Wargames being games of numbers, the question of average strengths seems to furnish unending grist for the mills of discussion and argument between gamers and statisticians. However, the quest for historical accuracy often tends to bog down the rational approach. We quickly lose perspective.
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To my mind, those long discussions over average strengths and their derivatives can easily be settled among the players at game time as a function of what figures are available and whether they want to play a long or short game. Obviously, a four figure battalion will reach "critical mass" quicker than an eight figure formation and will thus necessitate its removal from the firing line.
In order to do this with some rhyme and reason, to assess units properly and predetermine the critical masses for different times of the Empire, a gamer should know a great deal more than what can be gleaned from an order of battle, no matter how detailed and valuable this may be.
A battalion of 1,000 men, on paper, will be twice as strong as another of 500 men. When looking through Foy's memoirs (often quoted by Oman) we will find such outfits side by side -- but how deceiving mere numbers can be! On the one hand, we have a provisional battalion, scraped together and bloated beyond paper strength with green conscripts, led by newly promoted and inexperienced cadre, on the other we have a lean depot battalion, where better than half are veterans, with 75% of the officers and noncoms old "troupers."
To a soldier "in the know", this bit of intelligence already reduces the paper advantage of 2:1 to about 1.5:1. And knowing what a killer forced marches are for young soldiers, the 1,000 man conscript battalion will probably have lost 20% of its strength at the end of a 300 mile march (more if the weather is bad), while our depot battalion will have dropped maybe 5%. Which means that upon arrival in the operations area, the 2:1 paper advantage of a couple of weeks ago will have shrunk to even.
Exaggeration?
If you feel this is an exaggeration, take the case of the Grand Army of 1812. By the time the French conscript regiments reached Smolensk, they were on average, down 40% and had yet to hear the first shot fired! Nor was this an isolated case -- Spain, for instance, provided a constant non-combat drain.
In 1813, one of Napoleon's (what military historians long liked to call) grave errors in concluding a cease fire with the Russians and Prussians when he had them against the wall, no longer looked so erroneous when the true situation is brought to light by latter day researches. The facts were that despite his victories at Gross Goerschen and Bautzen, his army was falling apart. More than 30,000 of his young conscripts were in hospitals from other than combat causes. At the same time, he was facing an outnumbered but tough opponent who had yielded no prisoners, no trophies and no guns. Thus the casualties of the victors were higher than those of the defeated!
For these and other reasons, statisticians should be wary of constructing too much on the given unit strengths of a given order of battle which reflected matters only as they prevailed on a particular day. At the time of the armistice, for example, Napoleon was still waiting for most of his replacements 20% of which never did reach the operations area. Orders of battle are useful only to those who know how they came into being and what stood behind them.
There is a substantial credibility gap between what the casual reader of military history and the wargamer deems essential and how a battalion commander of those times saw things when the balloon was about to go up. In order to come to grips with this gap, one must start with the basics.
Armies are like living organisms and as such, they are subject to constant change in troop strength levels, be this in terms of aggregate army strengths or individual units. One must make important distinctions between the army as a whole and the basic tactical units, the squadrons and battalions. To keep this article at a reasonable length I will emphasize only the infantry arm -- the same applies only more so to the other arms.
Table of Organization
Essentially, the French armies of the First Empire fought only three campaigns against the military establishments of the old order. Since the Spanish army remained in a state of war for the entire duration, it never really had the opportunity to overhaul its organization until after 1814. In the East, the short campaigns of 1805 and 1806/7 were concluded by peace treaties which, no matter how costly and restrictive these might have been for Austria and Prussia, provided the opportunity for complete reorganization.
Thus, Austria (1805/9), Prussia (1808/9) and Russia (1808/10) all made extensive readjustments to bring their armies into line with the new methods of warfare. This, of course, involved the alteration of the infra-structure of the battalion to allow for the deployment of skirmishers without causing confusion for the rest of the formation. Though primarily organizational changes, they also involved new training measures. Here and there there were also minor changes in personnel level. This left the average paper strengths of the battalions about the same as they had been during the linear era. Since everyone again used pretty much the same tactical system, the battalions of different military establishments were hardly much different from each other, except for the large Austrian establishments.
Manpower Levels
Army units, with the exception of certain formations, such as guards and immobile units (depot battalions or squadrons) were not kept up to T/O, paper or "mobile" strength (I have deliberately chosen all the common euphemisms which are generally used to describe a unit at full strength). The reasons formations were kept at immobile or cadre strength were manifold. In peacetime, it was generally to save on pay and rations while still keeping the framework of the army intact. In wartime, it was generally because the men currently trained and under arms were better employed in operational units rather than in a rear area.
When one of these immobile units was mobilized to move into the field, it was brought up to full strength and sometimes beyond, by taking on supernumeries.
From time to time troops were needed hurriedly because of some unforeseen circumstance. It became more important to have a number of battalions at 65% strength present in an operations area in a week than to have these same units there in a month at 100% strength (this is precisely what happened due to the sudden turn of events in Spain).
Not even Napoleon would interrupt his lunch, call over a lackey and tell him: "Have Berthier call out the army this afternoon, I'm going to have me another war". Very careful preparations were made for such occasions, including mobilization. Mobilization did not merely mean passing out live ammunition and buying horses for the artillery, it also meant bringing the units earmarked for operations up to strength. This was just about the least problem confronting a general staff of the Napoleonic Era. Bodies for the army had. become just about the cheapest of all commodities for war. This was a result of the "levee en masse" which could effectively tap the manpower resources of a nation.
Even Prussia, with a population of but 5 millions, was able to stamp a massive army out of the ground in 1813, the obstacles it had to overcome being represented more by the difficulties in finding the arms and accoutrements necessary, not in finding the men to use them! Russia, with a population of about 30 millions, Austria with 25 millions and France with 29 millions (36.5, counting the annexed territories) had even fewer problems occasioned by manpower.
Britain, whose experience colors much of the thinking in this area, because of the ready availability of English language source material, did have some problems. Not a great deal more populous than Prussia, Britain maintained a huge naval establishment, exercised a military presence in several areas far distant from the Continent and could hardly afford to make deep inroads into the manpower necessary to maintain its highly developed industries. These industries were indispensible in providing not only arms and accoutrements for the Continental Allies but also in producing the trade goods necessary to bankroll these efforts. Once fully committed, the Peninsular army represented only a relatively modest portion of the overall British war effort -- a fact generally not fully appreciated by the casual reader of military history.
For example, the general supposition that the Prussian units remaining at home after their contingent of 20,000 men had departed for the Russian Campaign were mere shells is wrong. According to the Treaty of Tilsit, Prussia was allowed to retain an army of 42,000 men. Thus, only 22,000 should have been left after deducting the Grand Army contingent. But the Prussians had to do some creative bookkeeping to show only 21,130 men on the returns inspected by general Narbonne who had been sent to Berlin with the expressed purpose of checking up on them. Another return, which Narbonne never saw, actually showed 38,231 men.
In the end, as I have mentioned, the raw numbers are not so much a matter for concern as is the quality of the troops. Since the strength of the French army are such interest, let's have a look at the big numbers and then work our way down to the details.
French Levies
At some point in the course of the French Revolution, the mobilization of the masses produced nearly 600,000 men. Even at that, the army never really grew beyond a quarter of what had been expected. The National Assembly and the Terror had either driven out or guillotined most of the leaders who might have organized such an effort. Those who were left were a long time gaining the experience and know-how necessary. It was not until the passing of the Conscription Law of 1798, that a legal basis was furnished for the maintenance of the army. This was not enough until Napoleon inserted a strong hand during the Consulate.
Between May 1802 and May 1805, some 210,000 men were drafted, followed by 60,000 (plus 20,000 in reserve) in 1805 and another 80,000 in 1806. By September 1807, 420,000 men had been called up. In 1805, these drafts had maintained the army at a line strength of 445,000 men. By 1809, this had risen to 622,000 (Saski, Campagne de 1809). 1811 and 1812 each produced a further 120,000 men, not to mention 80,000 in 1809 and 1810.
Redressing the Russian damage ran the total to 1,237,000 men called up by 20 November 1813. Only now was a real dent being made into French man power resources! The cost of war, always high, was getting to be exhorbitant. According to Tame's "Origines de la France Contemporaie", the years from 1805 to 1815 cost the French nation 1,700,000 lives, not counting the losses of the allies.
Draft Dodging
With all this, Napoleon did not experience an enthusiastic response to his inflationary draft calls. As the army grew, so did resistance to the draft. Morvan, who in his "Soldat Imperial," shows the other side of the coin, only infrequently and obliquely alluded to in the military histories, tells us that in 1810 alone, 160,000 men were convicted (usually in absentia) of draft evasion and that fines totalling 170 millions francs were levied against their families.
In 1811 and 1812, a major effort was made, which bagged 60,000 of these "refractaires" which also included thousands of soldiers from the so-called "armee roulante" -- men who travelled back and forth across France, exchanging at opportune moments their travel orders with soldiers going in the opposite direction, so that they never arrived at their original or any other destination. Many of these were impressed into penal regiments like those activated in 1811 as the 131st (Ile de Walcheren) and 132nd Line (Ile de Ré), which were then taken out of their island garrisons (think Alcatraz) and packed off to Russia under the watchful eye of a German Rhine Confederation regiment (Wurzburg).
Returning to the numbers I have cited, those who expect to see these perpetual increases reflected in the number of new line or light regiments raised, will do so in vain. While it is entirely true that a considerable number of new regiments were formed between 1808 and 1813, these do not nearly reflect the overall increase in numbers.
Difficult as it was to find adequate officers and non coms to command the many new battalions which were organized, finding the specialists and staff officers necessary to provide the overhead personnel for regiments, which were actually administrative and economic organizations, would have been even worse. It was much easier to load extra battalions onto the existing regimental recruiting, training and replacement systems. Thus, while the army, in 1803, had been fixed at 90 regiments of the line and 31 light, the former with 19 regiments of 4 battalions and 71 of 3 battalions, the latter with 4 of 4 battalions and 27 of 3 each, it was decreed in 1808 that all regiments were to be brought up to 1 depot battalion and 4 field battalions.
However, by 1811/12, a number of regiments had taken on even 6th Battalions. The bulk of these were in Davout's I Corps, where the 12th, 17th, 21st, 25th, 30th, 33rd, 48th, 57th, 61st, 85th, 108th, 111th Line and 7th, 13th and 15th Light each took five field battalions into the Russian Campaign (so did 2nd Line in II Corps).
Since, other than those mentioned above, relatively few regiments ever achieved such strength and in view of the large number of provisional units spotted all over the Continental landscape, it becomes a very chancy proposition to make estimates concerning the dislocation of the French army based on capsule histories, such as those quoted by Emir Bukhari. All these say is that during such and such year, this regiment had one or more battalions present at such and such place.
I should add that the cavalry never saw expansion on such a scale, because Napoleon, who regarded cavalry largely as a necessary evil, pushed most of the cavalry expansion off onto the Rhine Confederation, which was required to maintain disproportionately large complements of this expensive arm (and most all of it was better, too!).
The Inside View
While the numbers game exhibited so far serves to furnish the outline of the Napoleonic armies (with emphasis on the infantry), there is more to be known about the content, the qualitative aspect of these numbers.
The army of 1805 is universally regarded the best of all Napoleon ever took into the field. This is one of the reasons the "Sun of Austerlitz" shines so brightly in the chapters of contemporary diarists. This, despite the fact that about half of its personnel had not yet been on campaign and had been in service only since about 1801. However, in the camps along the Channel Coast, it had experienced what was to become a rare occasion for the armies of the Empire -- it had drilled!
Even so, thing had not proceeded at a uniform pace.
There was no official drill manual which reflected the new mode of warfare and every corps did things in its own way. Soult, it is said, drilled relatively often. Conversely, Ney drilled -- what never? Well, hardly ever! In later years, when the Grand Army found a new home away from home in Germany, Davout attempted to correct what he perceived to be serious deficiencies in drill and a distressing lack of discipline. Unfortunately, his measures could not take root because the army was soon off to war again. The regimental training schools were but a passing effort.
Training
What training there was, was entirely empirical and left in the hands of the company officers and non coms. Apart from an occasional directive or recomendations from Napoleon to his corps commanders, there was no direction from above. Napoleon's most important measure in this area, of course, was to limit even further the number of tirailleurs which might be deployed. To this end, he ordered the formation of the voltigeur companies in 1800 which, together with the grenadier company in each battalion, would represent a third of the battalion after the consolidation of 1808. The four fusilier companies were to be kept as before.
Fortunately, an unusually large proportion of the officers and noncoms of 1805 had campaigned and seen combat. Each regiment even had some thirty old perennial privates from the white army in its ranks. Half of the general officers had held royal commissions and 60% of the field grade officers, indeed more than half of all the officers had seen service in the royal army.
According to Alombert-Colin (Campagne de 1805), only about 600 officers in the entire army had not campaigned or had less than fifteen years service. The Winter of 1806/7 already began to show the first cracks in the discipline which holds armies together under conditions of severe stress. Losses and expansions continued to dilute the cadre both in numbers and quality, even as the ever expanding guard corps continued to siphon the most experienced soldiers from the line. 1812, then, provided the final stroke, from which the army was not to recover until Napoleon's abdication in 1814, which brought not only a reduction but, more importantly, a period of respite. How important these were, is proven by the army of 1815, which showed some of the flash of 1805.
The army of 1812 had units marching to Russia stuffed to capacity with young conscripts. These began to fall apart at an alarming rate even before operations went into the active phase. The rest of the story is pretty well known to everyone, but it is still a common misconception that the Russian winter destroyed the army. That is not at all true. To the contrary, it was the long marches in the heat of the continental summer, which effectively wrecked the army, as well as the indiscipline and dissolution occasioned by inadequate supply.
By 1 February 1813, of the 125,000 French troops of I through IV Corps, only 6,400 remained present for duty! Fortunately, the early returnees, some 20,000, contained a very large proportion of officers and non coms, who had shown a much greater capacity for survival than the young conscripts. Napoleon might have had again that many more, had he been able to cut his losses and evacuate the Oder fortresses and Danzing. As it was, these remained bottled up there until they finally surrended to Prussian militia some time in 1813.
Rebuilding
Gathering what was left of the Grand Army, 40,000 men from the depots in France, another 40,000 from the Army of Spain and 78,000 men of the First Levy of the National Guard (mobile since March 1812, but short of good officers), Napoleon had 178,000 men around which the Grand Army might be rebuilt. 567,000 conscripts were quickly raised though 20% never did reach their units. Thus, better than two thirds of the army were conscripts. For this reason, one often speaks of the Conscript Army of 1813 -- a far cry from the Army of 1805!
For the great majority of these, basic training consisted of nothing more than a few drill sessions at the end of a day's march enroute to Germany. Many did not receive muskets until they reached the main staging area around Mainz, Germany, where they got to fire four blanks and two live rounds at a target, while old Marshal Kellermann wrung his hands and shouted for adequate equipment and supplies almost as loudly as his opponents who were organizing the Prussian Landwehr. All of these problems were compounded further by the fact that the cadre which were available were not evenly distributed amongst the regiments.
As Freytag-Loringhoven put it succinctly in his superb assessment of "The Armies of the First Empire," in the Prussian General Staff Quarterly (II, 1908): "Such an army could rise to a passing enthusiasm and was capable, under Napoleon's leadership, to be victorious at Gross-Goerschen, Bautzen and Dresden, but not even he was able to conduct a successful campaign with it."
By way of underlining this assessment, I might add that among the nine eagles lost by the French army during the 1813 campaign, six -- those of the 134th, 140th, 145th, 146th, 148th and 150th Line Regiments, belonged to the new creations of 1813. Thus, the quality of the numbers must also be taken into account. As a unit continues on campaign, its numbers will sink while the performance curve of those remaining may rise. However, once replacements arrive in the field, the performance may again diminish somewhat until the new men have had the opportunity to mesh into the existing fabric.
In the 18th and 19th Centuries losses, unlike the more gradual and steady drain of modern war, were apt to be far more explosive, involving percentages that would knock modern units out of action altogether. Nor may we assume that the replacements, which came in large numbers, were as well and as uniformly trained as we have come to expect in our time.
Of course, what happened to individual units in the course of a campaign was also reflected in Napoleon's armies as a whole. From their peak in 1805, they exhibited a steady decline which hit bottom in 1813, to rise slightly in 1814, when only the fittest had survived and the Guard, in the opinion of the Line, had to earn its pay for a change.
More Scope, More Men
As the scope of Napoleon's schemes widened, so did he require ever larger numbers of men, which resulted in an ever increasing deterioration of the performance curve of his army until by 1813 his personal presence became a pre-condition for victory. At the same time, the performance curve of his adversaries was on the rise!
Having worked our way through the big picture, we are now ready to make a critical appraisal of the battalion, the basic tactical unit. As a basis for discussion, I propose four basic points:
- Long marches and bad weather could be more debilitating and reduce unit strengths more than a lost battle.
- The average strength levels of the Grand Army exceeded those of the Army of Spain.
- The organizational levels of the battalions were such that they could continue to function, even at levels far below what is today deemed critical.
- In action, a battalion of 600 effectives did not necessarily have only 4/5 the combat capacity of a battalion of 750 men, even with all other factors being equal.
Attrition
It is difficult for us to gauge the effect of long marches. In our modern experience, long range troop movements are executed by rail or motor transport. In Napoleon's day the army still marched. If a unit was transferred, from Spain to Germany, it moved on foot, each man packing upwards of forty pounds of personal gear. A battalion did not have sufficient transport for the rank and file to off load its packs. That was a privilege of rank. Artillerymen fared better as the gun carriages, caissons and wagons were more than adequate to carry the hundred and sixty packs of the men in a battery.
At such times, desertion, always high, peaked as well -- especially if the destination spelled bad news. By 1810, nobody really wanted to go to Spain and even the veterans, who had bad memories of Eylau and Friedland, viewed the Russian Campaign with far more trepidation than the young and inexperienced soldiers. Of course bad weather made everything worse. But bad weather should not be translated simply into cold, rain and influenza. It included, for example, the Continental Summer the army experienced going into Russia, which made the young recruits drop from heat prostration, sunstroke and a lack of water, etc., etc.
On the return march, it was the very mildness of the early Winter, which turned bad roads into seas of mud and caused the ice to break on the Beresina. By now, every Napoleomaniac knows what came of that! The celebrated deep freeze came late, when what was left of the Grand Army was already back in Poland.
In summation, I might add that anyone who has ever worked on a "morning report" in our own time, knows that any outfit's strength is subject to constant fluctuation, even when in garrison. The bottom line may be fairly constant, but it will be the difference between "present" and "accounted for" which varies so widely. The effects of campaigning, marches, bad bivouacs, combat, all these, singly or collectively, accelerate the process of attrition, but the absence of any or all of them, will never halt it!
The Army of Spain
Grand Army strengths ran higher because Napoleon paid more attention to it. The Grand Army was the first team, no if, ands or buts about that. It was the "hammer", his instrument with which he struck the blows.
The proof, of course, lies with Napoleon himself. The Grand Army went where he went. And Spain only got to see him when he brought his "hammer" and went looking for Wellington. The latter, of course, made the wise choice and embarked his army on an extended cruise, waiting for the ogre to return to his lair. So much for the matter of priority when it came to replacements. In addition to this, there is also the matter of differences between the Eastern and Western Theatres of Operations.
Germany
In Germany, the campaigns were short and violent. The battalions would be brought to strength before they commenced operations and would then decline steadily. If a campaign lasted long enough, some march battalions, containing replacements for several units, might appear in the field and be broken up and distributed. But that was rare. Only the Prussian war outlasted the campaigning season and trouble promptly developed when Winter came.
Once a campaign was concluded, a peace treaty was signed and the army went to quarters to lick its wounds and repair the damage. It was then, that entire battalions were exchanged with the depots and every effort was made to return the Grand Army to an "as new" condition. Whatever the flow of replacements was required during the periods of repose was small compared to what was needed after 1806/7 and 1809.
Most importantly Germany was connected by a good communications network, its provinces fertile and populous and the country politically divided. In other words, it was not conducive to guerrilla operations.
Spain
Spain, on the other hand, seemed tailor made for the purpose. Crisscrossed by desolate mountain tracts which offered sustenance only to those who knew every inch of the country it was easy for a uniformly hostile population to form strong bands of guerrillas and sustain them. Look at the difficulties guerrillas have posed for modern armies which are equipped with motor vehicles, radio communications, helicopters and aerial surveillance! One can begin to appreciate the troubles facing the French in Spain.
As a result, hundreds of bridges, blockhouses and towns had to be garrisoned, a thousand miles of roads had to be patrolled and every convoy, every courier, had to be furnished an escort. All this caused a ceaseless drain on unit strengths in the midst of which the effects of battles are relatively small. That's why Spain has often been characterized as the "festering sore" in the side of the Empire.
Replacements came to different units at different times and then frequently not in the quantities desired. When the Grand Army repaired the damage of 1809, prepared for its own sojourn to Spain in 1810 and began to build up for 1812 in 1811, guess who stood in second place at the order counter? In 1813, for instance, the Army of Spain had to turn over 40,000 of its men to the Grand Army. Of course, Wellington's presence was of extreme importance but there is no telling what might have happened in 1813 had Napoleon been able to send the entire Army of Spain into Germany. Spain was, for all its importance, the secondary Theatre of Operations.
battalion Strengths
The numerical strengths of the battalions were important, no doubt -- but not in ways which reflect the war- gamer's concern for numbers! A wargamer puts his army on the table to fight a battle. A general takes his army into the field to fight a campaign. And there lies a vast difference between the two.
By way of illustrating my point, think of the strength of a battalion in terms of the gas tank in your car. Naturally, on a full tank, you will travel further than on half. But your overall mileage will vary considerably, depending on the nature of the terrain over which you travel.
If the car is left sitting in the garage, that tankfull will, in theory, last you a lifetime. Of course, it won't. Its contents will eventually evaporate. Make that equal to your battalion in garrison.
When you travel a straight, flat road with no traffic to impede your progress, you will obtain maximum mileage at cruising speed. Make this equal to a peace-time exercise or an easy campaign in fertile and populous country, where the marches are short and the billets in between comfortable. Assume good weather as well. Traffic and traffic lights which force you to stop and go, increase your gas consumption. The overall distance before you have to gas up again will shorten. Equate that to an ordinary campaign with some problems. Once you hit mountains watch the gas being syphoned into the engine! That's combat.
What's All This Then?
Now, you may ask: "what has this to do with the personnel strength of a battalion? Isn't this all rather simplistic and obvious?" You are, of course, quite right. So, to make my point, let's add an assumption and much of what comes next will, at once, make sense to you.
Let's assume that the fuel line is attached to the side of the tank in such a way, that it can only tap up to 60% of the gas in the tank, it can't reach the last 40%.
Now, if the road you travel is uneven, shaking the contents of the tank, the gas will slosh back and forth, creating waves. This means that once the contents of the tank are down to about 50%, the pump will draw air from time to time, causing a misfire. And the further the level of the tank recedes below 50% the more frequently these misfires will occur until, finally, the pump will draw nothing but air. Your car will stop.
The point of all this is that so long as your tank is half-full or better, say 60%, you can operate as if on a full tank. The only difference is that you will have to stop for a refill sooner. But if there is no gas station in sight, you have to keep going, you can get together with another driver, whose car is also down to the critical limit and syphon what remains from his tank into yours. In general terms, that's the way in which the battalions work. They can usually do their work until they get down to about 50% or less and then you must amalgamate until replacements arrive.
It should now be crystal clear to every reader that a battalion at 100%, T/O or mobile strength on a day of battle is just about as rare as a 1.000 fine gold ingot (.988 is the South African norm, the Russians manage .999 with electrolysis). A 100% battalion could happen if it had just finished refitting and marched out to fight a battle about a mile from the front gate of the depot. Even then we would find that some fool tripped over his own feet, broke or sprained his wrist falling and cut the man in front of him with the tip of his bayonet. And that was only in the 1st Company!
It is, to the contrary, far more realistic to regard any personnel strengths above 90% as outstanding. Since vigorous campaigning usually means vigorous marching as well, 80% is still very good. So much for the paper strengths of the 100% battalions and all the discussion these mythical organizations have generated.
Lower End of the Spectrum
Having dealt with the upper end of the spectrum, let's look at an example from the lower end.
After the battle of Bautzen, most all of the Russian battalions were down to between 150 and 200 men. Since they were beaten but far from clobbered (all Napoleon got was the battlefield and higher casualties than the losers), the Russians could have hardly gone in with battalions of more than 350 to 400 men, with some of the smaller ones already amalgamated before the battle, that is to say with average strengths little better than 50%.
During the cease fire in the summer, about 70,000 replacements arrived from Russia. Since most of these covered several hundred miles from their depots, it is a safe bet that many more than that had originally started out -- possibly enough to bring the battalions in the field up to snuff. As it was, the 70,000 were sufficient only to bring the battalions up to some 500 to 600 men (69% to 81% of full strength).
Even then, the order of battle for the fall campaign (Friederich, History of the Fall Campaign, 1813) shows a large number of regiments with but one battalion (the 1st and 3rd of each regiment had been mobilized for the campaign). Still, the Russians went right on campaigning (victoriously) and earned the respect of both friend and foe. During the retreat of 1812, the guards, the Poles and the Badeners at the Beresina and the Young Guard and the Hessians at Krasnoi, showed that severely depleted battalions could still fight effectively.
Practive Vs. Theory
But you may still say: "these were, perhaps, special circumstances. I'm still not convinced that, all things being equal, 1,000 men shouldn't be able to knock the stuffing out of 600." In theory, this is correct. In order to see why this wasn't necessarily so, we must step up to the front lines, the sphere of elementary tactics, where the Frederician or Napoleonic style "grunt" worked his musket. Because what he saw, thought and felt is what really counted. Unfortunately, after discounting the romance and apocrypha of pop history, there isn't much to be found on that subject these days.
One source, of course, is General Bugeaud's narrative, describing the attack of a French column against a deployed British line. This has received wide circulation and it gives a splendid picture of why the French were so often frustrated in the Peninsula. But it is a one-sided image. Many such attacks failed in other places as well and some succeeded. This means that those who see in these short paragraphs an answer to the entire Peninsular Campaign are taking a decidedly simplistic approach to something quite complicated. At times, it has been pointed out that the Iron Duke was also attended by a good measure of luck which, as every avid Napoleonic student knows, was deemed one of the great military virtues by none other than Napoleon himself.
In the matter of written histories, one must take great care to determine from what perspective primary as well as secondary material was written. Even when military men take up the pen, one must make a clear distinction between what was produced for consumption by other military men and what was more in the nature of "look what splendid fellows we were!" Scharnhorst, himself one of the military literati, once likened much of military historical writing to "a work of fiction, bordering on probability." Thus, there is usually a wide gap between the general histories, the cold-nosed, objective and frequently too terse reports of company commanders, informing their battalion or regimental commanders of the day's activities, and what the "old boy" school actually remembers or thinks the way it must have been. One must proceed with great caution.
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