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.

Preview of new Russian SYW guide

I just wanted to wet your appetites, you Greenwood & Ball fans, with an illustration from the new booklet 18thCenturyPress is preparing at the moment on the Russian Army of the SYW.

This will be the third in the series following on from No1. Prussia and No.2 Austria.

Release date will be early next year - well that is the plan anyway. My compliments to Pete the illustrator who, I think you will agree, has a fine eye and an even finer drawing hand!

I'd like to hope that we could embark on the forth booklet towards the end of 2012 and to that end I'd like to invite ideas from you as to which nation we should cover next. All except, I think, the French whose army was so large that two booklets would be needed. So, leaving them aside, whose army should be next? I'll do a poll.

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.