Armed Town Watches

I recently got hold of "Advice for Princes" and in it, it talks about arming town watches with rifles/muskets. This is something I have thought about doing, just because I thought it might make them better at their duties and also because in my mind (don't ask me why) I had them as armed with muskets.

"Advice" goes on to say that however such armed Watches would not be as good as regular infantry units if used in the field. Now this is something that never occurred to me and is not something I would consider doing but it did make me wonder the following.

In Game terms, "Militia" are inactive units, they cease to be militia once mobilised. All well and good. However could armed Watches be used as second rate and garrison forces, so as a sort of militia force? They would be cheaper and perhaps for certain roles effective enough. The role that occurred to me is Fortress garrison, the rules state that for a fortress to be considered properly garrisoned it needs 5 infantry battalions (so 3,500 men)-but it would be cheaper to raise and maintain 7 'watches' (even allowing for the extra cost of buying muskets) to garrison a fortress and I wonder if they would be any less effective.

Has anyone tried using an armed watch as anything other than a watch?

Try issuing blunderbusses or pistols makes them more efficent

Pistols, thanks you...an option I had not even considered!

Indeed... Most of mine are armed with pistols.

I've raised a few Town Watches, but found them fairly ineffective. They are useful in times of famine, quelling riots and perhaps having them armed with clubs rather than blunderbusses or pistols means you don't inflict heavy casualties on your own people when they riot.

I think Town Watches are probably the closest European nations can get to Tribal Foot - fine for fighting as a mob in restricted spaces, but the drill would need to be different for them to stand in line in a battle.

There is another inconsistency. It takes 2 months to raise F, but 3 months to raise TW. Is this because TW have local loyalties rather than national ones?

I assume that if you have a town with a military garrison there is no need for a town watche as the soldiers can keep the peace.

Yes, I think so - I have a town with TW and 5F as garrison. During a famine there was a riot and the TW dealt with it - no report that the garrison did anything. However, I guess it wasn't a serious riot.
In peacetime I would keep garrisons for strategic positions and rely on TW in other settlements. I guess it depends on the country and situation.
Some smaller countries only have 5 named towns - larger ones can have 30-40. You wouldn't really want to garrison all 40 towns.