Brunswick Artillery

Hinton Hunt never made any Brunswick artillerymen, so I’ve had to resort to the dark art of head swapping to create some. The donor bodies are all British Horse Artillery and the heads are from various odds and ends of Brunswick infantry I had lying about.

There was just one Horse Artillery Battery present in the
Brunswick contingent during the Waterloo campaign. 

And one Foot Artillery Battery.

I’m quite happy with the Horse Artillery figures but the Foot Artillery heads are a bit big for the rather spindly RHA bodies resulting in quite a menacing pinhead look. The guns are on loan from the French, apparently the canny Black Duke sent his artillery chief to an auction following the Battle of Leipzig where he snapped up enough captured French guns to equip several batteries.

For C&CN we need two guns and crew per battery so mine
will be combined for the game.

So, I can hear you thinking “hey, those aren’t Prussian – what’s he up to?” well I can only blame Goya for this distraction. Next week he is hosting a C&CN game of Quatre Bras and we were short of a Brunswick battery for the OOB. A battle report will be posted here in due course.

Brunswick Owls

This has to be the fastest I’ve ever completed a Hinton Hunt infantry unit as the whole lot have been prepared, painted and based in just over one month. Not quite sure how it happened but as I mentioned in my last post I’ve been assisted by the relative simplicity of the uniform.

The figures are:
2 x BRN/1 Officer charging (one converted to standard bearer)
11 x BRN/4 Private charging (one converted to drummer)
9 x BRN/5 Private firing
1 x BRN/6 Officer marching
1 x BRN/40 Avant Garde Officer marching
The flag is an old Revo one (the battalion didn't actually carry a flag but I wasn't going to let that stop me!)

The Leib Battalion had a rough time of it at Quatre Bras where they took 127 casualties and famously broke, leading to the incident in which the the Duke of Brunswick lost his life. At Waterloo they were held in reserve on the right flank in the area behind Hougoumont. Eventually they moved forward to support the British line where they formed square and helped repel the French cavalry attacks.

As a dog lover I won’t be stationing my Brunswickers anywhere near the 95th Rifles. The story goes that they had a liking for dogs (but not in the British way) and ate the mascot of the 95th, a dog called Rifle, who had survived shot and shell only to be “devoured by the insatiable jaws of the Brunswickers”.

Leib-Battalion in progress

Since painting the Black Duke I’ve been slowly plodding away at the Brunswick Leib-Battalion to give him something to lead and/or rally. I’ve always wanted to have a unit of Brunswick infantry and these figures (acquired back here) have been waiting way too long in the painting queue.

The drummer is a conversion of BRN/4 knocked up for me by
the very talented Wellington Man. The Avant Garde Officer is
BRN/40, this figure didn't appear in my 1974c catalogue and
may even be a Clayton production.

Half the unit will be made up of BRN/5 Private (firing), and the other half are BRN/4 Private (charging). There will also be a smattering of officers including one from the Avant Garde just to spice things up.

BRN/4 - there's a bit of swagger to this chap!

I’ve just passed the halfway mark and the reasonably rapid progress (for me) is helped somewhat by the black uniforms. Although, having said that, there is some fiddly detail like the horses painted on the packs. The uniform colour is a 50:50 mixture of black and Foundry 34B which gives a subtle difference between the coat and the cross-straps although that may not be easily seen in the photos.

The Black Duke

Frederick William joined the Prussian army as a young captain in 1789 and took part in the war against Revolutionary France. His father Charles William was a field marshal and both father and son fought at Jena-Auerstadt where the former was mortally wounded. Frederick inherited his father’s title becoming Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg.

With the advent of the Fifth Coalition he established a corps of ‘Black Brunswickers’ at his own expense, dressed in black in mourning for their occupied country. In 1809 after the loss of Braunschweig he fled to Britain seeking employment with his brother-in-law The Prince Regent. The Brunswickers were then shipped to the Peninsular to fight under Wellesley gaining a good reputation for themselves in the process.

The Brunswickers were heavily engaged at Quatre Bras on 16 June 1815. Towards late afternoon the Leib-Battalion found themselves hemmed in by cavalry whilst taking artillery fire and suddenly gave way running towards the Namur Road. The Duke halted the battalion and was in the process of rallying them when a musket ball knocked him from his horse. Some of his staff carried him to the rear in a blanket hoping he was not badly injured, but he died shortly afterwards.

The figure is BRN/30 The Duke of Brunswick, in Death’s Head shako and braided coat (on horse BNH/11).

Allied light cavalry on parade

Stapleton-Cotton, Ponsonby and Uxbridge have been reviewing the recently expanded allied light cavalry contingent.

The 11th Light Dragoons

The Brunswick "Death's Head" Hussars

The entire brigade including Mercer's horse artillery

Stapleton-Cotton looking spiffing

If I'd had these figures in 1972 they might have looked like this

It was never part of my plan for this year (if I had a plan at all) to increase the size of the allied light cavalry force but sometimes things just happen.

Brunswick Hussars – updated

The troopers are all BRN/17 Death's Head Hussars charging.
The back row are the figures painted by myself, Tony's are in
the front row including the trumpeter on the white horse.

After our recent battle, as he was packing his soldiers away, Tony unexpectedly offered me his unit of Brunswick Hussars which he claimed to have no further use for. Now I wouldn’t normally accept payment for umpiring a game (well, not after the event anyway) but these were genuine vintage Hinton Hunt castings and already painted to an excellent standard so I said yes please!

This little windfall has meant I have been able to expand my existing 6-figure squadron to a full 12-figure unit which had been on my wish-list for quite a while. Tony’s style of painting and the colours he used have blended in incredibly well with my own figures with just a couple of very minor tweaks. I have to say I am chuffed with the result.

Tony’s troopers included a nicely converted trumpeter and a rather splendid commander figure. The commander is converted from BN/252 Earl of Uxbridge and rides a Les Higgins horse. I will be using this figure to represent Colonel Elias Olfermann who took command of the Brunswick Corps following the death of the Duke of Brunswick at Quatre Bras.

The recession bites

As if the wobbly world economy isn’t worrying enough it now appears we need to be concerned about another potential crash because amazingly I managed to buy these 12 Hinton Hunt figures on eBay for a mere £12.50 at the weekend!

I haven’t made more than the occasional token bid on eBay for a long time now and certainly never expected to end up winning this lot. They are however a very welcome addition as I have another 12 or so Clayton castings already and this will mean I can finally make up a proper 24 figure unit.

The firing figure is BRN/5 Brunswick Infantry (firing) and the officers are BRN/1 Brunswick Officer (charging). One of the Officers has been converted into a standard bearer, which is a bit of a bonus. All of these figures turned out to be vintage castings in excellent condition.

In the background is another eBay acquisition that arrived in the same post. I’m having a little bit more trouble than I hoped resisting my Crimean War project – this set is from ESCI (set 220 Lord Cardigan’s 11th Hussars).

Hussar!

Those of you who have read my house rules Muskets & Marshals will know that my cavalry units consist of three squadrons each of six figures. It has proved almost impossible to collect any set of eighteen identical cavalry figures so instead I have formed composite units that I loosely term Brigades.

The completion of the Brunswick Hussars a few weeks ago has led to the formation of the first Allied light cavalry Brigade. This unit is made up of two squadrons of Austrian Hussars (from the Blankenstein & Vecsey regiments) and the squadron of Brunswick Hussars. Command of this impressive force has been given to Stapleton Cotton and he is very proud indeed to receive such an honour.

The Austrian Hussars were originally in the collection of American wargamer Don who also painted them. The detail of the slung Pelisses is very fine and they make a colourful contrast to the black of the Brunswickers.

Work is ongoing on the French light cavalry Brigade but has slowed somewhat in recent days. It now looks as if the Polish lancers will not be finished in time to meet my April painting quota.

Brunswick Hussars – Finished!

The Brunswick Hussars are finished at last - 6 x BRN/17 Death's Head Hussar (Horse Attached Series) charging.

I see a line of Hussars and they’re all painted black

I see Hussars ride by dressed in their sombre clothes

I wanna see em painted black, painted black


Black as night, black as coal, yeah…

*Lyrics by Mick Oels Jager

Brunswick Update

Thanks to all of you who left comments suggesting the best way to tackle my Brunswick black problem. I tried out quite a few ideas but in the end went for the “safe” option and just mixed up a much darker shade of grey (50% black and 50% Foundry 34B). This means that it’s actually very hard to see all the black detail I have laboriously painted on the figure but at least I know it's there and I feel happier with the overall result.

So much for my cunning plan of painting up some “easy” Brunswickers to crank up the painting output. This figure has actually taken me longer to paint than Stapleton Cotton did in all his finery - there are so many layers of paint on this chap that he may be in danger of falling off his horse under the weight of it all. Anyway, as you can see I am now getting on with the other five troopers in the squadron and already have the horses done.

I decided this year that I would try to stick to a Hinton Hunt painting quota to get things moving along a bit better after last year’s disappointing output. I will try each month to paint either one personality figure, a squadron of six cavalry, a gun and crew or half a battalion of infantry (12 figures). If I have any time left over in the month then I’ll paint up some non-HH related stuff so that my other projects might progress as well – sounds simple enough eh?

Grey is the new Black

I’ve completed painting my test figure for the Brunswick hussars BRN/17 Death’s Head Hussar (Horse Attached Series) charging. I had hoped that painting what is basically a completely black clad figure might be easy but I also had my suspicions that it might not be.

In fact it has been a bit of a pain in the proverbial trying to get this one right. My first attempt used a very dark grey for the uniform that looked ok close up but at a distance provided no contrast at all with the cross-belts and lace etc. I decided to repaint the uniform with a lighter grey and this seems more effective when viewing the figure at a normal playing distance.

However, I confess that I’m still not totally happy because now he doesn’t seem quite black enough. I have resisted another re-paint attempt by telling myself that in reality black uniforms would very quickly have faded to grey and that therefore grey is the more realistic choice but I’m not sure who I’m kidding. Any suggestions on how to resolve my dilemma would be welcome.

Painted Black

For some time I’ve had in my possession four Brunswick Hussars (BRN/17) but as I need six figures to make up a squadron they’ve been waiting patiently for reinforcements. Now as you can see I’ve finally managed to recruit the two missing troopers. This squadron has been assembled from the four corners of the earth (well the US, UK and Australia to be exact) and they’re just awaiting a bleach bath to remove the old paintwork before I repaint them.

I have a certain affection for these “Death’s Head Hussars” which I’m sure is shared by many other Napoleonic wargamers. Apparently Lady de Lancey compared the Corps to “an immense moving hearse” when she saw them on the march during the Waterloo campaign. The Hussars fought under the Duke of Brunswick at Quatre Bras where they gave a good account of themselves.

The other reason I like them of course is the ease of painting or at any rate the theoretical ease of painting – after all I could just splash them all over in black as the previous owners have done. However I think I should put a little bit more effort in so intend to use a dark grey for the uniform and then black on the straps for some contrast. Anyway, surely even I can paint these up relatively fast although of course I have to finish those French grenadiers first.