The Nyland Jägerbataljon is a newly formed Swedish Jäeger Regiment. We will be using the skirmisher units, and in such, resemble the original Nyland och Tavastehus Jägerbataljon that served in the closing years of the Napoleonic Wars, in which its greatest moment was its important role in the Battle of Leipzig. They were originally established in 1626 by Gustavus Adolphus under the name, The Nyland and Tavastehus Regiment. The regiment consisted mainly out of Swedish and Finish Volunteers and was known for their deadly aim with their rifles. Their tradition was carried on through WW2 as the Brigade served under Finland fighting off the Soviets. It now exists today as a coastal Battalion in the Finnish Army and is considered one of Finland's premier Special Operations Units.
The Role of Sweden in the Napoleonic Wars
At the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars Sweden, once a great power, was only a middling power in the game of European power politics. Sweden had a population of only 3.4 million, Finland and Swedish Pomerania included, and the economy was based on a weak agrarian sector. It would certainly have been in Sweden’s best interest to stay out of the huge conflagration engulfing the European continent in the years 1805 to 1815. That was not to be; Sweden was to fight no less than four wars during the era (excluding a short “phoney war” with England). Even if the forces involved and the casualties suffered were small compared to the campaigns fought on the continent during those years. For Sweden, those wars meant a considerable commitment in both money and manpower, and actually brought the country to the brink of destruction.
The first two wars, the farcical war against France in Swedish Pomeranian in 1805 - 1807 and the epic struggle against Russia and Denmark-Norway in 1808 - 1809, were fought solely due to the incompetence and pig-headed stupidity of King Gustavus Adolphus IV (1792 - 1809). Gustavus wisely kept Sweden out of the Revolutionary Wars and joined the armed neutrality with Denmark and Russia in 1800. But his mind changed after the arrest and execution of the duc d’Enghien in 1804. The event led Gustavus to view Napoleon as nothing short of evil incarnate, as a man capable of any heinous act to topple the righteous rulers and nobles of the ancient regime. After the d’Enghien Affair no such trifling matters as the political interests or actual resources of his country could stop Gustavus from fighting Napoleon.
Thus Sweden joined the 3rd Coalition and sent an army to Pomerania to serve the allied cause. This led to the first campaign the Swedish army was to fight during the Napoleonic Wars, fought in Pomerania from 1805 to 1807. During the war, Gustavus managed to botch just about every military and diplomatic move he made. Sweden’s participation in the 3rd Coalition had no impact whatsoever on the campaigns fought on the continent during the same years. After the Treaty of Tilsit, the Swedish position in Pomerania became untenable and the province was evacuated and left for the French to occupy.
Since Gustavus still refused to come to terms with France, Napoleon prompted Russia and Denmark to declare war on Sweden in 1808. This coalition proved to be too much for Sweden’s meagre resources. Despite heroic efforts the war was lost. When peace was signed in September 1809, Finland – with a third of the country’s area and a fourth of its population - had to be handed over to the Russians, though Sweden did survive as a political entity. By then Gustavus, whose military incompetence only aggravated matters, did not rule Sweden anymore; in the spring of 1809 he was ousted from power by a military coup. The years 1808 and 1809 were nothing short of a national disaster for Sweden.
Gustavus was replaced on the throne by his frail, old uncle, Charles XIII (1809 - 1818). Charles was childless and after a somewhat strange turn of events the disgraced French Marshal Jean Baptist Bernadotte was adopted by him and made crown prince of Sweden in 1810. Soon Bernadotte was made generalissimo and became de facto ruler of Sweden, since Charles XIII’s mind was faillng due to old age. The political and military elite of Sweden hoped that Bernadotte would join Napoleon in the war against Russia to win Finland back. Wisely he instead chose to fight against his old master. Thus Sweden came to fight its third war of the Napoleonic Wars, against France, alongside Austria, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia in 1813 - 1814. During the war, the Swedish army marched from Pomerania to the Netherlands, but won little military glory due to Bernadotte’s unwillningness to risk his army in open battle; the lesson of Gustavus Adolphus IV, who lost his crown in a military coup after a disastrous war, was not lost to him.
For his services to the allied cause, Bernadotte demanded Norway. The little country, however, bravely refused to be incorporated into Sweden at the whim of the great powers. This led to a final war, when Sweden invaded and conquered Norway in a lightning campaign in 1814, easily defeating the outnumbered, but brave, Norwegians. Thus Bernadotte redeemed Sweden’s fortunes and made up for the loss of Finland, though not in they way originally hoped by those who helped him to power.
In terms of recruitment, pay, social composition, training, and deployment the Swedish army’s regular forces were divided into two different types of units, indelta (difficult to translate, but approximately “allotted”; the implicit meaning is “the allotment [of state property and income]”) and värvade (“enlisted”). Any understanding of the Swedish army during the Napoleonic period must begin with these two different categories of troops; indeed thinking that titles as “Guards”, “Grenadiers”, “Carabiniers”, “Hussars”, et al., would imply, for example, as in other European armies, elite units consisting of select personnel or units trained for “heavy” or “light” cavalry duty respectively is apt to be misleading, since whether a unit in the Swedish army was indelt or värvad says more about it than any such titles.
Every battalion was to have a jägare-force, though the jägare were not a part of the peacetime establishment. They were selected from the men of the line companies and formed into a separate unit only on mobilization. Only the infantry of the Swedish army formed jägare-detachments; the infantry of the Finnish army never did so. Originally, each infantry battalion was to form a 53 men strong platoon (one officer, two NCO’s, two corporals and 48 privates) but in 1806 this was doubled to a 106 men strong jägare-company per battalion. In the 1813 regulations, the number of jägare per battalion was lowered to a platoon with 58 officers and men (one officer, two NCO’s, four corporals, one bugler and 50 privates). The employment of these jägare-units varied; sometimes they were used as skirmishers for their parent battalion, sometimes merged to a regimental jägare-company or battalion, but most often they were removed from their parent battalions and formed into a light infantry battalion held at brigade level, as in Wellington’s Peninsular army. (It was several such converged brigade jägare-battalions that participated in the storming of Leipzig on the 19th October 1813). Obviously, the size of such a converged brigade light infantry battalion varied with the number of battalions the brigade had.
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