Monday 11 April 2011

Recently Painted No 24 Russian 1st Jagers 1812



There were not many admirers of skirmish formation in Russia, one of the few were Suvorov and Kutusov. Kutusov wrote several sets of notes on light infantry already in the 1780s.
During the early campaigns the Russian skirmishers were rather poor  compared to their French counterparts. One Russian author wrote, "our grenadiers, of great height and with large plumes, were sent to skirmish: the weak and small French shot them from behind the rocks, as they wished." One of the few exceptions were the 1st Jagers. According to James Arnold this regiment, "had the best skirmish troops in the Russian army. They had trained hard in the Finnish forrests around Karelia and were comfortable fighting in broken terrain." (Arnold - "Crisis in the Snows" p 112)
They were trained to use terrain features, to fire from standing, kneeling or lying position, the skirmishers acted in pairs with 2 - 5 paces intervals between pairs, and were manoeuvred according to drum signals and moved at a run (150-200 paces per minute).
The troops were sent to skirmish by platoons or companies, who relieved each other in turn, or  by  battalion or regiment. For example a day before the Battle of Eylau, the Arkhangel Musketier Regiment was deployed as skirmishers to cover the withdrawal of the 4th Division. At Krasne in August 1812, the 49th Jäger Regiment was placed in front of the village in skirmish order. 
There were however disagreements about the use of large number of skirmishers. Published in 1811 "On Jäger Training" recommended the use of entire jäger battalion (4 companies of 2 platoons each) in skirmish order. The grenadier and strelki platoon were kept in reserve behind both flanks of the skirmish line formed by the remaining six jäger platoons.

Barclay de Tolly was against using large number of skirmishers. He wrote in 1812; "in the beginning of a battle one is to push out as few skirmishers as possible, but to keep small reserves, to refresh the men in the chain and [to keep] the rest behind formed in column. Heavy losses cannot be attributed to skillful actions of the enemy, but to excessive numbers of skirmishers confronted to the enemy fire." 
At Berezina in 1812, a large number of jagers and line infantry were thrown into skirmishing in the overgrown terrain. They were shattered by French cuirassiers and 1,500 were taken prisoners.

Once again, another of Posties Russian units, the figures are 15mm Essex, they're based up for Posties GdB rules and the rough grand base is made by  The Last Valley.



40 comments:

  1. I dont know how you keep up your rate of production of such great quality minis, but I'm envious as hell! Great job as always mate

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  2. Great painting Ray and really enjoy the history snapshot too.
    Cheers
    Paul

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  3. they're pretty sneaky hiding behind those bushes...

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  4. Great work mate. You are a painting machine.

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  5. awesome job as usual, congrats.

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  6. Good to see the production line still in full swing. That 'Crisis In The Snows' book sounds intriguing

    Cheers

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  7. My Facebook thingy tells me it´s your Birthday today....Happy birthday !!! Or did you do what I did and gave a false DOB?? :-D
    Cheers
    Paul

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  8. No, tis my B'Day today!! 43 years young........groan!!!

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  9. Happy birthday! Another interesting and informative post with great eye candy.

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  10. First of all Happy Birthday young man :-D

    Nice painted minis and thanks for the historical background!

    Greetings
    Peter

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  11. Whipper snapper

    I'm 47 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) in July :-(

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  12. Great paint job. I really like the terrain you've set up for them.

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  13. Nice work as usual Ray and Happy Birthday on your 43rd year, I'm still 42.

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  14. only until September moosh! and your ginger!

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  15. Cool background. I'm curious, what rule system do you guys play with?

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  16. The Napoleonic rules our my mate Postie's own version of a set of rules called General de Brigade, he's changed quite a bit of the rules that he/we don't like or don't agree with. Here's a link to a blog that specializes in GdB.
    http://generaldebrigade.blogspot.com/

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  17. Looking the look of the display and Happy Birthday :D

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  18. Great work! I love the blog style!

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  19. i like how they are hiding behind the hay! happy birthday!!

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  20. Strawbery Blonde you bollox and Postie who I'm on the phone with at the moment says any chance of your painting improving or your extortionate prices will have to come down.

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  21. happy bday! kick some ass

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  22. thanks for the info and great painting job.

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  23. I'm unemployed and have all the time in the world and I still could never find the time to dedicate that kind of detail to something like that. Amazing job.

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  24. Happy Birthday Ray, now you can add your 'Blog Description' as well as the 'About me' thing about the new glasses to your list of inaccuracies that are IMO better left unchanged, as you will lose your search engine rankings by trying to change them now.

    Right next to the thing about glasses it says you're 42. Probably safe to update the about me, but I wouldn't mess with the description.

    It's your decision, how to handle this delicate issue, but the rest of us can learn from your blogging mistakes, if you make any, so it will not be entirely in vain if you do make a false step here.

    On the bright side, however:
    This very choice and splendidly painted diorama has promoted Postie's army of Russians throughout the world, and greatly increased its value, despite your own avowed preference this month for FIW and if only you'd added a character and story to make a vignette a price rise might have been in order, were you so disposed.

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  25. Thanks for the Birthday wishes everyone!!
    @Mekelnborg - Ooops I didn't think about that?? What to do? It should be safe to change the "about me", but your probably right about the description....ah well I'll have to be 42 forever.
    I'll pass on your price idea to Postie, somehow I think he'll decline me the offer!!!

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  26. Happy Birthday, my friend!

    On the Russian skirmishers, do you think they were able to reload in addition to fire from the prone position with those really long rifles? I can't even begin to imagine how difficult that must've been.

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  27. @ Aaron - I'm sure I've read that they could, but it must have been very difficult??

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  28. On the other hand, I don't know, maybe it would be all right to change the description, and maybe it would work even better. It could go up to #1, then have a bounce or sandbox, then come back up stronger than ever. There's only one way to find out.

    The price rise was if you had done a vignette, with characters. Shouldn't be too hard to think of something. Paul did it with that exploding head.

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