Romanian Border Regiments, Walachisches Grenz-Infaterie Regimentes

I found some time ago an article on the Internet, written by Major Alexandru Bucur from Inspectoratul de Politie Sibiu about the history of 1st Romanian Border Regiment from Orlat. Unfortunately I lost the refering source of the document, but since I dont want to reproduce it entirely, I believe that it will be no problem.

I also gave my contribution on the article, with some detailes regarding persons and time-framing.

I just want to make a short abstract of the history of the Romanian Border Regiments, based on the article written by above mentioned officer.

In 12 april 1762 Maria Tereza aproved the organisation of "border militia", made up by 2 romanian infantery regiments, 2 sekler infantry regiments, 1 romanian regiment of dragoons and 1 sekler regiment of hussars. It was planed that this force to be deployed to the border between Bucovina and Banat.

The history of 1st Romanian Border Regiment begins in 1764, when the 2nd Romanian Border Regiment from Nasaud was already raised up. The deployment area of 1st Romanian Border Regiment was between the Iron Gates of Transylvania (Portile de Fier ale Transilvaniei) and Tohan, near Brasov. Later it will receive the number "16" corespondantly whith the number of border regiments already existing.

The raising of the regiment was finished in 1766, this long time being necesary because the romanian population didnt wanted to join the imperial army due to the fact that they had to switch religion to greek-catholic from ortodox.

In 1777 the number of men enlisted was 3708 able men and 5837 cripled man from 82 romanian villages.

The order of battle of the regiment was 3 battalions, each consisted of 4 companies. Each company had 4 platoons.
1st battalion had the HQ at Hateg, 2nd batt. at Orlat abd 3rd batt. at Vaida Recea.
After 1766 the regiment was reorganised on 2 battalions with 6 companies each.

The regiment was disbanded in 1851.

At the begining all oficers were non-romanians. In 1774 was mentioned the first romanian officer. In 1800 the number of romanian officers and NCO was 8 (20% from the total number of officers and NCO's from the regiment), in 1830 the percentage of romanian officers was 32% and in 1850 was 45 (almost 50%). 20 officers from the late number of 45 were decorated for bravery during fightings from 1848-1849. (references for the deeds of one of them, leutnant Manzatu can be found at http://www.taramotilor.ro/cap36.html)

Battles where 1st Walachischen Grentz Regiment fought:

- the baptism of fire was in 1778 in the war for the succesion of Bavaria.
- 1788-1790 in the war against turks; distingueshed in the battles from Rucar, Vulcan and Turnu Rosu.
- 1793-1796 - Rhine front, against the french army.
- 1796 - 1797 - Northern Italy, against french napoleonic army; they were now complimented by Napoleon Bonaparte for being fierce warriors, at Piave.
- 16-19 october 1805, the battle of Ulm against Napoleon.
- 2 december 1805, the battle of Pratzen against Napoleon.
- 1809, battle of Sandomir and Zamosc.
- battle of Leipzig, Dresda and Besancon.
- battles of 1848-1849 during civil war in Transylvania, on the side of austrians.

In the campaigns between 1792-1815 1st Romanian Border Regiment lost 27 dead, almost 600 wounded and more than 2.000 missing in action. Together with 2nd Romanian Border Regiment, the 1st Regiment paid a toll of more than another 8.000 disabled men due to wounds or sickeness.

Some of the romanian officers from 1st Romanian Border Regiment eventually fought in 1856 in the italian campaign and in 1866 at Koniggratz.

Books:
- "Alexandru Bucur şi Cornel Lupea - Ofiţerii români din Regimentul 1 grăniceresc român de la Orlat, Editura Etape Sibiu, Sibiu 2002."
Links:
- http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilizator:As...icole_alfabetic

at Leipzig, the 1st Wallachisches IR Nr. 16 was present with 1 btl. and attached to Feldmarschall Freiherr von Mohr's division, belonging to Klenau's IV. Korps.
2nd Wallachis-Illyrisches IR was there too with 2 btl. beloging to the same unit.

also present at Leipzig, the Deutsch-Banater Grenzer IR Nr. 12 with 2btl, attached to Count Hardegg's division, beloging to the I. Korps under Count Colloredo-Mansfeld.

[split from http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?showtopic=4465]

In this case you may be able to confirm, or infirm, the story of the reportedly Rumanian-manned "dayma" regiments of the Austrian Army fighting against the French led by Napoleon.

See story here:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php...138650&start=45
(scroll down to about the centre of the page).

Gen. Dénes

That poster was referring to the Romanian border guards raised in Transylvania, which defended the bridge over the Piave River at Arcola on 15-17 November 1796.

See more details about the regiments in this article in the Army Academy's magazine:
http://www.armyacademy.ro/reviste/3_2000/art28.html
http://www.armyacademy.ro/reviste/1_2002/art16.pdf

I moved this here from the original topic.

In this case you may be able to confirm, or infirm, the story of the reportedly Rumanian-manned "dayma" regiments of the Austrian Army fighting against the French led by Napoleon.

See story here:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php...138650&start=45
(scroll down to about the centre of the page).

reading that thread, there were, from what i know, 2 border regiments called "Wallachische". As with all border guards, they were considered light infantry, which means they would do extensive skirmishing, which is more demanding and requires, among marksmanship, some degree of individualism and independence. generally a more demanding duty than in the regular "line" infantry.
there was also a dragoon regiment with soldiers raised mainly from the romanian speaking areas, but just as with the border infantry, the officers would probably be austrians or hungarians.

This post has been edited by dead-cat on March 03, 2010 12:25 pm

I have found a picture of type of a short sabre that could have been used by the soldiers of the romanian border regiments. The sabre was described as short, slightly curved and with a bronze handle in the form of an eagle head.
This short sabre meets all 3 features, also it is known to be used in the same period. This specific piece was used by a prusian infantry regiment (see the markings on the scabbard). Here are the pictures:




This post has been edited by Lup_Alb on March 03, 2010 11:10 am

from what i've seen so far, austrian sabres, even for grenzer infantry had knuckle guards.

Yes, Officer sabres do have knuckle guards, but this one is a soldier's short sabre, a secondary weapon since the soldier would rely to his musket and bayonet.

This post has been edited by Lup_Alb on March 04, 2010 07:40 am

soldiers sabres too. that's what the pictures in all my osprey books about the austrian army show.
a knuckle guard isn't so expensive and hard to build so that only officers would be able to get it.
all infantry would have a short sabre. Jägers would have one instead of a bayonet, but it could be fixed to the muzzle.

Osprey Books are not allways "dead" accurate ... . I have almost all of those related to antique and medieval period and some of those related to renaissance and pre WWI era myself.
In "Man At Arms Nr. 299 - Austrian Auxiliary troops", there are a lot of short sabres without a knuckle guard, most of those are related to "grenzers"(border troops).
For example "1781 pattern Tshaikisten-und-Pontoniersabel" the short saber of the river Danube border tshaika(a small military river gun-boat) sailors, or the short sabre of the Grenzer 13th Wallach-Illiryan Regiment (a mixed regiment formed from romanians and serbs).
And a short sword that could be mounted in the muzzle of a musket, could not have a knuckle guard because it wouldn't fit in the barrel .

This post has been edited by Lup_Alb on March 04, 2010 04:57 pm

as i said, i haven't seen that type of sabre anywhere yet, in connection with austrian infantry or grenzer troops. that doesn't mean necessarily that they never had some.
there are however examples of short sabres with knuckle guards used as bayonet replacement. a rather famous example are the 95th rifles of the british army.
they are not supposed to be plug bayonets. those, fell out of fashion during the war of the spanish succession.

This post has been edited by dead-cat on March 04, 2010 06:02 pm

I could be wrong, but anyway, that short sabre was used in second half of XIX century and meets the description of the short sabres used by romanian border regiments in Austro-Hungarian army.
My area of interest is antique and medieval period and not modern period so I don't know very much about XVII-XX century weapons (except late XX century because I have used some of them ... )
This short sabre looks interesting and I believe it's quite well balanced, a quick and nimble useful weapon. I would have used something like this as a backup second to a doppelstutz short rifle if I would have been a soldier of that era.

After my last post here, I have read more about the subject. I have found all Osprey books concerning the subject and I think that it will be interesting to develop it further. I am curious What reenactment group from Romania is focused on this kind of reenactment. I was thinking about the fact that here, in Hunedoara, it is possible that the "Perintei sabelfabrik" could have made the edged weapons used by Grenzer 1st Wllach (Orlath) regiment and Grenzer 13th Wallach-Illiryan Regiment since it was recorded to manufacture spears and only the Grenzer regiments and the local "insurrectio" militia still used spears as standard weapons. This fact made me thinking about researching what kind of weapons have been made here and to try and "remake" a few ... We have the knowledge and tools to try this.

This post has been edited by Lup_Alb on March 24, 2010 01:33 pm

Asociatia Datina Strabuna from Oradea reenact the 1st Wallachische Grenzinfanterie Regiment. We will present the uniforms at Military Museum Days in Bucharest in 8-9 May 2010.

Here is a link to pics of our uniforms (one of them, the first one): http://6dorobanti.ro/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1252594545