Lancers of the Guard

The Red Lancers have taken their place alongside the Polish Lancers to complete my unit of Lancers of the Guard.

The figures used for the full unit are:

1 x FN/40 Officer (mounted) charging

1 x FN/41 Trumpeter (mounted) charging

7 x FN/43 Lancer (mounted) charging

3 x FN/44 Lancer (mounted) charging with separate lance

(all the castings are vintage ones)

Thanks to Tony for kindly providing the last few figures I needed to complete this unit.

Guard Marines Command

FN/145 Dragoon Officer (marching) - on the left
WN.10 Polish Officer (charging) - on the right

I’ve painted some command figures for the Guard Marines this week, nothing too taxing as there are only three of them. I don’t have any proper Marine Officers so I’ve had to improvise and use one Duchy of Warsaw figure and one French Dragoon figure as they seem to have the right sort of hat.

The drummer is a bit of a mystery and I can’t remember where he came from. The base has “HH” stamped on it but it’s not a figure from the original range so could possibly be a Clayton variant. It appears to be based on FN/6 Drummer (charging) with an added plume which was just what I need for the Marines. The sky blue uniform will add even more colour to this unit.

Next I need to finish the eagle bearer and then it’ll be on with the final six of the rank and file.

Poles on Parade

In the Hinton Hunt catalogue Marcus Hinton wrote:

The Polish troops of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw were amongst the staunchest allies of France. They fought with traditional Polish dash and courage and in the knowledge that Napoleon was the best hope for a free Poland. The army of the Grand Duchy saw much hard fighting standing shoulder to shoulder with the French and added more than a touch of glamour to the scene in their square topped “Lancer Caps”.

Well Marcus Hinton obviously loved sculpting these figures and I’ve loved painting them too, see what you think...

The 8th Polish Regiment leave a Chateau in column of march.

They stop and deploy into column of attack.

Next they deploy into line.

What a fine looking body of men!

They are joined by the 1st Chevau-Legers-Lanciers of the Guard...

...and a very proud Marshal Poniatowski!

Time to put the pot of “Shadow Pink” away then, because my Polish contingent is now complete.

Pole Update – 2

I’m getting tantalisingly close to finishing the last few figures for the 8th Polish regiment, one or two more painting sessions should do it.

These final few recruits are the fusilier figures WN.13 Fusilier, advancing (the ones converted from the mysterious grenadier version). They are pretty well complete and just need the cross straps black lined and a couple of other bits and bobs done.

I really hope that my next post will show the entire completed unit.

Polish Grenadiers

As you can see, I have finished the Grenadier Company of the 8th Polish Regiment. Well, almost finished because I still have to paint the bases.

The company consists of 5 x WN.4 Grenadier, charging with 1 x WN.6 Officer, marching. I had my usual struggle with the varnish and they came out a bit more on the shiny side than I had intended, but then I like shiny, shiny is good.

Just eight more Fusiliers to paint up and the Regiment will be ready for parade.

Command Poles

I did say in my last post we’d have to see how I could do in speeding up my Pole painting; well the answer is “not very well”. I have completely finished the command group for the regiment however and they look quite smart except for some of the officer’s buttons, which are a bit blobby.

The picture shows the completed Poles so far, from left to right in the front rank are: WN.10 Officer charging then another WN.10 converted to a standard bearer, then WN.13 Fusilier charging converted to a drummer. In the rear ranks are the men of the Voltigeur Company. The grenadiers are well underway on the painting desk so I guess I can honestly say that the unit is more than halfway to being completed.

The Poles have posed for a quick picture on the tabletop in the garage where I am currently engaged in a 15mm American War of Independence game with my brother. For more on that follow the link here Brother Against Brother.

Flag Pole Finished

I’ve just finished off my Polish standard bearer by adding a Revo paper flag. I like to use the Revo flags where Hinton Hunt cast-on ones are not available because they fit in nicely with the retro theme of this project. The flag sheet I have does actually have a flag for the 8th Polish Regiment but it looked a bit small to me so I used this one instead.

If you remember, this figure is converted from WN.10 Officer charging – I have also finished the other officer and drummer that complete the regimental command group and am now working on the Grenadier company.

I’ve enjoyed converting and painting this figure but I really do need to get back into production mode and get the whole regiment finished off. The painting table is now clear of all other bits and pieces so let’s see what I can do.

Pole update

Well unbelievably it appears to be almost an entire month since my last post. My apologies to those of you requiring a more regular Hinton Hunt fix.

I haven’t painted any Hintons at all in these last few weeks as I’ve been painting stuff for another project but that’s nearly finished now, so I’ll be returning to the Poles shortly. In the meantime here’s a shot of the completed Voltigeur company of the 8th Regiment. The figures are:

1 x WN.25 Officer (marching)
5 x WN.23 Voltigeur (charging)

Only one of the figures pictured here is a genuine vintage casting but you’d be hard pressed to tell him apart from his colleagues and I’ve already lost track of which one it is.

The Slippery Pole

Paul left a comment on my last post saying that the conversion bug was the road to insanity – I think he may be right. This evening I have broken out the green stuff once again and finished off my Polish standard bearer.

You may remember that he needed a new hand but I’ve also added a topping to the flagpole. Not quite sure how I managed it but I seem to have crafted quite a decent looking eagle even if I do say so myself. 

Who knows where all this will end?

Polish Drummer – 2

Last night I took the plunge and had a go at converting a Hinton Hunt Polish Fusilier into a drummer. I was inspired by Steve’s lovely conversion (click here) and also by Roy’s gentle nudging to “embrace the possibilities of converting”.

So I snipped off the musket from a casting of WN.13 Fusilier, advancing and glued on a drum from a Prussian drummer then added two brass rod drumsticks. Amazingly it all went very well and I’m very pleased with the result.

Now I wouldn’t normally advocate the butchering of Hinton Hunt castings but the Prussian drummer was already missing his head (someone had previously converted him into a Nassau drummer by a bit of cut and paste) and the Fusilier wasn’t actually a vintage figure – so I think it’s all o.k.

I can see all sorts of possibilities opening up now…

Polish Voltigeur

The first of my Polish Voltigeur figures is completed at last. I’ve enjoyed painting this one, in part because it’s an excellent little model, but also because I’ve been able to explore my feminine side by finally getting to use my Foundry Shadow Pink.

I seem to be in possession of a ridiculous number of pots of Foundry paint many of which remain unopened - will I ever get to use Nipple Pink or Royal Purple? The situation is not helped by the fact that I don’t use the three-shade system when painting the Hinton Hunts, I only block paint with a single shade. However, I do get almost as much pleasure from lining up my paint pots as I do from lining up the toy soldiers, so I guess it doesn’t matter.

The remaining five figures that make up the Voltigeur Company of the 8th Regiment are almost finished as well. This is good because there are ominous rumours that a large Hinton Hunt Russian force is gathering on the east banks of the Rhine and the Emperor is anxious to have the Grand Armee up to strength.

Polish Drummer

Roy suggested that I add a drummer to the Polish command group by converting a French drummer. This would involved a head graft which I think I could just about manage but I’d worry about him losing his head in the heat of battle.

But then, this morning, Steve sent me this picture of a Polish drummer he converted from an advancing Polish voltigeur (WN.23). I quite like this idea as no head graft is required but it looks a bit fiddly all the same.

To be honest, I wasn’t going to bother with a drummer at all but now I feel slightly under pressure.

Mystery Poles - continued

Don sent me this picture of some of his David Clayton Poles. As you can see these ones look pretty much like regular Hinton Hunt so, as I suspected, my mystery Poles are probably not Clayton ones.

That still leaves either DK or the possibility that they are home-cast conversions. Does anyone have any photos of DK (Der Kreigspielers) Poles?

Flag Pole

Hinton Hunt never produced a standard-bearer figure for their Duchy of Warsaw range so I’m having another stab at a conversion to provide one for the 8th Regiment. I’m fortunate enough to have two officer figures WN.10 Officer charging so one of these has been sacrificed for the greater good of the regiment and had his sword removed to make way for a flagpole.

I feel a little bit guilty about cutting up a vintage figure in this way, especially as very few of the other figures in this unit will be genuine vintage ones. However, I really do like to have a flag with each unit to provide that extra splash of colour on the tabletop.

In due course I will provide him with a green-stuff hand and a suitable topping to the flagpole.

Mystery Pole

Steve very kindly sent me this picture of some Poles that look very similar to my own mystery variant of WN.13. They were genuine Hinton Hunt figures purchased in the 1970s as far as he remembers.

So the plot thickens because my own copy of the Hinton Hunt catalogue from around 1972 doesn’t mention this variant. This also rules out the possibility that they are Clayton figures because he didn’t produce figures until much later, and anyway I’m 99% certain that mine are not Clayton.

This leads me to conclude that the figure is either a genuine Hinton Hunt one (in which case I feel slightly sick about snipping off those plumes) or one produced by Der Kriegspielers in the USA. There is a listing in the DK catalogue 825-205 Polish Line Infantry Charging but no illustration of the figure.

Gentlemen the floor is open, please feel free to comment.

Pole Volts

I painted this (click here) test figure for the 8th Polish Regiment almost two years ago so I think that it’s time I got on and painted the whole unit. To this end I’ve been cleaning up the castings and getting them ready for undercoating.

WN.26 Officer, marching + WN.23 Voltigeur, charging

The six figures above make up the Voltigeur Company (my stylised units have six-figure Companies and the 8th will have two of Fusiliers, one of Voltigeurs and one of Grenadiers). The only vintage figure in this line up is the chap on the right of the front line; the others are later but quite decent castings of unknown origin.

When I was sorting through the various Polish figures in the lead pile I noticed something fishy about some ones with tall plumes that I had initially mistaken for Fusiliers. The Hinton Hunt Polish Fusilier figure has a pom-pom and no epaulets and the Grenadiers have bearskins so I eventually deduced that someone had created their own Grenadiers with “Lancer Caps” from the Fusilier model WN.13.

 The "fishy" Pole is on the left, WN.13 is on the right

This was fine though because it has been an easy job to turn them back into the Fusiliers I require by snipping off the plume and taking a file to the epaulets. I do hope it doesn’t take me another two years to finish this lot off.

1st Squadron Polish Lancers

The 1st Chevau-Legers-Lanciers of the Guard (The Polish Lancers) were formed in 1809. They served in many campaigns and distinguished themselves particularly at Wagram and in Spain. Some of them accompanied Napoleon in exile to Elba, returning to take part in the ‘Hundred Days’ as part of the Combined Guard Lancer regiment.


These figures are all vintage Hinton Hunt castings made up as follows:

5 x FN/43 Lancer (Mounted) charging
1 x FN/44 Lancer (Mounted) charging with separate lance

They have all been painted by myself (something of a rarity theses days) and represent the 1st Squadron of the Combined Lancers as they may have appeared on the field of Ligny.



I found painting these figures a frustrating experience, mainly because I’ve had such little time to devote to them but also because the detail on these one-piece castings can be so tricky to follow (or should I say ‘invent’). Just to remind you – this is how they looked before I started on them.

Polish Lancer Update

It’s taken me three painting sessions to get this one the way I want him to look. I always paint a test figure prior to mass-producing a unit because these Hinton Hunt castings can be very tricky customers. I’ve mentioned before that sometimes a piece of detail I carefully follow with the brush just suddenly disappears in a disconcerting way (I had a similar experience once driving through Spain when the road suddenly disappeared but that’s another story).

In this particular case one of the straps to the sword scabbard turned through 60 degrees and ended up in the middle of nowhere. At first I thought maybe it was some extra cavalry accoutrement that I’d never come across before but after thumbing through my various Uniform books I realized it was just a mistake in the sculpting. Interestingly (interesting in an Anorak sort of way) when I checked a *Der Kriegspieler casting of a Guard Lancer I found that it had exactly the same fault.

Anyway, after spending all of my hobby time this week fussing around with this one figure I must now move on to the more tedious task of painting up his five colleagues – all to be completed by the end of this month according to my rigorous schedule.

*Der Kriegspieler was a range of US produced figures contemporary with Hinton Hunt.

Obsessive or what?

Those of you who have trawled back through my older posts will know that I like to finish off my figures by labelling the underside of their bases with their Hinton Hunt codes. The font I use is Old English that closely matches the font used in the original Hinton Hunt logo.

After nearly 4 weeks of waiting Poniatowski finally gets his label.

I also stick a name label on the top of the bases of my personality figures so there’s no mistaking them in the heat of battle. The labels are just paper printed from my LaserJet and stuck on with a glue stick.

No mistaking this one!

So, as you have probably guessed, not much painting progress although I have just started on the first of those lancers.

A Pole Apart

The Hinton Hunt Catalogue says; “Marshal Josef Anton, Prince Poniatowski was not only a hero of Poland but was one of Napoleon’s most dashing Marshals. He cut a splendid figure in Lancer style uniform and fur cloak with his horse in an elaborately trimmed and tasselled harness”. It was pretty obvious to me as I painted this one that Marcus Hinton must have enjoyed sculpting him because the figure has some great detail and certainly captures the “dashing” look.


When I was in my early teens, and developing my interest in the Napoleonic Wars, I came across a book on the 1813 campaign. It was rather dry reading (as many such books were back then) but Poniatowski and his part in the battle of Leipzig fascinated me. He was the shortest serving of all Napoleon’s Marshals holding the rank for a mere three days before drowning whilst trying to swim to safety across the Elster river. He was a great friend with Murat and they must have had fun trying to out do each other with their taste for gaudy uniforms. Of course though, Poniatowski really was a Prince and hadn’t had one of Napoleon’s made up titles bestowed upon him - I wonder if Murat was annoyed by that?


This figure is one of only two “horse attached” castings amongst the Hinton Hunt personality figure range (the other being BRN/30 The Duke of Brunswick). I decided to give him a bay horse rather than the obligatory white one because I already have three personality figures riding white horses (and also I’m no good at painting them). Next up – Polish Lancers of the Guard.