French Infanterie de Ligne Regiments

When I first started on this project I'm not sure I fully understood just how much infantry would actually be needed. Once I sat down and read up on the structure of brigades through to divisions through to corps and armies it came home to me pretty quickly though. A Napoleonic army (even when fighting at a smaller scale like that of a division) has a lot of men in it. I suppose this is why some people don't like working in the period or else use very abstracted formations that cut down on the number of figures used, particularly in the big scales. It is a lot of cross belts to paint after all.

 

But, I want to play 'in the grand manner', as they say. This means I need lots and lots of battalions if I want to play at the level of one or more divisions per side. Today I have some more of those much needed battalions for my French army.

The fusiliers for this first regiment come from HaT's French Line Fusiliers (Set 8041). This set is a decent enough one, but is a bit on the old side and I think it shows. Some of the detailing is warped and there was more flash than I would have liked. These were still very serviceable figures though, so that overall I would say that I'm happy with them.

I mentioned in the post on French Chasseurs that I had set aside the rest of the Zvezda figures for line battalions. Well, here they are. As I mentioned in that post the figures are excellent. Although, there may have been some miscalculation on my part, as they seem a little tall compared to the fusiliers I matched them to. A bit awkward given that the voltigeurs were supposed to be chosen from the smaller men, but oh well.

The second regiment have their fusiliers drawn from Italeri's older French Infantry set (Set 6002). An issue for some with this set is that I gather it is not very historically accurate, mixing together parts of uniforms that don't belong to the same period. This results in models that don't technically belong to any period of the Napoleonic Wars. This is actually fine for me, since I'm not strictly committed to any one period, other than 'beyond 1806', and aside from that issue these are very good models.

The grenadiers are also Hat, but much more recent (Set 8166). Very solid figures, and since the set comes with command figures I'm planning on doing a battalion of combined grenadiers sometime in the nebulous future. They also have a noticeably different sculpting style from the fusiliers in these regiments, but in this case I think it works well, as it makes them seem large and imposing, as grenadiers should.

Lastly we have this fellow. He'll be acting as the commander for the brigade these two regiments will form together. The figure is by Waterloo 1815 from their Mounted Line Officers set (Set 028).

With this added to my previous French infantry I have two brigades, each one containing six battalions. That's certainly a solid start, and I must confess to being just a little bit pleased with myself. It hasn't been quick, but this most recent phase of the Napoleonic project is finally winding down. There'll be a bit more, then after that I'll probably be taking a break to work on some 28mm stuff.

Cheers!