PC: French military advisors in [War of 1812]

dandan noodles wrote:

When Wellington fought the French, he was almost always fighting second string troops, new conscripts without the training of the Grande Armee that shattered the Prussian state in a matter of hours at Jena-Auerstädt

Citation needed, I think. On the contrary, the French troops in the Peninsula War were the better units. This was why Napoleon was so keen to extract them that he was willing to restore the Spanish monarchy.
 
dandan noodles wrote:



Citation needed, I think. On the contrary, the French troops in the Peninsula War were the better units. This was why Napoleon was so keen to extract them that he was willing to restore the Spanish monarchy.

Check out "A Reappraisal of Column Versus Line in the Peninsular War" by James R Arnold.

For the decisive years 1808 to 1812, French annual conscript calls ranged from 181,000 to 217,000.[63] During 1810 and 1811, when France was at peace in the rest of Europe, the majority of these conscripts went to the Peninsula and substantially diluted the quality of the French forces serving there. Simultaneously, troop quality declined further as veterans suffered some of the nearly 100,000 casualties sustained in the Peninsula in 1810-1811.[64] The impact of this dilution is clearly stated by General Anne Savary. Savary's report on the 1809 Battle of Essling, where he fought with troops substantially better than the average Peninsula soldier, observes, "if instead of troops consisting of war levies [raw conscripts], we had opposed to them such soldiers as those of the camp of Boulogne [the Grande Armée], which we might easily have moved in any direction and made to deploy under the enemy's fire without any danger their being thrown into disorder".[65] Innumerable Peninsular battlefields demonstrated this need.

The Peninsular War was something of a best-case scenario for the British, in that they were able to badly bleed second string French troops, with allies performing extensive guerrilla actions in their rear and could build up extensive institutional experience, with a great deal of independence from London.
 
The US Army adopted a drill based on the French, but their deployment tactically was based on the British model. Lundys Lane and the fighting in that area is the best example of how American regular infantry did against British veteran regular infantry.

That's not correct. Wikipedia's entry on Lundy's Lane states this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lundy's_Lane "The battle confirmed that the American regular forces had evolved into a highly professional army. [Winfield] Scott is widely credited for this progress, having modelled and trained his troops using French Revolutionary Army drills and exercises, although not all the American units present at Lundy's Lane had benefitted from his personal training."

Furthermore, after the war Scott visited Europe to study French military methods in 1815/1816.[4] He translated several military manuals of Napoleon I of France into English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winfield_Scott

French experts (or any other foreign experts) were not needed. Just training people into disciplined soldiers, like Scott did at Lundy's Lane, was all that would have been needed to make an American invasion of Canada successful because of manpower advantage.


As to militia, when used properly.. behind entrenchments or as skirmishers, they are actually useful. They generally did fine against Native American tribal armies when serving with some regulars. But battlefield discipline and willingness to stand and face volleys was never their strong suit. In the Revolution or the War of 1812. Which is why when the US fought Mexico it raised volunteer regiments and did the same in the Civil War and Spanish American War. Although the militia did provide a lot of those volunteers.

Militias are useful to pad out an army at low cost so there were American militias in the Mexican-American war. However, they were to support the regulars.
 
Last edited:
Check out "A Reappraisal of Column Versus Line in the Peninsular War" by James R Arnold.



The Peninsular War was something of a best-case scenario for the British, in that they were able to badly bleed second string French troops, with allies performing extensive guerrilla actions in their rear and could build up extensive institutional experience, with a great deal of independence from London.

That's right. Every time Napoleon sent fresh troops into Spain, the British would always retreat back to Portugal, only coming back to engage after the guerillas and the hot, arid mountains softened up the French. Wellington's final offensive finally drove out the French (with the help of the Spanish guerillas and army, mind you) only after Napoleon invaded Russia and drew troops out of Spain to support the invasion.
 
That's not correct. Wikipedia's entry on Lundy's Lane states this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lundy's_Lane "The battle confirmed that the American regular forces had evolved into a highly professional army. [Winfield] Scott is widely credited for this progress, having modelled and trained his troops using French Revolutionary Army drills and exercises, although not all the American units present at Lundy's Lane had benefitted from his personal training."

Furthermore, after the war Scott visited Europe to study French military methods in 1815/1816.[4] He translated several military manuals of Napoleon I of France into English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winfield_Scott

French experts (or any other foreign experts) were not needed. Just training people into disciplined soldiers, like Scott did at Lundy's Lane, was all that would have been needed to make an American invasion of Canada successful because of manpower advantage.




Militias are useful to pad out an army at low cost so there were American militias in the Mexican-American war. However, they were to support the regulars.

you basically repeated what I said but put your own spin on it. I said "the US Army adopted a French type drill", as in their manual of arms is based on the French one, while adopting the British tactical scheme (2 ranks instead of 3)

you are misinterpreting the use of militia in American military history. It has far more to do with political tradition than cost savings.
 
... It has far more to do with political tradition than cost savings.

Well, the political tradition included resistance to both spending and taxation, a fiscal doctrine that interfered with maintinance of large enough standing regiments. The rational being militias were cheaper & moved the cost away from easily taxable merchants. Certainly not the sole argument, but part of it.
 
So if a French military mission could get the U.S. Army up to the standard Winfield Scott held his men to at Lundy's Lane, they could, if not conquer Upper Canada, at least force the British to commit extensive resources to hold their colony.

I'm imagining that this would be part of a broader campaign; Napoleon could send small advisory staffs to many colonial theaters. Send a couple to the U.S., to the Caribbean, to India, to Spain, to South and West Africa; hope that if you hit them everywhere, they will crack somewhere. Meanwhile, he's marrying off his relatives to monarchs and royals on the continent, drawing up treaties and alliances, and generally solidifying and institutionalizing French preeminence.
 
Well, the political tradition included resistance to both spending and taxation, a fiscal doctrine that interfered with maintinance of large enough standing regiments. The rational being militias were cheaper & moved the cost away from easily taxable merchants. Certainly not the sole argument, but part of it.

the whole distrust of a standing army thing built into the system is probably a more salient reason, but American Congressional unwillingness to spend money does have a very very long history
 
minor point? While they typically tried to form into line under fire, they failed pretty much every time they tried that against Wellington.
also, "Forward into Battle" and "The Face of Battle" don't agree with your assessment of French tactics of the period. The whole point of the column is to panic the defenders into route or into delivering a shaky and ineffective volley. It worked pretty well against everyone but the British, who learned to overlap the column and countercharge after the well delivered volley (as did the Army of Portugal)

I believe the current view is that while the mass of the column was used to quickly advance to contact, the French tactical system required their battalions t fight in line if the artillery and voultigers hadn't already broken or significantly disrupted the enemy line. This can be seen from British accounts of Maidia. The accounts of columns failing to deploy in the peninsular is thought to be due to the reverse slope defence - the French didn't know where the Anglo-Portuguese were, and blundered over the crest of the hill into the fire of the red line - there are a number of primary sources which describe the French 'struggling to deploy' under fire.
 
Top