Bavarians - Where I'm at, and What's Next

The next thing to do is to get the 3rd Divn of Lefebvre's (Bavarian) VII Corps of 1809 finished off. I still need two infantry brigadiers, a brigade of cavalry (2 regts - one of dragoons, one of chevauxlegers - plus a brigadier) and two artillery batteries (including one of Light Artillery). That will be the main components - I can add sappers/engineers and limber teams as time permits.

I may have posted pictures of some of this stuff already. Here are the raw materials for the next steps. The cavalry will all be Hinton Hunt based, and the artillery equipment will be Franznap - for gunners I have a choice of SHQ or Franznap.

The cavalry figures set out here are (L to R) an original HH Chevauxlegers trooper, then conversions produced by Wellington Man of a Chevauxlegers officer and trumpeter, and a dragoon trooper (different-shaped shabraque). I am still doing some experimentation for the command figures for the dragoon unit, but the most likely solution at present is SHQ French line lancer command figures, with HH heads and with the uniform detail re-carved as necessary, mounted on 20mm Garrison horses - we'll see how that goes.

The artillery figures are (L to R) two SHQ figures and three Franznap. Though a good height match, you can see that the Franznap figures are slimmer, and I'll avoid mixing the two breeds in any one unit, though the different makes can co-exist on the table in separate units, I think.

Interestingly, Franznap only make gun crews for the Light Artillery, which brought me back with a bump to the small matter of how the Light and Heavy(?) artillery differed. I have not had a great deal of help on this from the better known modern sources, but in fact it's all OK. The Bavarians did eventually have horse artillery, in the French style, but in 1809 the Light Artillery was simply artillery who were equipped with - erm - lighter guns (6pdrs), and the gunners had a tendency to ride around on those splendid Wurstwagen things. Uniforms? - no real difference, as far as I can tell. So that simplifies matters a bit - I might think about getting a Franznap Wurstwagen - sounds like Phase 1(c) to me.

At risk of sounding like the Golden Globes, I thought I'd mention a few people without whose help I couldn't have made the progress I managed to date - not even close, in fact. Flipping back through this blog, I see a first mention of a possible Bavarian contingent in my State of the Union report in August 2017. By 2nd April last year I was experimenting with preparing some Der Kriegsspieler castings for the first infantry. This week I have 10 battalions ready to fight - I'm really pleased with that. For help with sourcing figures, painting, encouragement, consultancy, charitable donations of effort and castings I have to acknowledge sincere thanks to Evan, Stryker, Ian P, Aulus Grammaticus, Goya, David M, David Y, Old John, Matthew, Uwe and Andreas (die Spielzeugmacher, or Brothers Grimm) and to Chuck Gibke in the US for his knowledge of the old DK ranges. If I've forgotten to mention you, then you know I'm grateful anyway - in particular Jonathan, Lee, Peter A, Ray, Aly, Ross and those others who have egged me on by making encouraging comments as the troops appeared.

Thanks very much!