Regiment Prussia (Grande Armée)

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The Regiment Prussia (Grande Armée) , like the Regiment "Isenburg", was a military unit in the French service ( Grande Armée ) during the time of the Rhine Confederation (1806-1814) (also Régiment de Prusse, Régiment étranger de Prusse). The regiment did not belong to the Prussian military (Prussia was also not a member of the Rheinbund, just as the Isenburg regiment was not part of the Isenburg military). The military association established in November 1806 by Carl Fürst zu Isenburg was given the name 4th Imperial French Foreign Regiment in 1810 .

"Prussian" regiment in French service

Carl Friedrich Ludwig Moritz von Isenburg-Birstein
(* 1766 † 1820)
Overview of the uniforms of the 1806 regiment

Carl zu Isenburg (Knight of the Legion of Honor and Générale de Brigade since December 1806 ) recruited another régiment étranger (foreign regiment) for France - like the Isenburg regiment before - during a three-month stay in Leipzig (October to December 1806) First Infantry Regiment Prussia in the service of France, regiment étranger de Prusse ( Prussia in French service ), 2,000 men strong and comprising four battalions. ( The Prussian soldiers who have transferred to French service are de la Prusse , but if they were still Prussians , belonging to Prussia, Prussian-minded, could they render profitable services to France? Johann Gottfried Dyck , bookseller and writer).

Prince Carl zu Isenburg's appeal in the Berlin telegraph of November 8, 1806 read:
After Se. Your Majesty the Emperor of France, King of Italy, graciously deigned to entrust me with the establishment of an infantry regiment of four battalions, made up of individuals who had served in Prussia; Thus, all those gentlemen officers who are captured by French prisoners of war with surrender, and who wish to emerge from this unpleasant situation and to dedicate their activities and military talents to the service of our insurmountable emperor, are given a position in their previous one ranks accompanied in the army, offered in this regiment. This honorable appointment assures those who wish to attain them the protection and paternal care of the adored hero, who loves his warriors as well as his children to the fullest extent, and they become in all things the officers of the French. Army are kept the same. The NCOs and the commoners will also all enjoy the advantages of the French soldiers. Which soldier is so happy with all of these? Pay, clothing, and food in abundance exceed those of any other army: the French soldier lives better than the sergeant in any other army, and enjoys an abundance which makes the burden of service easy business for him. Then hurry up, brave warriors! stand under the banner of Napoleon the great, and go with him to victory and immortal glory. The assembly point of this regiment will be Leipzig; those individuals who wish to speak to me will find me in the Schiklerisches Haus Nro. 57, on the Döhnhofischer Platz. - Karl, Prince of Isenburg.
The call did not trigger the expected influx. Half equipped, subsidized by the prince, who received too little money from France, and melted down to a third due to severe desertions , the regiment crossed the Rhine.

The recruitment has not only been criticized by (anti-Napoleonic) journalists. Carl Fürst zu Isenburg had "wanted to seduce Prussian soldiers into a band of robbers" in Jena and, in a mendacious style, faked the princes who belonged to the French to protect and care for the hero they worshiped. Legal problems also arose, which finally led the French Minister of War to the decision (of January 20, 1808) that the French (these were also former Germans in the areas to the left of the Rhine and from 1810 also large parts of northern Germany) should only join the for they are allowed to recruit intended regiments, ... not naturalized foreigners are only accepted by the regiments of the Schanzgräber, Tour d'Auvergne, Isenburg, Prussia, Westphalia and the Hanoverian Legion .

The military association was made up of soldiers of various origins, even deserters who had run away are said to have been included. The formation took place in then French Mainz (French: Mayence, capital of the Département du Mont-Tonnerre ).

In mid-April 1807, the regiment moved to France, first to Valenciennes , where it ended its organization, then to Avignon and was then used in coastal guarding ( continental barrier ), especially in the Netherlands . In July 1809 the 4 770 strong unit (together with Dutch and French units) was on the coast in Vlissingen . Carl Fürst zu Isenburg, the recruiter and promoter of the regiment, was a brigadier general in the First Infantry Division of the Observation Corps of the Coasts of the Ocean , but he was not the chief or officer in the Prussian Regiment (or Isenburg).

Battle of Buçaco September 27, 1810, Arquivo Histórico Militar, Lisboa

In 1808 part of the association was used in the Spanish War of Independence . The prince also went there, who initially did not lead a command here, but then commanded a German brigade (from a Nassau and a Baden regiment) (in the battles of Medellin and Ciudad Rodrigo ).

The list of all regiments fighting for France from 1810 reads: VI. Foreign troops: 1 Latour d'Auvergne regiment (5 battalions) in Naples, 1 Isenburg regiment (5 battalions) in Naples, 1 Prussia regiment (4 battalions) on the Po, 1 Spanish Joseph Napoleon regiment (5 battalions) in Avignon; 4 depot battalions from other foreigners.

Dissolution and disarmament of all foreign regiments

On November 25, 1812, all foreign regiments were disarmed and disbanded on the orders of Napoleon, which dragged on for some Allied troops in Spain until the end of 1812. Most soldiers were offered to join the regular imperial army.

On November 26, 1813, the Prince of Isenburg applied to join the anti-Napoleonic alliance and declared his membership in the Rhine Confederation and his French employment relationships terminated.

literature

  • Martin Bethke: Das Fürstentum Isenburg im Rheinbund in: Zeitschrift für Heereskunde - Scientific organ for the cultural history of the armed forces, their clothing, armament and equipment, for army museum messages and collector's messages , Berlin (West) (German Society for Heereskunde e. V. ) 1982, pp. 94 to 99 with seven illustrations.
  • Eugène Fieffé History of the foreign troops in the service of France: from their formation to our days as well as all those regiments that were raised in the conquered countries under the First Republic and the Empire (Original: histoire des troupes etrangeres au service de France. 2 vol., Paris 1854, German by F. Symon de Carneville), Volume II, Deschler'sche Buchdruckerei, Munich 1860
  • L. (Ludwig) Hörmann The German troops in the service of France - A historical sketch - II. After the French Revolution. in V. (Valentin) Streffleur's Austrian military magazine, second volume, fourth volume, court and state printing, Vienna 1861
  • Georg Schmeißer: Le regiment de Prusse. A military-historical sketch from the Napoleonic era. Landsberg a. W. 1885, digitized
  • August Woringer: History of the Princely Isenburg Military 1806-1816 in: Journal of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies , Volume 64, Kassel 1953

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Gottfried Dyck The Age of Napoleon the Great: Second Period - From his coronation to the Tilsit Peace . Dyksche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1812, p. 248 f.
  2. ^ Johann Gottfried Dyck The year 1806 and Germany's sovereign at the beginning of 1807, overview of the most memorable incidents since the Pressburg Peace Treatise. printed in February 1807, p. 120.
  3. ↑ The Telegraph first appeared on October 17, 1806 and was published by Simson Alexander David , from January 1, 1807 "Fürstlich Isenburgischer Hofrat", journalist, caricaturist and Napoleon admirer
  4. ↑ Königlich-Baierische Staatszeitung von München, Thursday, November 27, 1806, p. 1148 f .; Also in Friedrich von Cölln's familiar letters about the internal circumstances at the Prussian court since the death of Friedrich II. Peter Hammer, Amsterdam and Cöln 1807, p. 285
  5. ↑ Bernd Müller The Principality of Isenburg in the Rhenish Bund - From Territory to State , Büdingen (Fürstliche Isenburg- und Büdingische Rentkammer) 1978, p. 118
  6. ↑ as quoted by Bernd Müller The Principality of Isenburg in the Rhenish Bund - From Territory to the State , Büdingen (Fürstliche Isenburg and Büdingische Rentkammer) 1978, p. 118;
    Gustav Schmeißer Le "regiment de prusse" - A military-historical sketch from the Napoleonic period , Landsberg a. W. 1885
  7. ↑ Anton Keil (Imperial Procurator at the District Courts of Cologne) Handbook for Mayors and Adjuncts for Policey Commissars, municipal councilors, collectors and distributors of taxes, hospital and poor administrators, pastors, church councils and church masters, field and forest guards and businessmen. Third increased edition, Part Two, Keilische Buchhandlung, Cologne 1814, p. 197
  8. ^ Franz Joseph Adolph Schneidawind Austria's war against France, its allies and the Rhine Confederation in 1809. Volume 3, Hurter'sche Buchhandlung, Schaffhausen 1843, p. 97
  9. ↑ Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army for the year 1806 with information about the subsequent relationship between the officers and military officials listed therein. Ernst Siegfried Mittler, Berlin 1827
  10. ↑ Emplacement des troupes de l'Empire francais a l'Epoque de du September 1, 1810. Imperial Printing House , Paris 1810, German: Complete list of all French, auxiliary and foreign regiments and corps in French service
  11. ^ Statistical overview of the French military power and their auxiliary troops; as well as their distribution and status on September 1, 1810 in FJ Bertuch (Ed.) Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden, Weimar (Landes-Industrie-Comptoir) 1810, p. 217 [220]
  12. ^ Austrian observer of December 7, 1813 (No. 341) p. 1759