Tuesday 15 December 2020

28mm Pfalz/Palatine: 2nd BTN Garde-Regiment zu Fuss






I have a fascination with the Electorate of Palatine (in German Kurfürstentum Pfalz ) probably because it disappeared in 1777 when it went into personal union with Bavaria. The reasons why are complicated and are best investigated via wiki if you are interested. Meanwhile in the SYW Pfalz/Palatine was allied to France via the happy method of being paid to be allies. Thus a large percentage of this Protestant army served with the Catholic French army with great reluctance while the balance went off to serve with the Reichsarmee. The contract ended in 1759 and the French were not too upset as they had by then managed to reconstruct a Saxon army to replace it.


This regiment had been the Garde Grenadiers but mitres were removed in 1757 and the name changed to Garde zu Fuss. The second battalion joined the ten battalion force serving with the French when one of those ten surrendered in 1758.

I have used Black Hussar Prussian figures although really the cuffs were larger. For grenadiers, when I get round to them, I will probably use Eureka's late Saxon grenadiers in bearskin.

As for the uniform blue I have made it lighter than that uses for Hesse or Prussia. There is no evidence for this just an entirely personal suspicion. The glorious flags are from Frederick Aubert who can be contacted on our FB group. I have used two Kompaniefahnen because that was the convention although they could have had one Kompaniefahnen and one Leibfahne. For the drummers, there is no information so I have just used the Bavarian system, which was drummers dressed as for the other ranks with arm lace. The hat lace (shark's teeth) is very complicated to paint and requires a good deal more patience than I have!

I would like to say that I will paint all ten battalions but I suspect I will just manage to do one brigade.








 

Tuesday 8 December 2020

28mm Hessians: 1760-63 KR2 Gens d'Armes






In 1760 the four Reiter regiments of cavalry were converted by the new Landgraf to cuirassiers although, according to Kronoskaf, they were not given cuirasses until after the end of the war. In my army they have them. Actually you would be hard-pressed to find miniature figures without the cuirasse and the nearest example would be 1806 Prussian cuirassiers although the bicorne would need to be replaced.

This is quite a pretty regiment in my view and the Black Hussar figures are lovely. You even get a choice with each figure of 4 different right arms.

I decided that the flags for this regiment shown on Kronoskaf were clearly pre-1760. There is a clue in a regimental plate (I would guess late 1760s to 1770s) for the Dragoon regiment Dalwigk as to what the cuirassier flags might have looked like. It is strange that all Hessian dragoons carried the swallow-tailed standard except for this Dalwigk which suggests that at some date the 4 cuirassier regiments might have been converted to dragoons. But I have no further information on this, suffice to say that the Dalwigk flag will form the basis of the new flags for the 4 Hessian cuirassier regiments. Stylistically, they fit in with my other Hessian flags.