German light troops, whose name—like chasseurs in French—means huntsmen. They began in the 18th century as quite literally that. When Frederick ‘the Great’ raised his Feldjäger-Corps zu Fuss in 1744 he recruited it from foresters and gamekeepers, as did many of his fellow-sovereigns. Prussian Jägers, in common with those of other German states, carried heavy hunting rifles which made them very effective skirmishers, although the facts that they were not fitted with bayonets and took longer to load than muskets made them vulnerable to cavalry. Jägers were among the German troops used by the British during the American independence war, and influenced the British army's approach to rifle regiments. The Honourable Artillery Company (perversely not a company at all, but a regiment) was amongst the units to call its light company the Jäger (sometimes anglicized as Yager) company.
An assortment of Jäger units fought in the Napoleonic wars. In 1914 the imperial German army had eighteen Jäger battalions, doubled with reserve units on mobilization, which, in a reflection of their light traditions, were expected to operate with the cavalry. As the German army developed storm-troop tactics during WW I, Jäger battalions which, like similar light troops elsewhere, had long emphasized toughness and self-reliance, were converted into assault battalions. Jägers wore grey-green rather than field-grey uniforms, and a flat-topped shako rather than a spiked helmet. Their waffenfarbe (arm of service colour), used as piping round epaulettes, was light green.
There were also Jäger ski-battalions, known as gebirgsjäger, which wore a distinctive Edelweiss badge. The Wurttemberg Jäger battalion, in which Rommel served, enjoyed a particularly high reputation in WW I. German mountain troops performed some spectacular feats in WW II, among them the capture and defence of Narvik by Gen Dietl's division in 1940 and the ascent of Mount Elbrus, highest peak in the Caucasus in 1942.
The Germans had no real equivalent to French chasseurs à cheval, but the Prussian army did raise Jäger zu pferd (horse Jäger) squadrons in 1897, based on Meldreiter (dispatch rider) detachments which had been formed in 1895. The squadrons became three regiments in 1905, and more were raised to make a total of thirteen by 1914. They did not survive WW I.
— Richard Holmes
