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!

British Line Infantry

At the very beginning of this project I had considerably more British infantry than French. Over the past two years I've added a great deal of infantry to my French army and very little to my British one. In part this was because I found it difficult to lay hands on the particular British infantry set that I've been after (HaT's Peninsular War Infantry). These two battalions actually represent the first real additions I've made to my British infantry forces so far.

The figures themselves are Italeri's British Infantry 1815 (Set 6095). Very good figures, though the uniforms presented are a bit of an odd bunch. Odd that is, in the sense that they are meant to be very particular. Apparently there are three specific regiments from Waterloo represented in the set. But I'm much too lazy to go around trying to match regiments (serious respect to those who do though), so I just painted the facings as I fancied. As for quality the miniatures are very good, modern sculpts with strong detail and good poses.

This will be the last bit of Napoleonic work I do for a little while. My focus these past few days has been shifted over to my 28mm collections, specifically my Middle-Earth models. Hopefully I'll have a few posts about that in the future.

Cheers!