The Minor States of the Confederation of the Rhine: Deployment

The Minor States
of the Confederation
of the Rhine

Deployment

by Peter Kessler, UK

For the first three years of their lives the regiments kept their heads down in a Central Europe lacking in internal wars (at peace is probably too strong a phrase to use). By the time of the 1809 campaign against Austria, all three regiments were as fully manned as they were ever likely to get, and were sent to Donauwörth on the Danube to be brigaded with a Nassau contingent as so:

Corps de Maréchal Davout

They formed part of the Vienna garrison from 22nd June to 21st October 1809. After the declaration of peace the entire division was sent to Spain to reinforce Augereau in Catalonia (north east Spain), and attached to Rouyer's Division at Barcelona. In March 1810 the formation consisted of the following:

VII Corps commanded by Maréchal Augereau

Whilst in Spain they, like most of the German contingents, retained their code of conduct and discipline under the extremely adverse conditions the occupation caused, whilst all those around them conducted a brutal and mercilessly bloody campaign. Much of this was initially caused by Napoleon's policy of forcing his armies to live off the land, but once things got going, increasing bitterness set in on both sides amid an escalating cycle of violence. Still, even for the well-behaved Germans, casualty rates were high, with more men dying as a result of disease than at the hands of the enemy.

The Rheinbund units were charged with the task of protecting the French lines of communication against the Spanish forces in Catalonia under General O'Donnell. He was conducting a guerrilla operation aimed at breaking those communications between the French III and VII Corps and then destroying the Corps in detail, the only way the ragtag remnants of the Royalist army had a hope of defeating their enemy.

On 19th March 1810, Augereau sent General Schwarz's brigade to the remote Spanish town of Manresa, which was a flourishing gunpowder manufacturing centre. The brigade was ordered to occupy the town and destroy its production capability. Two days after receiving their orders, the brigade reached and occupied the near-deserted town, only to find thousands of guerrillas filling the hills around them, outnumbering them by around six-to-one. The Germans settled in for a siege.

Four days later, on the 25th, a French ammunition convoy and a battalion of the 67th de Ligne fought their way through and arrived (mostly) intact after being rescued by the Nassauers. After the French battalion left and was destroyed on an attempted repeat mission, the survivors convinced Marshal Augereau that Schwarz's force was lost. In fact, Schwarz had quite wisely decided to get out of town, and his command slipped out on the night of 4th/5th April, the alarm being raised as they hurried away. As the guerrillas followed close behind, they were forced to fight and march for a solid twenty-four hours through the blazing heat of a Spanish day before arriving at the safety of St Andres, where they made camp. The next day, the battered heroes of Schwarz's brigade marched into Barcelona with bands playing.

Losses for this action were high; the Nassauers lost 405 men and officers dead, wounded, missing or captured, while the 4th Rheinbund-Regiment lost 353 in all. After a swift tidy-up and the arrival of some reinforcements, the same units saw action at Tarragona in 1811. By this time, Napoleon was cheerfully preparing his jaunt into Russia, and the Rheinbund units returned north to contribute towards the reformation of the Grande Armée. At the start of the campaign, in August 1812, the units were brigaded together as usual:

XI Corps commanded by Maréchal Augereau

By the time the Russian campaign ended, it is doubtful that there was much left of these units, and for the short time they remained with the French in 1813 they are not mentioned in any orders of battle I have. I suspect that they were given garrison duty, protecting Napoleon's fragile lines of communication through increasingly hostile German lands. By the end of the year, with fervent Nationalism gripping the people, the titular heads of the many Rheinbund states had thrown in their lot with the Allies and the Rheinbund formations were disbanded prior to wholesale reorganisation. Their newly raised replacements took part in the 1814 campaign and won a place in the Anhalt-Thuringian Brigade of The North German Army of 1815.

Confederation of the Rhine Continued

Introduction

Organization

Uniform and Flags

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com

The Minor Statesof the Confederationof the Rhine

Deployment

The Minor States
of the Confederation
of the Rhine