Hat 9324 Napoleonic Prussian Landwehr (Action)

At the time of the outbreak of wars with revolutionary France (1792-1799), the Prussian army was still radiant with the fame of great successes during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), and the memory of such victories as the Battle of Rossbach (1757) or Lutynia (1757) was still alive. It was also widely regarded as probably the best in Europe. However, already in the 1770s, it began to undergo a kind of erosion and ossification. Its combat value was becoming more and more debatable. The Prussian army was still able to wage a campaign against France with some success in 1792-1795, but already in the course of the 1806 campaign it suffered a devastating defeat. It is not surprising that the battles of Jena and Auerstädt became synonymous with defeat in the Prussian army, and at the same time launched a process of far-reaching changes. These reforms also affected - not surprisingly - the Prussian infantry. On the wave of these reforms, in March 1813, Landwera (Ger. Landwehr ), i.e. a formation composed of men between 18 and 40 years of age who were not physically capable of serving in regular infantry or cavalry formations. Interestingly, the Landwer units were not equipped centrally, but provincially - i.e. their uniforms and weapons had to be provided by individual provinces of the Prussian state, and not by Berlin. However, each first regiment of this formation consisted of 3 battalions, 4 companies in each battalion. In the summer of 1815, Prussia set up 64-65 regiments of Landwera. Of course, its combat quality was lower than that of regular infantry, but often its units had a very high morale and were used in general battles, such as the Battle of Ligny in 1815.