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    Prussian Reserve, Militia & Irregular Troops 1806–15
    Prussian Reserve, Militia & Irregular Troops 1806–15
    Prussian Reserve, Militia & Irregular Troops 1806–15
    Ebook115 pages50 minutes

    Prussian Reserve, Militia & Irregular Troops 1806–15

    By Peter Hofschröer and Bryan Fosten

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    About this ebook

    Irregular, semi-regular and reserve formations comprised a substantial part of the armed forces at the disposal of the Prussian Army throughout the Napoleonic Wars, particularly during the campaigns of the Wars of Liberation, 1813-15. The scale of the uprising of 1813 required the mobilization of all available forces and the utilization of all available equipment, and meant that the Prussian Army of the Wars of Liberation was very much a patchwork affair. This book examines and illustrates the reservists (or Kruemper), the Freikorps and foreign units, and the militia who fought in the Prussian Army.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMar 20, 2012
    ISBN9781780965192
    Prussian Reserve, Militia & Irregular Troops 1806–15

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      Book preview

      Prussian Reserve, Militia & Irregular Troops 1806–15 - Peter Hofschröer

      image1

      Contents

      Introduction

      Reservists

      Freikorps and Foreign Units

      The Militia

      The Battle on the Goehrde, 16 September 1813

      Gneisenau

      The Plates

      Prussian Reserve, Militia & Irregular 1806–1815

      Introduction

      A substantial part of the armed forces at the disposal of the Prussian Army during the Napoleonic Wars, and in particular during the campaigns of the Wars of Liberation, 1813–15, consisted of irregular, semiregular and reserve formations. Most historians tend to see these formations as being born out of the necessity of the uprising of 1813; but it should be pointed out that plans for the formation of a militia had been laid before the cataclysm of 1806, and only the speed of the catastrophe which befell Brandenburg-Prussia prevented these plans being executed. Moreover, there was little new in the so-called ‘Kruemper’ system, supposedly invented by certain leading reformers to circumvent the restrictions placed on the size of the defeated Prussian Army by a victorious Napoleon. The use of irregular bodies of men to engage in guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines was a tradition in the Prussian Army; Frederick the Great had used such troops, various comparable units fought in the campaigns of 1806 and 1807, and further forces were raised to participate in the campaign of 1813. The use of so-called ‘foreigners’ in the Prussian Army has often been criticised; but even after the post-Jena reforms the necessities of war forced the Prussians to think again, and, as always, the ‘foreigners’ proved to be reliable troops. The uprising of 1813 was an act of great daring by a king whom history has often described as being timid and weak. All available forces were mobilised, and all available equipment was utilised. The Prussian Army of the Wars of Liberation was very much a patchwork affair.

      Stragglers making their way back to their depots and assembly areas after the defeats of autumn 1806. It was from among such men that the various Freikorps would be raised.

      Reservists

      The army of reservists built up in Prussia between 1807 and 1813 was known as the ‘Kruemper’. It was formed by dismissing a number of trained men at regular intervals and replacing them with raw recruits, thereby passing a large number of men through the ranks. Contrary to popular myth, neither the word nor the idea were novel. The word ‘Kruemper’ itself, related to the English ‘crimp’, and was first used in the days of Frederick the Great, eventually becoming the term which described those extra recruits taken on to cover unexpected losses. Moreover, as we shall see later, this system was introduced before the French enforced restrictions on the size of the Prussian Army, and was therefore initially not a clever scheme to get around these restrictions.

      A raid on a French supply train in the mountains of Silesia. The officer with his arm in a sling is Count Goetzen, the guerrilla leader. His men come from a mixture of units; to his rear are a grenadier, a musketeer and a fusilier.

      This system of training men and then putting them on furlough, building up a trained reserve, had its origins—as much else in the ‘reformed’ Prussian Army—in the days of Frederick the Great. The catalyst of such planning was the need for a larger army, but one that would not require any more expenditure of the limited resources of a poor agricultural economy like that of Brandenburg-Prussia. Before the Seven Years War, Frederick had built up a strong reserve in this way; but after such a strenuous war the extra manpower was needed on the land, so the idea was dropped for the time being.

      From 1787 the idea was taken up again, and a system of reservists developed in the years prior to Jena. Alongside such work went the planning of a militia for use in defending the fatherland and garrisoning the fortresses. It was planned to formalise this system; but as with so much else in the army at this time, lethargy ruled the day, and only when war loomed in 1805 did anyone take any action. As always, it was too little, too late. The basic idea was for each company to take on more men than it required every year, and then to put the same number on furlough, passing a greater part of the male population through the ranks and calling on them in time of war. Such a system clearly took years to become effective and, at this stage, time was not on Prussia’s side.

      After the defeat of the army in 1806, this idea was taken up again. On 31 July 1807, a few weeks after the conclusion of the Peace of Tilsit, Scharnhorst published a memorandum suggesting a way of training additional men without spending any more of the state’s limited funds. He estimated that in three years, a trained reserve of 17,000 men could be built up if every company put 20 men a year on furlough and took on 20 replacement recruits for training. Scharnhorst’s idea came from a Colonel von Below,

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