The Loose Association of Wargamers

.....which shows what a tedious life I must live.

OK, I've just finished my SYW Saxon-in-Prussian service SYW grenadier battalion. There's 4 bases of 4 figures each, loading and firing privates. There's a "command" base with officer, two musicians & a pike-armed NCO. All very nice; but what's missing? The chap carrying the flag because grenadier units didn't carry flags.

So in an army replete with flags - every other infantry unit, every cavalry unit - grenadiers don't get even one. So what's the point of the fancy table cloth nailed to a broomstick? Meant to inspire the troops? Meant to be a rally point? A decorative statement by the King's Interior Designer*? So, if these are valid reasons, why don't grenadiers qualify?

And these anomalies grow in the Napoleonic period; a period where I think Sharpe was lucky to even locate one in the enemy ranks.

Any thoughts?

donald


* if you know anything about Fred. such a post possibly existed.

It's this whole silly idea of converging companies to form a battalion. It's not a real battalion, so it doesn't have a flag. I think it's a foreign sort of thing.

The short answer is of course that as a composite battalion composed of companies from several parent battalions (albeit sometimes semi-permanently in some cases) , there was no unifying 'battalion identity.' Most SYW infantry battalion organisations only had 2 flags for the (typically) 8 line companies anyway, so there weren't many to spare,in any case.

That,said, Nic Robson from Eureka tells me that they produce 15mm SYW Grenadier flagbearers in their ranges because "wargamers expect a flagbearer figure' even though he knows that they didn't exist in real life, He's a canny Yorkshireman so recognises that it gets extra sales. So there are plenty of wargames out there who do want them.

Isn’t the idea of a battalion of Grenadiers being made up of converged companies from later?
It’s something I associate with the Napoleonic era.

Circa SYW, weren’t grenadiers still the titular descendants of actual units of bomb-flingers - no longer flinging bombs, but still units in their own right?

In the ECW, there were flags galore for the infantry, one per company, with perhaps 10 companies per regiment, the cavalry had a flag, but the dragoons,, being neither fish nor fowl generally didn't.

'Commanded shot', when stripped off from their accompanying pikemen usually left their flags with the pike stands, so there were earlier precedents.

Norm, the composite Grenadier battalion was pretty typical for the SYW, although there were exceptions.

There were also Horse Grenadier companies in some cavalry regiments, although they don't seem to have been formed into composite units in the same way.

Grenadiers and Lights were massed long before the Napoleonic Wars - every bugger (apart from the French and Spanish, I think?) was doing it in the SYW and the British were still doing it in the AWI. There is the odd British example from the Napoleonic Wars (e.g. in Italy and southern Spain; well away from Welly), but the Napoleonic Wars was generally when the British Army STOPPED massing elites.

During the SYW the Prussians had five flags per battalion, but for some reason there weren't any spare for the detached grenadiers... Yes, I've often wondered about that.

Two mitre-wearing Prussian grenadier units carried flags - IR6 'Garde-Grenadier-Bataillon' and III./IR 15 'Grenadier-Garde', so you do need a couple of such figures for a Prussian army.

Old Glory 15mm packs always had dozens of fecking grenadier standard-bearers, as well as officers wearing mitre caps. The average price of an Old Glory Prussian Grenadier figure was far more than AB figures, because you had to throw away about 25% of the figures in the bag!

The Prussian Grenadiers of 1806 were still not given flags, but the Grenadier Battalions did receive them after the 1808 reforms (they were essentially organised as permanent groupings from that point, anyway and became battalions of permanent Grenadier Regiments in 1814). The Austrian massed grenadier battalions also received flags (a spare Ordinarfahne) during the Napoleonic Wars. IIRC that was following the removal of one flag per infantry battalion in 1808ish, so they had lots going spare (loads also went to the Landwehr and Freikorps at that time).

I'm not convinced that the battalion or regimental flag did function as a battlefield rallying point. The thing would be difficult enough to see from any distance on a clear sunny day, let alone on a smoky battlefield when all about you people are losing their heads - figuratively and actually.

And, who runs towards the enemy looking for a rallying point? If this was the flag's purpose, surely it would need to be positioned some distance behind the unit when in action?

I suspect the flag indicates the units administrative position, from where orders can be received and disseminated.

My money is on the flag having nothing more than symbolic value to the men of the unit, such symbolism being less relevant to troops who already believe themselves to be elite.

I have a command stand, with flag, to use with my converged grenadiers in my SYW British army simply because I had the figures and wanted to use them. As I've remarked before, these are toys in a game and it bothers neither me nor my chums.

Penda wrote: ↑Sat Apr 04, 2020 7:40 pm I have a command stand, with flag, to use with my converged grenadiers in my SYW British army simply because I had the figures and wanted to use them. As I've remarked before, these are toys in a game and it bothers neither me nor my chums.

Indeed! But it is rather irritating, when buying packs of figures where it's impossible to pick out single figures, when you have to pay for unhistorical figures that will just go in the bin.