Good day,
I was working through this article:
https://www.napoleon-series.org/military-info/organization/c_lightinf.html
and compared to the line regiments most of the light look pretty strange, often twice formed from another light unit demi-brigade or from a pool of many pother units, none(except one) having battle honors from the Revolutionary Wars but only in the period of 1805 to 1809, etc..
All these information's just made me curious to dig deeper and so I'm searching for standard works that cover the creation & evolution of the light French infantry up to 1815.
With regards
Are you familiar with the regimental histories by Frederic Bejaud and Didier Davin? They might be of help:
http://frederic.berjaud.free.fr/articles_en_ligne.htm
Just that everybody knows the reason for my question, check out this little pdf:
https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=history_cadet_etd
If you follow the points brought up there then its a little hard to understand that they didn't seem to have profiled themselves at all in the 1st & 2nd Coalition Wars, at least not when looking at Battle Honors, but then seeing them skyrocket in the timeframe of 1805-1809, only to drop back to meaningless again.
It seems to be a much stronger, at least a different, up and down compared to the line infantry.
And specifically for 1813, can the troubles in the 1813 campaign really be put also on the lack of good light infantry and not only on the lack of cavalry like you usually hear?
as so important
I didn't undertsand as in the Line they were also formed twice with 1st and 2nd amalgamation, I don't see where there is a main difference, only that the Light came from green Bataillons de Chasseurs as nucleus instead of white Infantry Regiments before both where merged with news revolutionary units to form light and line half-brigades...
Did you check the usual suspects like Fieffe, Susanne ?
Terry Crowdy is working on just such a title, as part of my From Reason to Revolution series, but it isn't scheduled for release until the second half of next year I am afraid.
I should say that I have worked with Terry Crowdy on Marengo, but this was his first work and is probably the most comprehensive available Incomparable: Napoleon's 9th Light Infantry Regiment (2012).