Jäger Battalions (Part VI)
The Light Infantry Tradition
In 1874, 442 infantry battalions and 27 Jäger battalions served in the peacetime armies of the German Empire. By 1902, the number of infantry battalions had grown to 682 (an increase of more than 37%), but the number of Jäger battalions had dropped to 18 (a decrease of 33%.) To make matters worse, the pages of military journals were full of articles calling for the abolition of the Jäger as a separate branch of service. (These pieces often quoted Napoleon Bonaparte as saying, “I want only one kind of infantry - good infantry.”)
As early as the 1890s, the Inspectorate of Jäger and Schützen responded to the danger of organizational extinction by seeking new roles for Jäger battalions. One of the earliest of these was the provision of Jagdkommandos, “hunting commands” capable of conducting long-range raids. Another was experimentation with machine guns and bicycles. (Where the Jagdkommando initiative competed with cavalry units, creating horse-drawn machine gun batteries and companies mounted on bicycles provided cavalry divisions with the capabilities that enhanced their ability to operate as independent formations.)
In addition to this, Jäger units experimented with things that promised to improve their traditional capabilities. These included self-loading rifles (such as the one invented by General Manuel Mondragón of the Mexican Army) and scout dogs.
The entrepreneurial strategy of the Inspectorate of Jäger and Schützen succeeded in preserving the place of the Jäger battalions in the armies of the German Empire. Better yet, it created a new, and explicitly modern, identity for a type of unit that had previously struck many observers as an anachronism. Thus, in turn, led the addition of two companies - one armed with machine guns and the other mounted on bicycles - to the four traditional companies of most Jäger battalions.
Sources: Peter Hofschröer, Prussian Light Infantry, 1792-1815 (London: Osprey, 1984); Curt Jany, Geschichte der Preußischen Armee vom 15. Jahrhundert bis 1914 (Osnabruck: Biblio Verlag, 1967); and Paul Pietsch, Die Formations und Uniformierungs-Geschichte des preußischen Heeres 1808-1914 (Hamburg: Verlag Helmut Gerhard Schulz, 1963)
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