SYW – French Infantry

In my last posting, I mentioned the collection of French were based on the order of battle at Hastenbeck 1757. This list offered a nice assortment of French, German, Swiss and Swedish troops, with auxiliaries from Austria and the Palatine. In total, the 50,000 infantry were organized into 84 battalions and 10,000 cavalry formed 83 squadrons, all this supported by 68 heavy guns, 84 battalion guns and 8 howitzers.

Rather than compress this number into 12 elements for DBA-HX, I kept the nominal strength an element of foot or cavalry and simply expanded the number of elements needed to duplicate the order of battle.

However, 84 elements of foot and 42 of cavalry, discounting the guns reqired would far exceed the big battle option for our purposes. So I set my goal to have half that number to be ready by Easter.

Listed below are the regiments which I shall focus on; these are listed in their respective brigades with senior regiment listed first. I mention this, as each brigade will have one flag representing the senior regiment for recognition purposes.

Checking Kronoskaf.com for uniform details, many of these regiments have similar details, such as lacing, colour of waistcoat or cuffs, however, flags are the most distinguishing feature.

The order of battle gives most brigades having two regiments totaling 4 battalions, in most cases, the older regiments (vielles bandes ) fielded all four of their battalions to the brigade. Nine such brigade/regiments were present at Hastenbeck.

Most infantry brigades are comprised of two 2 battalion regiments, however, the older or vielles bandes fielded their complete strength of 4 battalions as one brigade. Keeping the ratio of “old” to “new” regiments at 2:5, my curent list is thus:

French Line

Picardie Brigade (4 bns)
Champagne Brigade (4 bns) under M. d'Anlézy

La Couronne Brigade
La Couronne (2 bns)
Conty (2 bns)

Vaubécourt Brigade
Vaubécourt (2 bns)
Condé (2 bns)

Eu Brigade under the Comte de Lorge
Eu (2 bns)
Enghien (2 bns)

Orléans Brigade
Orléans (2 bns)
Chartres (2 bns)

Foreign regiments

Alsace Brigade
Alsace (3 bns)
Saint-Germain (1 bn)

Royal-Suédois Brigade
Royal Suédois (2 bns)
Royal Bavière (2 bns)

Reding (Swiss) Brigade
Reding (2 bns)
Salis de Mayenfeld (2 bns)




The top photo shows the older regiments of Picardie and Champagne plus La Couronne and Cont.

Photo two, shows the newer reigments of Vaubécourt, Condé, Eu, Enghien, Orleanns, and Chartres, while below are all the foreign regiments shown in their order listed.





Further additions

I will add two more brigades of grenadiers and light troops and some auxiliares, such as those from Austrian and the Palatine. The later brings back fond memories of my student life at Heidelberg. Generals pose no problem as I have five cavalry brigadiers and five for the infantry, all under the command of Maréchal d'Estrées.

By Easter, I should be painting flags for all my brigades. Next posting will cover my work on the light troops and artillery.

Cheers,