iain1704 wrote:
Maybe Darkman will clarify this but it appears to be both our beliefs that the question was regarding whether Dragoons fought in both mounted and dismounted or were they almost entirely fighting mounted during the War of the Spanish Succession. The supplement was regarding the difference in useage between the French and the Allies.
My simple answer to this would be that both sides used dragoons in both the mounted and dismounted roles during the War of the Spanish Succession. I think we are both agreed on that.
Yes I agree
iain1704 wrote:
To hit to the crux of the debate (I do not call it an argument because friends do not do that). It is the term and interpretation of the term ‘Line Cavalry’.
I interpret this as Cavalry who are trained to fight primarily on Horseback and are not drilled or expected to fight dismounted (also generally why you find Hussar/Croatian units listed with Cuirassier/Horse/Chevau-Leger/Reiter or what ever other term may be applied).
Your interpretation of this seems to relate to placement of Dragoon regiments within camp rosters (which some also call OOBs or line of battle). This is where I disagree. The problem with this is that you can find Dragoon regiments listed with cavalry as part of the line of battle as early as the 1630’s, right through the 17th Century and beyond (I am sure you have trawled through Marburg the same as I have), this obviously does not mean they are like SYW Dragoons either (I think we would both agree on that too).
I tend to think of the term 'line cavalry' in 2 senses. The first in the way I have used it previously to mean 'fighting in the battleline'. The opposition to this would be light cavalry or skirmishing cavalry who are not part of the 'Line'. AFAIK dragoons in the TYW/ECW period were never in the battlelines. They could be alongside or whatever but would not be expected to 'mix it' with real cavalry. Very often they were dismounted and occupying some kind of terrain feature, etc. The second way is in the sense of 'normal' 'ordinary units. So the opposite to this would be 'Guard Cavalry' or 'Militia Cavalry' or similar.
You could use the kind of classification you suggest but then you have problems with how do you clasify 'Cuirassier/Horse/Chevau-Leger/Reiter' who do get off there horses. These types of cavalry and later SYW dragoons still sometimes got off their horses from time to time.
I have no good suggestion for a good alternative name to any of these though
In any case on general principles I tend to think of dragoons as traveling from being near 100% mounted infantry (0% cavalry)in the TYW/ECW period to 100% full fledged cavalry in the Napoleonic period. I would say they are maybe 90 to 95% 'cavalry' in the SYW and maybe 80 to 85% in the WSS. But this does depend a lot on which dragoons you are talking about.
I have to say that I think that is not as much difference between WSS dragoons and SYW dragoons as you may think. The main difference in my view, in this connection, is that during the SYW most armies had ample light infantry/light cavalry/others to do the kind of tasks dragoons were asked to do in the WSS. I think that by the WSS the regular dismounting of cavalry, including dragoons, wasn't generally needed and it only really occured in response to specific problems on specific battlefields. When something came up dragoons would clealy be the first choice units to dismount. But it was not the usual way for dragoons to fight. While similarly other units would dismount if for some reason it was needed and dragoons couldn't be used.
Ok lets look at some examples.
iain1704 wrote:
The term mounted infantry I used was a reference to the 17th Century attitude towards dragoons, obviously still strongly applied in the east as you proved with your examples, was still regarded much the same in the west.
I am afraid not. In reality I think that the ' backward East' is a good example of what I mean above.
The Polish dragoons always dismounted simply because for various reasons the Polish armies in the GNW had no infantry. So the dragoons and often the 'Horse' dismounted despite supposing to be used mounted. AFAIK this was different to later 17th century practice when Polish dragoons rarely dismounted.
The Russians were actually either circa 100% or less than 5%, the 30-40% I mentioned was a kind of an average. You see the Russians used 2 kinds of armies and used different tactics with each.
The first was basically a standard western style of army with infantry masses and relatively small numbers of cavalry. These kinds of armies used Western sytyle tactics with the vast majority of the cavalry fighting mounted - i.e. no more than 5% (and ususally a lot less) fighting mounted. I should point out here that all Russian cavalry was dragoons, they had no 'Horse' and so it is easy to see when their dragoons are fighting mounted compared to with other armies. These tactics are, at least as far as the Russians are concerned, copying the tactics of Western dragoons.
The second kind of army the Russians used was a 'flying column'. This had relatively small numbers of infantry mounted on horse with larger numbers of dragoons, plus other support troops. The whole thing was a fast moving strike force which moved on horse but largely dismounted to fight. 50 to 100% of the cavalry (which are of course were all dragoons) in these forces dismounted for all or some of the subsequent action. This kind of force was a specific Russian development and a response to the sitation they found themselves in.
It was this specific 'flying column' idea that the Russians used that accounts for their relatively large amount of use of dismounted dragoons. Other than this their dragoons nearly always fought mounted, to at least the extent I suggest for Western dragoons.
I will briefly mention the Swedes here who had a lot of dragoons and these always fought mounted. But as the Swedes really are 'cutting edge' at this point in time I think that they are not a good example. So to round up I will mention the other participants in the GNW such as the Saxons and Danes.
These both fought in the WSS as well as the GNW and the Saxons in particular had a lot of dragoons. But even better they fought in relatively small battles where it is easier to see what the cavalry are actually doing. Large GNW battles involving these armies were 15 to 20 battalions per side. It is fairly clear that what the dragoons were doing is fighting mounted, or at least 95% or more of the time. When they did dismount, the same with the Russians in a standard battle, was in response to some specific local tactical factor.
So despite the seemingly high figures there is good evidence from the 'East' that dragoons only dismounted under specific conditions and that the 'usual' tactic was to fight mounted.
iain1704 wrote:
Again, you give good examples of this attitude in your response.
The main issue in the lack of western examples or small percentage to support the case is the lack of detailed primary sources specifically discussing dragoons, I feel it is quite dangerous to make the assumption that because only a few examples can be found as evidence of dismounted usage that it means they were used primarily in the mounted role like other cavalry, especially since dragoons performed other roles such as scouting, supply escort, during sieges, etc (I think the term ‘Jack of all Trades’ is very apt).
Yes this is very true and sadly we are, as often is the case, short of good accounts of what actually happened in detail. But of course this cuts both ways. In addition you have to explain what dismounted dragoons in the big cavalry actions were doing. It is difficult to imagine what the bulk of the Confederate dragoons, the ones in Hesse Kassel's group and Eugene' s, are doing if they are dismounted in the large cavlry actions at Blenheim.
iain1704 wrote:
The other issue is Spain (why the British certainly raised the additional Dragoon regiments you mention), where the allies primarily used Dragoons in the Mounted role since they did not consider the theatre as suitable for the use of Horse Regiments, which probably goes a long way to reducing the number of examples found and would probably affect your percentages quite heavily.
I think because of the size of the big 'Marlborough' battles you would need to find evidence of significantly bigger amounts of dismounting in them to seriously change the %. The battles in Spain are really too small to have much impact on the % but the % of dismounting is about the same as elsewhere.
In 1710 two of the actions featured dismounted cavalry for example, but again for specific tactical reasons rather than because it was the 'usual' thing to do. The first one featured cavalry from one or both sides dismounting in rough terrain, this probably included 'Horse' as well as dragoons. The second was with Britsh Horse and dragoons dismounting to defend a town when caught out. These were 2 relatively small affairs and in the 3 larger actions it seems very unlikely that anyone dismounted.
iain1704 wrote:
I feel the debate has been extremely important in terms of views and interpretations and although we have disagreed, possibly through a misunderstanding of what the other wrote I hope I have now made my position clear.
I think that it is something that needs to be looked into but I suspect we largely don't have enough primary sources to tell for certain. I would suggest that the evidence we do have suggests that it was not common and we would also have some other problems to tackle if the dragoons did dismount.
Well I will finish now as I am tired and need to get to bed.
Nick