95th Rifles?

Hey guys, I'm new here and all currently in the process of making a character you guys already knows me as Casmen in the CBOX ;)Just a question of curiosity about the 95th rifles.

Now obviously I can guess that a few of us are good Sharpe fans which is all good and that we aren't a hundred percent to historical accuracy. But regarding the fact that it says 95th is a small detachment I remembered once reading that they were by this time June 1809 actually full combat numbers in the peninsular wars and therefore I had to go find it to make sure and.

"In 1809 the 95th was increased to three battalions, and with the
5/60th formed the primary rifle-armed element of Wellington's
Peninsular Army."

"The regiment was in Spain in 1808, fought at Vimiero, and later took part in the 1809 retreat on Vigo. It returned to the Peninsula in May 1809, when it formed part of Crauford's brigade, which later became the famous Light Division. The 1/95th fought with Wellington in all of the Peninsular battles until 1814 when it moved to northern Holland"

This meaning that the 95th in the Peninsular campaign is currently around 1350-3000 men where the size of the 5/60th is a mere battalion which is tops 1200 men at most later split into companies and tied to other units.

So in the end my question is, is the reason that 95th is only a "specialist" Detachment force because of the Sharpe series, or am I misunderstanding something here?

Hope I'm not too much trouble.
Regards
-Casmen

Firstly, hello there!

The 95th took a lot of casualties in Sir John Moore's retreat in the winter of 1808/09 and while it may have been officially increased to three battalions (in comparison to most regiments' two), the third one was (at this point) mostly for administrative purposes: it was where the most severe casualties of the retreat were listed, as well as those men who had gone missing during the retreat -the real life Rifleman (Benjamin) Harris was mustered into the 3/95th, despite being in hospital at the time.

Yes, the 95th as we have it is a specialist force, partly due to Sharpe and partly because of when we decided to set the game when we opened - in May, shortly before Sir Arthur returned to the Peninsula. Also, there is very little point in having a full-strength battalion in play when, at most, we will have four or five characters from that battalion as actual PCs - something that we can do equally well with a smaller group, such as the forty-odd Sharpe brought south from the retreat.

For current game purposes, we are not planning on bringing the full 95th into the game as a playable force for several reasons. Firstly, we have our own Division (a fictionalised 2nd Division) with several different regiments represented. Secondly, we have found that to have only one or two PC characters in a unit leads to those characters lacking RP opportunities. Thirdly, and linked to the second, where we have allowed new players to create characters in a new in-game regiment, those players have not had the RP opportunities they were looking for and they have drifted away.

Also, it may be worth noting that we are a little AU as far as actual battles went, simply because we tried RPing an actual historical battle pretty much as the history books said it went and found it deadly dull - we're here to RP, and use our own imaginations while doing so. If we're limited to recreating things exactly as they were, we might as well sit down and write a book rather than take part in a collaborative act of writing for fun.

Well as far as I can see the 95th 1st battalion is fighting in the Peninsular and the 2nd battalion in Copenhagen later Portugal before returning to the Peninsular in 1810 and fighting alongside the 1st battalion. Despite 1st Battalions losses it was reorganized and returned to the Peninsular campaign in may 1809 as for the 3rd Battalion fought in Cadiz in 1810 and Barossa before later joining Wellington's campaign in the Peninsular.

Of course the 60th in 1813 forming an 8th Battalion supposedly a 9th and a 10th but that was only seen on paper as they seem to never have been much more. 60th however was split into companies and split between the different regiments as a detachment throughout the army where the 95th was never split up the same way and mainly kept together in their Battalion size. The 5th/60th (Royal American) was put together as one of the first rifle regiments to form a company of the people loyal to England in America, was moved to England and of course fought in all major campaigns from 1808-1814 and during this period they made the 6th, 7th and 8th battalion which mainly consisted of German, Hungarian, Swiss and Dutch either of said nationality or Former Prisoners-of-War.

Of course I do see the point in the lacking amount of characters and players to make up what's already on the forum and that would reduce the thread count and scare people off as I can imagine also from experience that when putting this kind of things together with regiments and so on of course I have to go now and thanks for the reply though! Artistic freedom does make things a bit more fun

Although I will surely ask another question later

Yes, the 3/95th did (eventually) join the first two battalions in the Light Division, but (as you say) not before about 1810.

The 60th did raise a 6th Battalion, though I can't remember whether that served in the Caribbean or in America - it was definitely one of the two. And there were plans for a further four, taking them up to ten battalions overall (with number 5-10 all being rifle battalions) but 7-10 never came into actual existence.

We've done our best to provide units to cover all potential areas of interest without stretching ourselves too thin, so I do hope you'll find something you'll like - we could always use more riflemen in our (fictional) 3rd company of the 5/60th...