Royal Bavarian 6th Infantry Regiment "Kaiser Wilhelm, King of Prussia"

The 6th Infantry Regiment "Kaiser Wilhelm, King of Prussia" was an association of the 12th Infantry Brigade of the Bavarian Army . The regiment's peacetime location was Amberg .

history

Emergence

The regiment was set up in Frankenthal on June 28, 1725 by Elector Carl Philipp, initially as a land battalion of the Electoral Palatinate Army , which had already existed from 1698 to 1703 under General Rehbinder. The first colonel in command was Franz Albrecht Freiherr von Obentraut, whose name the battalion bore (Land Regiment "Obentraut"). In 1733 the regiment was divided into six companies of 198 men each. On November 6, 1734, the regiment still consisted of 600 men, 66 men deserted in the next two days alone . On January 12, 1735, the entire team was dismissed because of the increasing desertions. From July 1738, the land battalion lost its name. On April 20, 1739 the remnants of the regiment were ordered to form a land militia battalion. In July 1740 it had grown again to 493 men. In 1743, 86 men were drafted in order to fully deploy the battalion, but it was disbanded again because of numerous deserters. In autumn 1744 it was set up again in Mannheim with a strength of 786 men . On May 6, 1746, Johann Franz Adrian Baron Marotte von Montigny was appointed Colonel Commander. On May 13, 1746, Colonel von Montigny's Palatinate-Zweibrücken battalion, consisting of nineteen officers and 350 men, was combined with the rural battalion to form a regiment, which was divided into thirteen companies of 112 men each. On the same day, Lieutenant General Friedrich Pfalzgraf von Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld was appointed regiment owner and the regiment was renamed "Pfalz-Zweibrücken" on foot. On February 6, 1747, the 14th Company was set up with 106 men. On May 2, 1747 Colonel Matthias Bertram Deroy was appointed Colonel Commander. By 1750 the regiment had grown to 1,481 men. On May 8, 1751, Lieutenant Field Marshal Karl II. August Count Palatine von Zweibrücken became the owner, the regiment was then called the Infantry Regiment "Prince Karl von Pfalz-Zweibrücken". In 1753 the regiment was raised as a house regiment after the Guard Grenadier Regiment.

Participation in the Seven Years' War 1757/59

The regiment joined the auxiliary corps of Lieutenant General Freiherr von Isselbach with two battalions, each with a grenadier company and five musketeer companies with a strength of 1212 men. While the 1st Battalion was near Cologne , the 2nd Battalion was involved in the Battle of Hastenbeck on July 26, 1757. The affair near Nienburg on February 27, 1758 ended in defeat, but the regiment was allowed to move freely to Minden . On March 15, 1758, the 2nd Battalion in Minden was taken prisoner and taken to Magdeburg . It didn't return until April 1759.

From March 3, 1788 to December 26, 1792, Colonel Erasmus von Deroy was the regiment's chief commander. On September 18, 1789, according to the electoral rescript , the regiment was renamed the 1st Fusilier Regiment "Duke Karl", although it did not lose any privileges as a house regiment, as it had not owned any. The grenadier companies were reclassified into fusilier companies. On December 5, 1789, the regiment received a white body flag and three blue flags. On the body flag was a portrait of Mary , on the other flags the whole coat of arms was shown.

First Imperial War against France 1792/97

The 2nd Battalion (600 men) was assigned to the Reich contingent in 1792 under Major General Ferdinand Count von Minucci, later under Colonel Count Nogarola. First it was used in Mainz , where it had to mourn four dead and five wounded during the siege in May / June 1793. On July 26, 1793, the regiment, reinforced to a combined regiment, with a strength of 1670 men, lay near Landau in the Palatinate . Three officers and 145 men were sick, eleven men left the flag. No details are known about the battles on the Weißenburg lines and at Fort-Louis in October 1793. At Frœschwiller and Wörth, the regiment suffered losses of five dead, 27 wounded and 16 missing from December 14-22, 1793. Little is known about the casualties during the operation near Kaiserslautern in September 1794; the strength was fourteen officers, 29 non-commissioned officers and 397 men. During the second siege of Mainz from November 14, 1794 to February 2, 1795, one man was killed in action and eight men wounded, two officers and 116 men from the Palatinate contingent died of illnesses, and 343 sick people were housed in the hospitals of Mainz. On April 23, 1795 Lieutenant General Duke Wilhelm zu Pfalz-Birkenfeld was appointed owner and the regiment was named 1st Fusilier Regiment "Duke Wilhelm". In June 1796 the regiment was to receive 1,300 replacements, of which, however, 302 had already deserted. In August 1796, while retreating across the Isar and Danube, 277 men fell into the hands of the French. In the Battle of Geisenfeld on September 1, 1796, eight men were killed and fifty were wounded, 158 were missing. After the battle of Biberach on October 2, 1796, the regiment lost two officers and 189 men, most of whom were taken prisoner by the French. At the end of the First Reich War, the regiment still had 315 rifles.

On May 27, 1799, the regiment was reduced to one battalion in the course of the army reduction, which was called "Battalion Efferen" '.

Second Imperial War against France 1799/1801

The 1st Battalion, 22 officers and 959 men in strength, was subordinated to the 1st Brigade under Major General von Deroy, later subordinated to the Subsidien Corps.

Franco-German War

In 1870 the war against France broke out again . After fighting at Weißenburg , Wörth , Bitsch and Sedan , the regiment took part in the enclosure of Paris from September 19, 1870 to January 28, 1871 .

Use at the Fuchsmühl forest crime

The regiment achieved sad fame when it was called on October 30, 1894 by the authorities against the farmers of Fuchsmühl because of their self-help in the fight for their timber rights in the " Fuchsmühler Holzschlacht " and was then actually used. The fifty soldiers killed two 69-year-old men in the forest.

First World War

1914

At the beginning of the war, the regiment was subordinate to the 12th Infantry Brigade / 6th Infantry Division and was initially deployed in the Rémilly area on the western front. On August 20, 1914, the regiment attacked parts of the French 68th Reserve Division near Delme and advanced as far as the Seille . Used as flank protection in the course of the persecution, it was detached from the front in front of Nancy on September 11th and relocated west of Metz . On September 19, 1914, the regiment attacked via Chambley in the direction of Vigneulles and took the Meuse heights on the same day. It captured Saint-Mihiel by September 25, 1914 . Both the Maas bridge and then the village of Chauvoncourt were taken. The III. Battalion was involved in the assault on Camp des Romains on the morning of September 25, which gave up after heavy resistance. The crew was taken prisoner.

1915

In the forest of Ailly, the French tried to gain tactical advantages through mine tunnels and saps , but these were thwarted by a well-prepared counterattack by the 6th Infantry Division with the participation of the 7th and 8th companies in the mixed infantry regiment "Carl" .

1916

After the French had recaptured the village of Fleury on August 2nd and 3rd, 1916, the regiment with parts of the 13th Infantry Regiment started a counter-attack on August 4th, 1916 and was able to restore the original position there. Detached from the front after the fighting at Verdun , the regiment was thrown into the line north of Flers without recovery, where I battalion on the left, II battalion on the right, III. Battalion as a reserve that was able to repel attacks by the British until September 25, 1916. The following day the English, supported by tanks, broke into the regiment's positions and smashed it. On September 30, 1916, the remnants of the regiment were detached.

1917

The III. Battalion was used as a reserve during the spring battle at Arras from April 2 to May 20, 1917 under the command of the 1st Reserve Division . As early as April 9, 1917, the battalion was thrown onto the Bailleul - Farbus railway line to prevent an English breakthrough. The regiment was deployed at Langemarck during the Battle of Flanders from May 27 to December 3, 1917 . On October 4th, 1917, it was able to hold positions south of Koekhuyt, despite heavy British attacks.

1918

During the heavy defensive battles between Somme and Oise , the 2nd, 8th and 9th Companies were disbanded due to a lack of sufficient replacements . With Mine Throwing Company 6, the regiment received its own mine throwing company on September 16. After further heavy losses, the 1st Battalion was disbanded on November 2, 1918 and the remainder were incorporated into the 2nd Battalion. At the end of the war, the regiment stood on the Belgian-French border near Maubeuge .

Whereabouts

After the armistice of Compiègne , the remnants of the regiment marched across the High Fens and Bonn to the Siegen area and from there to Amberg. After arriving there, the regiment was demobilized on December 19, 1918 and finally disbanded. Three free formations were formed from parts . On March 27, 1919, the 1st Volkswehr Battalion Amberg with five companies and one machine gun company and the Neumarkt Security Command were set up. This was followed on April 18, 1919 by the formation of the 2nd People's Army Battalion Amberg, including the 5th Company of the 1st People's Army Battalion with 5th to 7th companies and the 2nd MG company. This battalion was in action in June 1919 in the border guard Bohemia. Finally, on April 29, 1919, the Amberg Volunteer Detachment, also known as the Krummel Freikorps, was formed with three companies. The formations went in June 1919 in the III. Battalion of the Reichswehr Infantry Regiment 47.

The tradition in the Reichswehr was taken over by the training battalion of the 20th (Bavarian) Infantry Regiment in Amberg on August 24, 1921 .

literature

• Konrad Krafft von Dellmensingen , Friedrichfranz Feeser : The Bavaria book of the world wars 1914-1918. Volume 1. Chr. Belser AG publishing house bookstore. Stuttgart 1930.
• Günther Voigt: Germany's armies until 1918. Günter Wegner: Volume 10: Bavaria: Infantry Leib Regiment, Infantry Regiments 1–23, Jäger Battalions 1–2, 1st machine gun division. Biblio Publishing House. Osnabrück 1984. ISBN 3-7648-1199-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The designation commander did not come into use until 1872
2. ^ Jürgen Kraus: Handbook of the associations and troops of the German army 1914-1918. Part VI: Infantry. Volume 1: Infantry Regiments. Publishing house Militaria. Vienna 2007. ISBN 978-3-902526-14-4 . P. 439.