French 2nd Hussars

Here's that other cavalry unit I mentioned in my last post: French 2nd Regiment of Hussars. Hussars in general are one of the most iconic military units of the 18th and 19th centuries and the Napoleonic Wars are no exception. With their brilliant uniforms and (oft exaggerated) feats of daring do, the hussars leave a striking image in peoples' minds. Thankfully Italeri produce an excellent set, worthy of the hussars' glamorous reputation.

The 2nd are the hussar regiment that fought at Talavera. Since that's the smaller of the two battles I'm focusing on, it only made sense to take care of it first. The 2nd won't be the only regiment of hussars I paint up, though it will probably be the only one for a while. The 3rd Regiment will be needed for Salamanca at some point down the track, but for now the 2nd will fight alone.

The two elite company figures don't actually come from the Italeri French Hussars set. Instead they come from their French Imperial General Staff set, and are intended to be bodyguards drawn from the Imperial Guard Chasseurs a Cheval. The structure of the uniform is (to my understanding) virtually identical, so it was an easy stand-in. The sculpting style also matches between the two sets, so they fit together just about seamlessly.

I wasn't sure how well the colour scheme of the 2nd would work on the tabletop. Brown dolman and pelisse seemed to me at first to be a rather dull choice. In reality it compliments the bright blue and silver very well and I'm superbly happy with how the unit came out. I'm itching to send these men careening into some vainglorious charge, but there's still a little more to do before I can try for a proper game (though I am, at long last, getting close).

That's all for today, hope you liked it.

Cheers!

French 20th and 25th Dragoons

While cuirassiers are certainly the most iconic French heavy cavalry, during the Peninsular War it was the dragoon regiments that shouldered the bulk of that role. I've had six bases of dragoons in yellow and orange facings for many years now, since I was quite young. They were given to me by my dad, who was the also the one who painted them. 

These little units of three bases each, though well painted, were too small for the regimental scale I want for my cavalry units. So I've added three more bases to each, with the figures coming from Italeri's French Dragoons set.

The first of these two units has orange facings. Orange was worn by the 25th-30th regiments, with the 26th and 29th both having green collars. The 27th and 30th also had green cuffs, but since these figures are modelled wearing their long gloves that feature isn't terribly relevant to me.

The 25th is in my list for the Battle of Salamanca, one of the two large battles I'm aiming to model my collection around. This unit is also likely to stand in for their green collared cousins, the 26th, who were at Talavera. Neither Talavera or Salamanca feature more than one "orange regiment", so I can hardly justify doing two units just to have their collars be different colours! This is especially true considering that Talavera features six different dragoon regiments, so there will be plenty more to do either way.

The elite company figures for both units were painted by my dad. They are from HaT's French Horse Grenadiers set.

The 20th Dragoon Regiment was technically present at Talavera, being part of the 2nd Cavalry Division in the Reserve. But from what I understand they were not engaged in the battle itself and are not in my list for Salamanca either. However, the regiment did serve during the Peninsular War and I am not above swapping the 1st regiment out for the 20th.

At the beginning of this year I took some time to assess exactly what I wanted to do with my Napoleonic collection. I may have to make a post at some point going into the specifics, but for now suffice to say that I've worked up a list of all the units I want to complete in the long term. With that list in mind, I probably won't be coming back to the French cavalry arm again for a while. Turns out a proper army needs a lot of infantry; who'd have thought, eh?

There is one other unit of cavalry that will need a post written for them, but after that it should be all foot sloggers for me for the foreseeable future. That and the occasional cannon and command base. The last month or so has actually been very busy for me in terms of figures painted (5 units so far, with another 3 or 4 in the pipeline!). Those should all wander their way onto the blog at some point, sooner rather than later I hope.

That's all for now though.

Cheers!

French Combined Grenadiers and Artillery

It's been a while since I last worked on my Napoleonics. I took a break from them to work on other projects for a year or so, some of which you can see in earlier posts. But with the new year I've felt excited to return to work on my French and British armies. I sent off an order for some new models (which have since arrived) but first I wanted to paint up the figures I had leftover.

The first unit of these was a battalion of French Combined Grenadiers. Many nations followed the practice of detaching the grenadier companies from their infantry and converging them into dedicated grenadier battalions. The French didn't use this tactic as often as other powers like the Austrians or Russians, but it was done. The resulting units provided heavier, more elite formations of infantry that could be used to drive an assault home at the key point.

 

These figures are from HaT's French Grenadiers set. I used most of the figures from that set to provide grenadier companies for my French line battalions and had just enough left over for a combined battalion. As I mentioned previously, these HaT figures are done in a much heavier 'chunky' style to the other figures I own. I actually quite like this, as I feel it gives the grenadiers an air of physical power and size when put next to the slimmer figures I normally use.

I actually have enough figures set aside to do several more grenadier command bases. I'm thinking that I'll paint those bases up on their own and then detach grenadier bases from the line battalions to form additional Combined Grenadier Battalions if I ever need them for my games.

The other unit I have today is a French artillery battery. These figures are also HaT, with the exception of a few bits and pieces-mainly the mounted figure-which are Italeri in origin. I painted up the first two cannons from this set a long while back (four years!) so I think this was a long time coming.

The layout of the bases likely looks a little strange, with these odd strips on the sides. I made the choice to add these after finishing the guns themselves, when I didn't much fancy scrapping the bases I had just finished. These extensions give a much wider and-to my mind-much more convincing footprint for a battery. They also allow me to use more of the figures that came with the set, as I can only cram four artillerymen onto my usual bases. The plan for future artillery is to use a single wide base rather than this system of strips which, while flexible, is a lot more fiddley than I'd like.

As I mentioned earlier I've had a number of new models arrive since I got back to my Napoleonics. I was able to snag a lot of kits that had thus far eluded me, included Zvezda's beautiful French Foot Artillery. Some of those new models should start appearing in posts soon enough. For now though I have one more post that'll be going over some of the 'loose ends' that needed tying up. Hope to have that post up soon.

Cheers!

French Infanterie de Ligne Regiments

When I first started on this project I'm not sure I fully understood just how much infantry would actually be needed. Once I sat down and read up on the structure of brigades through to divisions through to corps and armies it came home to me pretty quickly though. A Napoleonic army (even when fighting at a smaller scale like that of a division) has a lot of men in it. I suppose this is why some people don't like working in the period or else use very abstracted formations that cut down on the number of figures used, particularly in the big scales. It is a lot of cross belts to paint after all.

 

But, I want to play 'in the grand manner', as they say. This means I need lots and lots of battalions if I want to play at the level of one or more divisions per side. Today I have some more of those much needed battalions for my French army.

The fusiliers for this first regiment come from HaT's French Line Fusiliers (Set 8041). This set is a decent enough one, but is a bit on the old side and I think it shows. Some of the detailing is warped and there was more flash than I would have liked. These were still very serviceable figures though, so that overall I would say that I'm happy with them.

I mentioned in the post on French Chasseurs that I had set aside the rest of the Zvezda figures for line battalions. Well, here they are. As I mentioned in that post the figures are excellent. Although, there may have been some miscalculation on my part, as they seem a little tall compared to the fusiliers I matched them to. A bit awkward given that the voltigeurs were supposed to be chosen from the smaller men, but oh well.

The second regiment have their fusiliers drawn from Italeri's older French Infantry set (Set 6002). An issue for some with this set is that I gather it is not very historically accurate, mixing together parts of uniforms that don't belong to the same period. This results in models that don't technically belong to any period of the Napoleonic Wars. This is actually fine for me, since I'm not strictly committed to any one period, other than 'beyond 1806', and aside from that issue these are very good models.

The grenadiers are also Hat, but much more recent (Set 8166). Very solid figures, and since the set comes with command figures I'm planning on doing a battalion of combined grenadiers sometime in the nebulous future. They also have a noticeably different sculpting style from the fusiliers in these regiments, but in this case I think it works well, as it makes them seem large and imposing, as grenadiers should.

Lastly we have this fellow. He'll be acting as the commander for the brigade these two regiments will form together. The figure is by Waterloo 1815 from their Mounted Line Officers set (Set 028).

With this added to my previous French infantry I have two brigades, each one containing six battalions. That's certainly a solid start, and I must confess to being just a little bit pleased with myself. It hasn't been quick, but this most recent phase of the Napoleonic project is finally winding down. There'll be a bit more, then after that I'll probably be taking a break to work on some 28mm stuff.

Cheers!