Those "Austrian" wargamers who have read this far in anticipation of "getting the word'' about the Austrian Army organizational strengths in 1812 are now going to be disappointed. There is ample information available about organization and about establishment strengths, which is all that NAO presents, and it does so accurately.
There is not available in this country any information on reported field strengths at the regiment/battalion level in the 1812 period or on either side of it. A review of the sources listed in NAO's Austrian bibliography does nothing to solve the problem. NAO referred to the "enigma" of the Russian Army. This writer believes that it would have been more appropriate to refer to the "enigma" of the Austrian Army.
So if NAO has missed its stated goal of setting forth average field strengths, what options are open to the Napoleonic war-gainers in organizing his units? It seems to this writer that there are several which should be examined. First, and perhaps most obvious, is the option of organizing all units of all countries, the Big Five and all others, at 100% of establishment strength. This is the most obvious because establishment strength information is available for almost everybody and it is easiest.
It is easiest because it involves very little balancing out between different national forces and very little in the way of calculation for what ever figures-to-historical strength ratio is chosen. It has a number of disadvantages also. The resulting units will be very large in terms of numbers of figures unless en extremely high ratio is chosen. Large units take up more space on wargaming tables already limited by arm-reach. Large units can also be extremely expensive to create in these days of ever-escalating figure costs.
At 1:20, it boggles the mind how long it might take the average wargamer to paint up a 45-figure British cavalry regiment or a 60-figure Austrian infantry battalion (and there are two to a regiment!) In sum the disadvantages of 100% organization seem to heavily outweigh the advantages, and to disqualify it as a workable option for most.
Another option would seem to be to attempt to accurately represent average field strengths from the information available in NAO, in this article, and from Ray Johnson's two Napoleonic Organization booklets. The advantage for the purist would be that the units on the wargame table would look like the units really looked, which was what NAO set out to accomplish in the first place. The units will be more manageable in size, depending on the representation ratio chosen, and more manageable from a dollar and paintingtime point of view.
But this option does have some problems. What do you do in those areas where hard information is not available, like French cavalry? When one starts making assumptions based on other information, as was previously suggested herein for French cavalry, then problems arise in having to maintain some sort of balance between various national Armies, if the game in which these units will be used is not to become unbalanced.
Another difficulty inherent in exercising the option to attempt to accurately reflect field strengths is what period of a campaign do you choose to represent? Is it to be the beginning of the campaign? Or will it be a period right before the first major engagement of the campaign, after attrition has taken place on the approach marches? Or will it be right after the first major battle of the campaign, in order to reflect both field service and combat attrition?
Are you sure you can find a good breadth of reported strengths for various nations at regimental, battalion and squadron level for the stage of the campaign you have chosen to represent?
Additional Difficulty
An additional difficulty in exercising this option is that of which year (or period of years) does one choose to establish historical average field strengths? As noted in this article, 1812 seems to be a poor choice because two of the "Big Five" nations -- Prussia and Austria -- were not at war.
In fact, there were precious few years during the 1809-1815 period when all of these five nations were at war at the same time. Under these circumstances, one finds oneself trying to compare field strengths of forces of one nation with establishment strengths of another nation.
Those establishment strengths may in fact be peace-time strengths with substantially larger strengths applicable when that national army is on a war-time basis. If this is the case, then one finds oneself back at the assumption stage, trying to equate national forces with various war (or non-war) postures on the basis of reasonable rational, and partly supportable assumptions.
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