a forum discussion, you cannot pick and choose who says what. Given the mythology surrounding the Nap period, it is also important that many claims, which are just secondary claims, should not pass unchalleneged - otherwise you guys might as well play fantasy wargames.