Large Mercenary Units?

How plausible is it to have large mercenary units in the early 1800s? I'm thinking along the lines of Hessians in the ACW.
 
Don't really know but I just had the crazy idea of Cossack mercenaries under Shermans command during the march to the sea.
 
Well, one must get rid of levee en masse under the French Revolution and Napoleon. Before that wars were fought by mercenaries and small professional armies.
Without mass conscription, and the example set by the French of it's usefulness, mercenaries would be more valuable.
Anmd even then, there were still small uses of mercenaries after Napoleon. However, very small. Thus, getting rid of levee en masse would be best.
 
Did rifled muskets start getting broad use in the Napoleonic era? If so an earlier shift in tactics than occurred in our line could help prevent the levee thing.

If not...well I suppose you could just have the French using the British system that focuses less on a huge levy armies and more on well trained troops that can keep up continuous fire (one row fires, then the next while the first ones are reloading, etc.).
 
Thanks for the responces. Unfortunatly, it means one of the plot points of my story I'm going to write is impossible, but I'll just find another plot point to replace it.
 
If these mercenaries performed a very specialized role, you could still have the levee-en-masse AND large bodies of mercs.

Perhap most of the Union's experienced cavalry troopers die in some horrid massacre and there's not a lot of time to train replacements, so the US hires an army of Cossacks?

Russia under Alexander II and the US WERE friendly during the Civil War, after all.
 
Did rifled muskets start getting broad use in the Napoleonic era? If so an earlier shift in tactics than occurred in our line could help prevent the levee thing.

Every country except Britain rejected them because of the slow reload times. And in truth they were very slow, definitely far too slow to be in the line of battle. In order for them to become effective enough to really change the way tactics played out in battle, you need the technological updates which allowed for easy loading, and that stuff is hard to move forward in time very much.
 
Well, I was thinking basically along the lines of "extra troops for rent".
Except Mercenaries have alway been Specialty Troops. They rarely end up as more Bodies in the Line of Battle.
From Roman Hired Calverly, to Todays Commandos, they fill the Niche that the Local Forces, don't have the training for.
 
Except Mercenaries have alway been Specialty Troops. They rarely end up as more Bodies in the Line of Battle.
From Roman Hired Calverly, to Todays Commandos, they fill the Niche that the Local Forces, don't have the training for.

Yes, the termage is a bit off. As I said in the OP, the inspiration was the Hessian troops in the ARW, which were no mercenaries in the true sense. I don't really know what else to call the topic though.
 
There were, for want of a better word, large bodies of mercenaries in the early 1800s, starting with the King's German Legion. The Royal Navy was hiring kroomen (Kru from West Africa) already AFAIR, and its regular crews included men from all over the world. I am not sure about the status of Napoleon's Polish lancers - were they an allied unit or Poles in French service individually?

What you make of the various ethnic units raised by other combatants is questionable (are cossacks mercenaries? Hungarian hussars? Croat light infantry? They serve for pay and loot in the army of a warlord, so they're certainly not soldiers - warriors may be more appropriate). Colonial troops certainly qualify in many instances.

The majority of troops were regular (often conscript) soldiers, but the mercenary tradition was far from dead yet. Just a few decades later, Louis Philippe would create a Foreign Legion for which he saw some use and at least no insurmountable problems.
 
There were, for want of a better word, large bodies of mercenaries in the early 1800s, starting with the King's German Legion. The Royal Navy was hiring kroomen (Kru from West Africa) already AFAIR, and its regular crews included men from all over the world. I am not sure about the status of Napoleon's Polish lancers - were they an allied unit or Poles in French service individually?

What you make of the various ethnic units raised by other combatants is questionable (are cossacks mercenaries? Hungarian hussars? Croat light infantry? They serve for pay and loot in the army of a warlord, so they're certainly not soldiers - warriors may be more appropriate). Colonial troops certainly qualify in many instances.

The majority of troops were regular (often conscript) soldiers, but the mercenary tradition was far from dead yet. Just a few decades later, Louis Philippe would create a Foreign Legion for which he saw some use and at least no insurmountable problems.

Thanks, I think I have the idea I'm going to use now.
 
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