Franco-Prussian War French Imperial Guard Voltigeurs

This presentation of my French Imperial Guard is the first two of six battalions of Voltigeurs.

The 1st and 2nd Voltigeur Regiments were formed by a decree of 1 May 1854, drawn from the line regiments with the requirement of 1 to 2 years active service, a minimum height of 1.65 m, and a proven, clean conduct record.

Alongside the Grenadiers they went to the Crimea early in the war and established a solid combat record. Their baptism of fire was in the night attack of 22-23 May 1855 against cemetery on Quarantine Bay where the 2nd Regiment assaulted Russian trenches suffering the heavy loss of 14 officers and over 300 men killed or wounded. In the attack on the Malakoff Redoubt both regiments were committed during the final general assault. Operating on the flanks of the Zouaves de la Garde and Chasseurs, they took the outer trenches and suppressed Russian firing positions. Concentrated artillery fire there inflicted losses as high as 40% in many companies.

The 3rd and 4th Regiments were formed during the course ofhe Crimean War, in December 1855, but remained in France.

All four regiments served in Italy in 1859 forming Camou's 1st Division. At Magenta, the Division was initially held in reserve, but was finally committed to secure the critical railway embankments and bridgeheads at Ponte Nuovo and Buffalora. The 1st Voltigeurs suffered heavy losses while clearing barricades and forcing Ponte Nuovo. The 2nd and 3rd Voltigeurs were engaged in skirmishing to hold the right flank against Austrian counter-attacks. While the 4th Voltigeurs, which formed the divisional reserve, were only slightly engaged.

Twenty days later the Battle of Solferino proved to be the costliest action for the Guard Voltigeurs during the Second Empire. Deployed directly against the central Austrian strongpoints around the heights, village, and cemetery of Solferino, the regiments engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat. The 1st Voltigeurs made column assaults up the steep slopes towards the Solferino hilltop tower Spia d'Italia in the face of heavy Austrian musketry fire taking particularly heavy losses in  officers and NCOs. The 2nd Voltigeurs were heavily engaged around the village centre and stone walls, also suffering heavy casualties. The 3rd and 4th Voltigeurs saw their first major battle here, with the 4th launching bayonet charges against the fortified cemetery walls, while the 3rd fought alongside the 2nd Regiment securing the high ground. Across the 1859 campaign, but primarily at Solferino, the Voltigeur Division sustained over 1,200 casualties.

The Voltigeur tunic in 1870

After the Italian campsign, the four regiments rotated between garrison duty in Paris, ceremonial duties at the Tuileries Palace, and annual grand manoeuvers at the Camp de Châlons. Selected cadres and volunteers from the Voltigeur regiments also participated in the French intervention in Mexico.

In 1870 the voltigeurs were in reserve at Rezonville, but still suffered 555 casualties, largely from German artillery fire that overshot the main line, and were not engaged at Gravelotte-St. Privat. They were involved in the attempted sorties at Metz, particularly at Noisseville where the 1st Voltigeurs lost 4 officers and 85 men, the 2nd assaulted the fortified farmhouses, the 3rd lost 13 officers and 250 men in intense fighting around the estate walls and 4th suffered losses of 6 officers and 130 men killed or wounded.

All four regiments went into captivity with the other units from Metz and were disbanded on 28 October 1870.

As with the grenadiers the voltigeurs took the field in their undress bonnet de police.

So here are the first two battalions.

While I have failed to find conclusive written evidence, it appears that the Guard followed the practice of the line regiments where only the second  battalion carried the regimental colours, or drapeau, on an eagle topped pole while the other battalions carried a fanion on a shorter staff. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I will give only the second battalion a drapeau and eagle and a fanion to the others, following the pattern in this image presented in Les Uniformes de l'Armée Française by Leinhart and Humbert.

Normally the fanion was carried by an NCO, but in my guard they are carried by a junior officer...they are guard afterall! Indications are that the fanion was a little over half the size of drapeau (50 x 40 cm compared to 90 x90 cm), but I have made my fanions a little over scale, otherwise the look a bit silly carried on a pole, even though it is a shortened pole. Although officially no fourth battalions were raised, I am assuming that the 4th battalion was the battalion formed from depot companies that formed the regiments de marche in the Republican armies. 

Franco-Prussian War French Imperial Guard Grenadiers

I have started work on some French Imperial Guard for the Franco-Prussian War.

When he established the Second Empire in December 1852, Louis Napoleon decided to reestablish the Imperial Guard, in the fashion of the Guard of his uncle's First Empire.

Formally established by decree on 1 May 1854, it was originally formed as a mixed division consisting of two infantry brigades (two regiments of grenadiers and two of voltigeurs with three battalions each), and one battalion of chasseurs à pied; a cavalry brigade (a regiment each of cuirassiers and guides); a regiment of foot gendarmerie, a regiment of horse artillery, and an engineer company. Additional decrees of 1855 and 1865 changed the structure to a full corps of two infantry divisions with two brigades each, and one cavalry division with three brigades through the addition of new unit types (zouaves, chasseurs à cheval, lancers, dragoons and carabiniers, and the creation of a third grenadier regiment, two new voltigeur regiments, and a foot artillery regiment.  

Commanded successively by Régnaud de Saint-Jean-d'Angély, Bazaine, then Bourbaki and was intended for deployment as an elite force in campaign as much as it was for ceremonial purposes. Each unit of the Guard had a sumptuous uniform unique to itself and Napoleon took a personal interest in the clothing, weaponry, quality of horses, training, billeting, and general well-being of its  regiments.

My Guard is going to be a representative force about half the strength of the original. I will form a brigade consisting of a regiment of Grenadiers (three battalions) and the Guard Zouave Regiment (two battalions - there were only two battalions), and a brigade of consisting of two regiments of voltigeurs (each of three battalions). Later, when I can find suitable figures, I will do some cavalry and artillery. I am starting with a battalion of grenadiers, because I like grenadiers. 

The 1st and 2nd Guard Grenadier Regiments were formed in time to see service in the Crimea and played an important role in the capture of the outer works of Sevastopol in June 1855, and in the final assault on the city in September. In that campaign the two regiments suffered 250 battle casualties, but three times that number from disease. All three regiments went to Italy in 1859 where they suffered 879 casualties at Magenta and a further 528 when they stormed the heights at Solferino.

In 1870 the Guard joined the Army of the Rhine at Metz in time to join the retreat towards Verdun. At Rezonville, on 16 August, the Grenadiers were a part of Picard's Division that was brought forward at around 1:00 PM to stabilise the line as 2nd Corps fell back in the face of the Prussian 3rd and 4th Divisions. Along with the Guard Zouaves they formed south of Rezonville and remained there all afternoon.  It would be easy to think that from the two images below (from the Rezonville Panorama) that they had a relative easy day, but not so. For most of the afternoon they faced the Prussian 3rd Division and were under relentless artillery fire from the massed German batteries. At day's end they counted 1,477 casualties across the three regiments

They were not engaged at Gravelotte-St Privat two days later and then spent the next two months besieged in Metz. In the attempted sorties at Noisseville and Bellevue they suffered a further 650 casualties. A total of 5,250 grenadiers surrendered when Metz fell in late-October and they saw out the rest of the war as POWs in Germany. The grenadiers, along with the rest of the Guard, were disbanded on 28 October 1870.

Unlike the Crimean and Italian campaigns, the grenadiers took the field in 1870 without their bearskins. In late-July, when he should have been focusing on his plan of campaign, Napoleon became sidetracked with  minutiae and made only three decisions of note. First, in the summer heat the he felt troops need not encumber themselves with blankets and ordered that they could be left in the depots. Second, the line infantry could dispense with the regulation shako and wear the kepi (not that it was really his decision since the troops refused to wear the shako and tens of thousands them littered the railway platforms across the length and  breadth of France). Third, the Guard Grenadiers and Voltigeurs would leave their bearskins and shakos, respectively, at barracks in Paris and were approved to wear the kepi, but there were not enough kepis in stock to supply all seven regiments so they were permitted to wear the bonnet de police in the field. Later, during the siege of Metz sufficient kepis were available and the bonnet de police was gradually replaced.

Here is my first battalion of grenadiers.

The figures are all 3D printed and have amazing detail. The only negative is that with the rank and file figures in the advancing pose the white boutonnières on the front of the tunic, which gives them a very distinctive look, is largely concealed and quite difficult to get at with the brush. The voltigeurs, that are on the painting table now, are in the marching pose and their yellow boutonnières stand out much better. 

Villages for the Franco-Prussian War - Part 12: The Final Alsace house

This is the sixth and final building in this series.

Compared to the last two chocolate box houses, this is rather simple and plain. The addition of some pent roofs (mainly to use up the last bits of roofing material), the fence and the hedge helps to lift what was otherwise a rather dull model. 

I also completed another couple of garden walls to go with the FPW buildings.

Now, all six Alsace buildings formed into a number of village configurations.

And, just for Aly, a sort of re-creation of the charge of Michel's cuirassiers in the streets of Morsbronn on 6 August 1870.

And finally the scene above rendered as a painting in the style of a painter famed for his FPW painting

In truth I am quite pleased that is the final of one of the series. Over the last three months I have made 20 buildings in a row, 23 if I include the three buildings that make up the Schirlenhof Inn, and I am suffering from building fatigue, so the builder's yard will be closed for a while. I need to move on to something else...how fortunate that something has come along...

The Inn at Schirlenhof

I have made a model of the inn in the Alsacian hamlet of Schirlenhof that came to fame in 1870 in the early stages of the Franco-Prussian War as a result of the reconnaissance of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin...yes that Zeppelin...the one who invented and built the famous dirigibles. 

A Württemberger, Zeppelin was born in 1838 and entered the Württemberg Army in 1855. In 1862 he took leave and travelled to the United States and joined the Army of the Potomac as an observer where he witnessed the efforts of Professor Lowe and his observation balloon in the Peninsula Campaign.  The next year he travelled north to Minnesota where he experienced his first ascent in a balloon, an experience that started him on his path to develop dirigibles.

In 1865 he was appointed adjutant to the King of Württemberg. The next year he served in the Austro-Prussian War as a staff officer, a position he continued to hold in the War against France.

In the first days of the war in 1870 General von Beyer, commanding the Baden Division, was responsible for the observation of the Rhine Frontier which was within III Army's intended zone of operations. Since most of the cavalry was still in the process of mobilisation, Beyer was struggling to gather detailed information in the situation west of the Rhine. The only enemy activity observed had been that of the customs guards so on 24 July he ordered Zeppelin to make a reconnaissance with three Baden officers and three dragoon troopers.  Moving swiftly across the Frontier near Lauterbourg Zeppelin’s patrol rode through northern Alsace noting French encampments, monitoring telegraph lines, and counting unit strengths around Wissembourg and along the Vosges foothills. Zeppelin quickly determined that French forces were still largely disorganised, dispersed, and unprepared for an immediate offensive across the border. 

However, both horses and men were exhausted after nearly 48 hours in the saddle and riding nearly 70 kilometers. They were in need of  rest and at around 8:00 AM on 26 July the patrol stopped at an inn in the hamlet of Schirlenhof. Zeppelin ordered a brief pause to feed the horses and gather fresh provisions from the innkeeper.

While the officers were inside eating breakfast and discussing their return route, French forces caught wind of their presence. A squadron of French 12th Chasseurs à Cheval, alerted by local villagers, silently surrounded the inn courtyard.

French troopers charged into the courtyard, blocking the exits. The Baden officers dashed outside to reach their tethered mounts. Lieutenant von Winsloe was shot and killed during the initial volley, while two other officers and several troopers were wounded or overpowered. However, Zeppelin, who had stepped out toward the rear stables to check on the horses just moments before the attack, made his escape. He sprang onto a saddled French horse, slashed his way past two closing Chasseurs, and broke through the surrounding ring at a full gallop.

Pursued for several miles by French cavalry, Zeppelin outpaced his pursuers through the dense Niederbronn forest. Exhausted, riding solo, and navigating solely by map and compass, he successfully re-crossed the German frontier later that afternoon and reported to Beyer that there were no significant enemy forces north of Wœrth. This now largely forgotten episode bought Zeppelin national renown entering him into German military lore, establishing a reputation for personal daring.

Zeppelin continued to serve with the Württemberg Division for the duration of the war. Later he commanded the 19th Uhlans before taking a position as Württemberg's envoy to Berlin. Returning to  army in 1890 he commanded a cavalry brigade in the manoeuvers of that year, but handled them so poorly that he was forced to resign. He dedicated the rest of his life (he died in 1917) to the development of the Zeppelin dirigibles.

Parts of the inn remain today, with its basic form much as it was at the time of the skirmish.

A contemporary illustration of the skirmish

A post war photograph from the front, around 1900, that was possibly the reference for previous image. 

 

A drawing of Zeppelin escaping through the back of the Inn 

The rear of the inn also around 1900, a gabled extension has been added on the left

From these images I have sketched a footprint for my model. The intended base size may change a little once the basic buildings have been dressed. 

Having made that sketch I found two more aspects that confused me a little. 

This postcard of the action confuses the issue by showing what appears to be a barn in the photograph as a dwelling (I like the touch in the lower left of the chasseur leading a little girl away from the action to the safety of her mother). 

Then there is this image of the property in March 2023 (a screen capture from Google Street View). The dwelling/barn shown in the other images is gone and the rue principe runs through where it stood, but it clarifies something that I wasn't sure about in the first and second images which was whether the stables were actually connected to the main building, which they clearly are/were and that the main part of the inn was actually longer than I had designed. So the inn was extended another 30mm and the stables were then physically connected to it. The other building would continue to be just an open barn.

So here is the finished item.