"Find your ancestors in Napoleonic War Records 1775 - 1817" Topic

Of possible interest?

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Also….

Find your ancestors in Waterloo Roll Call, 1815

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Amicalement
Armand

Wring side🤓

Same as above. Find me something from France or the Kingdom of Italy.

All my people were already in America.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

It sucks, I need France :-(

"Lose My Past" are a national disgrace. Large chunks of the National Archives were sold off to these charlatans who have absolutely butchered the records with their appalling database and highly flawed search engine. As a result, they have effectively lost countless records – and they have the nerve to charge you for the privilege!

I find the whole situation too depressing for words – I have tried to raise it with the PRO but in the end I decided to just let it go. Sadly I believe it would take too much time for me to pursue, time I would much rather spend actually doing primary research at Kew.

I know that my ancestor was at Waterloo, but nothing comes up when I tried a search.

French ….

If you are looking for someone in particular, post the info that you have and I can try to find him.
If you like searching, here are a few resources that I have used.

digitized matricules (by unit, does not include officers) :
"Les sous-séries GR 20 YC et GR 21 YC dont on trouvera ici la reproduction numérique recensent les sous-officiers et la troupe de la garde impériale et de l'infanterie de ligne pour la période 1802-1815"
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the above matricules indexed and searchable (partially complete) :
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digitized dossiers of members of the Légion d'honneur (typically does *not* include non-French, general offocers and those who were killed or disappeared in action) :
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chevaliers of the Ordre de Saint-Louis 1814-1830 (complete, I think) :
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Medaille de Saint-Hélène (partially complete – this medalwas given to any veteran of the military of the 1st Empire who was alive in 1857 and applied for it)
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For officers there were various listings by unit and/or senioity called "état militaire" :
army overall : 1789, 1793, 1802, 1804, 1819, 1820
artillery : 1805, 1811, 1815
génie : 1808, 1825

A website which has collected and digitzed many "contrôles" of various regiments (and other resources) – most of the data is about officers, there is little or no pattern as to what is or is not included, several different methods of data presentation, etc., etc. – so the site is *not* easy to operate
ancestramil.fr/terre.html

Large and (slowly) growing list of detailed regimental histories (lots of officer information, some on sous-officers and soldats, lots of uniform information):
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There is also quite a bit of free transcriptions of the "actes" recording aperson's "état-civil" (birth, marriage, occupation, death) – varies by départment, often incomplete, sometines just a "tease" to get you to buy access behind a paywall (of which be very wary – often all you get is from books that you could have found online yourself).

"Lose My Past" are a national disgrace. Large chunks of the National Archives were sold off to these charlatans who have absolutely butchered the records with their appalling database and highly flawed search engine. As a result, they have effectively lost countless records – and they have the nerve to charge you for the privilege!

I find the whole situation too depressing for words – I have tried to raise it with the PRO but in the end I decided to just let it go. Sadly I believe it would take too much time for me to pursue, time I would much rather spend actually doing primary research at Kew.

This one totally passed me by, Lord Hill. What happened? Why were any records sold in the first place?

I know that my ancestor was at Waterloo, but nothing comes up when I tried a search.

Aussie Andy, give me your man's name and I'll look him up on my database.

Whirlwind – Many of the records held by the Public Record Officer were given to "Lose My Past" so that they could sell them as part of their ancestry business. The latter's search engine is so amateur and riddled with errors that it makes finding most individuals almost impossible.
So, members of the public are paying Lose My Past to find their ancestors, entering the name, and finding nothing (because the search engine is so ****). Many of the records have also been muddled up so that if you try to call up the record of, say, Private John Smith you actually get the record of Private Peter Jones (or whatever). The whole thing is a criminal shambles.