Hello,
first I would like to say I'm glad I found these forums, since I've recently stumbled upon ancestors from Germany and Austria (I'm from the Czech Republic myself, but ethnically I'm about 70 % German, so that was only a matter of time), and it seems this place is a great source of information. Now, to the question at hand - two questions, actually.
1. On a birth record of my ancestor born in 1823 I found out that her grandfather was a "soldat beim löblich Waldekischen Cavallerie regiment". There is no number, but there is "N:2" written just one line below that, right after his wife's first name. At first I thought this would be the number of the house she was born/living in, but that is actually listed as "unknown" at the very end, so it's not that. That led me (and a few other people) to believe that this is the regiment number written in a wrong place - maybe the person who wrote it forgot about it at first and added it later, who knows. But in case it's true, I'm looking for the 2nd regiment of the Waldeck army. Now, since the man had a granddaughter in 1823, that would probably make him around 45-60 years old at the time, and therefore born between 1760-1780, and deployed in the army at the turn of the century, maybe during the Napoleonic wars. I wrote to the Bundesarchiv, not knowing that the Waldeck area is not in their competence, and I was redirected to the Hessen archive. I wrote there, and I am waiting for a response, but I thought I'd ask here. I wasn't able to find any mention of such a regiment online, does anyone know what sources other than the archive could I use? Maybe someone would know where that regiment was deployed, how it moved through Europe, and so on. This man had a wife from Schwaz (Tyrol region, Austria), and then settled in Gebirgsneudorf (Nová Ves v Horách) in Bohemia, which are both pretty far from Waldeck, so I think it's not that far fetched to assume he visited those places with the army. It would be nice to have some records of the regiment, so I could put the pieces together. A screenshot of the important part of this record is here - http://i.gyazo.com/51ce5e1f8658d4d20eb5f3e215b833d9.png.
2. On a death record of a different ancestor, it is stated that he was an invalid from the 12th Jäger batallion, and I assume it means this one - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/1._Königlich_Sächsisches_Jäger-Bataillon_Nr._12. Now, this person died in Most (Brüx, Bohemia) in 1830 at the age of 50, meaning he was born in 1780 or around that time, and therefore was pretty much the perfect age for the army when the Napoleonic wars started. He may have even been in the Befreiungskriege, and in Holland (see: Feldzüge. It makes sense that he was then in Brüx, since Saxony is right there, bordering with Bohemia. However, there is a word written at the and, it is a place name, which I wasn't able to read properly. I'm not sure whether that was the place he was born, it seems more likely that it was the origin of his unit or something like that. It looked like Wisbaden/Wiesbaden at first, but the only place called Wiesbaden is in Hesse, and that's really far away from Saxony, where this batallion was from. So I was wondering if someone knew something about this batallion, and what that word could be referring to, and possibly correct me if I'm wrong about the batallion from the record being the one in the Wikipedia article. I'll try the Bundesarchiv, since this area should be under their competence, but it would be nice to get some pointers here. Screenshot - http://i.gyazo.com/64a4be439680a481f7b3cd3fb1ba935c.png.
Also, does Germany have some sort of records about individual soldiers from those times? It's definitely a long shot, I know, and I'm not really expecting anything big to turn up, but does something like old conscription lists or officer records exist? And should I try to get any particular books to look into about this? I tried the local libraries and a few bookstores online, but since my German isn't all that great (I only recently started taking lessons to improve it), it's hard for me to find anything on the subject.