The Reichsarmee: Flags Of Franconian Regiment Varell

During the Seven Years War the Franconian Kreis raised 3 infantry regiments of which this was one. Christopher Duffy in Prussia's Glory says that "the troops of the Franconian Circle were collectively the least reliable element of the Reichsarmee".

First raised 1682. Had 2 battalions each of 6 musketeer companies and 1 grenadier company, plus 2 3-pounder battalion guns and a theoretical strength of 1940 men. It had 30 separate contingents, ranging from 1 man to 145 men. Actual strengths were 1399 men in August 1757 and 1720 men in May 1758.

Soubise in 1757 rated it as Bad and "entirely Prussian in sympathy" (Duffy).

In 1757 the regiment was with the Reichsarmee in Thuringia and Saxony, and was present at Rossbach on November 5th. The eleven battalions of the six Reichsarmee regiments were deployed  in two lines on the right flank of the unwieldy column of French infantry, with Varell in the centre of the rear line. When Trier in the first line fled after firing a single volley, they collided with Varell in the second line and, as Christopher Duffy says, "carried away all but sixty-three of its files" (Prussia's Glory) and knocked it entirely out of the action. 1526 men were registered as lost from the three Franconian regiments, of whom 9/10 were listed as missing and the majority of those were probably deserters.

The regiment was with the Zweibrücken Corps in 1758-9. It was probably at the battle of Korbitz in 1759 and at the battle of Wittenberg in 1760 but probably was little involved in the action. At Freiburg in 1762 it was on the far right wing and again appears to have been little engaged.

 

The flags: The flags of the Franconian Infantry Regiments have a curious history. In 1757 it was decided that each battalion would carry three flags. The old flags (whose design we do not know) were "well known to be reduced to the staves, for which one is exposed to the laughter of other troops" (this quotation and others from the detailed account of all this in Klaus Roider, Die fränkischen Kreistruppen im Siebenjährigen Krieg, Nuremberg 2009; translation courtesy of Stefan Schulz). The new design had the double headed eagle on one side and the interlocked initials FC (Fränkischer Creis or Circulus franconicus). Previously they had been made of double-layered silk but now were to be of single-layered fabric so the emblems were embroidered on canvas and sewn onto the fabric. However, the flags were not nailed to the staves until long after the war so were not actually carried in action in the Seven Years War. The problem was that Protestants and Catholics in the units insisted that the nailing ceremony should happen according to the rites of their own church and so, as they could not agree, the ceremony did not happen. This was the reason given in a report of 1775. A report of 1759 from the Ansbach envoys gives a different reason; it claims that the regimental colonels wanted to have "some pomp and feasting on this occasion, and to have the costs thereof paid by the district" but the district wanted the colonels to pay for any such festivity. No agreement could be reached so again the nailing ceremonies did not happen.

The colours had been ordered by the middle of 1757 and by the end of the year the embroiderer Christina Andrae delivered them (it is fairly unusual to know who actually created the flags in this period!). The regiments received the new flags in January 1758 but, although the colonels repeatedly asked for advice on how to proceed with them because of the impasse over the religious ceremonies, the district council repeatedly refused to dictate what should be done and so nothing was done at all. In May 1759 the Cronegk Regiment returned its new flags and their staves to the arsenal, even though only two of its six old flags were usable.

In the event, the flags were not finally issued and carried by the units until the next mobilisation of the Reichsarmee, against Revolutionary France in 1793! There seems to have been no problem about the nailing of the flags to their staves then.

The FC monogram is as authentic as I can make it as it is taken from a surviving flag in the Bavarian Army Museum.

And this was the uniform in 1756: