5th Line Battalion, King's German Legion
hanoverian unit in British service
The 5th Line Battalion, King's German Legion was a line infantry battalion of the King's German Legion, a British Army formation of expatriate German troops which fought in the Napoleonic Wars.
Raising, service and disbandment
The 5th Line Battalion of the King's German Legion (abbreviated: KGL) was raised in late 1805 as the fifth out of eight line battalions that the Legion levied in total. The British Hanover Expedition at the end of 1805, which had been vacated by French troops on their way to the Battle of Austerlitz, resulted in a massive recruitment success for the KGL.
After Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz, the British expedition's position became untenable. The whole force including all participating and newly recruited KGL units re-embarked for England in February 1806. The 5th line battalion KGL was initially brigaded with the 6th Line Battalion of the Legion. It served from 1805 until 1816 in Ireland, Copenhagen, Portugal, Spain and southern France and Belgium.
The unit was part of the British occupation force in France in 1815. In December 1815 the disbandment was ordered and the troops marched back to Hannover, where they were disbanded in early 1816.
Waterloo
On 18 June 1815, during the Battle of Waterloo, the battalion was nearly wiped out during the fighting in the center of Wellington's battle line, in the wake of the so-called 'crisis'. Around 6 o'clock the Prince of Orange told Sir Charles Alten, the KGL's divisional commander, to send forward the 5th line battalion to attack the French infantry, who were pursuing the men from the 2nd light battalion KGL retreating from La Haye Sainte.
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This entry incorporates text from “5th Line Battalion, King's German Legion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.