Voltiguers are a type of skirmisher infantry in Napoleon: Total War and The Peninsular Campaign.
Description[]
These musket-armed skirmishers are exceptionally good at using available cover, making them useful for ambushes.
Skirmishers fight two battles: one against the enemy’s skirmishers to prevent them from doing their worst, and the second to harass the main body of the enemy army. Voltigeurs are excellent shots, even with their smoothbore muskets, and can whittle down the numbers of enemies they face very quickly. They are also well trained in using every scrap of cover and every fold in the landscape to hide. This makes them hard to spot and worse, hard to kill.
At the start of the Napoleonic period, most armies thought of light troops as auxiliaries to the line infantry. Part of Napoleon’s genius lay in taking existing ideas and making them work really well: he got the proportions of light and line troops right for his armies, and made sure that his attacking columns were well supported by swarms of skirmishers, including voltigeurs. Originally, the name had come about because they were expected to jump onto enemy cavalry horses and attack the riders that way! This was nonsense, but the voltigeurs did prove excellent soldiers. They were also given additional tasks, such as aiding pontonniers in building bridges; they could not only work hard, but also fight effectively to defend the bridge if necessary.
General Information[]
Voltiguers are, for their regiment size, exceptionally hard to kill through musket fire. This makes them excellent at distracting enemy fire, particularly if hiding in woods or behind walls. They have inferior range to other skirmishers; however, they make up for this once they're within range, as they reload much more rapidly than other skirmishers thanks to their use of muskets instead of rifles. Together with their superb accuracy, voltiguers can inflict disproportionately large numbers of casualties for their small regiment size.
Despite their small regiment sizes, voltigeurs deal about as much damage over time as Chasseurs thanks to their superior accuracy and reloading skill. While the two unit types are comparable in usage, voltigeurs can make better use of cover and stealth at the cost of being much worse at melee combat, while their ability to deploy stakes give them additional tactical options. In multiplayer battles, voltiguers are much cheaper than chasseurs, a crucially beneficial trait for France and its generally expensive unit roster.
Gallery[]
Voltiguers have different uniforms depending on the campaign.
Trivia[]
- The unit's name is misspelled in-game. The proper spelling is "Voltigeurs".