Bavarians - Light Artillery

Thanks to some splendid paintwork, very kindly carried out by Count Goya, the first artillery presence in my Bavarian 3rd Division is now ready for action. This is a battery of Leichte Artillerie, commanded, I believe, by Hauptmann Tausch.

The figure castings are by Franznap, as are the guns, which are Manson pattern 6pdrs (the gun masters were produced by 3D printing, I understand).

Some foot artillery are also coming along - currently they're on the bottletops. After them, I have to complete a regiment of dragoons and add a few staff and that is the 3rd Division complete - limber teams and a Wurstwagen will follow on after a respectable interval.

Bavarians - The First of the Cavalry

I'm very pleased to welcome the first cavalry unit for the 3rd Division of the VII (Bavarian) Corps of the Grande Armee of 1809. These are freshly painted by my friend Goya, for which kindness I am deeply grateful; he and I agree that painting Hinton Hunt figures is challenging because some of the detail on the old castings is implied rather than in your face - thus the exact location of the piping around the lapels on these chaps (for example) is partly a matter of guesswork.

We are also agreed, however, that the figures really do look very good if they are well painted. I bow to his efforts on this lot! Thank you again, Count G.

This is the 4th Regiment of Chevauxlegers Bubenhofen, all ready to fight on the Danube. This regiment also fought in Russia and in the 1813 unpleasantness, but by that time they had become the 6th Ch-Leg for reasons which are too fiddly to go into.

Anyway, here they are, and very welcome. The officer and trumpeter are both conversions, for which thanks are due to Wellington Man.

The number of new painted units here recently has finally outstripped my stock of bases and sabots, so I have had to order some more from Uncle Tony at ERM. In the meantime I am very pleased to have dug out some pre-used bases which were previously attached to a unit of Brunswick Hussars (now departed). Considering that wargames collections (well, mine, anyway) are a veritable hymn to self-indulgence and waste, I can't understand why re-cycling a few penceworth of old bases would give me any pleasure at all - very strange.

They'll be provided with a smart new sabot of the correct size as soon as Uncle Tony sends some along.

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!

Bavarians - 3rd Divn Infantry now complete

Bavarian 10. LIR "Junker"

The infantry for the 3rd Divn of VII Corps of 1809 are now finished. Both battalions of the 10th line regiment were based and provided with flags and sabots this morning, and photos taken for the Catalogue.

1st Battalion - that'll be Oberstleutnant Von Poellnitz on the cuddy

2nd Battalion

The cavalry are still to be painted, as are the artillery, but I now have the figures in stock. I'll put some photos of the artillery castings up here in a day or so. I still need to paint some brigadiers, and some sappers would be nice. It's all gone rather well thus far - I'm not sure when (or if) the 2nd Divn is likely to get started, but I have figures ready for that as well. One project at a time, if you don't mind.

And because it seemed a suitable occasion, here's a picture of all the finished infantry - here you see General Deroy, with the 5th (Buttler) and 7th (Gunther) Light Bns, and the 9th (Ysenburg), 10th (Junker), 5th (Von Preysing) and 14th Line Regts, all the line units being of two battalions.

Deroy with the infantry of 3rd Divn, VII Corps, all ready for the Danube campaign

Same Old Painting Style, and a Brush(?) with Technology

Reports of my passing have been premature - I've been a bit preoccupied...

This afternoon I've finished off painting the mounted officers for my next Bavarian infantry regiment. These figures are new releases from Hagen, which turned out rather nicely, I think. They are uniformed as LIR 10, Junker.

Yesterday I visited the Stryker Estates, up in t'North, for a proper Old School style wargame, and very nice too. A new departure for us was live posting on Instagram - if I'd known I'd have arranged to take my make-up crew with me (my hairdressing people only work part-time now). The game was loosely based on Plancenoit, and finished as a draw, which surprised me since I had the impression all afternoon that my lot were getting thumped. Now that we have an international online audience available, it could be that a rematch will be almost as big a draw as the Fury vs Wilder refight. Stryker will have to get his advertising contracts dusted off.

General view early in the game

My French skirmishers were lethal

Stryker's splendid Old Guard - mine for the afternoon - pinned in square by Prussian uhlans - no-one came near them!

Excellent day, as ever - my thanks to Baron and Baroness S for their kind hospitality, and my compliments to Stryker and Goya for their company and the excellent toys. 

Ready for The Cupboard, with a Quick Flash of Nipple Pink

All based and flagged, the two battalions of the Grenadiers à Pied de la Garde are now finished and looking for a fight. The guardsmen are 1970s Les Higgins NF1, and the command figures are modern Art Miniaturen castings.

Also completed today are another 2-battalion Bavarian line infantry unit, this one the 5. LIR "Von Preysing", resplendent in pink facings (Nipple Pink paint, thank you Foundry...). Their command figures are a mixture of Hinton Hunt and Falcon (from Hagen), the other ranks are Der Kriegsspieler. Too late for Eggmühl, but I'm sure they'll be in action before long.

Battle of Eggmühl, 22nd April 1809

Wargaming yesterday; delighted to welcome Goya and Stryker from Up North (or Further Up North, I suppose). Goya brought along an Austrian army (on the train - we are always at the leading edge of technical innovation here at Chateau Foy) and Stryker brought along Marshal Davout. Stryker and I were to command the French forces.

Our game was - unusually for me - one of the published scenarios from Commands & Colors: Napoleonics. This was No.312 - Eggmühl - Day 2 - French Left, which I think must be from Expansion 3 (the Austrian bit). One reason I am always hesitant about using other people's scenarios is because they are usually designed to give both sides a chance of winning, which is OK from a social aspect but sometimes dubious historically, and often (I have found) they give you a grinding match while one side waits for a lucky dice roll or a show-stopping card to give them an edge. I'm sure that GMT Games and their countless fans will not worry at all about my views, I hasten to add.

Anyway, we used the scenario, and it looked interesting, and in fact it gave us a nice game. A feature of the day was that we also used some experimental house tweaks to the rule system. I don't wish to say too much about these at present, since they are still under development, but they seemed promising.

Neither am I going to discuss the real (i.e. historical) battle, since it is well-known, and the portion of it we were playing, though it makes a decent standalone game, is a bit odd in isolation. I will, however, mention briefly the small matter of spelling. If you know better, or can give a better-informed view, please do pitch in here. The locals call the place Eggmühl - I have a locally-produced tourist souvenir of the battle, and there it is - Egg - as in Scrambled Egg. Not Eck, as in Prince of Eckmühl, or as in Bloomin' 'Eck. I assume that the proper German name must be Eckmühl - "the corner mill" (bend in the river Grosse Laabe?), and that the local Bavarian dialect says Egg. The French have always called it Eckmühl, of course, but their track record with German place names is not good anyway. [Ratisbonne? What's that?]

As usual, I'll attempt to fill in a narrative around the photos. In passing, I managed to get hold of some brighter bulbs for the over-table lighting (1200 lumen halogens, two of them, which are supposed to give the same light as old-money 150w jobs, but much less heat), so the photos may be a little brighter than in previous efforts.

As a spoiler, I have to tell you that the French lost [damn]. It wasn't a complete whitewash, but the field is very busy with villages and woods, and the Austrian line infantry, slow-moving and potentially brittle though they are, have 5-blocks-worth of musketry per battalion, and that is a very serious prospect all round. And, of course, Goya commanded his defence rather better than did Rosenberg in 1809. Our rules of the day stipulated 10 Victory Banners for the win, but the situation was sometimes quite difficult to follow, since there were temporary VBs available for possession of the villages, and the exact timing of when these counted was sufficiently complicated for me still to be unable to understand it this morning. I think the final score was about 10-7 to the Kaiserlichs, but I'll take advice on that. French did well enough, but couldn't keep up any kind of momentum in the face of the Austrian musketry.

By the way, if my account of the day shows a little French bias, I hope you will indulge me - the defeat is too recent and too painful. Like all military history, it may take some years for a truthful impartiality to creep into the narrative.

General view from behind the French right flank, at commencement. The French cavalry in
the foreground were always going to struggle to get some open ground to work in. Beyond them
are Von Deroy's shiny new Bavarians, then St Hilaire's Division, and at the far end Friant's boys.
The villages are, in order of proximity to the camera, Unterlaichling, Oberlaichling and
Obersanding, with various arrangements of VBs available for each.

View straight down the middle of the table at the same stage - note that the Bavarians
have some distance to advance across open farmland to attack the village and woods
in the centre.

Unterlaichling - first attack and the Bavarians took the place. A brief moment of glory -
subsequently the village and its neighbouring woods changed hands so many times I
lost count, though our lot never seemed to be in possession when it came time to tot up
the temporary VBs.

On the French left, Friant made a big push through the woods and towards Obersanding.
Heavy going. The dude on the right hand edge, on his own, is Davout, currently Duc
d'Auerstadt and, sadly, destined to remain so.

The problem - too many Hungarians in the Plastic Forest. You're sure of a
big surprise.

Erm - and suddenly the French had a lot less troops advancing on the left...

...and St Hilaire's division in the centre didn't fancy their chances much...

...and the Bavarians, though they are fleetingly back in Unterlaichling here, with some
French légère boys on their left, were running out of men and out of steam. 

Theme for the day - the French needed a bigger superiority in numbers to win the day.
Here they just don't have enough fresh troops left, and we are getting near the end.

After the official VB target was reached, we played on for a little while. I fiddled around
with some of the under-employed French cavalry on the right flank, which was fun but
enhanced neither the result nor the historic narrative. Faint shades of Borodino - some
cuirassiers capture an artillery position on the Bettelberg, but it makes no difference!

Bavarians - 3rd Division Commander

Needed for action on Saturday, here we have General Bernhard Erasmus von Deroy (on the nimble little horse...) and his General-Adjutant; the figures are both from the old Falcon range, now marketed by Hagen. The Adjutant has the Quick-Reference Sheet handy. The gentleman in the cloak is easily recognisable as the ubiquitous Minifigs FNX1, rescued from the spares box and repainted as an officer of cavalry attached to the Bavarian staff - he's obviously seen it all before. The white edging to the base allows quick location of a divisional general.

The mounted figure has a toy-like, Noggin the Nog air, which I find rather appealing. There is a joke here - one of the few stories about Deroy (who was an older officer, and a bit of a traditionalist) describes his fury when he found that his troops were growing all sorts of non-regulation facial hair on campaign - orders of the day appeared very quickly. This casting has a very luxuriant moustache, so poor old Deroy can hide behind a Full Groucho - maybe it's a move to gain the affection of his men?

Sorry the Arctic light has dimmed down the colours a bit - these Bavarian chappies are pretty vivid normally.

Deroy - no whiskers here

Deroy commanded the 3rd Bavarian Division in the VII Corps on the Danube. A well respected veteran and a good leader, he was mortally wounded at Polotsk in 1812.

Another Bavarian Paint Test - 5th Line Infantry

Time for another test figure for my first Bavarian Division - this is a fusilier of the 5th Line Infantry Von Preysing. Once again this is a Der Kriegsspieler casting, but this time it's a slightly different pose - this is the first one I've done from the DK set 175 "advancing"; the previous line infantry figures tested and painted up have been from set 174 "at ready" (which, confusingly, looks very like the Hinton Hunt "charging" pose).

I was nervous about the pink facing colour - I've used Foundry's Nipple Pink [yes, all right, thank you - calm down now]. It worked out better than I expected. This unit has a rather unusual uniform. The good news is that there is no piping around the lapels or the collars, which simplifies things a lot, but the pink is potentially a bit weird with the red turnbacks, cuff piping and shoulder strap piping. The shades chosen seem to work OK - the red and the pink are clearly different. This pose has a rather more open stance than, and looks a bit more slender than, set 174.

Current record of getting units finished after production of a test figure is good - really much better than I had expected. Once this regiment is painted (maybe a month or 6 weeks?), there is one line regiment still to do for this Division (10th LIR), then there are two cavalry regiments, a horse battery, a foot battery and some staff. That sounds like a fair amount of work - especially since I am busy refurbing various French units as well - but I'm keen to keep cracking on.

The cavalry will be Hinton Hunt OPCs, with various conversions and (probably) a few Garrison horses drafted in. The artillery will almost certainly be SHQ (I'd have loved some FranzNaps for this, but they're expensive and tricky to get hold of). I have a very limited range of general officers available at the moment, and no ADCs at all, so some creativity is needed here. There is a chance that General Deroy may be in a carriage - still thinking about this.

Bavarians - More Light Infantry

I'm very pleased to welcome another unit for the 3rd Divn of Marshall Lefebvre's VII (Bavarian) Corps of 1809. This is the 5th (Buttler's) Light Bn. A bit of aristocratic patronage is very appropriate for the Bavarian army of this period, and it is a considerable privilege to have had these chaps painted at the studios of Count Goya - thank you, sir! I'm sure that all visitors will enjoy the Count's very fine brushwork.

Castings are, again, from the Falcon range, now manufactured and sold by Hagen.

More Bavarians Ready

Back to the toy soldiers. Some progress with painting this week - including the completion of two further battalions for the 3rd Divn of Lefebvre's VII (Bavarian) Corps of 1809.

Here are the second battalion of the 9th Line Regt Ysenburg, at the top, and the first of my Light Battalions - this one is the 7th, commanded by Major Günter, in the lower photo. The line infantry are Der Kriegspieler figures, with Hinton Hunt and Falcon command, and the lights are all Falcon.

 Photos taken by the light of my painting lamp are a bit washed out - the reds really are more vivid than they look here. The light infantry are shown with the skirmishers deployed - they get tucked behind out of the way when the unit is in close order column!

Bavarians - Another Test Figure - Lt Bn No.5

Really not making good progress with painting this week, but have produced another painted test figure - this time for Light Bn No.5 (Buttler). Again, the casting is by Hagen, from the old Falcon range. Nice little figures these, I think.

There is something psychologically more satisfying, when time is short, in producing a single finished figure rather than, say, painting (most of) the crossbelts of an ongoing battalion of two dozen.

More of Buttler's chaps will be seen before long. Apart from another two battalions which are dribbling along in the background at the moment, the next big intake of breath is scheduled to be two battalions of the 5th Line Infantry. Bad news is that these are more of the Der Kriegsspieler castings, which are eyeball-busters as far as I am concerned; good news is that the facings are plain pink, with no piping, which simplifies things quite a bit.

I won't do any more test figures until the current batches are finished. A cavalry test must appear soon, but I'll avoid getting distracted by that at present.

Light a candle to St Luke and press on. No-one said this was going to be quick.

Bavarians - Getting Back to the Project

I'm now trying to make a bit of progress on the painting front, after some weeks' interruption. Yesterday I completed a painted test figure for the 7th Light Battalion (Günter), circa 1809. The casting is one of the old 20mm figures which were formerly made in Germany under the trade name of Falcon, and which are now on sale again from Hagen. I like them. My current plan is that my Bavarian light infantry will be pretty much built from Falcons.

Skirmisher from the Light Battalion Günter - seems OK

I have become a firm believer in the value of producing a test figure for each painting batch - it's useful for deciding on shades (the sky blue collar here is a second attempt - I finished up using Foundry's Tomb Blue, which is much lighter than my first guess), and for identifying which paints to use, and in what order - and I then set the pots out in a row in my workbox (I don't always use the same logic - in my recent work using Der Kriegsspieler line infantry castings I have been painting the lapels and cuffs before the main coat colour, which to me seems unnatural, but it helps to preserve the rather sparse cast detail as long as possible - horses for courses). I also get a chance to find out which are the tricky bits. I think this chap shouldn't really have a moustache, by the way, but - hey - they're on campaign. He will be one of the 6 skirmishing figures included in the battalion.

Hinton Hunt BVN 44 - this picture is pinched from Stryker - I hope he doesn't mind. It
shows rather nicely the mysterious object under the trooper's right arm, which isn't a
sling but points down towards his carbine

Yesterday I also finally worked out what has been something of a puzzle. The time is coming when I'll have to start producing some Bavarian cavalry, and initially I'll be using Hinton Hunt's OPC Chevauxleger (BVN 44) as the mainstay of this. Work has been going on in the background, converting some of these to produce command figures (results should appear here eventually), and even some dragoons, and in the course of this I became interested in a mysterious object in the HH casting. Between the lower right breast of the trooper and somewhere near the muzzle of his carbine there is a straight, narrow object which I took to be part of the suspension system for the carbine, but study of uniform plates and so on indicates that it obviously isn't. I asked a number of knowledgeable people about the object, and did an amount of poking around before I came up with this plate by Knoetel, which is a definite clue.

I now have a proper answer. Sometime after the Rumford uniforms were scrapped, the Bavarian cavalry were supplied with a new, steel ramrod for the carbine - this had a loop on one end, and was suspended from a leather thong which was fastened to the stud which secured the two parts of the leather carbine sling. So Marcus was correct (I never doubted it) - the ramrod just dangled from the carbine bandolier. So now I know.

The Bavarians were beset by things which dangled, apparently - the badge of rank of the Unteroffizier was a cane of office, which had a wrist strap. The cavalry used to hang this next to the sabre when mounted, but in everyday dress it was correct for the cane to be suspended from the upper section of crossbelt for the cartridge pouch, so that would be swinging about too. I assume these gentlemen used to sit down very carefully.

A Short Spell of Fiddling Around

I have figures to paint;  I have stuff to do. Hobby progress has been slow, in fact it would be easy to fail to detect any progress at all. I'm going away on Friday to sit in on some Field of Battle wargaming, which should be a valuable and worthwhile experience - not to say enjoyable. More of that another time.

Mostly, I seem to have been sidetracked into doing Real Life things. I guess that includes watching a lot of football, now I think about it - we may debate how real that is.

I have, after a lot of lamentable foot-dragging, made a start on playtesting my developing, homebrewed, grid-based, Napoleonic miniatures game, which has spent a very long time being redrafted over and over. My thanks, once again, to Jay for his patience and his invaluable input, and now my thanks are also due to Martin and Dan Sarrazin, in Australia, who have started doing some playtesting for me (using Commands & Colors kit in their case) and have shamed me into shaping up and getting on with it.

Anyway, I've had a few evenings lately of walking through the exact, detailed sequence of what happens when a unit breaks from a melee (for example), and how it is different when that unit was in square or in cover (for another example). Instructive. I always knew that this process was going to turn up the need for a lot more clarity, which is probably why I've been dragging my feet. I've got used to revisions of the rules becoming smaller as the draft stabilised. Getting the soldiers and the dice on the table is bound to reveal a mass of holes, but it's all good!

Unless the testing turns out to be a complete disaster (in which case the game may quietly fade away), I hope to be in a position to report on some actual battles using these rules fairly soon. As I keep reassuring people (including myself), the aim is not to replace Commands & Colors as my game of choice, but to provide a slightly less blunt instrument with which to fight smaller, more detailed actions. To get back just a little into the world of lines and columns, and all that, when it is appropriate to do so.

In the pursuit of more light on the tactical niceties, I was reminded that I really don't know how the British Army of Napoleon's day managed to operate without French-style attack columns, so I've gone back to some good old standby books to brush up a bit.

I've also been reading a new book - a sort of memoir of Franz Joseph Hausmann, of the Napoleonic Bavarian army. This was translated and annotated by Hausmann's greatgranddaughter, and edited by John H Gill. It's interesting, and does fill in a lot of the "what was it like?" aspects of service in that army. Franz was eventually a lieutenant in the 7th Line Infantry. From 1812 onwards he sent his father detailed letters of his experiences - his father was by this time invalided out of service in the same regiment, and was keen to follow the campaign in Russia. Prior to 1812, Franz's personal journals consisted simply of lists of each day's marches. Much of the interest derives from extra information provided by Gill, and from family stories supplied by the translator.

Anyway, it is interesting rather than spellbinding stuff, and it all adds some personality and context to my forthcoming Bavarian force.

Elsewhere - and this really is trivial - I finally tracked down a little portrait of General Anne-Francois-Charles Treillard, a French Peninsular War cavalry officer who commands a division in my collection of toys. Treillard is noted, among other things, for having an unusual number of alternative spellings of his surname (though "Anne" is consistent throughout all versions), and for being famously portrayed by Robert Stephens in my favourite movie, "The Duellists".

Gen Treillard

I know this is silly, but I do like to know the chaps in my little armies. I've got portraits of most of my French generals now - I didn't have Treillard, and I still don't have a picture of Maucune (the head-banger who largely screwed up Salamanca). Maucune (real name Antoine-Louis Popon, Baron Maucune) was eventually a rich and titled chap, and I can't believe he didn't have his portrait painted, though it is possible he may have been very hard to please in the portraiture department. If anyone knows of a painting of the Baron, or if you happen to live next door to the family, please give me a shout. All I have is some detail on the family coat of arms, and a photo of his tomb, at Père Lachaise.

Maucune's final rest