I'm coming out of my comfort zone and have taken on the challenge of painting Napoleonic miniatures rather than what I'm used to (WW2 and Cold War) and I have some questions regarding Napoleonic military history:
I know they used companies, battalions, and whatnot, but from my cursory readings these levels of organizations were vastly different from what I am normally familiar with. How many men were in a company? How many companies made a battalion? What was the standard unit on the battlefield? Did companies fight as single units or did they muster together as a full battalion to fight as a single unit?
Also I would like some resources to look up uniforms and what color, what they looked like for the time.
In the French army post-1808, a company of infantry had 140 officers and other ranks: a captain, lieutenant and sub-lieutenant; a sergeant-major and four sergeants; a corporal-fourrier (in charge of rations, etc.) and eight corporals; two drummers; and 121 privates.
A battalion had six companies: one of grenadiers (the tallest and bravest soldiers), one of voltigeurs (short men used for skirmishing and scouting), and four of fusiliers, for a total of 840, plus a small staff.
A typical regiment put four battalions into the field, though that varied by time and place; regiments in Spain frequently had only two or three, while some of the ones that went into Russia had five. Post-1812 things get even more confusing with the need to organize large numbers of new conscripts and shuffle cadres between fronts.
Each regiment also had a depot battalion of four fusilier companies that acted as a kind of garrison unit for training new recruits and handling issues like clothing, but this was not a combat unit.
The basic unit on the battlefield was the battalion: formations of lines, columns and squares were all based around battalions or groups of battalions. Companies could be and were deployed individually, though that was frequently as skirmishers to cover the rest of the battalion, since companies on their own were simply too small and lacked the firepower for sustained independent operations compared to battalions. They were, however, vital elements within a battalion to allow it to maneuver and change formation quickly as the need arose.
Sources:
Nafziger, George F. Imperial Bayonets: Tactics of the Napoleonic Battery, Battalion and Brigade as Found in Contemporary Regulations. London: Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal, Limited, 1996.
Griffith, Paddy. French Napoleonic Infantry Tactics 1792–1815. Bloomsbury, 2012.
Berriat, Honoré Hugues. Législation militaire : ou, Recueil méthodique et raisonné des lois, décrets, arrêtés, réglements et instructions actuellement en vigueur sur toutes les branches de l’état militaire. Vol. 2. Alexandrie: Louis Capriolo, 1812. https://books.google.ca/books?id=4yo-AAAAIAAJ.
Belhomme, Victor Louis Jean François. Histoire de l’infanterie en France. Vol. 4. Paris: H. Charles-Lavauzelle, 1893. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5493919k.
Marmont, Maréchal Auguste-Frédéric-Louis Wiesse de. De l’esprit des institutions militaires. Paris: J. Dumaine, 1845. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k96164s.
Morand, Charles Antoine Louis Alexis comte de. De l’armée selon la charte et d’après l’éxperience des dernières guerres. Paris: Anselin, 1829. http://books.google.ca/books?id=PTgGAAAAMAAJ.