"1855 Crimea to 1877 Turkish War - where did the Jaegers go?" Topic

Asking the hive mind…In Crimean TO&E, each Division has a Jaeger Brigade and a Line Brigade (1:1 ratio). By 1877, there are no Jaegers at all, just a few independent Rifle brigades (typically armed with breech loading rifles while the grunts have muzzle loading ones).

Does anyone know where the Jaegers went, and roughly when?

(I am building a mid 1860's era Russian army to take on the European Great Powers and invade the USA).

Not necessarily enormously helpful, but the best I can manage. The following is from Chapter 2, Short Account of the Development of the Russian Land Forces in Captain J M Grierson's "The Armed Strength of Russia" (War Office, London, 1886),

Page 18 has a table showing the army at the beginning of the Crimean War, 6 Army Corps – 18 Divisions* (72 regiments), 6 Rifle battalions (*each 2 line and 2 rifle regiments).

Page 20 – "the army was … by the 1st January 1860 reduced to 624 battalions … The organisation in force up to the time of the Crimean Was was, however, retained."

"In the years 1862 and 1863 radical changes in the organisation of the Russian Army were made by the Emperor Alexander…"

"… in 1870, at the outbreak of the Franco-German War, the Russian Army consisted of: …". The table shows
40 Divisions of Line Infantry (160 Regiments) – 500 battalions
4 Guard, 4 Grenadier, 21 Line Rifle Battalions – 29 battalions.

Page 21
1870 – The 1st and 2nd reserve Rifle Battalions became active. The Rifles were organised in 1 Guard, 1 Caucasian and 5 Line Brigades, as at present, and the remaining 8 reserve Rifle Battalions became Line reserve battalions, giving 80 in all of the latter.

Page 22
1873-74 Brigades were formed in both Infantry and Cavalry Divisions. Hitherto the regiments had been directly under the Divisional Commander.

Page 23
1880 The armament of the Infantry with the Berdan rifle, begun in 1876, was completed.

Jaeger regiments were equipped much the same as Line regiments and their training was not much different either. This had been the case from the Napoleonic wars, though some regiments in that period do seem to have been able to act as light infantry. Effectively all infantry except the Guard and Grenadier were the same.
There were 20 men per Bn with rifles who were sharpshooters and supposedly trained to operate ahead of the Bn but even these were used rarely against most of Russia's adversaries in the east. It was felt that keeping the foot in close order made them safer from enemy horse or 'hordes' of undisciplined foot.
When the designation 'Jaeger' went I can't say but the change of name can't have had much effect.
The Berdan rifle was definitely used by Guard & possibly Grenadier units in the 1877 war but so many seem to have been manufactured and imported by 1877 that I'd wonder why some Line units didn't get them.

I suspect that the wholesale issue of rifle-muskets to all infantry after the debacle of the Crimean War led to a re-think of tactics.

And that in turn, led to the idea that infantry was just infantry and the old notional division between line and light infantry was no longer useful.