I am looking for information on how "large scale" manouvers/training excercises took place in the 18th Century. Questions of importance to me are wheter or not they used umpires,live firing,firing ranges and the alike. Any pointers on where to look would be great...
thanks
Alan
6 hours ago
6 comments:
As I recall, one of the factors about Leuthen was that the battle took place where Frederick trained his troops . . . so they knew the terrain very well.
Der Alte Fritz might be an excellent person to direct this question to.
-- Jeff
Alan,
Duffy's books will give you some sound pointers about the Prussians and Austrians at least.
Theo
Also, I believe that the Saxons once held some major training maneuvers, and Freddie was injured at one of them ... possibly leading to his prejudice against Saxony ... \
Not sure of all that, but it sounds like I read something like that a couple of years ago ...
Arthur
Also, I believe that the Saxons once held some major training maneuvers, and Freddie was injured at one of them ... possibly leading to his prejudice against Saxony ... \
Not sure of all that, but it sounds like I read something like that a couple of years ago ...
Arthur
Frederick's Prussians certainly trained and manoeuvred more than other nations. In "Frederick the GreatA Military Life" Duffy notes "Day after day Frederick put large forces of mixed arms through simulations of real actions..."
This is one of my favourite books of the period. It goes on about the famous autumn manoeuvres instigated by Frederick from 1743.
In 1753 44,000 troops took part.
The Prussians were certainly the most drilled army of the period.
The lack of combined arms practice was a factor on more than one occasion whenever opponents faced the well drilled Prussians.
Even with all the training, the Prussian commanders still wanted more time.
Austrian and French forces would be the second most 'field' practiced, with the great Marchfield just outside Vienna the Austrian troops did do a number of annual maneuvers. However neither army ever did them with more than 1/3 of the available forces and most often it was with already trained forces. This meant that often in battle situations there were 2/3 of the forces that had never been on maneuvers with each other ever before. With non-standardized elements in all forces of the period this can create a certain amount of confusion.
The Russians were the largest and did do a number of maneuvers, sadly they were rarely combined arms battle practice and rarely did they ever use more than 1/20th of their field forces. This meant that in battlefield situations there were maybe 1 officer in 20 that have even any clue of what was going on, let alone what the 'grand' situation was all about.
Other national forces would fall somewhere between those of France and Russia in the scale of 'maneuver' practice and the multi-national or multi-ethnic forces would have had even less 'combined' practice to them ~ something to consider when militia forces get into action around any sort of 'regular' armies?
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