Max Foy's Mad March Mug-a-rama - results...

Well, the deadline has passed, and I must have sat up until several seconds past midnight sifting through the entries. Thanks very much to everyone who sent one – a number of people said they were going to, but obviously thought better of it, and a surprising number sent a note saying, “I’ll take one, ta…” – obviously these are people who visit the supermarket with a reversible jacket, so they can go round the free samples several times – quite right too.

Since the entire episode was a dreadful conceit and self-promotion of my own I can hardly crib about the limited response. After a short ponder, I decided to award one to Epictetus for his stout effort in Limerick form (it would be graceless to mention that my nom de blog is pronounced Fwa) – this is it, and very good it is:

A philosophical wargaming bloggist

Thought a free mug was not to be missed

So for better or worse

His thoughts turned to verse

In an attempt to make the short list

His input to the hobby was duff

His painting was really poor stuff

He had written no rules

And his blog got no views

There was no way that he’d done enough

He suspected that he’d get no joy

With the arguments he could deploy

Still he gave it a go

Because you just never know

With that estimable chap MS Foy

I also awarded one to the worthy A W Kitchen, for straightforward brass neck, since he reckoned he deserved one of my mugs because he had recently broken the handle off his own. I like his style.

Though he made no formal entry, I also feel I should send one to Polemarch, whose blog got me thinking along these lines.

If you 3 gentlemen would care to send me a comment bearing your postal address (which I will not publish, of course) I shall wrestle with the logistical problem of how to send a fragile item through the Royal Mail, so that you may have the pleasure of my ugly mug watching over your wargames.

I's a Muggin' - Silly Giveaway

This follows on from a discussion on Polemarch’s very fine blog – there was a passing reference to de-emphasis of the unseemly, or politically difficult, aspects of wargaming (such as death, which we shall refer to as the D-word henceforth). 

I felt that a mug bearing a suitable message would be amusingly silly, but then dismissed the idea. Later, I thought better of it – such a mug would not only be superbly tacky, but would be just the thing to extend the intermittent range of Max Foy collectibles – sadly the much-admired tee-shirt (click) is no longer in stock, but the mug would surely be a must-have. Think how your wargaming friends would envy you if you had one, or – if, like me, you have no friends – just think how people might visit you to see it.

View of both sides of the mug - not your cup of tea?

Anyway, I ordered some, and here they are – they exist. As you see, they bear an improving message on one side and my own portrait on the other – how inspirational is that? I shall give away two, as a token of my selfless devotion to the hobby, my supreme lack of both taste and humility and my shameless determination to promote my crappy blog. If you would like one, all you have to do is send me a comment (which I shall not publish) explaining why you truly deserve one (or need one) and how much you would like to receive one. Any details of your personal contribution to the hobby (or anything else, really) will be most welcome – there are no rules at all, except that you must be a follower of this blog. Whichever two submissions amuse me most (and there may be extra points for relevance, but it’s not essential) by midnight on 5^th March will receive the mugs – I’ll retain some stock so that I can (maybe) offer them as some sort of special award in the future.

I’ll probably publish the best entries – as long as they are not too rude, of course.

Foy Gone to Pot?

Here's one I hadn't seen before. It's me, Max Foy!

This is a ceramic bust of me, manufactured in 1820 - which is after I'd retired from the army and become a prominent liberal politician, orator and effective leader of the opposition in the French Chamber of Deputies, but it is also before I died in 1825, so I guess this is a representation of me as I then was.

The bust is in the Musee Lorrain, in the Palais Ducal in Nancy. It is not there because I myself came from Nancy (I was born in the department of Somme), but because the piece was manufactured at Niderviller, in Lorraine. This is rather more jovial than I am customarily portrayed, so I have mixed feelings about it - perhaps it's sardonic? Anyway, I came across the picture by accident, while looking for something else entirely.

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.

Hooptedoodle #14 - Foy on Foy

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. Potentially, I have a new project for the New Year. We'll see.

I have two major confessions to make today.

Firstly, I am not a qualified historian. I am pretty well read, I would contend that I am a passably smart chap (quiet at the back, there!), and I once wrote a short and rather humble booklet on the Portuguese Army, but I am certainly not qualified. This may seem an odd thing to say, but it is a serious point. Anything more thankless than attempting to be an unqualified historian is difficult to imagine. I am a big fan of a number of recent and present day Napoleonic historians - Muir, Esdaile, Gill, Elting, and Horward all come to mind - and am aware that to some extent they write/wrote their books for each other, within a closed academic community which despises 'popular history' as a point of principle. Fair enough - that's how it is. During my recent immersion in Salamanca, I was a little disappointed that Rory Muir felt it necessary to be so dismissive of Peter Young's and James Lawford's Wellington's Masterpiece, of which, for all its evident faults, I have been very fond for many years. Though no-one is likely to confuse Muir and his very scholarly approach with the enthusiastic (and rather patriotic) authorship of the earlier work, the fact remains that popular history is really where it's at when it comes to selling lots of books, so let's treat Young & Lawford and similar with all due respect. If it wasn't for all the unqualified punters like me who purchase and read their works as popular history, Dr Muir and the rest of the fraternity would be getting pretty hungry by now.


The second confession may come as rather more of a shock, so I recommend that you put your hot coffee down carefully, and sit back.

I am not really Maximilien Sebastien Foy.

I use his name as my blog persona, because he is, in a quiet way, a hero of mine, but the real Max Foy died in 1825. I have always had a high regard for MSF. Most of the eye-witness accounts I have read of the Napoleonic Wars are flawed in some way - they may be self-justificatory (Marmont), tedious (Pelet), romanticised and unlikely (Marbot), excessively patriotic (Marcel, Napier and many others) or written by complete jerks (Thiébault). This does not mean, of course, that I have not enjoyed or valued such writings, but Foy is something different. His best-known work is his Histoire de la guerre de la péninsule sous Napoléon, which was published after his death at the behest of Mme la Comtesse Foy, who suddenly was very short of money. The Histoire is readily available, in French or in a handy English translation (which you can download from Google books here and here if you do not wish to purchase it). It is remarkably balanced and fair-minded, gives a valuable overview of the characteristics and strengths of the participating nations but, sadly, ends abruptly at the Convention of Cintra (1808). Foy was born at Ham, Somme, but had an English mother, which may have contributed to his rather liberal views on foreigners.


Foy was one of the good guys. I have an impression that he would have been excellent company at dinner. He became colonel of a horse artillery regiment, then a general of brigade, and ended his army career as a general of division. Conscientious and always in the thick of battlefield action, his seniority did not advance as quickly as it should, and this may not be unconnected with the fact that he was a known critic of the French Empire. On merit, he should certainly have been one of Napoleon's Corps Commanders at Waterloo, where he received his fifteenth and last wound while leading a division in Reille's II Corps. Subsequently he became a liberal politician and a noted orator, and he died suddenly in 1825 at the age of 50.


There is another book, with a much wider scope. I have in my possession a copy of Maurice Girod de l'Ain's excellent Vie Militaire du General Foy, which was carefully edited from Foy's memoirs and correspondence and published, by the splendidly named Editions Plon, in 1900. It's a sound, scholarly job, meticulously referenced. I am not aware of this book ever having been translated into English, and I am thinking of doing exactly that - this is what might be the New Year project. Partly as a consequence of my rather convoluted Anglo-French family, I read French well, and I have sufficient familiarity with the period, the individuals involved and military matters in general to avoid most of the howlers which can present themselves in such works. The original idea was simply to produce a translation for my own amusement and, I suppose, to prove I could do it. That would be reason enough, but it also occurs to me that such a book might have a wider potential readership. I know nothing of the copyright implications or how I might set about the project, though I am currently in contact with a couple of academic fora and individuals to gain some guidance.

I have put this post up here mainly in case it is of interest, but also so that anyone who knows that an English translation of the Vie Militaire is on the shelf in their local public library can put me straight. Nothing at all might happen, of course, which would not necessarily be a novelty for my New Year projects, but at the moment I am very interested in this idea.