Hi All, I am a member of Crusade Re-enactment who portrays The Black Brunswickers and I recently volunteered to become a Fifer for the Line Infantry battalion but my searching on the internet is coming up with nothing. So I was wondering if anyone on here can inform me if the Duke had any Fifers in the Line Infantry during mainly the Battle of Waterloo and if anyone knows where I can find any marches played by them, please? Many thanks :)
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I know the meaning of "Hoboisten" and I won't judge finally which instruments belonged to the music bands.
But as I wrote before, I would recommend the reenactment as "Hornist"
"Hoboisten" are band musicians, playing, as the origin of the denomination, "hautbois", indicates, woodwind instruments, possibly embellished by the percussion of the new janissary style music.
As far as I know "Querpfeifen" (with a high pitch, not to be mixed up with "Querflöten") were signal instruments (in Prussia in use only with the grenadiers, and abolished before 1806) and did not belong to the band music.
If I calculate the final number of Kortzfleisch with 151 officers, 440 NCO and 4.946 soldiers ... the numbers of "non-fighting" men within the Brunswick infantry were:
31 officers, 42 NCO and 96 men
@Hans Wurst:
At pages 50-51 of volume 2 Kortzfleisch lists the field corps with a sum of 169 officers, 482 NCO and 5.043 soldiers. Then he states that in these numbers the "non-fighting" soldiers are included and notes among them: surgeons, "Büchsenmacher" (gunsmith), "Hoboisten" (musicians), Train soldiers and officer's servants.
So I would not neglect the musicians as part of the Brunswick corps 1815, but final certainty only will be achieved via archive research (in case the troop rolls survived).
Greetings from Berlin
Markus Stein
Kortzfleisch when talking about the composition of the companies between 1813 and 1815, mentions only "Hornisten" (buglers) for the light infantry and "Tambours" (drummers) for the line infantry. No "Pfeifer" (fifers). "Hautboisten" (musicians) were part of a musical band on battalion level. I doubt one of them was playing a flute.
So if you want to do your Brunswick line infantry re-enactment correctly, you should exchange the fife with a drum or a musket.
I added to the "Uniformenportal" of Napoleon Online an album with plates and paintings of A. Beyer-Pegau at
http://uniformenportal.de/index.php?/category/119
There you find a plate with the Brunswick troops 1815 and a "Hoboist" (musician) of the 1st Line Battalion. The regimental history of Kortzfleisch also speaks of "Hoboisten" who accompanied the Brunswick troops to the Netherlands 1815, but there's no list of the list of musicians (e.g. drums, fifers, etc.). So in case you want to be sure, I would stick to a horn as "hornists" are proved as musicians.
And just to help your research - I made a search in the "Uniformenportal" all images relating to Brunswick, just follow the link
http://uniformenportal.de/index.php?/tags/92-l_braunschweig
Greetings from Berlin
Markus Stein
(www.napoleon-online.de / www.2empire.de / www.uniformenportal.de)
though not directly Brunswick, I found Michael Tänzer extremely helpful in the past, I would get in touch with him.
https://www.facebook.com/pg/akHMG/about/?ref=page_internal
you may try this side
http://www.braunschweiger-feldkorps.de/