Reinforcements For King Louis (Part 9: Chasseurs de Fischer & Massed Flank Companies)

Since starting my Seven Years War French army in February 2021 with the ‘Frogruary Challenge’, things have progressed rather well.  The total number of units currently stands at 40 infantry battalions, 3 light infantry battalions, 2 massed grenadier battalions, 4 cavalry ‘brigades’ (each being a 12-figure unit made up from three regiments), the massive Gendarmerie de France (2 units in its own right), 2 dragoon regiments, 1 hussar regiment, 14 skirmisher stands and 10 guns.

I’ve therefore now got enough troops to do most of the small and medium-sized battles of the period and the same is true of my ‘Western Allied’ armies.  However, there’s still plenty to do on both sides, not only to build up the overall numbers and refight some of the larger battles, but also in order to expand the range of unit-types within the collection, especially those pesky units of massed grenadiers and chasseurs, the various foreign contingents and the volunteer legions or ‘free corps’ of light troops that so often appeared on the margins of these battles.

One such free corps that frequently appeared at the battles in Germany is the Chasseurs de Fischer.

The Chasseurs de Fischer were initially raised in 1742 during the War of Austrian Succession.  At this time, the French army of the Duc de Broglie was blockaded within Prague by the Austrians.  However, with such a huge perimeter to cover, the Austrians had nowhere near enough forces to fully surround the city with earthworks and troops and as a consequence, the siege was rather ‘loose’ and there was plenty of work on both sides for scouts and raiders around the city.  An enterprising German native of Lorraine by the name of Johann Christian (or ‘Jean Chrétien’) Fischer was therefore prompted to raise a company of freebooters from the servants of French officers within the garrison (Fischer himself is sometimes described as a ‘servant’ or even ‘cook’) and this irregular unit proved highly successful, even managing to recapture cavalry mounts that had been captured by Austrian hussars.

Johann Christian Fischer (1748)

The French garrison of Prague managed to surprise the Austrians and successfully broke out of the city over Christmas 1742.  It’s not clear if Fischer’s little band remained on the books following the break-out, though it seems likely, as on 1st November 1743, Fischer was commissioned as a Captain and his unit was officially designated as the Chasseurs de Fischer, consisting of 45 Chasseurs à Pied and 15 Chasseurs à Cheval, wearing an exotic uniform of dark green and red.  The unit grew rapidly and in 1747 distinguished itself at the Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom.  By then the unit had grown to roughly 600 men, still with the same ratio of two infantrymen to one cavalryman (i.e. 400 infantry and 200 cavalry) and Fischer was elevated to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

At the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748, the Chasseurs de Fischer won a rare privilege, in that they were not disbanded and were instead, allowed to remain on the order of battle of the French Army.  However, they were reduced to only 60 men (a foot company of 40 men and a horse company of 20 men).

With the commencement of what would become the Seven Years War, the Chasseurs de Fischer were ordered on 1st January 1756 to be expanded once again; this time to 220 men (five foot companies of 40 men and one horse company of 20 men).  A second order on 26th October 1756 massively expanded the horse component; the unit would now consist of four companies of 50 foot and four companies of 75 horse, for a total of 500 men.

In 1757 the Chasseurs de Fischer went through yet more phases of expansion, thanks to a successful recruitment drive in Lorraine.  On 8th July the organisation was changed to eight companies of 72 foot and eight companies of 81 horse, for a total of 1,280 men including regimental staff.  Six men in each foot company were designated as grenadiers, who in the field would form a ninth (grenadier) foot company.  The foot would form a single battalion of nine companies, while the horse would form four squadrons, each of two companies.  On 15th August 1757 a further 50 men were added per company, so the regiment now stood at 2,080 men of all ranks, with a further eight lieutenants added in November 1757.

The next few years saw hard campaigning for the Chasseurs de Fischer, with the regiment being engaged in the capture of Marburg, the Combat of Sanderhausen, the Battle of Lutterberg, the capture of Minden, the Battle of Warburg and the Battle of Clostercamp, plus numerous small actions, raids and ambushes.

Fischer himself won promotion to Maréchal de Camp (Brigadier) for his actions at the Battle of Bergen, though the constant campaigning took a heavy toll and as a consequence, the strength of the regiment steadily declined and in 1761 was reorganised with a total of 1,288 men (eight foot companies of 79 men apiece and eight horse companies of 81 men, plus regimental staff).

Then on 27th April 1761, the regiment rather bizarrely changed hands, being passed from Fischer to Louis Gabriel d’Armentières, Marquis de Conflans and being known from that point forth as the Dragons-Chasseurs de Conflans (also being known briefly as the Légion de Conflans for the last three weeks of its existence in March 1763).

Louis Gabriel d’Armentières, Marquis de Conflans

It’s not clear as to what brought about this change in command, though it would appear that the unit was still commanded in the field by Fischer as the ‘Lieutenant-Colonel’, with the Marquis de Conflans being only the Colonel-proprietor, rather than their field-commander (he was after all, a Lieutenant-General, not a mere Colonel).  The regiment had won increasing fame and Fischer wasn’t a noble, so the King probably decided that a regiment of such note should belong to a member of the nobility.  However, this is all my own supposition and I can’t find any information as to why the regiment changed hands.

In any case, it soon became all rather academic, as Fischer died aged 49 on 1st July 1762 near Caassel.  Again, information isn’t forthcoming and I’ve been unable to discover anything about the circumstances of his death.  The regiment had been caught in an ambush on 21st June, so did he perhaps die of wounds suffered during that action?  Or was it simply illness and the stresses of campaign?

Despite Fischer’s death, the regiment fought on and two weeks later were engaged at the Battle of Vellinghausen.  Finally, in one of their last actions of the war, they captured a Hanoverian cavalry standard, thus cementing their legacy as probably the most famous legion of French light troops of the mid-18th Century.

As we were planning to refight the Battle of Warburg last least year, the Chasseurs de Fischer were an absolutely essential addition to my collection, even though that battle wasn’t one of their finest hours, being kicked out of Warburg town by the Légion Britanniques!  However, finding suitable figures wasn’t easy and nor was identifying the uniform that they were wearing at any given time!

According to the Kronoskaf interpretation, the regiment’s Chasseurs à Pied were wearing a green uniform with a red collar, aurore (orange) shoulder-strap and brass buttons.  Headgear was a curious green cap called a pokalem (a word that was liberally applied to most soft French infantry caps of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries), also pictured here on the right (which is probably where Kronoskaf got the design).  This was decorated with aurore piping over the crown and around the turned-up false peak.  The pokalem therefore looked not unlike my old Cub Scout cap with the peak turned up!  The regiment’s grenadiers wore bearskins with a brass plate and green bag.

Other interpretations include mirliton caps in black or green with white lace and fleur-de-lys badge or cocked hats (though the cocked hats don’t appear to have appeared until right at the end of the Seven Years War), red pointed cuffs, red round cuffs, red lapels, aurore fringed epaulette, red fringed epaulette, red shoulder strap, red bags for the grenadier caps, black belts, buff belts, white belts, black cartridge pouches, natural leather pouches, black gaiters, white gaiters…  And we haven’t even discussed the uniforms of the regiment’s Chasseurs à Cheval!  I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a unit that has quite so many contradictory sources and quite honestly, I lost the will to live while trying to work out what was ‘correct’!  I think it’s probably true to say that all variants were worn by some part of the regiment for some part of its existence!

Well that’s my excuse, anyway…

I’ve not found any figures wearing pokalem caps (none I’d want to buy, anyway…), though Prussian fusilier caps might be similar if you filed them down a bit and if you could be bothered… However, Old Glory 15s (available in the UK from Timecast Models) produce a French infantry pack containing 12 rather nice mirliton-wearing figures in advancing poses (including officer and drummer), which would do for both the formed troops and the skirmisher stands.

However, the pack also contains 12 figures wearing bearskins.  I was able to find a use for the bearskin-wearing fellas however (see below), so no worries, but it would be a pain in the arse if you didn’t have a use for them!  Old Glory 15s figures are classics, but one of my bugbears is that for some reason, they reduced the size of their packs (from 100 figures to 24 figures), but didn’t then use that opportunity to separate out the different troop types that were grouped in the same pack!  The most bizarre one is the Hanoverian pack with 4x Luckner’s Hussars, 4x Horse Grenadiers and 8x Freytag’s Jäger in the same pack!

I used three of the Old Glory 15s packs to make two formed units of Chasseurs à Pied (each of 12 figures, plus two three-figure skirmisher stands), representing the regiment at its absolute strongest, circa 1757-1760.  There was officially only one battalion, but as the Chasseurs à Pied numbered more than 1,000 men at full strength, they were roughly the same strength as a two-battalion French infantry regiment.  I’ve therefore decided to put them on table as two four-company ‘battalions’ (with two grenadier figures formed on the right of one of the two ‘battalions’).

Although a lot of French volunteer legions carried flags, there is no evidence that this was ever the case for the Chasseurs de Fischer and as there aren’t any standard-bearers in this pack, I didn’t bother with flags.  However, I will probably be unable to resist the temptation of adding a suitably-green standard or two when I paint the Chasseurs à Cheval.

I haven’t yet painted the Chasseur à Cheval squadrons for the Chasseurs de Fischer, though I have painted one mounted officer figure (a French hussar officer by Eureka Miniatures) to represent Fischer (though a dedicated Fischer figure with that strange hat would be nice).  I won’t therefore go into great detail about the Chasseur à Cheval uniform here and will save that dose of excitement for when I want to show them here.  However, it generally followed the green and red theme of the Chasseurs à Pied, though again there is a great deal of disagreement in various sources.

The sources generally agree that there was a lot more red on the uniform during the War of Austrian Succession, with cuffs, breeches, pelisse, sabretache and horse-furniture all being red and only the dolman jacket being green.  By the time of the Seven Years War, the pelisse had apparently changed to green and some sources say that the horse furniture had also changed to green.  Whatever the colour, the horse furniture and sabretache were decorated with Fischer’s badge of three crossed fish (sometimes shown arranged in a triangle) in gold, with a crown above and surrounded by fleurs-de-lys.

As mentioned above, after sorting out the mirliton-wearing figures (and two bearskin-wearing figures) for my Chasseurs de Fischer, I was left with a pile of spare bearskin-wearing figures.  As it happened, my collection was badly in need of a couple of massed grenadier battalions.

While the French were not as enthusiastic as other nations in the use of massed grenadiers and most certainly did not form semi-permanent grenadier battalions, they did occasionally mass grenadiers on an ad-hoc basis for specific tasks such as seizing key terrain-features, to act as an advance/rear-guard or to support light troops.  This became increasingly common as the Seven Years War went on, especially following the Duc de Broglie’s Instruction pour l’Infanterie of 1760, which stipulated the formation of brigade elite battalions, where the grenadier companies were to be massed with the newly-created chasseur companies, in order to provide each brigade with its own avant-garde unit.

Note that these ad hoc grenadier battalions should not be confused with the Grenadiers de France Regiment, which was a permanently-established infantry regiment of four battalions, formed in 1749 from the massed grenadier companies of the infantry regiments that had been disbanded at the end of the War of Austrian Succession.  They should also not be confused with the Grenadiers-Royaux; eleven regiments of which were formed at the outbreak of the Seven Years War from the grenadier companies of the militia battalions.

It should be noted that French grenadier companies were very small.  A French infantry battalion started the Seven Years War with 16 fusilier companies (increasing to 17 in August 1757) and one grenadier company.  At full strength, a grenadier company would number only 48 men, so the massed ‘grenadier battalion’ of a four-battalion infantry regiment/brigade would therefore number only 192 men at full strength!  Consequently, in Tricorn I’ll normally only represent a single ‘battalion’ of this type as a single skirmisher stand or perhaps designating the lead battalion in a formation as a ‘large unit’ (i.e. may absorb one extra hit).

However, the strength of these massed elite battalions was more than doubled to around 400 men following Marshal de Broglie’s 1760 instruction that they should be massed with the newly-created chasseur companies.  A formed French ‘grenadier battalion’ on the table will therefore actually actually represent the massed grenadiers from two or three brigades or a single brigade’s massed grenadiers and chasseurs from 1760 onward.

The uniforms shown here represent most of the regiments I’ve painted thus far.  I could also use a battalion each of massed Swiss grenadiers in red coats and Germans/Walloons in blue coats.  I also threw in a mounted officer to replace the two grenadiers I’d stolen for the grenadier company of the Chasseurs de Fischer.  Massed grenadiers would not carry flags.

Pictures of French bearskins from the period are fairly rare, though they mostly seem to have lacked front-plates.  However, these figures are modelled with very obvious front-plates, so I had to paint them on.  Some units also definitely wore plumes on their bearskins (British eyewitness accounts mention French bearskin-plumes being taken as trophies), but these figures lack plumes.  If I weren’t bone-idle, I might be tempted to model such things, but…

It should of course, be mentioned that at the start of the Seven Years War, bearskins had only just started to be adopted by a few French regiments and most should probably therefore be wearing hats.  However, that would be rather boring…

At the start of the Seven Years War, the light troops of a French field army would normally be supplied by one of the legions of volunteers.  However, as with every army, each regiment was required to supply a daily company of picquets for guarding the camp and these could sometimes be utilised to form a rudimentary screen.  Very quickly, the need for avant-garde infantry was identified and some regiments formed unofficial chasseur companies from volunteers and/or the best marksmen.  Sometimes these chasseurs were grouped together into battalion and even brigade-sized units known as Volontaires de l’Armée.  However, these concepts were completely unofficial and not universally applied across the army.

In 1760, the Duc de Broglie, in his Instruction pour l’Infanterie, attempted to formalise the establishment of chasseur companies within each infantry battalion, as well as the formation of a massed elite grenadier/chasseur battalion as part of every brigade.  Under de Broglie’s new organisation, each infantry battalion would form a chasseur company of 58 men, in addition to the grenadier company of 48 men.  Each brigade of four battalions could therefore potentially deploy an elite battalion of around 400 men.

There were no specific uniform details for chasseurs, though green sword-knots or epaulettes seem to have been adopted by some units.  Otherwise they just wore the standard uniform of their parent regiment.  I’ve therefore painted these skirmisher stands in the same uniforms as regiments already in my collection.  These are Blue Moon figures.

Erroneously titled ‘Chasseurs de Fischer’, the figure on the right, taken from the Becher Manuscript, actually seems to be a chasseur from a French line infantry regiment (note the green sword-knot).  The number ’42’ and the uniform details suggest that this might be a man from the Rouergue Infantry Regiment, which was 42nd in order of seniority.

That’s it for now!  I’ll leave you with a picture of these troops deployed on the ramparts of my new Vauban(ish) fortress; more of which will be posted soon: