Chasseurs Britannique

A composite history of this British Regiment.

Chasseurs Britannique

The Chasseurs Britannique were formed in 1801, from soldiers transferred into British Service from the former Army of Condé which was disbanded following the signing of the Treaty of Luneville on the 9 Febuary 1801. This treaty established peace between the Holy Roman Empire (Austria) and France and left the Army of Condé with nowhere to operate and no allies for support along the German border.

Army of Condé

The army had been formed by Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, Prince du Sang, Grand Master of Royal Household. He had served with distinction as a French officer in the Seven Years War alongside his father the Prince of Sourbise and was a General in the French Army at the time of the revolution in France.


Condé had decided to escape from France following the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and fled across the border with his son and grandson. for fear of possible arrest or death.
In 1791, along with many other royalist French refugee’s the prince established himself at Coblenz. Here he helped to organize and lead a large counter-revolutionary army of émigrés.

Composition of the army

Originally about 25,000 men, the size of the prince's army varied, depending in great part upon the demands placed upon it, but also on the funding available. By the end of 1792, the force had 5,000 men. After recruiting in 1796, in the cities of Mainz and Mannheim, and in the Swiss cantons, it could call on 10,000 men, under the pay of Britain.

The composition of the army also varied: The regiments of Mirabeau, Rohan and Salms, for example, were almost independent corps.

Order of Battle 1795

Infantry
- Régiment des Chasseurs Nobles
- Légion noire de Mirabeau, puis légion de Damas
- Régiment de Hohenlohe
- Régiment de Bardonnenche
- Régiment de Roquefeuille
- Régiment Alexandre de Damas
- Régiment de Montesson

Cavalry
- 1er Régiment Noble
- 2eme Régiment Noble
- Régiment du Dauphin
- Hussards de la Légion de Damas
- Hussards de Baschi de Cayla
- Chasseurs de Noinville
- Dragons de Fargues
- Chasseurs d'Astorg
- Dragons de Clermont-Tonnerre
- Cuirassiers de Furange
- Chevaliers de la couronne.

Other than the Prince, the Army of Condé contained the prince's grandson, the Duc d'Enghien, and the two sons of his cousin, the dead king's brother, the Comte d'Artois. It also included many young aristocrats such as Duc de Richelieu, the Duc de Blacas and Chateaubriand, the Duc de Choiseul, the Comte de Langéron, the Comte de Damas, the Comte de Montlosier and the Vicomte de Bonald. Some of whom would eventually become leaders during the Bourbon Restoration.

The insistence of these former high ranking officers in the French Army on receiving the same rate of pay to which they were entitled in France created problems for their funders, which included Spain, Portugal, and Naples, and Britain, and finally, Russia.

The Noble Regiment for example was commanded by Condé himself drawing a French General’s salary, whilst many of its companies were also commanded by Generals being paid at the same rate as if they commanded a whole army. Although in fairness to them this would probably have fallen far short of supporting them in the manner to which they and their familes were accustomed given that they had lost all the income from their estates and possessions in France, and is probably no less than a modern day industrialist would expect if asked to help form and manage a new venture by the government.

History and operations

The Army of Condé initially fought in conjunction with the Austrians. Although many of the generals in Habsburg service distrusted Condé and policy makers in Vienna considered the army and its officers unreliable. Furthermore, the conflicting goals of the French royalists and the Habsburgs frequently placed Condé at odds with the Habsburg military leadership.

One such disagreement over the conduct of war became so heated that the Austrian Emperor ordered Condé to be arrested for insubordination, and in 1792, he demanded the immediate dissolution of the army on the grounds that its officers were émigrés were so incompetent, so unrealistic, and the army so mismanaged that it was nothing but a liability to the campaign in Flanders.

In 1794, the disagreements with Austrian’s became so debilitating that Condé through the negotiations of William Wickham, secured an alternative funding arrangement directly with the British government to pay the Corps' expenses. The British continued to pay to maintain the Condé’s army from 1795 to 1797, allowing him much more freedom to operate independent to the Austrian’s if he wished.

However, in 1797, Austria signed the Treaty of Campo Formio with the First French Republic, formally ending its hostilities against the French, and with the loss of its closest allies, the army transferred to the service of the Russian tsar, Paul I and was withdrawn to Poland. However, it returned to the Rhine in 1799 as part of Alexander Suvorov’s Russian Army.

When Russia quit the Allied coalition in 1801, the Condé once again negotiated the transfer of his army to British service after which it fought in Bavaria.

Over the course of its existence the army took part in the following battles and expeditions:

Battle of Wissembourg (1793)
Battle for Haguenau
Battle of Bertsheim
Siege of Maastricht (1793)
Battle of Toulon (1793)
Landing of emigrants at Quiberon
Battle of Biberach (1796)

The end of the Army.

On the 7th March 1800 the Armée de Condé was transferred over from the Russians into British service.
It was initially planned for it to participate in an expedition into the Languedoc, and on the 16 April the army was marched from Linz to Italy. However, upon reaching Pordenone on the 9th May, they learn that the plans had changed and that the Army was to remain at Pordenone to await further orders.
Eventually orders arrived that the army was to march north again, to reinforce the Austrian Army which was retreating from Ulm. On the 12th June it went into cantonments around Salzburg and remained there until the 5th July, on which date the army was ordered to move Rosenheim to defend the Inn river.

At Rosenhiem that army was involved in some outpost fighting with the French but avoided the main battle which took place on the 3rd December at Hohenlinden where the Austrians were defeated.
Joining the Austrian retreat on the 9th December, they are finally cantoned in Windisch-Feistritz where they remained until after the hostilities had ended and the Austrian’s sued for peace.

They were still cantoned at Windisch-Feistritz when they received an order to hand over all of their horses (presumably to the Austrians), further learning that with a peace now established, there was no further use for them on the continent. This had a very bad effect on morale, resulting in the defection of seventy fully equipped dragoons to the French Army.

Next, a rumour spread through the camp that the British government planned the use of the corps in Egypt. As a result, of this news all but around 250 of the officers and nobles in the army immediately resigned their commissions. At about the same time British offered the enlisted men a chance to transfer the ‘Roverea’ regiment, which was a Swiss regiment also in British service, but only 28 men accepted.
Finally, a deal was struck whereby the British promised to allow the men to continue to serve in their current companies under their former officers of the Armée de Condé, and guaranteed that they would only be required to serve in Europe, the Mediterranean and Egypt. About 600 men accepted this deal and signed up for further service, the remainder receiving a gratuity based on their rank.

Those that remained were combined into a single battalion with the name Chasseurs Britanniques.

The formation of the Chasseurs Britannique

The 600 volunteers from the Armée de Condé were organized into a battalion of six companies under Col. John Ramsay, former Inspector General of Foreign Corp, and the general consensus of historical opinion is that the battalion operated as light infantry (hence the name) at least until 1803.

However, there are a few key points worth noting to avoid later confusion.

Firstly, the 600 men who formed this battalion were not all French émigrés. The Armée de Condé had been formed ten years previously at Coblenz in Germany and since then had fought and camped in Germany, Poland and Italy. Therefore, the vast majority of its recruiting was amongst the ethnic populations of those area’s supplemented by occasional deserters of various nationalities (including French) from the enemy, and what few native Frenchmen chose to leave France prior to the terror. Therefore, whilst the vast majority of the officers were French émigrés, the men themselves would have been a mongrel group of all possible European nationalities.

Secondly, whilst the 600 men who volunteered for this battalion were probably seasoned campaigners with many years experience they were not all trained light infantrymen. Gould's "Mercenaries of the Napoleonic Wars," states that the volunteers were a mixture of former grenadiers and dragoons, though there were some rifle and light infantry units in the Armée de Condé and so some of the men at least may have been experienced skirmishers. The reason the British chose to designate the Chasseurs Britannique a Light battalion, is probably the same reason that they tended to designate a lot of newly raised foreign units as light infantry. Quite simply a newly raised foreign battalion was incapable of taking its place in the line of battle alongside regular British Regiments trained and drilled to the high standards expected by Dundas. Many of these new battalions had their own way of fighting and their own unique systems of manouvre. For example it is reasonable to assume that the ex-French Army officers of the Chasseurs Britannique continued to drill the battalion in accordance with the French regulations they were familiar with, and so it made sense to designate them as a light battalion and thus use them as an irregular formation.

Finally, the motivations of soldiers that volunteered for the Chasseurs Britannique were already being diluted from the pure ‘liberation and restoration of France’ which had inspired them in the early days. The officers themselves were largely French and still motivated by the desire to restore their country, but the men came from a wide range of backgrounds as well as nationalities, and their reasons for fighting were even more varied then their ethnicity.

Nevertheless, at least initially the fighting qualities of the battalion were good enough to illicit praise from General Fox in 1807 for their ‘unimpeachable fidelity’ and Wellington at Fuentes d'Onoro in May 1811. But it was not always so, and during the storming of Badajoz in June the men of the battalion, when forming ladder-parties, they threw away their ladders and fled the field. The fact, is that the regiment was constantly taking in fresh volunteers from a wide variety of sources, including French prisoners of war and the quality and morale of the unit fluctuated accordingly throughout its history.

Early History of the battalion.

The men embarked from Trieste, arriving on Malta in early June 1801. They remained on Malta until August when they embarked and sailed to Alexandria reinforce the garrison. It arrived at Alexandria on 15 October with a strength of 32 officers and 632 others ranks, in time to participate in the siege of Alexandria, being part of Moore’s reserve, but saw very little fighting and suffered only minor casualties.
By December 1801 they were back on Malta where they remained until 1803.

In 1803, while on the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands, the battalion was reorganised and the uniform was changed in British red coats with light blue collar and cuffs; white turn backs; silver lace for officers, white with a red and light blue stripe for others; white breeches with short black half gaiters; black stovepipe shako with white over red plume and a brass plate on the front; grenadier companies had a white plume, light companies a green plume; black leather sword and bayonet belts for all ranks. Officers had a large bicorn hat with a white over red cut feather plume; light company officers wore a shako with green plume; company officers had silver epaulettes on the shoulders, grenadier and light company officers had silver wings on each shoulder with grenade and bugle horn devices. Officers had also bugle-horn badges on the turn backs. Crimson sash for officers, and a red sash with a central light blue stripe for the sergeants. Officers had a gilt hilted sword in a brown leather scabbard, mounted with gilt.

In early 1803, the Chasseurs Britanniques were moved to the Isle of Wight and the Channel islands, were it was reinforced with émigrés, possibly from recently disbanded émigré units. By now it had gained an extra company and was now a seven company battalion.

In 1804 its seven-company establishment was raised to the usual ten including two flank companies. All the evidence suggests that at this point the regiment was re-organised as a standard British line battalion with eight battalion companies a grenadier company, and a light company and so lost its initial light infantry status.

However, there is an opinion that the light company were equipped as riflemen, though this might just have been a small detachment of sharpshooters copied from the line battalions of the Kings German Legion which were stationed on the Isle of Wight at the time.

From November 1805 the corps was in Naples, until transferred to Sicily in January 1806. In June and July it campaigned in Calabria but was not at the battle of Maida.

However, three companies were part of the British force that captured Regio on 9 July; incorporating over 300 French prisoners, the unit was back in Sicily by September.

It sailed in March 1807 with the British expedition to Egypt, which proved disastrous: the Chasseurs suffered some 300 casualties covering the retreat on 31 March. The unit remained in Alexandria until September, incorporating some of the officers and men from Froberg's corps. It then went to Sicily and absorbed other groups of foreigners. The corps participated in the raid on the island of Ischia and Scilla on 24 and 30 June 1809.

The Peninsula Campaign

By November 1810 the unit had some 1,740 men in 12 companies when were sent to Cadiz, Spain, where two companies were left until 1813 serving with the Foreign Recruits Battalion.

The rest of the regiment sailed on to Lisbon arriving January 1811 and joined Wellington's army in March.
It saw much action in the Peninsula, starting at Fuentes d'Onoro (May 1811) where Wellington noted its bravery. Other actions were the first attempt on Badajos (June 1811), Ciudad Rodrigo (January 1812), Larena (March 1812), siege of Salamanca (June 1812), Retiro (August 1812), Olmos (October 1812), Vittoria (June 1813), Pvrenees (July 1813), Bidassoa (August 1813), Nivelle (November 1813), Nive ( December 1813) and Orthez (February 1814) - the last major battle.

Napoleon's popularity was now eroding fast, and when the Chasseurs Britanniques arrived at Bordeaux escorting the Duke of Angouleme on 12 March 1814 the city had turned Royalist.

However, by 1813 there were few emigres left in the regiment except for the officers. The rank and file were filled with 'professional deserters' from all over Europe who had volunteered for the regiment as the best alternative to life in a British prison hulk.

Not surprisingly desertion had become rampant in the corps, especially when close to the enemy. After some 224 men had taking leave in 1813; the regiment was not allowed to post pickets for fear they would desert. However, despite this they proved steady in battle, often suffering heavy casualties.
Following Napoleon's abdication the British troops started to evacuate France and the Chasseurs Britanniques left Bordeaux in July 1814 for England. A detachment served as marines on board HMS Ramillies off the American coast during the summer.

On 5 October 1814 the Chasseurs Britanniques were disbanded in Lymington, its British officers placed on half pay, foreigners receiving a gratuity based on their length of service.

Uniforms (images to follow)

From 1801 to 1803
The initial uniform was probably supplied from the existing stores and was similar to that of the German Light Battalions in the Kings German Legion. The uniform consisted of a green coat with a black or yellow collar, black half-lapels with pointed cuffs, shoulder straps and turn backs, pewter buttons; long breeches (overalls), black half-gaiters; cylindrical shako, white metal bugle horn badge, black cockade, green plume; black accoutrements; most of the men were armed with brown bess muskets though some apparently retained their German Rifles.

From 1803 to 1814
In 1803 the regiment was reorganised into ten companies including both a grenadier and a light company, probably along similar lines as the Kings German Legion Line battalions also stationed on the island at the time.

They wore issued with standard British infantry uniform with light/sky blue facings, silver lace for officers and white with a light blue and red stripe for others. The regimental metal was white and distinctions were as usual for a line infantry unit.

The standard infantry pattern shako was worn with white over red plume for the battalion companies, white for the grenadiers and green for the light company.


There is some evidence that the battalion may have copied the KGL Line battalions and formed a small sharpshooter detachment armed with rifles. If so this might explain why some historians believe the regiment wore black equipment, as this could have been a standard rifleman’s equipment employed by the sharpshooters and obtained from the German light battalions on the island.

Oddly, there is no evidence that the Chasseurs Britanniques were ever issued with colours. Though this would seem unlikely given that they were now organized and otherwise equipped as a line infantry battalion.

Sources
Many and varied internet resources in both English and French.
http://cherylhingley.com/history-Chase1.htm
Gould
Haythornthwaite's "source Book" or "Uniforms of the Peninsular Wars 1807-1814"
Windrow's and Embleton's "Military Dress of the Peninsular War"
Émigré & Foreign Troops in British Service (1) 1803 – Osprey Men-at-Arms

I remember having to paint some of them for a miniatures game of Fuentes de Onoro some years ago.Still got some photos somewhere.

Oh! good point I mean't to add that if anyone has any pictures of the Chasseurs Britannique (or indeed any of the regiments in Conde's army I'd be interested to see them.) I only have the one of the officer in Embleton's at the minute.

Excellent stuff +rep

Wonder if the CBs strange combination of being too unreliable to post pickets but a good unit in battle reflects two main types of recruits - either you joined because you were a French POW and this offered you the best possible chance of escaping and rejoining the French army, or you were a rabid royalist aristo who wanted to fight and kill your class enemies.

(there were probably a third class of mercenaries who fought for whoever paid them well)

The ex-POW recruits were the ones who tended to desert between battles leading the royalist hard core and the mercenaries to do the fighting.

And if you hadn't deserted yet and found yourself in the ranks when battle was joined you really had no option other than to fight as the French would just see another target in a British uniform if you ran towards them.

Plus deserting in battle having borne arms against the emperor was probably regarded much less favourably by French gendarmerie than deserting before battle - and particularly in Spain there was more likelihood of being summarily executed rather than giving your side of the story in a formal court-martial.

Originally Posted by Clodius

Wonder if the CBs strange combination of being too unreliable to post pickets but a good unit in battle reflects two main types of recruits - either you joined because you were a French POW and this offered you the best possible chance of escaping and rejoining the French army, or you were a rabid royalist aristo who wanted to fight and kill your class enemies.

(there were probably a third class of mercenaries who fought for whoever paid them well)

The ex-POW recruits were the ones who tended to desert between battles leading the royalist hard core and the mercenaries to do the fighting.

I'm not sure it was that black and white, the worst example given was of an officer and sixteen men deserting as a group, and as i recall none of them was French. There was certainly a tendency for ex-POW's to desert most frequently, but of course I doubt few of them were French to begin with.

The best time to desert is undoubtedly at night and when on picket duty as you have a legitimate reason for being fully dressed and equipped and yet out on your own.

The worst time would probably be in battle as for the most part you will have enemy willing to shoot you in one direction and officers and sergeant willing to have you shot behind. Not only that but there is a personal stigma associated with abandoning your comrades which kept most men in the line.

It's also noticeable that the situation deteriorated considerably once the Regiment was in Spain, which of course was part of mainland Europe and therefore there was a chance of getting home. Prior to that the battalion had been on Malta, in Egypt, or on the Isle of Wight. I actually doubt many of the men that deserted went over to the French, I suspect they just decided to go home as soon as they found themselves on mainland Europe.

Good article +rep.

As to Conde's army you are in luck. I found the attached on the Inhaber website http://www.grosser-generalstab.de/adjutant.html

Some pictures of emigre troops in the service of Britain by Knotel taken from the Inhaber website.

Digby Smith Uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars has pictures of 7 emigre or mercenary regts in British service pp 114-117:

Hussar Damas Legion
Hompesch Fusilier
Corsican Ranger
Wurtemburg Cape regt
Legion de Mirabeau
De Meuron's Dutch regt
York Hussars

Odd choice of units as the Wurtemburgers, de Meuron's and York's never fought in Europe at all but were sent out to South Africa and the East and West Indies.

Ok if you have 25 quid to spare ! Too expensive for me. I think I got details of the uniform from Osprey Fuentes de Onoro.

@Jihada.

Yes, I kept bumping into adverts for that book as I was rummaging around looking for information on google. But as you say £25 for information on a single British regiment is a bit expensive, and basically I think I got everything I needed from other sources. I am slightly curious how Alistair Nichols managed to padd what little information is available out to fill a whole book, but I'm not keen to spend £25 to find out. I actually found a lot more information on French websites than English ones, but thanks to google translate I was able to extract the main content in a sensible fashion. The main thing I was lacking was the images as Embleton only has the picture of the officer I posted.

@Prince of Essling

Nice, those German sites seem to have a much more comprehensive uniform database than the English ones do.

I'm even more convinced now that my theory about the early uniform of the Chasseurs Britannique is correct. It does look to me as though they were issued with uniforms from the existing stock provided to the Armée de Condé. The actual description of the uniform is very similar to that depicted for the Grenadiers de Bourbon and Dragoons d'Enghien or Regiment Conde, which actually ties in with the suggestion that most of the volunteers were Grenadiers and Dragoons.

Likewise the officers posed on the front cover of Nichols book seem to be wearing uniforms in the same style as those depicted. The guy on the left from examples appears to be in the unifrom of one of the mounted Chasseur regiments. e.g. A'storg or Noinville) It also makes logical sense as these uniforms were probably on hand, and the volunteers were not shipped to England for re-equipment until 1803. Whats interesting of course is that he seems to be talking to Wellington, in which case he should have been re-equipped long before they actually met.

Similar volunteer units like the Greek light infantry were uniformed from local resources too, so its probably standard practice to avoid shipping uniform stores all over the globe.



Stumbled across this image a few minutes ago which supposedly shows the later uniform of the regiment from 1812-1814. However, its worth noting that the artist has chosen to go with a number of uniform details which are unverified and conflict with other sources.

The soldier is depicted as a light infantryman which would be correct for the men from the battalions light company, however, other sources are adamants that when the unit was re-structured in 1803 it was formed as a line battalion with the standard 10 companies including 1 x Grenadier Company, 8 x Battalion Companys and 1 x Light Company. So, the Grenadiers would be wearing the same uniform as above but with a white plume, and the battlaion companies were issued with white over red. Embletons image of a company officer for example has the white over red plume of a battalion company.

The artist has also chosen to show the uniform with the unverified black equipment, which is a rather dubious suggestion as its completely non-standard. I've taken the view that if some men did wear black equipment it was probably worn instead of the standard issue for a reason, the most likely I can think of being that they were using rifles instead of muskets and so were using a German Light infantry battalion equipment configuration instead of the standard set. However, even then they would only have needed some of the specialist items from the kit not the entire set.


Photograph showing the equipment configuration used by the KGL Light Battalions.

The cap badge is of course pure fantasy, as nobody knows what the cap badge of the 95th actually looked like let alone that worn by the Chasseurs Britannique. The artist has assumed that because the battalion were called Chasseurs, they were must have been light infantry and therefore wore a bugle cap badge, but in fact none of that is necessarily correct. Although I have seen an image of a light company man from the 28th Foot with a bugle horn badge, so it might have been a common affectation amongst flank companies to swap the regimental cap badge for a bugle horn.

The entire battalion would have worn stovepipe shako's from 1803 to 1812 anyway so the basic style of the uniform is pretty accurate. The overalls however would have been white for much of the regiments service, subject of course to normal campaign alterations. The grey or blue grey overalls did not start to become common until after 1812, and so most regiments would still have been in white at Fuentes de Onoro. However, the gaiters remained black even in 1815.

Inevitably, there is a lot of guess work going into the uniform and structure of this battalion as records are apparentely pretty sparse. Most wargamers prefer to assume it's another standard light infantry battalion, particularly as it was in the 7th Division during the peninsula campaign, but a number of sources suggest otherwise. Even if it was deemed to be light infantry it seems unlikely that it would have been employed as such given the tendency for the men to desert as soon as they were left to their own devices.

Extracted from article at http://home.wanadoo.nl/g.vanuythoven...itanniques.htm


"Uniform:
The Chasseurs Britanniques were originally dressed in green with yellow facings; black half-lapels, pointed cuffs, shoulder straps and turnbacks; grey long breeches; black half-gaiters; cylindrical shako with black cockade and green plume, white metal bugle horn badge; their equipment and accoutrements were still Russian.
In 1803, while on the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands, uniform was changed in British red coats with light blue collar and cuffs; white turnbacks; silver lace for officers, white with a red and light blue stripe for others; white breeches with short black half gaiters; black stovepipe shako with white over red plume and a brass plate on the front; grenadier companies had a white plume, light companies a green plume; black leather sword and bayonet belts for all ranks. Officers had a large bicorn hat with a white over red cut feather plume; light company officers wore a shako with green plume; company officers had silver epaulettes on the shoulders, grenadier and light company officers had silver wings on each shoulder with grenade and bugle horn devices. Officers had also bugle-horn badges on the turnbacks. Crimson sash for officers, and a red sash with a central light blue stripe for the sergeants. Officers had a gilt hilted sword in a brown leather scabbard, mounted with gilt.
As far as I know, the Chasseurs Britanniques had no colours."

Originally Posted by Prince of Essling

Extracted from article at http://home.wanadoo.nl/g.vanuythoven/Chasseurs%20Britanniques.htm

Yep! I included that information in the summary at the start of the thread, although I think I picked it up from the original French or German website site. The only bits I didn't publish were the detailed battle history as it was too much information, but I kept it all for future reference. In fact, I've more or less gone with that description of the uniform as the most reliable and logical. The only thing I've clung onto is the idea that some of the men were armed with rifles and wore black equipment rather than white. (as shown by Knotel above)

Originally Posted by Jihada

They are detailed in Osprey 'Emigre and Foreign Troops in British Service'. Unfortunately not included here
http://rapidtrend.com/?q=Osprey+Men+at+Arms+285+King+Georges+Army+

Do you know if it adds anything that I've not already covered?

They are detailed in Osprey 'Emigre and Foreign Troops in British Service'. Unfortunately not included here
http://rapidtrend.com/?q=Osprey+Men+...g+Georges+Army+

Probably not . I got a lot of detail on this unit when I painted some but that was some years ago and I forget where I found it.I remember the French had some Legion Irlandaise at Fuentes as well.

Fortunately, its not my job to research the French so i can leave that to someone else. I'm currently rummaging around trying to finalise the information on the garrison of Malta 1805. So, the Royal Corsican Rangers is my next challenge, and the Dillon Regiment (not the French one). Plus i need more information of the Royal Malta Regiment an the two Maltese Provisional Battalions. But I think the Chasseurs Britannique are about as ready to go as they ever will be, unless anyone has any more sources.

Originally Posted by Didz

Fortunately, its not my job to research the French so i can leave that to someone else. I'm currently rummaging around trying to finalise the information on the garrison of Malta 1805. So, the Royal Corsican Rangers is my next challenge, and the Dillon Regiment (not the French one). Plus i need more information of the Royal Malta Regiment an the two Maltese Provisional Battalions. But I think the Chasseurs Britannique are about as ready to go as they ever will be, unless anyone has any more sources.

Picture of Royal Corsican Rangers at http://sites.google.com/site/tiraill...rsican-rangers

This site has a listing of the Units of the Malta garrison from 1799 to 1850 http://website.lineone.net/~peterbidmead/regiments.htm

Thanks, I think I shall base the uniform on the print of the riffleman in the http://sites.google.com/site/tirailleurscorses/home/the-royal-corsican-rangers site. Its slightly different to some of the other images I've seen by in my opinion it makes more sense and fits in with the general pattern of the way Britain was uniforming rifle armed units at the time. I'll start pulling it all together over the next few days and perhaps start a new thread.

There are 2 volumes of this book which you might have to get. I can't find any free downloads of these
http://www.ospreypublishing.com/stor...9781855328594/

No, I've not found any free downloads of them either, I might pop in the local library and see if they have copies. So far the best online sources seem to be French.

Free down load at http://rs509.rapidshare.com/files/19...__1803-15_.pdf