Hooptedoodle #28 - Bad Attitude

More nonsense - more staring out of the window. From time to time we get a bad-tempered blackbird in the garden. I guess it's seasonal, and, since it's been going on for a good many years, it can't be the same individual. It must be a blackbird thing.

We have one now. He takes it upon himself to chase and generally intimidate all other living objects in the garden. In case we thought it was our garden, he keeps us aware that it's actually his.

It's not even a productive strategy. I just watched him abandon a good-sized worm in mid tug, and - presumably because something had caught his eye 50 yards away - he flew, screeching, into the wood at the foot of the garden, ready for a scrap. While he was distracted, the thrush that he had previously chased helped itself to the worm.

You know, I think there's maybe a lesson in there somewhere, if I could only think of it.

Hooptedoodle #27 - the Zippo app

It must be me - I refuse to consider, even for an instant, that everyone else might be crazy. For some years I have been aware of moments during rock concerts when, for some reason, people are on their feet, waving lit cigarette lighters in the air. My instinct would be just to turn on the sprinklers, but apparently this bizarre ritual is supposed to bring an almost religious quality to the group experience.

I am forced to accept that this is just one of those bits of mass culture which not only passed me by while I wasn't paying attention, but which also make no sense now that I am. I mentioned the phenomenon to a teenage guitar student of mine this week, and he informed me that now you can download an app to your iPhone which displays a picture of a Zippo flame, so that people who attend rock concerts need not feel left out if they do not smoke. So that's all right then.

I am seldom speechless, but this brings me pretty close to that state. I can see that there are certain health & safety advantages, but the idea that someone should apply 21st Century technology to the solution of such a major problem is just mystifying. What are they going to do, then, so as not to exclude concert goers who are non-smokers and who, like me, refuse as a point of principle to own a bloody iPhone?

Personally, I would still turn on the sprinklers anyway.

The Portuguese Cavalry Project

This has been off and on for many years. A chance discovery, and the fact that I have more time to fiddle around these days, means it is probably back on again.

No-one makes Peninsular War Portuguese Cavalry in 20mm. If you are a 28mm or 15mm gamer then you are well provided for, but 20mm, nothing doing. I have approached this problem in a number of ways. For a while, I decided the easiest approach was to assume that by 1812 the Portuguese had been supplied with British Light Dragoon pattern (i.e. French style) bell-top shakos, and I should convert some kind of cavalry wearing single-breasted jackets accordingly. I even have some Scruby British Light Dragoons which I bought specially for the purpose, with the intention of grinding off the epaulettes and shako cords - enough for at least two regiments. Alas, they are among Scruby's most primitive offerings, and I cannot bring myself to invest effort or money into them. The sow's ear/silk purse department is simply not prepared to take this on, though I have warmed a bit to Scrubies of late.

So I fell back on the safe and well-tried option of doing nothing at all about it. Portuguese cavalry (with all due respect) was not usually effective in a battlefield role, so could be a lowish priority anyway, and - anyway - I have not always been entirely comfortable that I knew exactly how these guys were dressed. There was the strange sky-blue uniform on the cover of Otto Von Pivka's old Osprey book, which I believe is probably incorrect (though it appears to have influenced GMT's counter artwork for Commands & Colors: Napoleonics), and there was a wide range of interpretations of the appearance of the helmet. The headgear situation is confused by the fact that the Legion d'Alorna wore something very similar to the helmet of a French line lancer, with a high crest, while there are descriptions of cavalry units in the Portuguese army equipped with British equipment, including, apparently, Light Dragoon-style Tarleton helmets.

We are much better informed these days - the recent Chartrand books published by Osprey are a big improvement. Just to be difficult, for a moment, let's go back to 1810, and reproduce an illustration from William Bradford's very fine Sketches of the Country, Character and Costume of Portugal and Spain.

Bradford's book includes plates of relatively familiar Spanish and French subjects which demonstrate that he was a skilled observer, and recorded what he saw. The cavalryman has his side plume removed, and the wide front stripe of piping colour is unusual, but we get the idea - there is no cause to doubt its authenticity. While on the subject of ancient history, here is a photo I took in 1981, back in the pre-digital days when poor holiday snaps really were poor, at the little military museum in Morges, Switzerland. The exhibit was described as a Napoleonic Spanish coat, but the button inscription (P. JOAO VI PRINCIPE REGENTE) and the style of the jacket identify it as Portuguese, the facings (sky collars and cuffs, red lining) being those of the 11th cavalry. The wings are odd - maybe a later addition, or a trumpeter's ornament?

The recent stroke of good fortune was that I came across some 20mm Kennington (SHQ) Waterloo Dutch Cuirassiers, and I think they will make pretty good Portuguese horse. Dutch cuirassiers, luckily, did not actually bother with wearing cuirasses, which makes the single breasted jacket a good match for the Portuguese one - near enough for 20mm, anyway. Sadly, Kennington do not do matching command figures, but the troopers are available in a resting or a charging pose, and it should not be a life-threatening challenge to produce two officers and two trumpeters with dremel, razor saw and my box of spare parts. I believe the project is back on - I would not recommend that anyone holds their breath, but I have a good feeling that my hoped-for, two-regiment brigade will become a reality before long.

To finish on a complete irrelevance, I was very taken with another of Bradford's plates, which shows a Portuguese goatherd in an ingenious straw raincoat. How about thatched guerrillas, then?

I am still having problems with Blogger which mean it is a major hassle to sign on successfully, so I have been unable to comment on my usual blog haunts, and publishing is an uncertain process. I am making use of Firefox to get by, but am not happy with it as a general-purpose browser for a number of entirely personal reasons (that should get me some hate mail – there’s nothing like a perceived religious insult to get people worked up...)

Foy's Sixth Law Revisited - NapoleoN Miniatures (yet again)

Just because it follows on from the last post, and the comments thereon, and because it is another appropriate reminder of Foy's mighty Sixth Law, here are some pictures from the old NapoleoN website of 20mm British Peninsular cavalry.

I did obtain a unit of the hussars, but would welcome any suggestions (on a used 5 pound note to Chateau Foy, please) as to why I never got around to buying the heavy dragoons, when I knew they were available and needed quite a few.

New Lamps for Old

To be more precise, that should read "New Lights for Old", but Aladdin never said that, so it wouldn't have worked for a heading (oh yes it would! - oh no it wouldn't!).

Old

It's that old Creeping Elegance thing - where you replace a unit that you have some prejudice against with a newer, better made or more appropriate version. For about 35 years I have been less than delighted with my 14th Light Dragoons - not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with them, but because what I really wanted was proper Peninsular Light Dragoons in Tarleton helmets, but there was never anything available. This original unit consists of Phoenix Model Developments (formerly Les Higgins) castings - nicely made if you like Higgins' stupid horses - and I didn't make a completely terrible job of the painting (Humbrol, and that orange will almost certainly be a model railway colour). It's the Waterloo-period uniforms that grate with me.

New

By dint of a few swaps and some eBay captures, I've finally collected a third unit of NapoleoN Miniatures' Light Dragoons of the appropriate period - I already have the 11th and 16th regiments in my British army. Matt very kindly did the very fine paint job for me on the new one, and here we have the replacement 14LD, ready for action. The old ones are spoken for, and will go to a very good home. Since I am a prince among skinflints, I have managed to re-use the original bases. Looking at the bases, you may wonder why I bothered, but there is some vague whiff of continuity which I find pleasing - the Executioner's Axe raises it's replacement head once again.

This little side project is especially satisfying because it is something that I didn't really need to do, but have wanted to do for many years. And now it's done - YES!!!

I don't have a big list of things to replace - the odd misfit figure of dubious scale, the odd item which I don't like for some reason or other. One recurrent theme is a back-burner intention to replace units which have the wrong period uniform whenever I can. Having all my British Light Dragoons in Tarletons is pleasing, though there is an element of rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic, since most of my British infantry wear the Belgic shako, and most of my British heavy dragoons are in Doric-type fire-bobbies' helmets, neither of which is awfully clever for the Peninsular War around 1811-12. Still, says I, no-one knows for sure when supplies of these later items became available, do they? And by the time the answer comes, I have my fingers firmly in my ears, and am singing la-la-la-la-la.

Thank you, Matt - another small step for progress.

More of the Same

The rest of the new shipment of painted figures have now been touched and revarnished as necessary and based. They too are now waiting for flags.

Very pleased to get back the first two of my proposed 4 groups of Spanish guerrilla infantry. These are a mixture of Qualiticast and Kennington figures.

More Spanish volunteers - these are the Defensores de Fernando VII, an unusually smart looking unit from Castile, who started life as Kennington 1812 American militia (good idea, Mr Kinch - thanks for that). The flag I had intended to do for them is a horror to draw, so I may go for something simpler.

And some volunteer artillery to support them - here we have the Artilleros Distinguedos de Avila. Since I am very keen on the weirder units in JM Bueno's lovely book, these guys could have been wearing almost anything, but it occurs to me that if I dress them more conservatively as slightly out-of-date artillery of the line I get more options for their use. Figures and guns are NapoleoN apart from the midget Kennington officer, who may not actually be visible in the picture.

Lastly, the combined voltigeurs of the fictitious Vorpommern brigade - Scruby and Higgins.

The Other Side of the Mountain

On Monday, the postie brought a satisfyingly hefty package, which was a pile of figures returned from David the Painter. It's always a bit like Christmas, unwrapping everything (a lot of very serious bubblewrap - and quite right too). Then follows an experience which might be described as the reverse slope of the Lead Mountain - that brief period when there is a pile of painted figures waiting to be organised and based. Since my basing standards are minimalist, this is not a huge chore, and it's really very gratifying.

Thus far, I've based three of the new units - they haven't been issued their colours yet, but that will probably be done over the weekend. No doubt they will appear here in full splendour when their formations are complete and a parade of some sort is in order. This is just a holding post, giving a glimpse of what passes for breathless immediacy in this place.

First there are two infantry units for my fictitious Vorpommern brigade. These are mainly Scruby figures, and once again I am astonished at how well they paint up, considering how unpromising they look in the metal. Since they have a pleasing "toy soldier" look, I like them a little bit shiny.

Here are the Grenadierbataillon Zum alten Greif, nicknamed Die Tulpen (tulips) by their comrades, for obvious reasons. The yellow coats are a tradition established by the old Stralsund Town Guard in the Middle Ages, and yellow and red were in any case the colours of the national cockade of the Duchy of Stralsund-Rügen.

And here is the Jaegerbataillon Franzburg. They were organised and drilled the same as the line infantry, though their light infantry pretensions extended to having carabiniers in tall bearskins and voltigeurs in colpacks. There was supposed to be a sharpshooter company armed with rifles, but this was discouraged by the French commissariat because of the lack of suitable ammunition. A number of the Stralsund-Rügen units bore the names of towns in Vorpommern, but there was no real connection - men were recruited from all over the area, including Brandenburgers and deserters from the Swedish army. There is a theory that the names were allocated to justify the raising of taxes in the relevant towns. The Jaegers had their headquarters in Stralsund, not Franzburg.

Change of army - these are the 2nd battalion of the Loyales de Zamora - Spanish volunteers - also waiting for their flag. The castings are by NapoleoN Miniatures. If they are poorly trained and equipped, if they run away in moments of duress, remember that they will be back next day. The relentless bloody mindedness of the Spanish militia and irregulars is what eventually wore away the spirit of the French army in Spain. They fought a style of warfare which the French did not understand, and which the Russians were quick to learn from. This unit, and all the many others like them, if he had only recognised it, were Napoleon's worst nightmare.

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