In the last issue (Volume X Issue No. 4) of this journal, I provided an outline for the breakdown of troops by nationality in Prince Ferdinand's allied army as an example of how to organize a wargaming army. A number of readers wrote to me and told me that they found this information to be quite helpful. Evidently, quite a few of us are over-weighted with British battalions in our Western Theatre allied armies. There were several requests for a similar treatment of the French army. With that in mind, I've endeavored to construct an order of battle for the French army operating in Western Germany during the SYW.

The following order of battle ("OB") is based on the Army of the Lower Rhine in 1758, commanded by the Comte de Clermont. The source of this information is found in a book titled, The French Army in the Seven Years War, by Lee Kennett (Duke University Press, 1967). The book has a fold out page depicting all of the infantry brigades (6 battalions) and cavalry brigades (6 squadrons) in Clermont's army. If you wish to organize your French army around this OB, then you can consult Kennett and choose specific infantry and cavalry regiments for your wargame army.

At the present time, however, I am more interested in the composition of Clermont's army, rather than the roster of specific regiments of horse and foot. I counted the individual regiments and came up with an army consisting of 102 infantry battalions, 121 squadrons of cavalry, 74 field guns and 6 mortars. Operating under the assumption that each battalion of infantry averages 720 men, while squadrons of cavalry average 178 men, I arrived at a total of 73,440 infantry and 21,538 cavalry, for a grand total of 94,978. I then assumed that artillerists, engineers, general officers and other army support personnel added up to 5,022 men, for a grand total of 100,000 men in Comte de Clermont's army. On a percentage basis, this gives us an army having 75% infantry, 20% cavalry and 5% artillery and other supporting troops.

How then, can one apply this information to the tabletop? In my own SYW French army, I decided to field 20 elements of horse and foot. Using the above percentages, this would indicate an army having 4 elements of cavalry (20%), 15 elements of infantry (75%) and a company of artillerists (5%). I am using a figure to man ratio of 30 to 1, so a French infantry battalion of 720 men would be represented by a battalion having 24 figures. Likewise, a two-squadron regiment of French cavalry would have a nominal strength of 356 men, or 11 figures at a 30 to 1 ratio. Thus a French regiment of horse could be 11 or 12 figures. If we round up to 12 figures per cavalry regiment, then something rather nifty occurs. And that is, that 2 regiments of horse total 24 figures, or the amount that I am using in an infantry battalion.

If we are trying to keep the cavalry strength at 20% of the entire army, and we know that the cavalry units are smaller than the infantry units, then it becomes obvious that 4 elements of cavalry will be substantially less than 20% of the army, in terms of roster strength, even though it represents 20% of the number of elements on the table. To keep the correct proportion of men and horse, I assume that an element is comprised of 24 figures. Thus, one battalion of 24 infantry equals two twelve figure regiments of cavalry. So I really need 8 regiments of cavalry (4 elements of 24 figures times 2 equals 8 units of twelve figures) in order to keep the proper balance.

As for the artillery, I have one element of 24 figures remaining to fill out my roster (i.e. 4 horse elements of 24 equal 20% of the army, 15 infantry elements of 24 equal 75% of the army, and 1 element of 24 artillerists equals 5% of the army). With respect to the artillery, my standard basing is four artillerists per gun casting. So 24 divided by 4 equals 6 possible gun castings. If I want to add light regimental guns to some of my infantry battalions, these typically employ 2 crew figures, so I could take one crew of four figures manning a field piece and allocate them to two regimental guns. This will give me more than 6 gun castings, but the total number of artillerists will still add up to 24 figures. It's your choice.

In my French army, I decided to use 4 field pieces (one 12-pdr. and three 8-pdrs.) and split the remaining two crews into 4 light regimental guns. I should point out that Kennett's roster lists the following artillery ordnance in Clermont's army: six 12-pounders, 12 8-pounders, 56 4-pounders, and 6 mortars, for a total of 80 guns. At first glance, I assumed that this meant that Clermont only had 18 field guns (the 12-pdr and 8-pdr pieces) and that all of the 4-pounders were regimental guns.

Then I remembered Ingo Beringer's article in Vol. X No. 4 (Guns and Brigades at Hastenbeck) and decided that these were the same "long-barreled 4-pounders" that he referred to in his article. These were cumbersome pieces weighing about 1,000 pounds. By comparison, the Austrian 3-pounder weighed 430 pounds and the Prussian 3-pounder weighed 450 pounds, according to Kennett. I suppose that some of the guns in my field ordnance should be long barreled 4-pounders, but for now, they will be regimental guns. Infantry composition: again, using Kennett as a guide, I counted the individual battalions in Clermont's army and came up with 66 battalions of French, 24 battalions of foreign troops, and 12 battalions of grenadiers. So roughly two-thirds of the infantry should be French line, about 20 to 24% should be foreign troops, and the remaining 10 to 12% should be grenadiers. The foreign contingent in Clermont's army included 9 battalions of Swiss, 9 battalions of Palatine troops, and 6 battalions of Austrians. So my army of 15 infantry elements should have 10 elements of French line infantry, 1 to 2 battalions of grenadiers, and 3 to 4 battalions of foreign troops (preferably Swiss in red coats and Germans in cornflower blue coats). I settled on a final composition of 10 French line battalions, 2 Swiss battalions, 1 German battalion, 1 grenadier battalion, and 1 battalion of light infantry.

OOB

So by using Kennett's OB for the Comte de Clermont's army of the Rhine in 1758, I was able to draw up the following 20 element roster for my wargame army:

French Line Infantry 10 battalions
Swiss Infantry 2 battalions
German Infantry 1 battalion
Grenadiers de France 1 battalion
Volunteers de Clermont (light infantry) 1 battalion
Total Infantry 15 battalions of 24 figures (360 total figures)

Cavalry:

Heavy Horse Regiments 6 regiments of 12 figures
Light Dragoon Regiments 1 regiment of 12 figures
Light Hussar Regiments 1 regiment of 12 figures
Total Cavalry 8 regiments of 12 figures (96 total figures)

Artillery:

12-pounders 1 gun (4 crew)
8-pounders 3 guns (4 crew)
4-pounders (regimental) 4 guns (2 crew)
Total Artillery 8 guns (24 crew)

After looking at the above roster, I will probably add one more unit of light infantry in order to give me 16 infantry battalions. This number is easily divisible by 4, so that I can field infantry brigades of 4 battalions. The cavalry regiments will be brigaded into brigades of two regiments, for a total of 4 cavalry brigades. I would imagine that a single player could command two cavalry brigades or one infantry brigade without any difficulty. With four infantry brigades, I could assign one field artillery piece per brigade and one regimental gun per brigade. I think that I rather like the symmetry of this setup. Très siécle dix-huitieme!

As of the first week of October 1999, my western French army is progressing quite nicely. To date, I have 9 battalions of infantry based, with three more in transit from Dennis Smail, my painter for this project. Dennis has also completed five regiments of cavalry. The French cavalry will be comprised exclusively of RSM figures, except for a single regiment of Cuirassiers du Roi, for which I will use Front Rank figures. The infantry is a mixed bag of RSM, Old Glory and Front Rank figures.

These individual ranges work together OK as long as you keep one brand of figures in the same battalion, otherwise, some of the Front Rank officers would be too chunky for RSM battalions, etc. Actually, we have used some Old Glory officers in some of the RSM battalions, without upsetting the visual effect of the regiment. Hopefully, the Western Theatre French project will be completed by the end of 1999. After that, I will tackle the rest of Prince Ferdinand's army, as outlined in Volume X, Issue No. 4.

More From The Veranda of Sans Souci

Introduction
Western Theatre SYW Project: Les Francaises
Book Alert
Free the Foundry Russians!

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