"Help with French troop quality in Russia 1812" Topic

Hi!

I'm quite new to Napoleonics, so I'm looking for some helpful pointers from you veterans for my current project. I'm painting up some French as my first 28mm Napoleonics minis, and loving it this far. For our first games we're looking to play some skirmishes in the start of the French invasion of Russia in 1812, using Sharp Practice 2.

Now, AFAIK the closest lists in Sharp Practice is one for the "Glory Years" (1805-07), and one for French forces in the Peninsular Wars. In the Glory Years list they are very good at practically most things, with good attributes across the board for infantry and cavalry, both for attributes related to manouvering, musketry and close quarter combat. On the other hand, the Peninsular list has them as pretty poor troops overall, with their line infantry not even able to perform controlled volley fire.

As I don't think either list really feel appropriate for the invasion of Russia, I want to make my own list, which SP supports. It sounds like fun! I also understand that you can easily argue that there's bound to be a range from supreme fighters to useless bums if you'd pick out a company of soldiers out of a 600 000 men strong army. However, I'd like to end up with a generalization that somewhat feels appropriate. That's why I'd love to hear some opinions on how you feel that the invasion army of 1812 measure up to those other two armies (1805-07 and Peninsular French).

My own limited reading on the subject suggests that they'd be somewhere inbetween. I've read that the cavalry was not what it used to be, especially as the army lost horses quickly in the campaign. I really want to add an option to field dismounted Dragoons, as I've understood that it became more common for them to be permanently underequipped with horses by 1812.

Another point that I've read is that the quality of troops was almost as good as in 1805, but that there was a lack of veterans compared to that period. This would mean that discipline and "elan" wasn't quite what it used to be. In this case, would it be reasonable to dock a bit in the attributes related to quickly get stuck in with the enemy (in SP terms, Step Out and Aggressive), but not make them necessarily that much worse at musketry than they were in 1807?

Anyway, I'd love to hear some ideas from people who have studied the French army more, and are able to compare its performance in different periods and theatres. Thanks!

It depends. Davout's I Corps would be pretty good, although the number of conscripts required to get that formation up to 70,000 would tend to dilute performance. Over half of the Grand Armee wasn't French. Performance among the French allies could vary wildly from motivated Poles to the reluctant Neapolitans.

Just raising 500,000 troops was sure to degrade the level of training and skill.

I couldn't agree more.

I'm thinking of instead of having one option for, say, line fusiliers, why not two? One representing regiments that managed to remain pretty solid from previous conflicts, and one for those that were more of a "battle of the barrel" kind of collection.

As far as the French allies goes, I'm leaving them out for now, but would love to explore them later on.

French 1st thru 3rd battalions – good troops especially from Davouts.
Legere units tended to hold up to good quality better than ligne.
The 4th battalions more conscripts and 5th and 6th worse yet.
Good allies: Wurttremburg, Duchy of warsaw, Baden, Hesse Dermstadt, prussian.
Not motivated: Saxon, Portuguese legion, most german duchies, etc.

Yes the "too green hay" in july that killed-effected much of the horses of the cav. The local replacements found were poor.

There should be some folks with much more research on this campaign who will hopefully chime in with more detail.

The big kicker for this campaign is the exhausting marches, constant harassment by cossacks and resulting neutralization of the superior skirmish ability of the french/Allies.

MG

Thanks for the great input marshalGreg! I have a rough draft for the French infantry now, will see if I get time to work on the horses tomorrow.

Davout got the best conscripts

With the enormous attrition/ desertion occuring, the effective quality of anyone left at Borodino must be quite good. Already seen the elephant well enough, same with training, and all those who wanted to run already had.
Suchet in 1813 said his Napolitans were amont his best as there for years and the one left really wanted to stay.

Might also be a difference between batalions numbers, 1-3 better than more recent 4-5.

Note that the worst French attrition was before Borodino. Way more troops were lost on the march into Russia before any snow fell. They out-marched their supplies and the Russian countryside couldn't support the huge forces.

The winter retreat killed off most of the hard cases that had survived the invasion.

On the way in there was a cholera epidemic as well.

Davout got the best conscripts

But wouldn't that just mean the biggest and healthiest at the start of the campaign. None of the conscripts would be experienced – by definition.

And I believe there must have been a massive expansion of the Jeune Garde as well. That would have creamed off a lot of conscripts.

Sharp Practice and all that kind of skirmish games allow you to play one or maybe two compagnies at best. You will not find many différences between men in a same company so I guess your troops quality vary with the scenario you play.

If you want variety, I suggest you play some combined units (''de marche'') escorting convoys along the line of communications. Then you can pick different soldiers from different corps and a variety of uniforms. Their opponents can be flying corps with a mix of line inf, hussars, Cossack and milicia.

By the way, skirmishing is not Napoleonic game :)

Hahaha good point Franck. At least skirmish gaming got me INTO Napoleonic collecting and painting, and soon I'll have enough miniatures to be a small part in a larger, "real", Napoleonic game. :P

Thanks for all the good pointers this far, it's nice to get confirmation that the quality would be quite diverse across the various units that you can rationalize some diverse list options.

@ setsuko
I have not played skirmish level games.
But what I would do is, if Franck is correct…
Have ratio of green to vetran/crack etc. infantry, within the companies of x , Y or Z based on the unit quality, with late & now depleted units ( sept/Oct/Nov units) having very little of these "green troops".
And not the color green LoL but in regards to experience.
Franck has the best plan overall and second that!

MG

My understanding is the same as jcfrog. At the start of the campaign the units were packed with relatively undertrained conscripts (though Davout's training regime has a fearsome reputation). By later in the campaign they were either battle hardened or dead. Also a think the cadre ratio was quite low at the start (companies at max. strength), but higher later, as attrition was inversely proportional to rank (the opposite of battle casualties).

So a company would have good cadres (even if many were recently promoted – their confidence would be high), but with quite a number of raw recruits. And the veteran privates were the ones not deemed worthy of promotion, but, presumably, good at survival skills.

Not sure how that works in Sharpe Practice, but you can make quite an interesting challenge out of it.

Davout got the best conscripts

Not necessarily. The Young Guard got the pick of the annual conscription. And it should be noted that Young Guard battalions were small and their cadres were from the Old and Middle Guards.

Having a percentage of conscripts in the ranks of a unit does not necessarily lessen the efficiency of that unit. That's up to the unit commander and how he trains and commands his unit.

Davout's corps in 1806 was made up of one-third conscripts and in 1812 Davout's I Corps consisted of veteran units which had not been committed to Spain, just as they did in 1809. There were exceptions of course, but the I Corps was still considered the best in the army on a par with the Imperial Guard.

Recent digs found out tens of 1000 maybe up to 100000 actually settled in Russia, did not die but became POW or just settled in villages.

I don't think you could consider the Saxon cavalry as 'not motivated'.