The start of the year is always a good time for me to get stuck into painting something meaty for the Napoleonics collection. This year I know I need to enlarge the French forces, as they are badly outnumbered by my Anglo-Iberian alliance at the moment, so I selected an interesting subject from the lead pile to start.
Having somewhat impulsively bought a regiments-worth of Confederation of the Rhine troops from Perry Miniatures, I decided these would be worth the effort to get reinforcements on the table. My purchase was probably influenced by the image of a heavily campaigned-out Schwarzburg-Sondershausen private in Hathornwaite and Chappell's classic Armies of the Peninsular War:
As was the choice of manufacture by the Perry's! Of course there was the issue of whether to do a whole regiment of the same troops, or to mix and match several units in proportion to represent the whole regiment. As you can see below I decided to go with the first option. Most of my Napoleonic units represent battalion strength formations and therefore it was acceptable for the unit to represent one battalion strength mass of the Schwarzburg-Sondershausen troops who numbered between 350 and 700 men.
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Now, there is one mistake on these models, oops. A bonus 10,000 points to the first to spot it, but overall I'm pleased with the look of this lot, having a suitably dishevelled appearance befitting their hard campaigning. Haythornwaite discusses in some detail the formations replacement of standard issue shakos, with simple pressed card equivalents, and locally procured trousers; elements I've tried to reflect. And painting patches is a nice way to add a dash of personality and colour to a unit.
I found no evidence for what their packs would've looked like, but given their service the the French Empire it seems reasonable that this piece of equipment would have been French in design. I also found no reference for a flag they might have marched under (the only national standards I could find appeared to date to well after the Napoleonic period) and so they are without an ensign.
Well, these work for me, and can stiffen the resolve of my much put-upon Westphalians.
What next?...
The officers cockade is wrong, it should be blue within white. Yours has a hint of red in it!
ReplyDeleteThis may be true, tho I've actually given him a French cockade with a smaller Schwarzburg cockade above it. But this is not the error I spoke of, 10,000 points remain up for grabs!
ReplyDeleteOK
ReplyDeleteThe shoulder straps should be green.
Haythornwaite shows them Red! So whilst this may agian be true, it's not a 'Really Obvious ' error like the one I actually made. Keep trying!
ReplyDeleteApart from them being in campaign dress rather than parade dress the only thing I can see is that the drum is in the wrong colours.
ReplyDeleteWell in fact, the crossbelts should be black not white!
ReplyDeleteWill give you that but I'll check my books which are out in the hut and I've just locked up for the night!
ReplyDeleteJust checked my books, black belts they say. Suppose that covers the crossbelts too!
ReplyDeleteI have seen some illustrations with white crossbelts. Perhaps they were an elite company or maybe a similar regiment.
Fine looking bunch though!
ReplyDelete