What size French Imperial Guard Grenadier Regiment

[steve]

I have just obtained my Victrix French grenadiers and dont know wether i should organise them as a Large unit in Black Powder with 42 men to represent the regiment or keep them the same as my 36 man french line battalions.

The 42 men regiment being formed of 2 x 21 man battalions but fielded as 1 unit.

any help or suggestions would be great

steve

[NTM]

I would not field them as a large unit historically when they combined battalions it was because they were severely understrength and it created a normal size unit e.g. Waterloo. So if your standard unit is 36 figs use that as either one battalion at full strength or 2 understrength battalions combined. Any left over can be converted to Legere etc by using spare heads. Where did you come up with 42 anyway as there are 60 in the box although you will not use all 4 officers, standard bearers & drummers in all likelyhood. If you wanted an entire regiment from one box you could probably make 2x24 fig battalions which I would count as small units.

[Guest]

Hi steve,,, there is no one way to field em of course... Historically they were around 800 men, IF full strength.... so a unit of around 32 sounds a good number if your line units are 36.... But it really does not matter.... what looks good is what matters.

anything smaller than a line Battalion sounds the right thing to do..but too tiny sounds silly to me... Good luck!! cheers john s

[steve]

Thanks all i have decided to keep the grenadiers the same size as my frenxh line battalions ( iread in 1813 average size of old guard battalion 780)

I have decided to form 2 battalions of 36 figs

1st =1 officer/1 eagle/ 1 eagle escort/1 drummer and 32 grenadiers

2nd = 1 officer/ 1 flag/ 1 drummer / 33 grenadiers

I have considered the following and was wondering what people thought :

Adding 1 mounted officer to 1st Battalion

Adding 1 or 2 pioneer marching in front of 1st battalion and 2 additional drummers ( i have them in the sets after all

thanks

steve