Sir Augustus Frazer's Waterloo Letters

Since we are heading towards a certain bicentennial, it seems appropriate to publish this. These are scans taken from the Christmas 1945 issue of the Illustrated London News, featuring letters extracted from the Journal of the Campaign in 1815 by Sir Augustus Frazer, who commanded the Royal Horse Artillery at Waterloo.

The full Journal has now been republished, though it existed only in manuscript form in 1945, I believe. Whatever, I thought the 70-year-old article was rather nice, complete with the map and the artwork.

1809 Spaniards - more on Granaderos Provinciales

After being assured by all sorts of specialists that it is no longer available, anywhere, I ordered up this book direct from the publisher, and after a brief delay it turned up. Well now.

Apologies for the photographs - no flash because the book is
printed on shiny paper, and the binding is such that I
will surely wreck the  poor thing if I try to force it flat on the
scanner

My Spanish is kind of plodding, but I can find my way around if no-one is in a hurry. I found a fair amount on flags (of which more some other time), and also on those mysterious Provincial Grenadier chaps. There is evidence throughout the plates that the Provinciales had rather simplified versions of the the line infantry uniforms (minimal piping throughout), but there is no mention of any downsized version of the grenadier cap - in fact the plates show a pretty standard looking bonnet.

Provincial Grenadiers at Medellin - fine big, furry hats
with flammes; that'll do for me

More of them, this time in 1802 with the earlier blue
uniform - again, normal grenadier headwear

It's not conclusive, certainly, but that's good enough for me - I have spent enough time dithering around on this - my provincial grenadiers will have normal bearskin caps, complete with appendages.

While I was looking over the boxes of collected grenadier castings which will form my elite battalions, I noted that I had carefully included a very fine standard bearer figure in each battalion. The reasons, of course, are [1] all my battalions have a standard bearer and [2] Falcata included one in the boxed sets. However, now I come to think of it, what flag would such a fellow carry? The provincial grenadiers were formed into permanent battalions, so some sort of flag might be expected there, but the line and the guard grenadier units were "converged" (ooh - I have a vision of them being forced through some kind of blending machine) from the grenadier companies of battalions in the brigade, so they would not be expected to take any regimental colours away from their parent units, despite pictures to the contrary on the Front Rank site and elsewhere. Unless the grenadiers got a flag of their own to play with, I don't think the standard bearer would have anything to do, and these converged units did not have any permanent status such as might justify a flag.

OK - decree No.2 for today is that my provincial grenadier battalions will have a standard (of some sort) but the converged line grenadiers will not.

There you are.

Two decrees in one day.  

Hooptedoodle #174 - Oi! - Gerroff!

We take a great deal of pleasure from the birds in our garden, and some pictures of them have been posted here in the past. Our previous bird-feeding gantry collapsed last year (rust and gale-force winds), so we have a stronger and more complicated one now.

One feature is an elevated gauze tray to allow ground-feeding birds that are not comfortable hanging onto a nut feeder or sitting on a seed perch (primarily blackbirds, chaffinches, robins) to eat from a flat container which is safely away from the neighbourhood cats.

Common (Mongolian Ring-Necked) Pheasant - south east Scotland
 - not supposed to be up there

The tray is clearly stronger than I would have thought, but it is not designed for great, greedy oafs like this chap! At the time of his visit, the tray contained mostly spilled niger seeds from the containers above. A niger seed is only just visible if you have decent eyesight - not unlike one of the commas in this post - any idea how many would make a snack for a cock pheasant weighing about 1.25Kg?

He didn't stay long, and lumbered off to continue his normal hoovering of the woodland floor.

Home brewed Flags - Spanish backlog (4)

Now some light cavalry - this will be enough for the moment, I think. Certainly that's all I need to get the painted units finished off. There will certainly be more later on.

If you wish to make use of these cavalry flags, click on the image, save the larger version, and if you print at 13mm high (including the fringes) that's about 1/72 scale.

Cazadores de Olivencia (L) & Husares de Maria Luisa (R)

Husares Espanoles (L) & Cazadores "Voluntarios de Espana" (R)

Home brewed flags - Spanish backlog (3)

Yet more of the same - I was beginning to think this is all getting a bit boring for anyone who doesn't actually care about my Spanish army, but then it occurred to me that this is probably as good a free download of Spanish Napoleonic flags as you're likely to find (with all due humility), so I've decided to carry on for a bit. Somewhere, someone may find them useful one day...

I only have the first battalion of the Guardias Wallones in my army, and the flag appears here, but I am slightly crestfallen to read that the flag for the 2nd battalion was rather more interesting, having a blue ground. Not to worry. The Cataluña regiment were light infantry, by the way.

Instructions are the same as before - save large version, and print at 23mm high for 1/72 - trim off the green border.

Regto de la Reina - coronela

Regto do la Reina - sencilla

1st Bn Guardias Walones

1.Voluntarios de Cataluna

That's enough infantry flags to give me something to work with for now. Next up are some cavalry flags - they are fun, but there's hardly any source images, so this is real head-crushing stuff. Watch this space...

Home brewed Flags - Spanish backlog (2)

And here's some more. Irlanda and Murcia only have one battalion present with my army (OOB loosely based on Ucles), which saves me doing a couple of sencillas! The technique here is (probably obviously) copying and pasting and dropping bits in - the skills are those of desktop publishing rather than graphic art - most of the Spanish flags are pretty much the same.

Since I was asked, the flagpoles were covered in crimson velvet, the cravats were red and the spearhead and the fringes on the cravats were in the regimental button colour.

Regto de Africa - coronela

Regto de Africa - sencilla

Regto de Irlanda - coronela

Regto de Murcia - coronela

As before, the big version of these images should be saved and printed to be 23mm high for 1/72 scale. The green border is not part of the flag, and should be cut away.

Home-brewed Flags - Spanish backlog

My 1809 Spanish army has now progressed far enough for the lack of flags to have become an embarrassing bottleneck, so I am obliged to crack on a bit with them. These have been produced, as ever, using my ancient version of PaintShop Pro, and they are intended for my own use, but (as ever) if anyone wants to use them, please feel free - they are non-copyright. The resolution is not brilliant, so they are not recommended for 54mm - if you wish to print them out, click on the image below, save the larger version and print each one at 23mm high for 1/72 scale (I'll leave you to do the arithmetic for other scales!).

The green border is not part of the flag - it is simply to enable me to cut a white flag out of a white sheet of paper. The 1st battalion of the regiment would carry the coronela - the colonel's colour - and the 2nd battalion the sencilla (or ordenanza).

There will be more of these (there had better be!) - what I might describe as an intermittent rush. The queue includes long-overdue flags for the otherwise complete regiments of Africa, Reina, Irlanda, Guardias Walonas, Murcia and a bunch of others - and then there's the cavalry...

Regto de Burgos - coronela

Regto de Burgos - sencilla

Regto de La Corona - coronela

Regto de La Corona - sencilla