The Headless Horseman

…and other mysterious goings-on.

Well you see, Clive was interested in mounted colonels for some of his British infantry, and one of the possibilities was the fellow I have pictured at the top of this post, who had been in my Napoleonic Command spares box for a few years.

I’d never quite identified this figure. At first glance it looks like a Hinton Hunt OPC, but there’s nothing like this in the catalogue. Disregarding oddities such as Der Kriegsspieler, my personal rule-of-thumb for this sort of thing is that if it looks like Hinton Hunt (especially in the horse department), then there is a good chance that it is actually a very early Minifigs 20mm piece. In fact someone had, I think, told me that this was a Minifig, and by deduction it was probably BNC5 – “Line Infantry Mounted Colonel”. Thus I had assumed this was what it was, and it lived in the spares box in this unofficial role.

I was never very taken with the paint job, and I was suspicious about the unconvincing epaulettes, so I decided to clean it up a bit and see what it was. Into the bleach it went, but bleach couldn’t handle a very thick coat of red undercoat, so it required a Nitromors bath. That shifted the red paint all right, but I was a bit shaken to find that it also shifted his head.

It was a conversion.

I should have thought of that – the Nitromors had simply taken out the glue which held his head on. At this point I was actually laughing out loud – there is something very silly about an elderly fellow like me looking so closely at epaulettes on a 20mm tin soldier, and missing the blindingly obvious. I really must get out more.

Having had a quick look around, I think it is actually a Hinton Hunt OPC Austrian General (AN102 – picture borrowed from the Hinton Hunter), with a British infantry head attached. If anyone recognizes the figure, or if you did the conversion, or if you disagree with my ideas about it, please shout.

Hinton Hunt AN102 - thanks to The Hinton Hunter blog

Good fun. Not sure what to do with him. The lack of epaulettes might make him suitable for a Spanish general, but the single-breasted jacket might not work – I’ll think about it.

Subject 2 – On Being Dead

I was happily reading Pierre le Poillu’s account of his visit to the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, when I suddenly remembered that I am buried there. There are, of course, some 1 million other people buried there, so I can’t feel too bad about it if he did not visit my tomb. Out of idle curiosity I had a look in Wikipedia to see which famous people share my final resting place, and was a little upset to find I am not listed.

It would be ungracious to make too much of a fuss about this, but I would remind the reader that I was a prominent general in the Napoleonic Wars (rising to the rank of General of Division – I would have risen higher if I hadn’t blotted my record by being a Jacobin and a Republican, opposed to the Empire), I was wounded 15 times during those wars – the last time being outside the walls of Hougoumont at Waterloo, and I subsequently retired from military service to become leader of the liberal opposition in the French Chamber of Deputies. I became a noted orator before succumbing to apoplexy at the tender age of 50.

Naturally I would not wish to talk myself up here, but there are some pretty cheesy C-List celebs on the official tour of Père Lachaise – actresses and such. If you are in Paris, I hope you have the opportunity to drop in and say hello. My tomb is a bit overdone for my own taste, but it is easily spotted, and I appreciate the sentiment that created it. As you will see, they did not wish me to get out of here in a hurry.