"Spanish Infantry Regiments" Topic

Hi

In the army building section of the Blucher rules, Sam has three types of Spanish Infantry, i.e. Regular Infantry, Provisional Infantry and Militia. I am presuming that Spanish Infantry Regiments were similarly divided into Regular, Provincial and Militia infantry regiments. Now I have a list of line infantry regiments but they are not divided into 'regular' and 'provincial' regiments. Does anyone know where I can find out which were which? Is it simply the name of the regiment, i.e. if it is named after a province e.g. Cordoba, it means its a 'provincial' regiment, otherwise it is a 'regular 'regiment?

Grateful for any help with this.

Cheers Paul

Your best bet is to look at individual battles for the OOB. Oman is fairly exhaustive. The line regiments are fairly finite and you can find several lists for these. Just about anything on the oob that isn't on the list of line is probably provisional. As for quality, the line are not really that much better than the provisional troops but exceptions both ways abound depending on tthe year and leadership.

While Oman is useful – more recent research shows he was not 100 per cent correct (on the OoBs and on the Portuguese Army….).
Your best bet is to go to link which lists all of the Spanish infantry regiments by type in each individual year (from 1717 to 1973). Lists are in pdf format.

Prince of Essling

Wow! Excellent resource! I wasn't aware of its existance. Thanks for sharing it!

For the Spanish infantry you have the following…

1. Guard Infantry regiments
2. Foreign Infantry regiments (e.g. Swiss)
3. Line infantry (often connected to a town or province)
4. Marine Infantry
5. Provincial Militia and Provincial Grenadiers (these had been embodied for some time due to the Royal Navy attacking the coast and were reasonably trained by 1808).
6. Other Militia and units hastily formed after 1808.
7. Light Infantry battalions
8. Tercios de Tejas

I don't have the Blucher rules so here is my best guess…

1 and 2 I would count as Regular or slightly better.
3 and 4 as Regular.
5 as Provincial
6 as Militia
7 and 8 would be some sort of light infantry. They were good at skirmishing but less useful on the battlefield where they needed to work with other unit types.

I have some info on Spanish Napoleonic armies on my web site…

littlewars.se/spanish/index.html

Hope this helps
Keith

Also see the Orders of battle for the Spanish & other participants in the Peninsular War "Estados de la organización y fuerza de los ejércitos españoles beligerantes en la península, durante la guerra de España contra Bonaparte"

link

I'm not familiar with the rules, but my guess would be that Regulars would be the units of the existing army at the time of the French invasion. The Provincials could be the units raised by the Provincial Juntas after the fall of the Central Government?