Sieges - French 24pdr

Thanks very much for the various suggestions received for siege gun castings. Special thanks to Mr S Wargamer, of Hampshire, who drew to my attention item MALA3 in the current Miniature Figurines 25mm catalogue - officially described as a Marlburian siege gun.

So I imported one to try it out. It looks as close to a 24pdr Vallière system gun, such as would have been used by the French in the Peninsula, as I think I'm going to get without having something specially made. The wheels are 21.5mm diameter, which is correct for 1/72 scale - I included some spare NapoleoN gunners to give the idea. Looks pretty good, I think? The Vallière guns were some 75 years out of date by the Napoleonic wars, but the big siege bangers were well down the queue for modernisation - the Gribeauval principles of light weight and standardised parts didn't really suit the heaviest stuff. Which means, I guess, that this gun could take part in a siege at any time from about 1690 to 1830, for any number of nations - a coat of dirty olive green paint and no-one will know the difference. Once I have it painted, I'll photograph it next to one of the British iron siege guns, for comparison - but don't hold your breath.

I have to say that the gun was fiddly to assemble - casting was not brilliant, so a lot of cleaning up of the pieces was needed, and supergluing the little plates to attach the trunnions is exciting - do not sneeze. Mission accomplished, anyway, so if a klutz like me can manage it, it must be plain sailing.

I'll have a look at this for a few days - if I still like it, I'll order up another seven of the things - that's enough for 4 batteries, and I'll start looking around for howitzers and mortars to suit - better read up on my pdf copy of Belmas to check what they had in the train. I'll also need more gunners - I have some spares, but not enough. I am a little shaken to see that the Art Miniaturen range seems to have been cut down a bit - at least it looks that way on the new website - so I may be looking at multiple sets of the cheap-and-cheerful Kennington gunners to make up the crews.

And yes - thank you - I do realise that the silly little rammer/sponge is not going to serve that monster very well, so less of the vulgar humour, if you don't mind...