@Churchill
What Rubbish!!! and what exactly do you base this comment on
I would like to know exactly what the percentage was for the guards at these battles...I bet it was between 10 to 20 %.
Really Ray,
On this forum let's try and keep the discussion fun and gentlemenly.
Perhaps you misunderstood the context of my post.
Let me re-phrase, if lets say we decide to fight Walcourt and concentrate on the action around the village gate. Holding the gate is a battalion of Coldstream Guards supported by a Luneburg battalion. The French assualt the village with eight battalions, six of which were made up of guard battalions.
If we carry on and the assualt matches its historical counterpart Marlborough on one side of the village counter attacks with cavalry including the Life Guards and the Oxford Blues (Royal Horse Guards). On the other side of the village the Dutch attack. The French guard was saved by Villars with the cream of the French Cavalry (in our game they may not be guard/elite but be of the better units).
In the above example we are looking at 40% - 50% of units being Guard/Elite/Better?etc.
As per your post if a group of gamers were going to re-fight all of Blenheim then the % of guard units would be small, of course.
Captain of Dragoons wrote:
In this period guard units were not kept in reserve like Napoleon's but placed in the heavest fighting.
I wonder why Marlborough had his 1st Foot Guards in the third line when assaulting Blenheim Village.
Interesting that the 1st Foot Guards were in the third line. But IIRC they too took part in the assualt and the fighting was heavy. At Ramillies the Dutch Blue Guards were in the first line and led the assualt.
Here are some examples of the Guards leading the attack from last post:
i.e. at Steenkirke Luxemburg threw in the French guard to throw back Mackey's English divison attack.
the same with Walcourt, the Coldstream Guards held the town and the French Guards try to carry it.
And of course the Boyne, The Dutch Blue Guards, the first ones in and on the other side waiting were the Irish Foot Guards.
But as per my post if we did a Steinkirk game based on the English Divison attack we would see a lot of guard/elite type regiments put in by the French.
I don't think playing small and medium size games using a good % of guard, etc type units takes away from the period or gaming pleasure.
Here's what another gamer has to say about guard units in the period - From a Nine Years War Variant of the rules Volley and Bayonet.
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mcnell ... rs_war.htm
This was, more than any other era I can think of, the heydey of the guards. The proportion of guard to line units in this period is unlike any other I can think of. The unique combination of the old (the 17th century and prior royal and aristocratic perogative) and the new (the modern standing army and the standardized formations and organizations), led to this, I think. The sovereign, be he a king, a duke, a prince, or an elector, would, as a matter of prestige, raise the best, often biggest, regiment--or regiments--in the army, and he would employ the state's resources to ensure that these units were kept at full strength. Instead of raising a bodyguard of horse or of foot which may fight, as in previous wars of the century, now they were raising battalions and cavalry regiments that held position in the lines of battle. Combine this with the relatively small size of the armies of the era, and you have a time period where the guard corps were very much in the thick of things. It's not that there were fewer guards during the WSS and later periods, for instance, but that the ratio of line units to guard units in the larger armies of later periods would make the proportions quite different.
Here's a good example: at the battle of Fleurus, Luxembourg had 34 infantry battalions, among them was the brigade Seguiran, which had 4 battalions of French Guards and 2 battalions of Swiss Guards--if you just count formations, 20 percent of the infantry battalions, roughly, were guard. The French weren't unique in this. Add to the number of formations the fact that guard formations were often larger than their counterpart line formations and that they were usually kept at full strength besides, and you have an idea of the central role these formations could play in the battles of the era. They weren't so much the last reserve of the army as much as they were the heart of it.
The horse of the era in general seemed to have a unique prestige, and many of the units, whether actually "guard" or not, seemed to have been considered elite or "above average" based on the trappings and trimmings of their uniforms (gold hat lace and whantnot, usually a sign of special status). In short, the most obvious case of mounted guards comes from the French, who had a large body of elite horse to draw on. The Maison du Roi represents a body of nearly 2,600 elite cavalrymen by itself; they were brigaded with the Gendarmie, who could easily increase the total to 4,000 elite horse who were committed en masse. This could represent as much as 25 percent of the total cavalry force for an army of 50,000. After 1692, the French converged all their carabinier troops from the line cavalry regiments into massed carabinier brigades, creating yet another class of elite horse. The Williamite army had its elite horse brigade with its Lifeguards (including the Dutch Guard de Paard), and even so called "minor" powers had viable household or elite cavalry contingents.
It doesn't get any better for gaming, I think, when you can, with a straight face, field colorful formations like the Wurttemburg Leib Guard Cavalry in their yellow jackets and silver cuirasses, regardless of whether or not you rate their overall brigade elite or not. That is another beauty of the scale and the period.
Cheers
Edward
