The Waterloo Archive Volume V: German Sources by Gareth Glover

Author:Gareth Glover [Glover, Gareth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Modern, 19th Century, Biography & Memoir, Historical, Military
ISBN: 9781473893993
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2018-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

2nd Battalion, 2nd Nassau Regiment

No. 25 Captain Louis Wirths

Nassovia, bimonthly journal, Wiesbaden, vol. 6, no. 12,1905, pp. 142 – 4

Born in 1787, the son of a mining official, Louis Wirths became a cadet in 1802 in the Dutch subsidised military establishment of the German principality of Waldeck (by 1815 a part of the State of Westphalia), and was advanced to second lieutenant in 1803. His unit was involved in defending the Dutch possessions at the Cape of Good Hope against the British in 1805 – 6. In 1809, Wirths joined the 1st Duchy of Nassau Light Infantry Regiment, by then part of Napoleon’s troops of the Confederation of the Rhine, and saw action in the Austrian campaign that year and, from 1810 to 1813, in the Spanish War.

The Duchy of Nassau’s military joined the Allied side upon the Emperor’s demise, and after Napoleon’s return from Elba contributed some 5,500 soldiers in two regiments to Wellington’s army. Wirths transferred to the 2nd Duchy of Nassau Regiment, which by August 1814 had become part of the Netherlands army. In the Waterloo campaign his regiment, together with the Orange Nassau Regiment and a volunteer Jäger Company, formed Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar’s 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Netherlands Division.

Promoted to captain and company commander in February 1815, Wirths witnessed the beginning of the Anglo-Allied Waterloo campaign on 15 June 1815 when his 2nd Battalion 2nd Nassau clashed as the first unit in Wellington’s army with the vanguard of Napoleon’s left wing at Frasnes and Quatre Bras. At the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June, his No. 8 Company was heavily engaged in open order fighting with tirailleurs of Durutte’s Division in the Ter la Haye area at the extreme left flank of the Anglo-Allied army.

For the rest of his military career, Wirths was no longer involved in armed conflict; promoted to major in 1841 and made Commandant of the Marksburg fortress high above the Rhine River, he and his garrison consisting of a company of partly disabled war veterans which kept guard over some of the Duchy’s armoury and over its central powder magazine. He passed away in 1853, one year short of his retirement.

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