In 1866 the active army, on a war footing, comprised nine army corps,
and aggregated 335,000 men. Each corps consisted of twenty-four
battalions of infantry, sixteen batteries of artillery, twenty-four
squadrons of cavalry, one battalion of rifles, one battalion of
engineers, an engineer train, and a military train conveying ammunition
and subsistence, quartermaster’s and hospital supplies. Each infantry
battalion numbered 1,000 men. Three battalions formed a regiment,
two regiments a brigade, and two brigades a division. Each battery
contained six guns. Four batteries were assigned to each infantry
division, two batteries of horse artillery were attached to the cavalry
division, and four batteries of field and two of horse artillery
constituted the reserve artillery of each corps. Each squadron of
cavalry numbered about 140 sabres. Four squadrons composed a regiment,
two regiments a brigade, two brigades a division. A regiment of cavalry
was attached to each infantry division. Each corps numbered about
31,000 combatants, except the Guards, which numbered 36,000--having
four additional battalions and eight additional squadrons. During the
campaign under consideration, the cavalry of an army corps consisted of
only one regiment to each division of infantry; the cavalry division
being taken from each corps, and merged into the corps of reserve
cavalry.
The depot troops consisted of a battalion for each regiment of
infantry, a squadron for each regiment of cavalry, an _abtheilung_ [3
or 4 batteries] for the artillery of each corps, and a company for each
rifle battalion, engineer battalion and train battalion. The army in
the field was constantly kept up to a full war strength by men drawn
from the depots. The fortresses were garrisoned by Landwehr; and on
troops of the same class devolved the duty of pushing forward to occupy
invaded territory, and to relieve the active army from the necessity of
leaving detachments to guard its communications.
This is a brief outline of the organization that enabled a nation of
less than 20,000,000 people eventually to bring 600,000 soldiers upon
the theatre of war, and to place a quarter of a million of them upon
the decisive field of Königgrätz.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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