Hooptedoodle #134 – The Information Age and the Common Turnip

Occasionally I have a little go at Royal Mail here, and usually I get my knuckles rapped – there is great belief and customer loyalty out there. Since my last cheap poke at our worthy national carrier we have had a mighty hike in postage prices, a controversial privatisation and a bewildering – I hesitate to say nonsensical – new set of regulations concerning shapes and sizes of parcel. My appreciation of them has new lighting, some changes of script.

And yet they almost always deliver – if slower and more expensively than previously – so we have to be grateful. Mustn’t gwumble.

One of the services offered – at a cost, of course, is trackability. The idea that you can see exactly where your precious package has got to is very attractive, especially in the somewhat tense world of eBay, where a painstakingly-built reputation can be destroyed by a single accident in the post. I am saddened to observe that this service is neither so useful nor so reassuring as it once was. The last three or four attempts I have made to check progress on parcels (including a guaranteed-delivery item which was 2 days overdue) have discovered only that my item was “in progress”. Since I already had a paper receipt which confirmed that it was in progress, this was not a big help.

I doubt if the internal rules or guidelines have changed. I suspect that the RM staff have discovered it saves effort and generates some useful fog if they do not bother with a full log of the adventures of our tracked parcels. You can take a horse to water, you can provide the posties with a state of the art online information system, but you can’t force them to use the thing properly – especially if not using it makes accountability (and potential blame) easier to avoid. Students of Brehm's (or was it Marr's?) Boomerang Effect will be nodding sagely at this point.

The logging system does, of course, record successful delivery, but then we have normally been contacted already by the recipient if the package was in any way precious, and this is also Brownie Points time, so you would expect flawless record keeping at this stage.

International tracked packages have always been a joke, since they simply tell you that the package has left the UK, and is no longer visible to the RM system. It seems that inland tracked mail may be heading the same way – the only reason to make anything signed-for or to pay for a trackable service is to ensure the maximum amount of evidence in event of loss, and the insurance cover is normally better.

It’s not a real defence, but the competition are about the same – one nation-wide courier I used recently provided a tracking reference which for 4 days told me that my package was “in the system”. Thank you for that – that’s a relief. This represents a genuine downgrade; the previous time I used this same courier I got to follow my parcel from Harwich, to their West Bromwich depot, to Livingston, and eventually was told it was on the van and would be delivered between 4pm and 5pm. Now that’s more like it. Not only was that useful, but also quite exciting for a poor old soul who doesn’t get out much.

Somehow, “in the system” is not quite the same. I kept checking again later, naturally, to see if the message had changed to “what bloody parcel?”.

Spanish Colonels - Conversions

Needs must. Since there is really nothing suitable on the market in metal 20mm, I've been experimenting for a while, trying various hybrid figures to provide mounted infantry officers for my new Spanish army. After some real disasters, I have finally found a conversion which I think works rather well.

Here's a couple of the new lads - the officers are Kennington French colonels, with Falcata Spanish heads grafted on. To provide a little variety, I'm going to mount these fellows on a selection of horses from the spares box - the examples shown here use Falcata and NapoleoN horses, which I think both look reasonable. These prototypes will be off to the painter on Wednesday.

It has also dawned on me that these converted officers would also work well in French or Confederation units. Hmmm.

Spanish Infantry Colonels 1805 - horse furniture?

Gallery picture borrowed from Front Rank website - thanks, guys.
Red? Facing Colour? White? Sky-blue pink?

Very quick post looking for clues, if anyone could be so kind as to supply any information. My Spanish army of 1809 now has a supply of mounted infantry colonels, conversions from bits of various figures, which look promising, but I cannot - for the life of me - turn up any pictures of such chaps on their horses.

With particular reference to the 1805 (white uniform) regulations, anyone got any idea what the officers' shabraques looked like? White is unlikely (impractical), though logic suggests they might be in regimental facing colour, braided in the regimental button/lace colour, but Front Rank's gallery pictures show red saddle cloths and holsters for (by implication) all regiments, since they depict a charging infantry unit with green facings, accompanied by a fiery looking colonel with a red shabraque (to match his sash). Red, as a national colour, was used by the general staff, so it is a possibility, but I'd like some kind of confirmation.

I checked out all sorts of books and online sources - the HaT site page showing painted test figures for set 8279, the Napoleonic Mounted Officers - which includes such a Spaniard - shows him painted up as a Wurtemburger, to demonstrate the versatility of the set. Drat.

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Subsequent Edit: thanks to the very fine sleuthing work of my main man Johnny Rosbif, here is some more evidence - a plate by Alvarez Cueto of the colonel of the Regto de Toledo, together with a standard bearer of the Regto de Mallorca.

Thus it looks as though Front Rank are probably correct (I never doubted it), and the colonel has a red shabraque with braid in button colour. Only slight quibble now is that the Toledo regiment should by rights have brass/gilt buttons…

Still. I'm happy to go with this.

A Run of Good Fortune – and a New Book

Like everyone else, I normally puddle along and fit my hobby activities in with other, less pressing matters, and sometimes things work out better than others. Swings and the other fellows – you know – roundabouts, that’s it.

On occasions, the gods seem to smile on what I’m doing, and I get lucky. Well, either they are smiling or else they were busy persecuting someone else, took their eye off the ball and allowed a few good breaks to sneak through by mistake.

One recent example was when the batch of pre-owned Scots and Irish ECW troops I got from eBay turned out to have been organized for Montrose’s campaigns, which is exactly what I wanted them for.

I’ve had a surprising run of fortunate coincidences, too, in connection with the arrangements for my proposed new 1809 Spanish army. As soon as I decided that there was no way I could ever collect enough metal figures for such an army, and had therefore shelved the idea, I suddenly got a series of windfall lots of OOP infantry on eBay and elsewhere, and I was in business. The army was feasible.

As I am hunting around trying to find all the fiddly bits to make up the army – command figures, gunners, staff and all that – and also trying to correct a lamentable lack of suitable cavalry figures, I get some good news from an associate in Madrid, who reckons he has tracked down some more obscure figures for me, and almost at the same time Hagen Miniatures begin to show the early proofs of some new Spanish artillery for the early Guerra de Independencia – the start of a mooted range which will include infantry later on. As if all this isn’t exciting enough, Ken Trotman have published a fine new book on exactly this period of the Spanish army, and it is a cracker.

Spanish Infantry of the Early Peninsular War, by Gerard Cronin and Dr Stephen Summerfield, is exactly what is needed by anyone who, like me, is trying to get a wargamer’s view of this army. Unusually, it makes use of Spanish sources, and presents a lot of information which I haven’t seen before, along with lovely reproductions of colour plates by Suhr, Knoetel, Bueno, Bradford and others. It also – importantly – features up-to-date research by Luis Sorando Muzas, and there are some marvellous reproductions of regimental flags as well as uniforms. This book, for the first time ever, makes sense of the bewildering variety of uniforms which were worn by the Spanish army – even before the chaos years of 1810 onwards, when manufacturing capacity disappeared under French control and units were clothed in whatever they could get hold of. The reality of the early years was a series of changes of dress regulations, of 1797, 1802 and 1805, each of which was never fully implemented, so that mixtures of uniform styles and improvisations on each and all of these were seen. There is a table giving a snapshot summary as at April 1808 of the known state of the dress of each regiment – this table is worth the price of the entire book, but there is much more besides.

The militia are covered, as are the Swiss and other foreign units, but the cavalry, guards, artillery and technical services must wait for the next volume. If you are interested at all in this period – especially if you field a Spanish army – you should seriously consider buying this book.

I have a few, relatively minor reservations. The first is entirely a hobbyhorse of my own: possibly because they are not from the inner sanctum of academic historians, the authors have really bent over backwards to cross-reference everything correctly, and the extent to which they have done this actually adds some clutter to the work. Referencing Von Pivka as a source, for example, might be regarded as a step too helpful.

My other complaint is also survivable, but annoying. If I were the author of this book, I would be furious at the lack of proof reading. Some words are reproduced incorrectly, there is the odd typo, which we should expect, but in some places the grammar is so strange that it requires a little unscrambling. I think I have worked out that it looks as though corrections were made to the text, but in many cases the corrections seem to have been added to the original text instead of being substituted. How can this happen? The book appears to be printed in the UK, so it is not as if there were no English speakers on the premises when it went to press. Were the publishers in such a hurry, or are their standards so low, that they did not have someone to check the final text? In the case of this volume, I would have been delighted to have carried out that service for them, free of charge – Trotman please take note.

In any case, I am so delighted with the book that it would be snivelling to make too much of these shortfalls. It will not give you a detailed history of the war or its campaigns (which you can get from other sources), but it will certainly show you things about the appearance and organization of the Spanish army that you have not seen before. I am very pleased with it.

A little clarity, at last.

Les Oreilles de Truie

1/17eme Léger, at long last - Les Higgins figures with a few interlopers in the
Command section - Qualiticast and Kennington, and the nonchalant eagle bearer in
the bicorn hat was previously (hush) a Falcata Spaniard...

After much muttering and retouching, and re-correcting of corrections, the first (and probably only) battalion of the 17eme Léger is ready for The Cupboard.

Refinishing these fine fellows has taken a lot of time and a lot of fiddling about – they will henceforth be known, not as “Napoleon’s Incomparables”, nor “Un contre huit”, nor even “Les Chasseurs du Diable”, but as “Les Oreilles de Truie” – the sows’ ears, in commemoration of the fact that they never quite made it into the Silk Purse section.

In fact I’m fairly pleased with them, and am especially pleased that I have finished the beggars. Perhaps at long last I may have learned that touching up a so-so buy on eBay cannot achieve miracles, and that – whether I like the idea or not – a complete paint job from bare metal will almost always give a better result, with probably less effort and certainly a lot less irritation.

Whatever, here they are, and it’s hardly their fault their military career with me got off to a bad start… 

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.

Hooptedoodle #133 - Hadrian's Wall - a quick revisit

In September 2012 I walked the entirety of Hadrian's Wall, West to East (which is traditionally the "wrong" way). It was a worthwhile trip, but there were a few minor regrets which caused me to make a mental note to come back another time.

(1) Doing the whole of the Wall - right across England from coast to coast - is an achievement in itself, but, of the six days it took us to do it, the first two (Bowness on Solway, through Carlisle to Banks) and the last two (Chollerford, through Heddon on the Wall and downtown Newcastle to Wallsend) show very little evidence of the wall itself, and are pretty uninspiring really, not least since parts of them have been re-routed by the National Trails people to take them right away from anything vaguely Roman.

(2) The weather was pretty awful for the second half.

(3) To be honest, my two companions really didn't get on very well, which had a lot to do with one of them having failed to prepare properly for the expedition, and thus struggling with blisters and lack of physical condition and slowing everything down. I was cast in the role of reluctant piggy-in-the-middle for much of the trip.

I promised myself I would come back, in a quieter season, with more suitable company, in decent weather, and do the lovely middle section again. This week I did it.

With three old walking buddies, I stayed two nights at the Twice Brewed Inn (which is worth the trip just for the beer and the grub), and on Tuesday we walked from Banks Turret to Steel Rigg, scrambling along the crags for much of the way, and on Wednesday we spent the morning completing the crags, from Housesteads Fort back to Steel Rigg.

Excellent - the weather was clear and actually hot, and it was really most enjoyable. We also won the pub quiz by a Roman mile on the Tuesday night, which may be connected with being the only entrants who were old enough to answer most of the music questions.

Once again, I am humbled by the engineering achievement which the wall represented in its day - or by any standards you care to name, for that matter. You couldn't get one built now, I think.

Walking alongside the River Irthing, which has moved a few hundred metres
sideways from the place where the Romans put a bridge across it

A good day for being a Roman soldier - Foy in the orange jerkin (easily visible
to rescue helicopters - which is a joke) and silly old lucky campaigning hat
(to avoid optical migraines caused by bright sunlight - which is not a joke)