Part A. The French Line Infantry excluding the Foreign Regiments It is not easy to compress the subject of the highly complex French organisation into one article but an attempt will be made to cover the basic points without trimmings in order to help the wargamer to understand this organisation and form his army up with some degree of accuracy. The army itself would normally be commanded by a Marshal of France. This highly coveted rank with all its privileges had been conferred on seven general officers in 1749. It has risen to seventeen in 1759 and thus had lost a great deal of its ultimate attainment mainly because of the political pressures involved in the selections. In fact, most of the time the French Army suffered from dual commands in the Seven Years War with control from Versailles and this sorry state of affairs contributed greatly to the decline of the army morale. Although the army was ostensibly split up into divisions of two brigades of infantry and equivalent units of cavalry and artillery it was in reality formed up in two massive battle lines, one behind the other, a highly cumbersome arrangement. The use of independent divisions was advocated by Brogli in 1760 and he did try to use them in this role against great opposition from the die-hard traditionalists but the idea met little success. It is perhaps ironical that it needed the fall of the monarchy and the rise of Napoleon before Broglie's ideas of hard hitting self-sufficient divisions were to be employed effectively. To add to the difficulty of making uniformity of units, the French regiments had differing number of battalions. In 1757, twelve regiments had four battalions, fifty-two had two battalions and sixteen junior regiments had only one battalion. Louis XIV had instituted the rank of brigadier in order to give the opportunity to young, able commanders to go above the heads of older, less competent colonel without being allowed to attain general rank. The brigadier was given a letter of authority which on covered command of his brigade and would only be composed of one arm of the service. In the period of the Seven Years War a brigade would normally consist of six battalions which did create a uniform unit but as was common in the army, senior colonels were not prepared to accept the authority of these younger brigadiers and would often disobey or thwart this authority on the field of battle. In 1759, Belle Isle, the War Minister put another nail in the coffin of command by declaring the rank of brigadier was on a par with that of colonel so this added more difficulties to an already impossible task to brigade commanders. Regimental staff in all the regiments regardless of the number of battalions, consisted of a colonel, lieutenant-colonel, major and aide major. In addition there would be a surgeon, padre, scribe, quartermaster and drum major. Certain privileged regiments would have powers of court martial and to the regimental staff would be added a provost-marshal and his junior assistant, five provost (archers one recorder (greffier) and an executioner. Originally colonels and lieutenant colonels had commanded companies in addition but this highly profitable arrangement had been abolished before the period of the war. The major and his aide majors were only concerned with training and administration and it i important to note that these ranks never commanded as the chain of command would automatically fall t the senior captain if the need arose. There were sixteen fusilier and one grenadier company in the battalion. The "chasseur" or equiv lent light company was not a permanent company but formed up from fusiliers in time of need. In action, the grenadiers normally formed up on the right of battle and the light company on the left. The French used the three rank system with the veterans in the front rank. For exercise purposes there was a breakdown of two companies combining to make a "peleton" and two "peletons" composing one battalion "division". The "column versus line" situation seems to have existed even then and both methods were used at various times. The wartime fusilier company consisted of one captain with a lieutenant as his second-in- command two sergeants, three corporals, three senior soldiers (anspessades), a drummer and thirty-one fusilier The company was split up into three squads (escouades) for tenting and victualling purposes, consisted of a corporal, senior soldier and nine men. Three of the most agile marksmen would be detailed off i the "chasseur" company and the remaining fusilier would be allocated to the sixteen-man light battalion cannon (a la suedoise). The grenadier company had one extra officer (a sous-lieutenant) and five grenadiers in addition the above complement. Grenadier companies were never allowed to fall below strength so the time honoured tradition of the grenadiers electing from the fusilier companies when deficient was another drain on the best men in the fusilier companies. Sources "Les regiments sous Louis XVII - Lucien Mouillar "L'ancienne infantrie Francaise" - Louis Susanne "Die heere der Kriegfuhrenden Staaten" - F.Schirmer "Etat Militaire 1759". Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 173 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1976 by Donald Featherstone. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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