Braunschweig-Lüneburg hunters

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Braunschweig-Lüneburgsche Jäger was the official German name for the Braunschweig contingent of troops fighting under British command on the Iberian Peninsula from 1810-1814 . In the English-speaking world, they are called The Duke of Brunswick-Oels Infantry and Cavalry or Brunswick-Oels Jägers for short .

history

prehistory

The Braunschweig contingent was founded in 1809 by Duke Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig-Oels as a free corps to support Austria in the fight against Napoleon . The troops, also known as the Black Squad because of their black uniform, fought their way through northern Germany on their own after the armistice between Austria and France, in order to embark from Elsfleth for England.

Realignment in England

The British Parliament granted Frederick William as a fighter against Napoleon an annual pension of 7,000 pounds sterling. The Black Band, which had arrived on the Isle of Wight with 1,595 men , was reorganized and converted into an infantry regiment (two battalions of six companies each ) and a hussar regiment (six companies each). Then they were put into British service as "The Duke of Brunswick-Oels Infantry and Cavalry". They kept their black uniform color and the silver skull, only the cut of their uniform changed: the long polo skirt became the short dolman . Relocations to Guernsey and Ireland followed and finally, on August 10, 1810, the ship was shipped to Lisbon .

Use on the Iberian Peninsula

When they arrived in Portugal , the Brunswicks were placed under Wellington's command and fought alongside the British and Hanoverians in British service (the King's German Legion or KGL ) in Portugal, Spain and southern France, and large parts of the hussar regiment also in Sicily .

The infantry was split up and subordinated to several British divisions, mainly General Lowry Cole's 4th Division. They fought in the battle of Fuentes de Oñoro , the siege of Badajoz , the battle of Salamanca and the battle of Vitoria . Wellington's initial blanket rejection of the "Brunswick Legion" in a despatch to the British War Minister Liverpool on January 4, 1811 gave way to the laudatory recognition of nine Brunswick companies in the 7th Division under General William Houston on May 5 at Fuentes de Oñoro . The entire infantry regiment made a good name for itself in the further course of the Peninsular War .

However, since her English comrades had problems pronouncing the German umlaut correctly in "Oels" , they soon jokingly referred to her as "owls", as the poorly pronounced "Oels" is phonetically very close to the English word "owl" for " owl " .

Return and further development

After Napoleon's defeat, the Brunswickers were released from British service in 1814 and returned to Brunswick at the end of 1814. There they formed the trunk of the new battalion "von Pröstler" (after their commander, Major von Pröstler), which was renamed the Leibbataillon on April 14, 1815 . This body battalion, together with the newly established battalions, moved to Belgium in June 1815 and fought at Quatre-Bras and Waterloo .

literature

  • H. von Franckenberg-Ludwigsdorff, memories of the Black Corps, which Duke Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig-Oels established in 1809. From a veteran's diary . Schwetschke , Braunschweig 1859, digitized
  • Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Gerhard Schildt (Hrsg.): Braunschweigische Landesgeschichte. A region looking back over the millennia . Braunschweig 2000
  • Gustav von Kortzfleisch : History of the Duke Braunschweig Infantry Regiment and its regular troops 1809-1902 . 3 volumes, Limbach , Braunschweig 1896–1903, [digital copies: Volume 1 , Volume 2 , Volume 3 ].
  • Gustav von Kortzfleisch: The Duke Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig's train through Germany in 1809 . Berlin 1894, digitized
  • Fred Mentzel: The contract of Duke Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig with the British government on the use of the Black Corps (1809) ; in: Braunschweigisches Jahrbuch, Volume 55, Braunschweig 1974, pp. 230-239
  • Georg Ortenburg: Brunswick military. Elm-Verlag, Cremlingen 1987, ISBN 3-980-02196-3
  • Otto von Pivka : The Black Brunswickers . Osprey Men-at-Arms, Oxford 1973

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ruthard von Frankenberg: In the Black Corps to Waterloo. Memoirs of Major Erdmann von Frankenberg . edition von frankenberg, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-00-048000-3 , pp. 65–66, 75–76 and. 80