Here is the
second Piedmontese General from the pack of Perry AWI French Colonels. The AWI
uniform has some late features for my mid 18th century officers but
it was the fantastic pose that caught my attention. The changes (enlarging the
cuffs, removing epaulettes and adding a sash) were easily achieved with
green-stuff. Here you can see him inspiring a couple of battalions from his
brigade. He is wearing his Rehbinder uniform.
Recently I
received in the post Stephen Manley’s WAS guide for Italian uniforms and I’m
very pleased I ordered it. I have made some changes already to what I had
previously painted. Firstly, the gun colour has changed to mid/light blue.
Secondly, but not visible, is the flame of some of the Grenadier bearskins. I
have further changes to make at some stage as the drummers all wore a House
livery as I had suspected but had not been able to research. New battalions
will get this livery but I’m not re-painting (yet) the four battalions that
have been finished.
Baron
Karl Sigismond Friedrick Wilhelm Leutrum (1692-1755)
Born at Karlhausen, Baden. Sent to Piedmont at 14 as part of
the escort of Prinz Eugene. Deciding to join the Sabaudian army, he was made
Captain of Infantry (c.1706), then in 1725 Lieutenant Colonel of the Regiment
Rehbinder (one of the German regiments in Piedmontese service). Became Colonel
of Rehbinder in 1732 and distinguished himself in the War of the Polish
Succession, making Brigadier in 1735.
At the start of the War of the Austrian Succession he was
still a Brigadier, and in 1743 accompanied his regiment when it was sent to
assist the Austrians. Fighting at Campo Santo, he and General Aspremont-Linden
led a counterattack with three regiments, including his own, that stabilised a
Spanish breakthrough. Aspremont-Linden was killed; Leutrum badly wounded. But
they had compelled a Spanish regiment to surrender, and Leutrum was promoted to
Major General on the battlefield.
Later that year he helped defend the Susa valley, while his
regiment was sent south to counter the main Bourbon effort on the Varaita. In
1744 he fought at Villefranche, leading a counterattack that temporarily
recaptured several positions. Evacuated to Oneille by sea, he found himself
appointed Governor of Cuneo, under imminent threat of siege. Leutrum energised
the defence, restoring morale, organising the citizens, laying-in enough stores
for a five-months siege, and building outworks and redoubts – he preferred to
defend as far forward as possible. The siege of Cuneo is recognised as his
greatest moment and he became a hero to both the Sabaudian army, and the
townspeople.
In 1745 he twice
defeated French attacks against the key position of Ceva, south of Asti and
Alessandria, and in early 1746, he led the counteroffensive against the French
at Asti with an army of 30,000 men. Leutrum remained in Lombardy that year,
finally concluding the siege of Tortona in November. In the Bourbon offensive
of 1747 he held, with inferior forces, a defensive position covering the Tende
Pass to the sea against 50 battalions. At war’s end, Leutrum returned to Cuneo
as its Governor.
He was further honoured by the renaming of Regiment
Burgsdorf, “Regiment Leutrum”. But he refused the collar of the Ordine della
Santissima Annunziata, Piedmont’s greatest decoration, because only Catholics
could qualify; Leutrum was a Protestant, and chose to remain so. Before he died
of dropsy in 1755, he asked to be buried in the Waldesian Valley, home of the Protestant
Vaudois.
