"Battalion Strengths in Oman's History of the Peninsular War" Topic

Reposting this because "the bug" got my first attempt.

Two quick questions as I look to build further armies for the Peninsular War.

1) Do the strength numbers given in Oman count just the rank-and-file, or do they include Officers/musicians/etc. Does this differ from one nation to another?

2) For British units that split out their Light and Grenadier companies into converged battalions, do the parent battalions numbers still count them?

Tertiary question, does anyone know if the numbers on the wonderful Rod MacArthur's website are generally counting officers or not as well? He seems to have summarized a lot of the data I want to trawl through Oman for, but it's hard to know which are just rank-and-file number and which aren't.

Thanks!

In general Oman's appendices more often than not show officers & other ranks in separate columns for the British and allies. However for the French & their allies that is often not the case – just an aggregated total.

For the French forces in Spain, you can compare Oman's numbers with the "états de situation" (which in the column "présens sous les armes", as far as I know, give the strength of men who are receiving pay).

They have all been scannned by enthousiasts and are available here:

tablasmartinien.es

Scroll down to "Documentos" and follow the link estados de situación.

A sample page here (15 october 1810):

Superb find Oliver!

Very well done. Must add that site to my links.

Ian

Wellington hardly ever converged grenadiers. Oman lists everyone separately for Maida, I think, where there are converged grens, converged lights and flankers.

And I don't think he has any converged lights as separate maneuvering units. Technically they're "converged" in the field in that someone has command of all the brigade's light companies, including the usual attached rifle/Brunswicker or whatever company, but they're never out of sight of the parent unit. Oman lists the line battalions--as noted, usually officers and other ranks--and the attached rifles separately, so I don't see where the light companies could be except in the battalion totals.

We seem to be getting a lot of queries about converged British elites in the Peninsula lately. Purely out of curiosity, is a particular rule set driving this? And if so, which one?

Swammeyjoe,

The numbers on my website depend on the context. Established strengths usually show Rank & File (ie Corporals and Privates) separately to Officers,Sergeants & Drummers, although different Nations showed this differently. Average figures in the field are invariably "All Ranks".

If you let me know which chart or table you are looking at, I can clarify it.

Rod

Thanks for all the responses, folks. Taking them one by one.

@Rod, I dropped you a message via your contact page as well, feel free to ignore that now. Specifically I was looking at the "Battalion Field Strengths during the Napoleonic Wars" page. Table 4 about the British, as well as tables 2 and 3 about French and Spanish.

@Oliver, wonderful, thanks for the info.

@PrinceOfEssling, good point, I was looking at the data about the Spanish army when I posted this, but the British data does seem split out.

@Robert, can't say there's a set of rules driving my question. I was tossing around ideas for a ruleset based on two bases to a battalion, but wanted to validate what sort of ground scales that would imply before I dove in further. As for the other point, I knew the light companies got combined quite often, but did not know for sure about the grenadiers. I realize now that I can probably check if the given table in Oman includes references to the combined companies and extrapolate from there.

Thanks!

For the Spanish breakdowns by officers & other ranks go with "Estados de la organización y fuerza de los ejércitos españoles beligerantes en la península, durante la guerra de España contra Bonaparte"
link

Swammyjoe,

In the article on my website on "Battalion Field Strengths during the Napoleonic Wars", Table 1 shows established strengths of officers, soldiers and totals. The other tables show average field strengths of all ranks.

Rod