Estonian Defence League
Estonian military forces at the time consisted of 2,000 men with light weapons and about 14,500 poorly armed men in the Estonian Defence League. The end of November 1918 saw the formation of the Baltic Battalion, primarily a mounted machine-gun company plus infantry. Estonia's Baltic German minority provided a sizable troop of volunteer militia for the Battalion, which was one of the first fighting units of the Estonian Army, and maintained staunch loyalty to the authority of the Republic. This contrasts with the "Baltische Landeswehr" in Latvia.