With my grand tactical wargame based around a figure scale of 1:100, I have plenty of room for numerous different formations on my table. This is a big plus when it comes to painting – there is little opportunity to become bored with a regiment if you never need to paint more than a dozen figures. Perhaps the opportunity to paint such a diversity of figures is what led me to such a scale in the first place. There is a drawback of course. Sometimes, I wish to experiment with more tactical and even skirmish games. Then I find myself trying to match up small formations to make a larger one and somehow their appearance on the tabletop gives a feeling of unease that these formations are somehow "not historical". Perhaps there are others who feel the same. The good news is that there is plenty of precedent for hybrid formations.

Infantry

The grenadier battalions are certainly the most famous class of "hybrid". In the Prussian army, they were established on a regular footing drawn usually from two regiments. In times of stress, however, we see battalions formed from the remnants of other formations. Thus, after Kunersdorf, as Frederic searched around for troops, he formed new temporary grenadier battalions by combining the shattered remnants of others; to Finck, he gave Grenadier Battalion Ripp, formed from the survivors of Jung-Billerbeck and Lubath, and Grenadier battalions Stwolinsky, formed from the survivors of Ostenreich and Schwartz. In the Austrian army converged grenadier formations were constructed as and when necessary. If you wish to construct exotic hybrid formations, do not forget that the Grenzer Regiments also had grenadier companies. I have never seen any historical account of the Croat grenadiers from different regiments being combined in a single hybrid formation, but I certainly like the idea. It would produce a very colorful unit.

It is perfectly proper to have a high proportion of grenadiers in a small-scale game; such troops were frequently detached from the main body of an army for special duties and certainly saw more than their fair share of fighting. However, hybrid line formations were not unknown. When Prince Henry was conducting his campaigns in Saxony against heavy odds, he frequently found himself with his troops thinly spread defending an extensive position. Despite this, he also wanted to use his troops offensively. To withdraw even a single battalion from an extended line would either mean breaking the line or needing to carry out a complete re-deployment of his force.

Rather than do either of these, he formed "battalions of detachments" from all the units along the whole line. Such a formation could well mix musketeers, fusiliers and even the soldiers of garrison battalions, who were sometimes used in the field in the later years of the war. It is not clear to me how effective such battalions of detachments were; quite possibly they may have suffered a deficiency in morale by being separated from their parent formations. Opposing Prince Henry stood the Army of the Empire, with a rather different type of problem. Here the issue was not so much lack of troops as lack of good troops.

To solve this, I have noted several occasions where battalions of "volunteers" were formed for special duties, often to support the outposts or for raids. Presumably, these would indeed be volunteers taken from all the available units - on some occasions they were actually paid a bonus while on such service; my opinion is that their quality was probably superior to those of their parent formations. A battalion of Empire volunteers, with different coats as well as facings, would make a colorful, and authentic, addition to any wargame table.

One other hybrid formation is especially evident in chronicles of the Prussian army – convalescent battalions. When a base town, like Dresden, was under siege, the Governor would summon all he could from the hospital to aid the defense. Such a convalescent battalion could, of course, include dismounted troopers as well as ordinary infantrymen. During the siege of Dresden in 1759, the Prussian convalescent battalion participated in skirmishes in the suburbs as well as later garrisoning the Royal Palace. I do not doubt that other armies will have employed similar formations in time of crisis.

Another type of hybrid infantry formation is temporary battalion scale formations of recruits. A notable case here is the battalions of Prussian recruits marching to join their regiments in Moravia in 1758. They acted a part of the escort to the ill-fated convoy to the army besieging Olmütz. If you tend to think of recruits as troops of poor morale, read how those poor fellows fought.

Cavalry

In the Imperial and Royal Austrian army, the carabineer and horse grenadier companies were brigaded together as required in the same way as the infantry grenadiers. I cannot imagine a more colorful cavalry unit than that provided by the Austrian horse grenadiers.

Cuirassiers and dragoons, unlike infantry, were not used to hold ground in positional warfare. Thus the need for the Prussians to employ cavalry formations of detachments is less than with infantry. Hussars are a different matter. Because of their reconnaissance duties, these troops were often deployed in detachments. In time of crisis, they could be reassembled as a hybrid formation. After Kunersdorf in 1759, Finck took with him to Saxony 800 hussars from regiments Kleist, Puttkamer, Ruesch, Malachowski and Zieten – as colorful a formation as any could wish for!

The Army of the Empire had a different problem. Because of shortages of oats, the horses were often in very poor condition. To produce formations that could support the Austrian hussars and Croats in the field, we frequently see references to bodies of "German horse". These German horse were detachments drawn from all the cavalry regiments of the Empire Army based on the fitness of the horses for active service. Like the infantry "volunteers", the quality of the "German horse" detachments would probably have been superior to that of the parent formations. I anticipate that such formations were common in other armies of the period, especially towards the end of a campaign. Artillery The very idea of hybrid artillery units somehow seems absurd. With the exception of the Imperial and Royal Army, who boasted a Low Country as well as an Austrian artillery, each country had only a single artillery corps.

And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to see how silly my thinking had been. I had always felt puzzled that, when I added up the number of cannon with an army and multiplied it by the recommended crew strengths, I always seemed to end up with far more gunners than the strength returns of the army recorded. Even assuming that the regimental cannon were largely crewed by detached infantrymen, I was faced by a discrepancy. I ignored this problem, gritted my teeth and painted the requisite number of gunners that the textbooks recommended to service my Reserve artillery.

Another factor that had puzzled me was in the strength returns of cavalry regiments. Almost always, the number of men exceeded the number of horses – often by a significant number. What did the unmounted men do on the day of battle I mused – did they play cards?

The answer of course is so obvious when the two problems are juxtaposed in this way, but I had to visit the battlefield of Leuthen and ask Christopher Duffy the question! The unmounted cavalry assisted the Reserve artillery as matrosses – unskilled labor – and, of course, as horse-holders.

Now there is a dashing hybrid artillery unit of 12-pounders. Perhaps as little as one quarter of its strength were genuine artillerymen; the remainder would be a medley of dismounted cuirassiers, dragoons and hussars. Suddenly, those dull looking battery positions become a riot of color.

From an historical perspective, I have, of course, overstated the benefit to the appearance of the tabletop by the color introduced by using hybrid units; the reality of the smoke and mud of battle leaves little room for color in an authentic reproduction of an historical battle. Nevertheless, I freely admit that there is a point at which I happily depart from historical authenticity.

I hope that these observations will assist you in devising hybrid units with some flavor of historical authenticity about them and units that add color to your tabletop. If you have a favorite historically authentic hybrid formation, why not tell the Editor about it so that he can open a special "hybrid" corner.

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