The Family Trees of the Regiment

In 1803 Napoleon restored the appellation of Regiment to
replace that of Demi-Brigade, a title which had been in use
for some ten years. The regiments, prior to the Revolution, had in fact been numbered, as well as named, the regiment corresponding to the 21eme de Ligne was the former Regiment Guyenne, and so the 21eme was to trace the history of its actions before the Revolution to this regiment.

The men of the newly formed 21eme de Ligne had, in fact, no connections with the old 21eme which had existed in 1791. During the revolutionary wars the army had suffered several major upheavals, which may be summarized as:-

1.1791 The old titles of the regiments were abolished and replaced by numbers.

2. 1793 The 'Amalgam' during which each battalion of the old regular army was combined with two battalions of the newly formed National Guard to form the new Demi-Brigades de Bataille. As each of the old regiments was split into two this had the effect of doubling the number of demi-brigades compared to the number of regiments (ia fact there were over twice as many demi-brigades as some were formed entirely from National Guard battalions. .

3.1796 A second 'Amalgam' was performed to reduce the number units within the armies of the Revolution and thereby increasing the strength of the resulting units. The new units were called Demi-Brigades de Ligne, as oppossed to Demi-Brigades de Bataille.

The new Demi-Brigades de Ligne were the units which were to become the new Regiments in 1803, and so the 21eme Demi-Brigade de Ligne became the 21eme de Ligne.

The 'family trees' which accompany this article show the effects of the 'Amalgams' where they affect the 21eme.

In fact three units bore the number 21, sometimes overlapping in the times when they existed, and these are shown 'boxed' in the ttrees'.

One affect of all this mixing of units is the possibilty that the men of the 21eme de Ligne of 1803 may have worn mixtures of some twenty different types of buttons. (It has been discovered that buttons from disbanded units were worn by the men of the disbanded units when they joined new units).

Keith Redfern
Explanation of terms used in the 'Family Trees'
L- Ligne
DBB- Demi-Brigade de Bataille
DBL- Demi-Brigade de Ligne
X/y- x battalion of unit y

ein Bild