Friday, November 8, 2013

Imagi-Militia

Awhile ago I posted about the problems of small tinpot states (like mine) when larger armies come near them. This is doubly problematical when (like mine) your main army is off fighting somewhere else (we took French coin and went off to Saxony, problem is the Hanoverians approacheth...)

Anyway, I got interested in recruiting more troops - especially a Militia - and did a quick survey of Kronoskaf and so concocted the following table:



Its not particularly accurate, if they had a number for Garrisons I put them in here. if not I didn't, and I tended to grab the most readily available numbers on the site for any one army, and came up with a number of about 40% of Militia to Line battalions.

But....the lowest ones % wise were States that either took British money to build more line battalions than they would afford naturally (Hanover, Hesse Kassel) or were KO'd early on (Saxony). France and Prussia re probably more indicative of the maxima numbers, c 50%.

At any rate, this gives my tinpot state, with 3 line battalions, a Garde demi battalion, a converged Grenadier battalion and another near-battalion worth of the 3 line battalions' depot troops, a magnificent theoretical total of about 2 Militia battalions.

I needed more.....

Another quick scan - Aha! - there are Freikorps, Legions, Volontaires etc - the French model is typically 2-3 squadrons of horse and a battalion of Foot volunteers. Surely any half decent tinpot state could raise its own Freikorps of Gentlemen, Scholars, Romantics, Patriots and Bounders! I decided mine clearly could

And, another quick reading showed that countries like Austria were quite good at grabbing frontiers men, mountain men, hunters etc into light part-time battalions, so surely there is such a battalion I can make from my hunters, foresters, mountain men etc.

So there you have it - the theoretical muster for your Imagi-Nation is about 50% of the Line battalion strength, and at least one FreiKorps and Light Jager/Grenzer/etc unit.

Which gives my tinpot state - well, its over here

3 comments:

abdul666 said...

Several historical 'volunteers' units were allowed to choose their uniforms, since they paid for it (and for their horses if mounted): if wished so this would justify a squadron in 'flashy' glamorous uniform (people wealthy enough to pay for an expensive uniform would serve as cavalry).

ColCampbell50 said...

I think you are a little off in your ratios. Using the Prussian example of 100 field battalions and 51 militia battalions, the ratio is 2:1. That means of the 151 total battalions, 33.7% of the total are militia.

France 36%
Saxony 24%
Brunswick 31%
Hesse Kassel 14%
Hesse Darmstadt 44%
Prussia 33.7%
Hannover 20.5%

Overall 381 field battalions and 183 militia = 564 or 32.4%

To use your example, with 4.5 field battalions (not counting the depot troops), you should have 1.5 militia battalions using the average of 32.4% as above.

But of course, it is YOUR imagi-nation and you are free to do with it as you will. :^)

Good gaming,

Jim

freecloud said...

I was using % as Militia/Line battalions, not Militia/(All battalions), but so long as you keep the same convention throughout you get the same numbers.

I've sort of modelled my Imagi-Nation on Brusnwick, or to be mor accurate, "half Brusnwick" ;-) and the storyline just follows my slow painting.