"1809 VI Armeekorps FML Vincent Grenz Division Artillery" Topic

Hello

Unless I am missing something I have exhausted topics on this, and am left I suppose looking on opinions as I don't think there is a definitive answer.

Would these two Grenz batteries match facing colors with the 7th and 6th in the division? Would be fine for modelling and easy to assume. However from my understanding each batallion only have two guns, and we see a total of twelve in the division in two batteries.

In total in the whole army at Wagram
13th (off in the army advance guard) 2 Bats
7th 1 Bat
6th 1/2 Bat

So this would lead me to think max 8 guns. Maybe I am being too particular and they just had more guns, and some were brought from the 13th over to Vincent Division.

Second anyone know what their limbers would have looked like? Their train headwear? Uniforms? One one hand it is easy to assume same as line for limbers and grenz for uniform. On the other while simply romantic and imagination one has to wonder if they had a lighter setup for rough border regions.

End of the day it may be one of those things just too niche and murky to be covered. Thanks for any advice and information.

Grenz artillery crew were mostly drawn from the battalion, so they'd be in white Grenz uniforms with their regimental facing colours. If you have a good OOB that says 12 guns it's probably plausible to assume that the three regiments' guns were grouped into one division.

As far as I know the limbers would be crewed by Führwesen personnel so standard white coats, yellow facings and Corsehut.

Happy to be corrected on any of this but thought I'd get the ball rolling.

Cheers,
John

I am thinking this is a moot discussion as from the various OoBs for the 1809 Austrian Army the artillery was organised into in either brigade, position or cavalry batteries.

Looking at OoB Wagram in Gill's trilogy on the 1809 campaign, there were no artillery pieces attached to GM August Vecsey's Brigade which was composed of:
Kienmayer Hussars No 8 (8 squadrons) 639 men
Warasdin St Georg Grenz Regiment No 6 (2 battalions) 937 men
Brod Grenx Regiment No 7 (Remnants) (2 companies) 326 men

Would it be all of the artillery crew drawn from the infantry battalion or just the handlanger crew? Seems odd to draw technical crew from the infantry versus unskilled (or less skilled) labour.

Thanks for the replies guys!

John – Thank you! I agree. That is probably the "safe" route if nothing more can be found.

Essling – Bowden has them. As does this site.

link

Now I do not consider this a source itself, but I *have* noticed differences when needing to check the OOB on a whim over the past year. So he is getting it from one of the other books in his listed bibliography. He does not list Bowden as a source, and Bowden doesn't directly state grenz gun in the OOB, it is implied.

I have been too busy but at some point want to figure out what book I am missing or overlooking from there, that is the pinpoint source they are using. This particular site I believe is just a mirror of Napolun, as the Napolun site has been down for quite some time for me.

For whatever that is worth, it is interesting.

I am not at my Gill set at the moment. You mention Wagram but I wonder if the guns are elsewhere in that version of OOB,

Interesting your strengths are way higher. Bowden has 1/3 178 strength for 7. This lines up with Acerbi, after Ebelsburg the story of that 1/3 detachment ends up at Wagram if I am understanding his writing correctly and he lists 142 men right after Ebelsburg.

Not complaining, and to be clear I very much appreciate your input. I just find this all fascinating.

Shadoe – See, this is where my imagination starts to take over, make sense in my brain, but then at the same time make me uncomfortable. It can make great sense both ways.

If these guns are permanent to the regiments as I understand, these are way off in the border and most often on outpost with the regiment. Could you imagine being in the train service and you drew the lot for someplace edge of your known world, where you see dreaded Ottomans every day, to sit in a fortress with Grenz, which as a "proper" Austrian you see as hooligans?

The situation reminds me a bit of when I dabbled in WW2 when younger. If memory serves Fallschirmjäger had miniaturized artillery that could be parachuted in. They did not have regular army regiments driving support to them. It all makes sense to me.

Again, this is just fun speculation. I still prefer to figure out what is correct.

Will post later a comprehensive article (60 pages approx) by Major Semek on Austrian artillery in 1809 from Mitteilungen des k.u.k. Kriegsarchivs (1904 edition) – I need to pull the pdf together. I didn't detect any mention of Grenze artillery being deployed in the various Corps (unless I missed it). All batteries were from the 4 regular artillery regiments.

As promised article by Major Semek on Austrian artillery in 1809 from Mitteilungen des k.u.k. Kriegsarchivs (1904 edition)
link

@DevoutDavout,

The following is from the Rawkins book, "The Austro-Hungarian Army 1792-1814", 4th Edition, 2016 – likely one of the last books published by Rawkins before his death.

"The Grenz-Regimenter had no elite grenadier division but retained the battalion artillery, two 3pdr. guns, even after the guns were withdrawn from the regular infantry regiments in 1808 with a crew of 44 artillerists."

He lists "56 artillerists (kader-batallion)" as part of the "Grenz-Regiments-Stabs 1792-1814" but no artillerists for "Grenz-Ordinär-Kompagnie".

On the allocation of personnel from the artillery regiments: "The Grenz-Regimenter were allocated four 3pdr guns but received no crew [i.e., from the artillery regiments] only a trained artillery NCO to supervise the battery and the gun crew was drawn from the regiment from volunteers with previous artillery experience, or men at least able to read and write and understand basic arithmetic to a maximum of fifty men. The regular infantry batteries had a trained crew of artillerists and the gun site labour, the ‘Handlangeren' was assigned from the men of the infantry battalions."

From the section on the Grenze:
"BATAILLON-ARTILLERIE: The Grenz-Regimenter retained the battalion artillery, two 3pdr guns, with a crew of 44 artillerists even after the guns were withdrawn from the regular infantry regiments in 1808. The guns were returned to the depots in 1810 but it is unknown if they were put into the field in 1813 although the artillery section remained on the regimental returns. Each Bataillon-Artillerie-Abteilung was commanded by a Korporal assisted by a Kanonier, who were professional artillerists with the Unter-Kanonieren found by the Grenz-Regiment from literate volunteers who were paid as Gefreite whilst assigned to the guns. When two or more sections were combined in the field the senior korporal was appointed as Feldwebel to oversee the battery.

"The artillerists uniforms were virtually identical to those worn by the regiment and followed the Verordnung 1769 and 1789. The regulation hat was the kasket in 1792 with a white scalloped lace edging to the front for the Korporal and Kanonier and white lace trim to the cuffs of the coat but otherwise as for the Gemeiner of the regiment except that the hat is often shown with a black leather peak. The Feldmontur was white and the Hausmontur was tobacco brown with pantaloons as for the men. The Unter-Kanoniers were armed exactly as they had been as infantrymen with musket, bayonet and sabre and the Kanonier was armed with the shorter carbine. The Kanonier and Korporal wore a brass match case on the breast of the pouchbelt."

Thanks very much both of you.

Essling – Thanks for the pdf. I read it and certainly do not see mention either. It is a little puzzling, as I wonder if it is overlooked by Semek, or they really did just leave the artillery and crew at home. They certainly did have attached 3lbr. It is on the other hand also not safe to assume the 3s attached are Grenz, because there are other 3s here and there in the OOB especially in the Grenadiers. However, the lack of mention and accounting of the artillery, the safer assumption would be they are not Grenz. That does make me wonder as well, is the reason those two batteries get cited as Grenz in some other places is simply because they are in a Grenz division? Something is off somewhere. In no hurry to model though, so will keep digging.

Shadoe – Thanks very much. I have been meaning to get that book, one Rawkins I do not have yet.

That certainly finally solves the crew, at Wagram or not. Interesting they essentially had a mini artillery staff of the most literate men and then filled out the rest of each battery with handlangren chosen from the regiment. That solves facings as well.

Also very interesting it was indeed as "internal" to the grenz as I suspected it would be. My imagination wasn't that far off.

So that makes me wonder about train. If they went to all that (in my mind logical as well) trouble to make the artillery this way, surely they wouldn't instead bring in train from the army as I speculated above. Does the book mention anything on that?

In addition today I found a before overlooked plate in Osprey 299 of a Grenz 3 pound trail, cited to a Dolleczek). It is indeed a lighter weight version to the regular Austrian battalion 3.

It has a contraption on the front. Googling his name and grenz carraige, I find something similar here:

link

Page 18, the forked device in front.

I have to get to work and will look into it later including translating this pdf. But I wonder if this is some sort of device for pulling instead of a limber. This image here sounds to be of an earlier model artillery, possibly before limbers? I know very little before 1800 or so.

Thanks all, exciting stuff.

Nothing is mentioned about the Fuhrwesen in the section on the Grenze, but in the Fuhrwesen Korps section Rawkins mentions that the Korps was responsible for all wheeled transport and were assigned as detachements to each gun section.

Well I had to google a little bit. I think this solves the contraption.

For manhandling. Probably still had some sort of limber since according to said osprey it weighed still around 240kg/500lb. Thinking about it as well, I question how well pulling it by that with horses would go. So don't think it has much to do with that.

Will keep digging later.

Thank you Shadoe!

See exchange at link where David Hollins says not taken into the field.

Wow. That is a wealth of info and just about every issue solved.

Strange this website has never turned up in any searches in any topic. Never saw it before. I did not know he posted there either. Will have to check it often.

Thank you very much for the help.

As is so often the case, this thread has brought interesting information to light for me.

This was new:
"Against that,of course, the Wurttemburgers claim to have captured a flag from the Peterwardein Grenzer at Eckmuhl." I've assumed up till now that Grenzer *never* carried standards in the field during our period.

Getting back to Grenz artillery, I think I am interpreting Dave H as saying:

Artillery in the Grenz would be in Hausmontur (brown), and probably in bicorn.

Artillery sent out of the Grenz would probably mostly also be in Hausmontur (but possibly in white Feldmontur). Casualties might well have been replaced by pulling suitable men from the battalions too, in which case they'd be wearing whatever the rest of the battalion was wearing, which, given how poorly prioritised the Grenz regiments were, could be either Feldmontur, Hausmontur or a mix of both, or even, potentially at a pinch, some bloke in blue tights and a red cloak! (OK, so that might be stretching things a bit :~})

I interpreted "I was always under the impression that the Grenzers took guns into the field, but this is an embellishment on basic data in Krieg 1809, so it was handy to discover" as meaning Grenz artillery *was* deployed away from home, but I haven't read Krieg so I'm not certain. Can someone elaborate?

At least some Grenz gunners being left at home would make sense since they were also responsible for the local fortifications, which included artillery.

Cheers,
John

@ Erzherzog Johann,

Krieg 1809 is the official Austrian history & none of the OoBs have the Grenze artillery pieces present, so the conclusion has to be that they were left at home.

Without any artillery why would the Grenze take any artillerymen into the field when in theory they had 2 battalions plus numbers of reserves?

For links to Krieg see my post of 19 February 2024 @ 2:16pm on "Austrian Infantry Regiments 1809" at TMP link

The question that remains in my mind is who was responsible for looking after the Grenze transport allocation as each regiment for the 1809 campaign was supposed to take into the field:
1 x 4 horse drawn field chest;
6 x 4 horse drawn ration wagons;
1 x 2 horse drawn field forge; and
a number of pack horses (actual number not specified).

Have now found 1 OoB that suggests that some Granze artillerie did take to the field but only 4 guns!

John Gill's Volume 2, page 347:

Dalmatian Detachmernt GM von Stoichevich
Licca Grenz Regiment no 1 (2 battalions)
Reserve battalion/ Licca Grenze Regiment no 1
Reserve battalion/ Ottacac Grenz Regiment No 2
Reserve battalion/ Ogulin Grenz Regiment No 3
Reserve battalion/ Szulin Grenze Regiment Nr 4
Hohenzollern Chevauleger regiment No 2 (1 squadron)
Mounted Serezaner (1 squadron)
Artillery : 1x 6 pdr position battery & 1 x 3pdr brigade battery
Infantry: circa 7,690
Cavalry circa 310
Guns – 18, so based on 8 cannon in a 3 pdr brigade battery & 4 guns & 2 howitzers in a position battery that leaves 4 guns unaccounted for, so in my opinion 4 must have come from the Grenze ; most likely the Licca Regiment.

As for standards – this is believed to have been written by David Hollins: "The Grenzers used the usual system, except that after 1807, all battalions appear to have carried one Ordinarfahne. It is not clear whether they carried the flag in war, although one was captured from 9. Peterwardein Grenzer at the Battle of Eckmühl in April 1809."

I realized today as well that Bowden does differentiate Grenz artillery. But at Eckmuhl. More evidence for none at Wagram.

I come to a completely different conclusion after reading Prince of Essling's supplied pdf and the answers by David Hollins.

Regimental artillery as such was disbanded in 1808 – early 1809, why should be there any guns from Grenz regiments any longer in the field in the campaign of 1809?

Position and brigade artillery were served by the regular artillery regiments.

I agree with the conclusions of Prince of Essling above -other that the unacounted 4 guns came from a Grenz regiment.

The drill regulations for the Grenzer of 1808 – link is supplied in the useful stuff thread, mentions that each battalion had a Führer, carrying a colour. I am unaware that it wasn't carried in battle.

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Full Game in Javier at war Blog

link

Armand

We, or at least I certainly, have come to agree with Essling.

The confusion came from while regimental was disbanded, Grenz still kept artillery, and some OOBs (seemingly now incorrectly) cite them as Grenz 3s. It wasn't until last few posts it comes to light they were kept in frontier.

No matter, but clarification.