Empress Dragoons

These are AB figures and had been kicking around on my workbench for nearly two months! I've had a bit of a painting block, not sure why really although I will say the last few weeks at work has been hectic.

This last unit completes the Guard Cavalry, I have both light and heavy now completed. I don't think I'll bother with the Guards D' Honour as they were a short lived unit (full of spoilt, rich kids anyway!). 

I have a lot more Prussian cavalry to paint up, three regiments of dragoons and three of Landwehr. Two battalions of the Old Guard Grenadiers and two battalions of the British Guards all primed and waiting!

Another trip

We went to Gibside Hall on the outskirts of Gateshead. We did quite a bit of walking here and there and hiding amongst the trees were re-enactors of the good old 68th regiment!The hall was built in the early 1600's and fell into disrepair around 1860. Back then it was the property of the Bowes family (Queen Mum's lot) and is now in the care of the national trust. The Sergeant allowed child number two and myself to have a bit play with a Brown Bess - a joy to hold and I can tell you with the bayonet fitted you're just looking for the excuse to run somebody through!!

1/4th Tirailleurs

Here is the 1st battalion of the 4th Tirailleurs and I've put them together with their 2nd battalion and the 3rd Regiment. These painted up very nicely although I missed the buttons on the soldiers coats and the white piping on the front which I can never do. The officer on horseback is General Delaborde, one of the Young Guard Divisional commanders - all figures are AB's.

Grand Parade 2013

Each September I usually take the recently painted units out for a stroll on the kitchen table and more or less take a head count of my painting totals for the year. This time I've just checked my blog entries and counted up the little blighters. At 12 figures for a cavalry unit  (except guard at 18) and 24 figures for an infantry unit and four figures on an artillery base; plus 9 command figures - my maths works out at 497 figures.

I also painted up 230 28mm figures for the Ayton game, which is 727 in total.

Command bases: 
General Picton
Prince Bernard
Prince of Orange
General Perponcher

Artillery: 
4 x French guard horse cannons and crew
2 x Dutch foot cannons and crew
2 x Brunswick foot cannons and crew

Infantry:
2/4 Tiraillers
92nd Gordon highlanders
79th Highlanders
2nd Nassau Usingen
1st Belgian line
1/13th French Light
2/13th French Light
1st KGL line
2nd KGL line
3rd KGL line
5th Dutch Militia
7th Dutch Militia
8th Dutch Militia
27th Dutch Jaeger
Russian Beilostock line
Russian Narva line

Cavalry:
Cossacks
French Guard lancers (18)
French Guard Chasseurs (18)
5th Belgian dragoons
6th Dutch Hussars

2/4th Tirailleurs

This is the 2nd battalion of the 4th Tirailleurs - the 1st battalion is almost completed but I wanted these guys to be my last post of August. AB figures, the flag is by "Flags for the Lads". Typical unit of 24 figures.

Cossacks!

Well, 12 of them.

I fancied doing something a bit different this time and decided upon a unit of Warmodelling (Fantasin) cossacks. There are 4-5 poses in all and unfortunately I'm not entirely satisfied with either the sculpts or my paint job. The lances are sticking out at odd angles making basing them a bit of a problem i.e. lances sticking over the bases and preventing them from lining up flush. They seem to be a mix of Don cossacks and Ural? cossacks. I painted the lances an brown-red colour to distinguish them from the line units.

I have a bag of Old Glory 15mm Prussian Landwehr (lances) cavalry in caps which will suffice to make  another unit of cossacks. I've had these for a while and was going to sell them, lead snobbery set in as I painted up more and more AB's. However, A Google search shows they are remarkably similar to the Don cossacks, the OG cavalry are a bit smaller than AB and Warmodelling which is historically plausible as the cossacks were mounted on smaller ponies compared with the line regiments. I guess I'll also need some suitable Cossack banners for them as well.

No Russian army is complete without these chaps for their great skill in skirmishing, reconnaissance and generally harassing the enemy!

Guard Lt Cav Command

Here we have the commander of the guard light cavalry division;  General Lefebvre-Desnouettes and the commander of the lancer brigade Colbert-Chabanais. You have just got to love those elegant names which of course I have no idea how they are pronounced! My eldest daughter is taking A-level French and may shed some light here. I'm sure a family visit or two to Paris over the next couple of years may help also. :)

These are AB figures; Desnouettes  is dressed as a Chasseur a' Cheval officer and Chabanais is in fact the Poniatowski figure. He came with an ADC that I used elsewhere in another command base (Lasalle I think). The only difficulty is explaining away the furry cape he is wearing, I painted it up as a grey/white cloak which I know the guard lancers wore.