SYW: French Orleans Dragoons

Dragoon Regiment Orleans was owned by Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orléans, but was commanded in the field by mestre de camp lieutenant comte de Pons Saint-Maurice. Whilst dragoons in other nation's service seem, by this time, to have fought mostly mounted, in France they retained a significant dismounted role. For example at the Battle of Hastembeck, this regiment served on the right wing in a dismounted role while at the Battle of Krefeld they were mounted.

This regiment wears almost exactly the reverse colour scheme of the other Dragoon regiment I have painted - Lanquedoc.

Capitaine Oudinot and the Gardes d'Honneur

A few months ago I purchased two boxes of Perry Hussars - a total of 28 figures. Allocating 24 to the 4th Hussars (one squadron done, the rest en-route) that left me 4 figures left over. I decided to paint them up as Gardes d'Honneur, a single company or half a squadron of the 4th Gardes d'Honneur. Plus I had an officer left over. Having also decided that I wanted my French army to be commanded by a more obscure Marshal, I hit upon Oudinot who, it appears from wiki, had a son Charles (born in 1791) who was a cavalryman to boot!

Thus we have the Marshal's personal escort, a half squadron of the Gardes d'Honneur commanded by his son Charles. Surely these guys will never actually fight, except perhaps in extremis, but they will look dashing sitting at the back of the battlefield surveying the carnage about them.

But perhaps I could turn these three figures into a six-figure squadron so if anybody has some (3 to be exact) Perry cavalrymen lying around without purpose, you could sell them to me? I can buy an extra command sprue from the Perrys but it is the rankers I am after.

Russian Napoleonics: Arkangel Infantry

Anybody who regularly reads this blog will probably remember that the Napoleonic project involved Prussians. Well, it will, in due course, but I have been side-tracked into buying some new plastic Russians from Warlordgames. Four boxes to be precise and here is the first box done - the 1st battalion of Arkangel'gorod' regiment. Gorod, in Russian, just means 'town' so this is the Arkangel regiment from the 8th division.

Firstly, the figures are not bad at all. The box comes with seven sprues of plastics (each with 4 figures) plus four metal command - a drummer, officer and two standard bearers. While the plastic figures have the normal problem of loss of definition on their sides they are nice and animated and each sprue has musketeer heads as well as grenadier heads. Actually I think the plastic figures are rather nicer than the metals which are crude. There is also a decent little sheet of flags for five regiments and it was seeing Arkangel's flags that made me do this regiment although I will not be doing all the other regiments from the 8th Division. I have decided to allow myself artistic licence and just to do four regiments whose flags I like! I plan a fictional division of 12 battalions to face off against my 10 battalions of French, more pictures of which will be on here soon. Don't forget that next year will be the 200th anniversary of the 1812 campaign!

Bercheny Hussars

My apologies for being quiet of late but I have been rounding off a number of projects and there
will be quite a bit to post over the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, here is a French SYW regiment of Hussars. The use of hussars was in its infancy in Western European nations and the French only had four regiments, mostly raised by Hungarian emigres. This regiment, Bercheny, was probably the best of them and one regiment, Polleresky's, was disbanded in 1758, (its squadrons hived off to other regiments) for doing what hussars do rather well - looting and pillaging. They sure look pretty but their quality leaves much to be desired.

The figures are from Front Rank. The flag is conjectural.