Schaumburg Lippe Artillery battery

Schaumburg Lippe is a Ruritanian delight and one of the reasons why wargaming the 18th century is such fun.

The County of Schaumburg Lippe (Grafschaft Schaumburg-Lippe in German) was a tiny pin-prick of a place but it's ruler was an artillery fanatic. He had his guns constructed to his specification and established an artillery school on an island in his Grafschaft. The map shows the territory (in 1905) to be 131 square miles in size!

Count Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe was born in London in 1724 and served at the Battle of Dettingen. During the SYW he commanded the Allied artillery at the Battle of Minden. By the end of the war he was in Portugal reforming that state's military establishment.

The army of his tiny Grafschaft consisted on one battalion of infantry (that was often to be be found guarding the artillery), a small cavalry unit, a jaeger unit, and an enormous, proportionately, artillery park of 29 3-pounders, four 8-, two 12-, three 18-pounder cannon, three howitzers and four heavy mortars!!

The colour scheme of the guns is speculative but as the infantry unit was considered to be part of the Hanoverian establishment I have gone with the traditional Hanoverian red.

This is my last post for 2011 so I'd like to wish you all a Happy Christmas and hopes for us all that 2012 is a somewhat better year than the one that went before.

French 4th Hussars

Twenty four figures (4 squadrons of 6) of the 4th Hussars are done - Perry plastics which are excellent figures and I love the variety one can get with the horses. These chaps need to be brigaded with another light cavalry regiment and I've decided to use Perry metal Chasseurs a cheval but with a twist. The late chasseur uniform is, in my view, a tad dull so I will give them all full dress plumes using the dozens of plastic plumes I have left over from the Hussar boxes.

This will, I hope, make them look rather spectacular.

SYW: Hessian 6pdr battery

This is a 12 gun battery of 6pdrs painted as a Hessian battery (6 gun models, 12 crew). The guns are by Front Rank and the crews are Foundry's Prussians.

Talking about Foundry, you probably know I used a number of their triad paints - that is paint grouped into 3s by tone. Recently I've noticed that a large number of the plastic tops have started to split, particularly on those that, oddly enough, I don't use very often. This is a disaster as the paint will rapidly start to dry out and these are not cheap paints. I've written to them to ask if I can buy some new caps and I'm awaiting an answer. I'll let you know the results (or lack thereof).

Napoleonic French 6pdr battery

Phase one of my Napoleonics French project is almost complete - 10 battalions of 36 figs each, cavalry (more on that later this month) and the single foot battery, consisting of 6 x 6pdrs (3 guns) and 2 howitzers (one gun). The figures are a mixture of Foundry, designed by the Perry brothers a long time ago (maybe 15 years ago but I'm not sure) as well as Perry figures from their own more modern range. They kindly provided extra guns and less crew as I had picked up a couple of packs of the Foundry crew at a North Star sale a few months back.

As for the colour of French guns, I have used an old and much valued pot of Humbrol (code is 179 French Artillery Green) which, if you ever see it in a shop, you should grab as it is increasingly hard to find and may not be being made anymore. The other alternative is to buy the Foundry triad called, unappetisingly, "Phlegm Green" 28A,B and C. Personally I have never had phlegm that colour but perhaps creapy-crawlies of some sort do!

Very soon now I'll post pictures of the Hussar regiment as well some SYW Hessian and Schaumburg batteries.

The results of the poll were rather interesting and, after the Russian booklet is printed, I think we will look at doing a Hanoverian booklet. The re-printing of the Ortenburg book is ditched as a reprint as images have appeared on the web, much to my annoyance, and, sadly, I don't think the copyright holders challenged them when they started to leak out. The Web brings benefits to everyone but there are people out there who think nothing about scanning images from books still within copyright and posting them for all to see. This makes reprinting of image-intensive books of limited economic benefit to publishers.

15% Sale

Just to let you know that http://www.18thcenturypress.com/ has started it's Christmas Sale and all books, including Greenwood & Ball, are 15% off. The sale will last until the end of January 2012.

The new Russian booklet will be available in the new year too.