"Chasseurs des montagnes" Topic

Does anyone have an opinion on these fellows:

link

If you had to rate them using Empire classes, what would they be?

I have some spare revolutionary era grunts that I am going to paint up, largely because they're going to be easy to quickly paint and mount: 90% of this can be handled with a brown spray. Should fit in for a Peninsular battle. I was inclined to consider them just regular line or conscript, but perhaps they deserve better?

That's a tough one. Although they were probably good at what they did, they shouldn't be able to stand in a line and shoot it out with regulars. So I'd probably call them Conscript/Conscript (or veteran) with a very good skirmish rating.

They were a bit sub standard compared to the regular line units. Big trouble with desertion.

I'm leaning toward Regular, with a Good unformed rating (using Revolution &Empire ratings). Regular was "bottom of the barrel" rating for legere in Spain 08-12. That "Good" is better than typical, but it would reflect experience scouring hillsides.

I know about the desertion problem, but figured the tabletop representation would be the best since they hung around. But it is hard to develop some cohesiveness or skill with a big turnover, so the Conscript rating.

Fred VIetmeyer classified them as militia light infantry for column line and square. I have two battalions of them organize that way.

As I understand it, the Chasseurs de Montagne were never intended to face regular soldiers in battle. To put it in modern terms, they were more of a paramilitary force for combating guerillas, bandits, and smugglers. If you insist on putting them in the line of battle, then I would second Bobgnar's classification.

Yup,mall true- Gendarmarie weren't,neither, but sometimes they did. Thanks for all the suggestions, they will be very helpful.

Funnily enough, I acquired some revolutionary French figures in bicorne, and decided to do exactly the same thing. Not yet painted but I was going to use them as basically poor quality regulars.