"Danish Light Infantry units." Topic

Does anyone know if Danish light infantry units had/carried colours during the Napoleonic wars? Particularily the 1801-1808 period.

I'm not sure if I want them to, or not!

You know you do. That is why you asked. We all do. That is why we ignore the facts and give every unit flags, eagles, standards……mounted, foot or on sleighs/skis.

It looks so good. Bit like full dress on the battlefield

… I do have a spare Danish standard bearer, but I like to lean towards authenticity!

I am with you spontoon. Sorry that I can't help though.

Do a search on TMP for Danish Napoleonic uniforms and you will find a whole series of topics. One of them talks all about flags.

Almost certainly not; I have never seen a reference to a flag for any of the Danish Light Infantry units, none of which were regiments. Since I did my series of blog posts on the Danish Army of the Napoleonic Wars

link

which includes a lot of flag information, I obtained a copy of "Den Danske Haer i Napoleopnstiden 1801 -1814", which has black and white drawings and descriptions of almost all of the flags of the Danish Army – even the Landwehr. Between knowing English and German and on line translation, I can make sense of most of it when needed. No Light infantry flags are even mentioned.

On the other hand, if you wanted to give them one, I'd be last one to object!

If you did, I'd use use the ones based on the Danebrog (White cross on a red field), with the royal monogram in the corners – "C7" for the time frame you're talking about. That design was pretty near universal for the 1st color of the infantry regiments.

Peter

Gonsalvo is right, I have checked with the book he is referring to (which I can read – Norwegian and Danish written Languages are very similar), a couple of Norwegian books on the Norwegian Army which had more or less identical regulations, as well as the Norwegian Defence Forces Museum's digital archive where they have several flags used in the Napoleonic Wars of 1808 and 1814 link . Flags for the light forces are not mentioned in any of the sources I have consulted, so I think we have to conclude that they had none. It is also quite logical as they were used exclusively as skirmishers and for screening, raiding and reconnaisance.

In Denmark, each of the 14 line infantry regiments had 2 Battalions with 5 Companies each (the regiment totalled 1690 men all ranks including regimental staff). Until 1803 each bn had 1 grenadier coy and 4 musketeer coys (each coy 3 officers, 9 NCOs, 3 tambours, 1 fifer, 2 sappers, 12 sharpshooters, 136 privates).
The grenadier coy had a Dannebrog flag and the others had one regimental flag per 2 musketeer coys. The regimental flags were either in the regimental facing color or white as two regiments with the same facing color would be brigaded – one regiment with regimental colored flags and the other regiment with white flags.

From 1803 the 1st Bn had 1 grenadier coy and 4 musketeer coys; the 2nd Bn had 1 Jaeger (Chasseur) coy, amalgamated from the sharpshooters in the regiment, instead of the grenadier coy. These Jaegers, however, had no flags and were armed with a special "sharpshooter" musket – the Skarpskyttergevaer M1789 (not a rifle).
After the defeat in 1807, the militia (Landvaern) was disbanded and the younger soldiers amalgamated to create two reserve battalions exstra for each line regiment. The reserve bns had 1 Jaeger coy and 4 musketeer coys each, i.e. no grenadiers. The Jaeger coys integrated in the line regiments were not THE light forces, but rather skirmishers for the line regiments.

THE light infantry in the Danish Army (I can provide info on the Norwegian Army in another post) were rifle armed battalions, consisting of 4 coys each. They were dressed in short tailed dark green jackets with black fronts and grey trousers. Round hats without the up-turned brim on the side until 1808, when a black shako was introduced. Until 1808 the trousers went down to the shoes, but after that black boots to underneath the knee were introduced. All leather straps/belts were black. The jackets had straw yellow lacing on collars, cuffs and rear pockets. Shoulder straps were dark green for all, but with different colors for each corps/bn. They were:
- Sjaellandske Jaegerkorps (white lace on shoulder strap, white buttons, silver cramp for fastening the green feather on the hat).
- Slesvigske Jaegerkorps (yellow lace and buttons, golden cramp)
- 1. Sjaellandske Battalion Light Infantry (no lace, white buttons, white cramp)
- 2. Sjaellandske Battalion Light Infantry (black lace, white buttons, white cramp)
- Sleswig- Holstenske Battalion Light Infantry (no lace, yellow buttons and cramp)
- Kongens Livjaegerkorps (Kings Life Jaeger Corps) (no lace on the jacket at all, they wore a special 6-sided black czapka with green feather, cordon and cokarde, black hussar boots, probably armed with muskets and grenadier sabres differently from the other light battalions).

Except for the Livjaegerkorps, from 1810 the jacket was grey with 3 rows of buttons, much like the hussar uniform, with horisontal dark grey lace between buttons. The officers were equipped with hussar-like grey pelisses during winter time.

If you need the facing colors and flag colors of the line regiments, let me know.