Balanced army sizes for GNW Swedish and Russian armies

Conflict between the Swedes and their various neighbours between 1670s and 1721. Including topics on Danes, Saxons, Saxon-Polish, Russians and anyone else the boys in blue were mixing it with!
Gunfreak
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Re: Balanced army sizes for GNW Swedish and Russian armies

Post by Gunfreak » Fri Dec 01, 2017 4:48 pm

If you can still get it.
The great northern war compendium is very nice . And I think half of the members on this forum has it.

Englund's Poltova book is available in English if you haven't already read it.

Cossacks should probably be classed as irregular cavalry. They were a lot less battle effective then dragoons.
Dfogleman2
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Re: Balanced army sizes for GNW Swedish and Russian armies

Post by Dfogleman2 » Fri Dec 01, 2017 9:45 pm

A few comments. The Swedish horse regiments were supposed to be issued with cuirasses but quite often did not wear them. Whether armored or not, they were more than equal to the Saxon and Danish cuirassiers. Indeed, the Swedish dragoons easily took on the Saxon cuirassiers. The dragoons at Fraustadt were every bit the equal of the horse.

Prior to 1708, the Russian dragoon regiments had grenadiers. The Grenadiers were stripped out and were combined into regiments in 1708.

At least in the 17th Century Polish “Cossack” cavalry were their generic cavalry. Pancerni were armored Cossack cavalry that began to be called pancerni in order to avoid confusion with the true Cossacks. I agree that there were few hussaria. I would simply class all Polish, Lithuanian and Cossack cavalry as light horse.

There was a large number of Cossack infantry in Russian service in the 1706 Polish campaign. By and large, they did not do well.
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