French 2nd Hussars

Here's that other cavalry unit I mentioned in my last post: French 2nd Regiment of Hussars. Hussars in general are one of the most iconic military units of the 18th and 19th centuries and the Napoleonic Wars are no exception. With their brilliant uniforms and (oft exaggerated) feats of daring do, the hussars leave a striking image in peoples' minds. Thankfully Italeri produce an excellent set, worthy of the hussars' glamorous reputation.

The 2nd are the hussar regiment that fought at Talavera. Since that's the smaller of the two battles I'm focusing on, it only made sense to take care of it first. The 2nd won't be the only regiment of hussars I paint up, though it will probably be the only one for a while. The 3rd Regiment will be needed for Salamanca at some point down the track, but for now the 2nd will fight alone.

The two elite company figures don't actually come from the Italeri French Hussars set. Instead they come from their French Imperial General Staff set, and are intended to be bodyguards drawn from the Imperial Guard Chasseurs a Cheval. The structure of the uniform is (to my understanding) virtually identical, so it was an easy stand-in. The sculpting style also matches between the two sets, so they fit together just about seamlessly.

I wasn't sure how well the colour scheme of the 2nd would work on the tabletop. Brown dolman and pelisse seemed to me at first to be a rather dull choice. In reality it compliments the bright blue and silver very well and I'm superbly happy with how the unit came out. I'm itching to send these men careening into some vainglorious charge, but there's still a little more to do before I can try for a proper game (though I am, at long last, getting close).

That's all for today, hope you liked it.

Cheers!

French 20th and 25th Dragoons

While cuirassiers are certainly the most iconic French heavy cavalry, during the Peninsular War it was the dragoon regiments that shouldered the bulk of that role. I've had six bases of dragoons in yellow and orange facings for many years now, since I was quite young. They were given to me by my dad, who was the also the one who painted them. 

These little units of three bases each, though well painted, were too small for the regimental scale I want for my cavalry units. So I've added three more bases to each, with the figures coming from Italeri's French Dragoons set.

The first of these two units has orange facings. Orange was worn by the 25th-30th regiments, with the 26th and 29th both having green collars. The 27th and 30th also had green cuffs, but since these figures are modelled wearing their long gloves that feature isn't terribly relevant to me.

The 25th is in my list for the Battle of Salamanca, one of the two large battles I'm aiming to model my collection around. This unit is also likely to stand in for their green collared cousins, the 26th, who were at Talavera. Neither Talavera or Salamanca feature more than one "orange regiment", so I can hardly justify doing two units just to have their collars be different colours! This is especially true considering that Talavera features six different dragoon regiments, so there will be plenty more to do either way.

The elite company figures for both units were painted by my dad. They are from HaT's French Horse Grenadiers set.

The 20th Dragoon Regiment was technically present at Talavera, being part of the 2nd Cavalry Division in the Reserve. But from what I understand they were not engaged in the battle itself and are not in my list for Salamanca either. However, the regiment did serve during the Peninsular War and I am not above swapping the 1st regiment out for the 20th.

At the beginning of this year I took some time to assess exactly what I wanted to do with my Napoleonic collection. I may have to make a post at some point going into the specifics, but for now suffice to say that I've worked up a list of all the units I want to complete in the long term. With that list in mind, I probably won't be coming back to the French cavalry arm again for a while. Turns out a proper army needs a lot of infantry; who'd have thought, eh?

There is one other unit of cavalry that will need a post written for them, but after that it should be all foot sloggers for me for the foreseeable future. That and the occasional cannon and command base. The last month or so has actually been very busy for me in terms of figures painted (5 units so far, with another 3 or 4 in the pipeline!). Those should all wander their way onto the blog at some point, sooner rather than later I hope.

That's all for now though.

Cheers!

French Allied Infantry - Kingdom of Holland and Confederation of the Rhine

 

When I came to the end of my stock of unpainted French infantry I decided to do something a bit different with the last two battalions. Since so many of France's allies wore uniforms designed along a similar pattern to theirs, it seemed only natural to look in that direction.

I ended up choosing colours belonging to the Dutch and the smaller German country of Hesse-Darmstadt. These two were not chosen by accident; both were part of the 3rd (German) Division that fought at the battle of Talavera in July of 1809. I've been trying to find a little bit more direction for my collection as it progresses, so picking units from specific battles in the Peninsular War seemed sensible enough.

Taking a look at the Dutch first, these gentlemen in their snappy pink and white are the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Infantry Regiment. There was a battalion at Talavera from the 2nd Regiment as well and I will have to get around to them once I have the matching figures available. From now I opted to try painting the 4th Regiment's pink rather than the light blue of the 2nd. I'd never done pink before so it was a nice new experience.

The fusiliers are Italeri while both flank companies are Zvezda. The two sculpting styles mesh very well in my opinion. The three grenadiers are Old Guard that came for free with a magazine many years ago. Hopefully they aren't too offended at the demotion I've given them!

The voltigeurs are the same Zvezda set that I've used for a number of units now. Any excuse to use more of these lovely figures.

Switching to the Germans next, this is the 1st Battalion of the Gross-und-Erbprinz Regiment. The figures for these are HaT, with the exception of the officer who is Italeri (and who, I have since discovered, should probably be wearing a bicorn, not a shako, but no matter).

Since these figures are sculpted to have a much more "campaign dress" look about them, with covered shakos and trousers, I decided to lean into that idea when painting. The trousers and shako covers are thus a motley array of colours that shows the more rugged, less uniform nature of soldiers on campaign. I don't normally go in for that sort of thing, preferring my men in bright full dress uniform if possible. However, the colour scheme was appropriate for the models and I think it helps to differentiate them a bit from their French allies.

I actually painted these figures some time ago but forgot to make a post about them (a shocking thing for me I know). I've been at work on a number of new units lately and so figured I should make a post about these before the others reach completion and need posts of their own.

Cheers!

French Combined Grenadiers and Artillery

It's been a while since I last worked on my Napoleonics. I took a break from them to work on other projects for a year or so, some of which you can see in earlier posts. But with the new year I've felt excited to return to work on my French and British armies. I sent off an order for some new models (which have since arrived) but first I wanted to paint up the figures I had leftover.

The first unit of these was a battalion of French Combined Grenadiers. Many nations followed the practice of detaching the grenadier companies from their infantry and converging them into dedicated grenadier battalions. The French didn't use this tactic as often as other powers like the Austrians or Russians, but it was done. The resulting units provided heavier, more elite formations of infantry that could be used to drive an assault home at the key point.

 

These figures are from HaT's French Grenadiers set. I used most of the figures from that set to provide grenadier companies for my French line battalions and had just enough left over for a combined battalion. As I mentioned previously, these HaT figures are done in a much heavier 'chunky' style to the other figures I own. I actually quite like this, as I feel it gives the grenadiers an air of physical power and size when put next to the slimmer figures I normally use.

I actually have enough figures set aside to do several more grenadier command bases. I'm thinking that I'll paint those bases up on their own and then detach grenadier bases from the line battalions to form additional Combined Grenadier Battalions if I ever need them for my games.

The other unit I have today is a French artillery battery. These figures are also HaT, with the exception of a few bits and pieces-mainly the mounted figure-which are Italeri in origin. I painted up the first two cannons from this set a long while back (four years!) so I think this was a long time coming.

The layout of the bases likely looks a little strange, with these odd strips on the sides. I made the choice to add these after finishing the guns themselves, when I didn't much fancy scrapping the bases I had just finished. These extensions give a much wider and-to my mind-much more convincing footprint for a battery. They also allow me to use more of the figures that came with the set, as I can only cram four artillerymen onto my usual bases. The plan for future artillery is to use a single wide base rather than this system of strips which, while flexible, is a lot more fiddley than I'd like.

As I mentioned earlier I've had a number of new models arrive since I got back to my Napoleonics. I was able to snag a lot of kits that had thus far eluded me, included Zvezda's beautiful French Foot Artillery. Some of those new models should start appearing in posts soon enough. For now though I have one more post that'll be going over some of the 'loose ends' that needed tying up. Hope to have that post up soon.

Cheers!

Muster the Rohirrim

Finally, after several months of on and off work (and if I'm honest about a full month of getting distracted), my current project is done. This is probably the closest I've come to actually painting an army as a single project. The idea was to bring my Rohan army for GW's Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game to a stage where I could call it complete, aside from a few characters. The batch consists of 24 regular 'Warriors of Rohan', 6 'Riders of Rohan' and 3 members of the Royal Guard, with both foot and mounted variants. In charge of all this were two minor characters, Gamling and Hama.

Someone familiar with these figures may notice that a few look slightly different, like the man on the left in the above photo. These were all minor conversions where I cut away the leather armour the figures were wearing and replaced it with chain mail. I am a firm follower of the anti-leather school of thought when it comes to historical arms and armour. Armour quality leather was very expensive and produced equipment dramatically worse than chain mail, the cost of which would have only been slightly greater or possibly even cheaper depending on region. Actual uses of leather armour would usually have focused on either being used in direct tandem with steel (kind of like the harnesses worn by Théoden and Éomer in the films actually) or when it was very readily available. Since its hardly great herds of cattle that the Rohirrim are known for, it would be far more believable for these men to be clad in mail.

And I know, I know "it's just fantasy, why does it matter?" First of all, I'm a huge nerd, so it matters to me. Second of all, Middle-Earth is probably one of the most grounded fantasy settings in popular culture. A lot of people let that slip them by because it doesn't have brutal violence, slurs or sex scenes, but the way the societies are structured, the low level of magic in the setting and the general approach to the way the world is built are very grounded in realism. It isn't 'gritty' but it is realistic once you look past the dragons and wizards.

That and I just think chainmail looks better.

Anyway, enough rambling about historical plausibility. Something I particularly like the look of on these figures was how the use of red for some of the undershirts played out. I was worried using bright red would be a bit too strong, as these are supposed to be Anglo-Saxon style levy, not British red coats. But I think the small amounts of red cloth work well to complement the green cloaks.

I imagine it's not much of a surprise once you look at him, but Gamling was by far the most challenging figure of this lot. Not only is he a character and thus demands extra attention, but the banner had to be free-handed. I'd not had much experience with something like this before, so it was certainly novel (and very stress inducing at first). After I got down to it though I actually found this to be some of the most fun I've had painting in a long while. There aren't a lot of pictures of these two here simply because this post is plenty long enough as it is. There'll probably be a short follow-up post with more pictures to showcase them. Gamling especially is a lovely figure imo.

And here is the full Rohan collection with the new boys included. Note, not everything has been based. Why? Because I'm too lazy, hehe. I'll probably get to it at some point but I have to admit basing is hardly the most riveting thing for me.

Théoden was actually painted for me by my father, several years ago. Or rather, teenage me did a terrible job, and my dad was nice enough to fix some of it. I believe Snowmane was mostly his work. At some point I might have to get my hands on the new Théoden and see if I can do a better job now than then (I jolly well hope I can).

The main thing missing here is Erkenbrand, though I'd also like to get my hands on the newer Éowyn and Éomer sculpts in plastic, as I'd say they look like solid upgrades to the older models. I also wouldn't mind one or two of the Forge Worlds models like Deorwine, but that would fall very far down the priority list.

Anyhow, that brings us to the end of this post. Hope you all enjoyed. Now if you'll excuse me I have to get back to wasting time on video games when I ought to be painting or writing.

Cheers!