Another year is almost gone. :-)

Hello, my friends!

Not much left of 2017. Time to make a personal figure check up, eh?
I hope that you all had enjoyable holidays and that your year was good, as well.

My year was pretty cool. It started with playing a background role in an opera (no singing involved, luckily), starting an interesting assignment at a lawyer's office, then quitting again when a far more interesting opportunity showed up in September. Changing my job twice this year, acting at the opera and writing my second novel took plenty of time. This resulted in far lesser blog entries this year. Nevertheless, I still enjoy miniature painting very much.

I have finished one figure setup for my long-term project recently. It's the command figures for my Isembourg regiment.

Bright blue. Really nice.

There's some stuff that I have painted this year but haven't presented on the blog yet. This is mainly because I haven't put them onto bases yet. I'm not quite sure how to assemble the war of 1812 american infantry. For example. But time will show. Or better said: I'll show them to you when it's the right time. :-)

Well - what was it that I put onto my 2017 list? Let's see...

• One single or multi figure display for FIGZ - check
• A multi-figure setup just in case I decide to go to the Lingen show - check
• Completing Baden Jagers and fusiliers -  started the fusiliers, Jagers at 80%
• Complete my Russian hussar vignette - *sigh* not even continued
• Complete the SU100 vignette with tank riders - check
• Complete the French departmental guard display (14 figures left) - check
• Finish my Kingdom of Holland setup of Pre-Bardin units until FIGZ (only 4 figures to go) - 2 left
• Finish the Garde de Paris (3 units left) - check

The finishing list of 2017 looks like this:

• Baden Jagers - 8 figures
• Isemburg command - 2 figures
• 1812 American and Canadian infantry - 13 figures
• 1812 US line infantry - 29 figures
• Italian infantry of different units - 8
• Dutch infantry - 1 figure
• French infantry - 31 figures
• Spanish infantry - 1 figure
• figures for contests - 8 figures
• British infantry - 2 figures

So that's a total of  103 figures. Less then last year.
Which means that I don't plan too high in numbers for 2018.

Plans are:

• complete the Baden figures
• eventually finish the Russian hussar display
• complete all Strelets Highlanders (at ease) which I bought recently
• paint the Dutch light infantry for having a complete unit overview of Kingdom-of-Holland infantry for this year's FIGZ
• complete all figures for my 'deserters' project
• finish the Boston hussars on my desk

That's not quite a lot. I guess it's better then starting with ambitions that I - as every year - won't be able to fullfill.

I wish all the best to you for 2018. May it be a successful, healthy and lucky year.

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More men behind the lines - the Gardes d'honneur

When I discovered the departmental reserve troop system, I had already stumbled accross the Guards of Paris as a unit. In one of them articles, there was a remark that 'they had been in larger scale, what the honour guards had been for the smaller cities'. So I started to find out what that meant.


During my research, I found an old book on the public database of the Toulouse biblioteque. (Book: Gardes d'honneur)

And there they were - a whole lot of new uniform pictures that I had to put into my Pre-Bardin-uniform project, which backlashed to more then a hundred uniforms yet to be painted.

Garde d'honneur of the city of Rochefort

Large cities had to setup such guards for the means of internal security. They served as protectors of the cities' officials and the city infrastructure. They guarded roads and streets as well as public public buildings. Larger cities tended to have their own city guards since medieval times. Under Napoleon, they mainly had these guards because the larger cities had the financial capabilities to pay for their security on their own accounts.

And as long as they had to pay them all by themselves, the city officials were relatively free to decide about the look of their city guards - not the equipment, which was same as it was for the standing army. Some of these uniforms looked really flamboyant, while other cities decided to put their men into rather conservative coloured cloth.

Garde d'honneur of the city of Moissac

By the means of battle readyness, one might consider these troops as militia. I haven't found much evidence of city guards that were placed on the field in a real fight, except when their cities came under siege.

The 'Garde municipale de Paris'

Paris, being the heart of France, always had it's very own guards. After the revolution, this guard went through several stages of organization, slowly deteriorating in men and functionality in the latest years of the 1790s. Therefore, the Garde municipale de Paris (or 'Guards of Paris', as I'll call them from now on) where created by personal decree from Napoleon Bonaparte himself in 1802.

Members of this troop had to fullfill some interesting criteria: they had to be between 30 and 40 years old, more then 1.65m tall, able to read and write and (!) they should have to be involved in at least five army campaigns. In other words: the Guards of Paris where not some background police dudes hanging around, they were real war veterans.

Their duties were the same as for the Gardes d'honneur in major cities or the Departemental reserves - they were responsible for inner security, guarded governmental infrastructure, patrolled in the streets, guarded prisons, city gates and protected governmental officials.


The Guards of Paris were organized in two demi-brigades, totally 2154 men strong.What is a bit tricky about this unit is the uniform documentation. Due to several sources claiming this or that configuration for the same time frame, it's a bit hard to say how the uniforms really looked like at this or that time. Although the general colours are of no doubt at all, this problem mostly is about cuff shapes and bearskin/shakos. Therefore, I had to decide for a certain variation in case of the tirailleur/voltigeur figure.

The basic uniform colour of the 1st regiment was green with red cuffs'n collar. The 2nd regiment wore it's uniform with the same colours the other way 'round. For the drummers, I basically found two versions: the one with the golden rims and the reverse-colours version. Well.

In 1806, both uniforms received white uniforms. Sitting at the center of the distribution chain, it is confirmed that they really got those uniforms. The distinctive colour of each regiment - red or green - remained. After the white uniforms were abandoned, they switched back to the old ones (what a waste of money, eh?).

What makes this unit interesting for wargamers is that here you have a 'militia' or 'city guard' unit with veteran status. Plus it makes a bright and colourful appearance.

The Guards of Paris were active on the battlefields from 1806 to 1812. Two batallions were involved in the campaign against the Netherlands and later took part in the occupation of Hamburg. In 1807, they took part in the siege of Danzig and the battle of Friedland. Detachements of the guards also fought in the battle of Alcolea, Bailen and Burgos in Spain.

In 1812, the Guards of Paris got involved in the coup d'etat led by general de Malet. The coup was quickly put down, the guard's colonel and his staff were shot and the Guards of Paris were disbanded. The infantry was used to reassemble the former 134th line infantry regiment, which later took part in the battles in Germany throughout 1813, were it was utterly destroyed.

The men behind the lines - French departmental reserves of the Napoleonic era

Okay. Let's learn something, shall we? This is going to be a long read, but it contains a lot of information about another not-so-usual aspect of the Napoleonic French military. 

When I started my 'paint all units in PreBardin-style uniforms'-project, I thought it was all about painting battlefield military units. Well - after a while I learned that I was totally wrong. I come from a country where you have the army on one side and the police on the other side. While the army is responsible for protecting the country against foreign enemies, the police is responsible for internal security. One side carries the big guns'n'stuff while the other one is equipped in order to deal with criminals, riots and keeping up public security.

Back in the days of Napoleon Bonaparte, this wasn't the case in the same way throughout Europe. In many states, the king or local nobles payed for armed units that served as a militia which local nobles or representatives sent out to carry out police-like duties. This 'state militia' was the root from which the gendarmerie evolved, a paramilitary force that - in wartimes - often was used as light cavalry or horseback infantry. In other states, this function was carried out by the king's guards.

When I first discovered that there was something like a reserve army in behind of the line army of Napoleon's France, I was really puzzled. I read about 'reserve regiments' especially in the Prussian post-1812 army organisation structure, but the French counterpart wasn't only about creating regiments that were just for filling the gaps in the field army's ranks, the French departmental reserves were an armed body that carried out actual tasks. 
For the project, things got even worse when I found out that the larger cities also had their own military units, called 'Garde d'Honneur' - and that these also had their very own uniforms. So there was an army behing the army behind the army.
When I already thought to have painted most units, the number raised up again. Oh. My. Goodness.

As there were so many of these companies, painting them one by one would have shot the number of necessary drummer and officer figures under the ceiling, resulting in buying boxes of figures just for getting enough of just two figure types. On the other hand, I thought that people would like to see the system in behind of the different uniform colours. So the idea was born to put one figure per company onto one display. But making the groundwork for a marching block of more then 30 figures was a nightmare - and that's why I just finished this project a few days ago after a period of at least eight months from which I finished the last of these figures. Now here it is. 

By decree of May 1805, France created reserve companies for the internal security business of the countrie's departements. The size of the specific companies differed according to the population size and financial power of each departement. Actually, these companies were positioned somewhere between the gendarmes and the regular troops. Their duties were the protection of the justice apparatus and key infrastructure (prisons, prefectures, archives, depots) plus being a guard for official representatives. With having the reserve companies under their command, regional governors, who were the local representatives of the emperor's authority, received their very own armed force. 

To build up that reserves, the total number of conscripts of each year was split up - while one part went to the regulars, the others went to the reserve companies. The other way round, conscripts that didn't perform well in the reugular regiments were send to the reserve and vice versa. Officers were either retirees from the line regiments or magistrates. 

From behind, they look almost all the same

Being in the reserve nevertheless meant being a soldier - laws and regulations were the same. The prefects as commanders were responsible for the quality, morale and payment of their troops and had to write regular reports about troop conditions to the ministry in Paris. Nevertheless, reserve recruits were not to expect medals and a military career. The daily business of the reserves was guarding buildings and roads, catching deserters, guard prisoners and protect public officials. Apart from that, regular exercise and weapon training guaranteed that the reserves were always able to fill up the ranks of the line regiments. 

The departemental reserves were no doubt being considered to be real soldiers. Some reserve companies even went into direct combat, for example in the Peninsula or to counter the landing of British troops in the Walcheren area. Eastern departemental companies took part in the fighting during the 1814 campaign on French soil. In Napoleon's view, the reserves were a big pool of supply for the grande armee. Every now and then, hundreds of men were drawn away by the emperor's decree in order to fill up the losses of the line regiments or even to build up new regiments. 
 

Seven different distinctive colours in four combinations each

By the table, all departemental reserves were equipped in the same way as the linen fusiliers. In order to give each departement's force a specific distinctive uniform, the ministry invented a colour code. The methodology was simple. There were seven basic colours: white, poppy red, dark green, yellow, orange, purple and black. The first seven legions (companies) wore their distinctive colours on breas, cuffs and collar. The 8th to 14th on breast and collar, the 15th to 21st on breast and cuffs and 22nd to 28th on breast only. Drummers wore the company colour code in reverse order.

Drummers wore reverse colours

close-up: note the differences in the colour code (cuffs, collar, breast)

By 1807, bicornes were replaced by shakos. Due to decree of 1808, the blue uniform was replaced by a white one, but in the same way as this was handled in the regular army, the colour was switched back to blue again without many companies even having received the new uniforms. As I found no documentation on which company actually got a white dress, I decided not to paint them at all. 

The result looks really nice, doesn't it? It's certainly the largest 'unit' of this project so far.

Bodyguards - the Velites de Turin

To strengthen his reign, Napoleon Bonaparte put a lot of his relatives onto European thrones. Sometimes, there had be certain arrangements to be made to secure them. At least, so it seems if you look at the Velites de Turin.
They were created in March 1809 as a battalion in order to protect prince Borghese, Napoleons brother-in-law, who served as governor-general for the French departments in northern Italy. 

Having guard status and officially being part of the Imperial guard, they wore guard uniforms. Originally, most of the ranks were build up with Italian men while the officers came directly from the French guard grenadiers.

The Velites de Turin fought actively in the battle of Leipzig, mainly in the covering of the French retreat. They were also actively fighting during the campaign of 1814.

Guards of Venice

Well - here we have something rather off-line again. And things will - I promise - get even worse regarding the diversity of this Pre-Bardin uniform thing. I discovered a new book that brought up a whole new aspect that I didn't have on screen until now. And it brings new uniforms, new units... gosh... if I knew that before...

Venice, a former big European player during the centuries which had declined into a local player when Napoleon showed up, brought in it's very own guard unit when the army of the Kingdom of Italy was formed. Here it is:

Doesn't look spectacular, I know.

For the statistics, I have now painted 313 figures representing more then 60 different units. That's about 120 left to be painted - if I don't find more units.

Veterans of Rome

Here's another unusual unit represented for my Pre-Bardin-uniform project. It's a soldier of the Veterans of Rome.
I found this uniform in a book filled with old Knoetel uniform plates. Napoleon annexed the Papal States in 1810, following a number of disputes with the pope. At this time, the Papal State army was considered to be the most worthless of the continent. Whoever was found worthy of serving in a regular unit, was transferred to the regiments of the Kingdom of Italy.

However, there was still a bunch of men left - and as it was considered to have these people rather in a uniform and under some sort of control then having these men roaming the streets, the battalion 'Veterans of Rome' were raised as a military unit for local security purposes.

If used in wargaming scenarios, I would say that this unit is merely militia with a minus on morale and combat abilities.

Dutch Corps Israelieten - and a historical remark

In 1808, King Louis Bonaparte, ruler of the Kingdom of Holland by the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte himself, made a decision to raise an infantry unit exclusively from the jewish population of 'his' country.

The unit raised up to regimental status, although it suffered from never getting enough recruits. It was dressed in the same uniform as the 2nd light infantry regiment - the only difference was the shako plate, showing the letters 'CI' for 'corps israeliten'.

I wasn't able to find out what the main reason for creating this unit really was - some write it was because of the special jewish nutrition, some write it was all about promoting jewish citizens' rights. Whatever it was, as far as I was able to find out, the Israelites Corps never saw actually any battle and was disbanded in 1810, it's soldiers were put into other regular infantry regiments.

Because of this short lifespan, the regiment remains one of the oddities of the Napoleonic era, although all-jewish regiments had already been in service in Russia and Poland in the late 1780s. Receiving citizen's rights due to the Napoleonic juristictional reforms that took place in many French dominated countries, jews began to join the armies, although it seems that not many of them were actually recorded. Or perhaps it was something that noone ever documented very well.

When Prussia joined the Coalition forces in the liberation wars against Napoleon, jews had been given citizen's rights in Prussia as well. This led to hundreds of young Prussian jews joining the army, although an exclusively jewish unit never had been established.

I find this matter really interesting. In the archives of the 'jewish history' of the city were I grew up, you can find this picture:

These are jewish citizens who fought for the Kaiser during WW1. The man on the left must be a NCO who has been decorated with an Iron Cross. In fact, thousands of jewish men fought on the German side during the first world war. They were as patriotic as their christian comrades were and the merits they earned during the 'Great war' later led many of them to the fatal mistake that even a Nazi government would never commit atrocities to the former brave soldiers.

Re-start the whole photo thingie...

Hello and welcome back!

...and sorry for the long absence...

Well. I've been busy painting things for the FIGZ which I then wasn't able to take part to. Blame me. At least I have some entries for next years' competitions. One should always see the positive side of the story, right?

Well. I have a new job and some new private issues and a second book to complete and not much time for painting. Next thing is that I have mostly painted things I'd like to have complete before showing them here. That is, for example, the display with all French reserve infantry regiment representatives or, on the other hand, a US infantry line for the 1812 theatre. For the first, I have completed all the figures, but not the groundwork of the base, for the second, there are still 13 infantrymen that I need to complete. So... well. I have done something.

With completing the officer and drummer for Italian light infantry, I've finished the light infantry units for my pre-Bardin uniform project. I'll do the veterans and the Venetians next, so that my Italian army will soon be complete.

To compensate my photography troubles, I have now invested some money and bought myself a small transparent photo tent. I'm still in the experimental stage - it will take me some time to find out which positioning and lighting brings the best results. But as far as now, I'm pretty satisfied with my first snapshots. Well... the inlay needs to be either flattened or replaced with something smoother, but the overall snapshot result looks far more pretty than what I was able to achieve during the last months - which was, to be honest, one of the reasons why I stopped making photos at all. When the summer set in, the large trees in front of my windows filtered every sunlight replacing it with a smooth greenish light. Which is, in fact, a catastrophy if you want to make good photos.

For example, this is a closeup of a casualty figure. Please feel free to tell me what you think about the photo quality. Every hint is welcome. ;-)

When I've found out how to use this photo tent in its' best way, I'll take up my pre-Bardin Nappies and make a complete set of new pictures and then, I will refurbish the complete project catalogue. :-)

Another Baden snapshot

The last few weeks flew away and I'm still not sure where they went to so fast. In the meantime, I have finished something for the competitions at this years FIGZ which is about to take place in Arnhem on the 4th of June. Yeah - plenty of time, I know, but it's always feeling comfortable to be done with the homework early enough.

The next thing was to continue with my Baden Jagers. After finishing these, I have 4 figures from that set left which are almost complete. Next task will be to paint them two sets of fusiliers.

Well - although it's all about green, green, grey, black and only a bit of white and gold, I still love these chaps and their uniforms. In fact, it's quite a good thing that they come without backpacks because usually, they cover the largest part of the figures backside so that you see lesser of the uniform colour. In case of the French for example, I always asked myself why they were called 'le bleu' when most what you can see is actually white...

The jager on the left side is one of these figures that allows a bit of conversion because both arms are separate. This figure is support to reload his rifle, but he also looks good as a spotter, doesnt't he?

The most cool pose of them all is that of the officer. Francesco made a really great job on that figure. With that hand on his back, sword held ready and a slightly snobbish look on his face, he makes a realistic look of an officer supervising his soldiers.

In addition you have that great sergeant. One of the advantages of Franznap's sets is that all figures of a set work together very well, no matter what combination you chose.

Now I have the Jagers ready, I have the Austrian infantry and the largest number of Austrian cavalry ready, it's about to start with the fusiliers. When I have all these figures painted, I can start to assemble the diorama.

Things take time. Good things take longer time. ;-)

Pre-Bardin uniform project: heavy carving

Today, I present you some plastics hardcore carving results. I'm still not finished with my project to paint all possible units that wore the French pre-Bardin style infantry uniform by using the same HaT set - but at least, I'm getting near to finish one of the biggest of Napoleon's allies - the units of the Kingdom of Italy.

Among them, I found two units that brought me to a certain challenge. Both uniforms share a greyish vest/trouser colour that is not that often seen on uniform plates. But what both have in common is the fact, that under normal duty circumstances, they certainly wouldn't have worn any backpacks. So for the first time, I had not only to remove some cords or swap a head, but had to remove a chunky part of plastic that hadn't been intended to be ever removed.

This was pretty challenging. Although the plastic of the figures is not that hard at all, it's a massive block of plastic that has to be cut off. In addition, I chose grenadiers as basic figures, which required a headswap with the fusiliers. At the first try, I underestimated the effect that - when half cut - the resistance of the plastic decreases, which ended with the scalpel blade slicing halfway through the tip of my left hand's thumb. Ouch

But after all, I managed to scrape off the backbacks. You can't just slice it away, you must also try to achieve the overall shape of how the soldier's back would look like, including a little bit of texture which looks like belts etc.
Well - the final result looks pretty nice to me and was worth the work .

The first example is a soldier of the medic company standing guard - for example while guarding a field hospital. Brown, light grey, white and black... I really like the combination of the colours. In addition, this is a rather unusual subject because you seldomly see units that are not directly battle-related.

When you see this figure from a small distance, it appears as if the backpack has never been there. :-D

The second one is is a galley guard. These chaps were the sentinels who guarded the convicts who had to row the galleys that some nations in the Mediterranean region still used in the Napoleonic age.
Working on a ship, this guy logically has no need for a backpack at all. So I had to remove it for him as well. In addition I decided to make the base look as if the figure was standing on deck, right in front of the guardrail.

I always liked that green of the Italian uniforms - in addition with light grey cuffs'n collar, trousers and vest, this figure looks really pretty. Although you wouldn't see those guys on a battlefield at all.

In both cases, I wasn't able to find representations of drummers or officers. In case of the galley guards, I found out that they were subordinated to the navy staff of officers and had no own officer's staff at all. In case of the medics... well, I don't know. Maybe someone else might help me?

US generic flag for 1812

Well - I found that it is quite hard to find suitable sources for the different line regiment flags of the US Army of 1812-14. Or maybe I'm just not looking in the right corner of the web? I bought a set of the new Strelets British marching infantry because I like Strelets figures, I wanted to make some paint conversions for the war of 1812 theatre and I wasn't able to get some HaT British. The set contains a flagbearer with a blank flag. Cutting it off in order to replace it with a printed flage would have looked silly because of the flagpole's thickness.

So after not being able to find the original flags for the 16th regiment of the line, I decided to get along with a very generic flag. Maybe you guys could tell me if that's alright or if it is problematic for a reason? Who knows how the regimental colours have looked like? Is there any good source on the web? I'm happy for every help!

War of 1812 special

Hello, hello!

I'm still there. Don't panic. Not that I haven't painted something during February, but it was all too diverse and too many things still lay on my desk. I had been experimenting for a while, which was the fact that kept me from completing many things. Today, I have some snapshots of what I'm currently working on and that's:

Soldiers of the British/US war of 1812

Some may say: pretty unusual stuff for someone who lives in Europe. And yes, that's right. European history has Napoleon and his wars so much in focus that you don't read much about the things that were going on in northern or southern America during the 19th century, except from the well-known American secession war, some WildWest-stuff and (if you're lucky) the Alamo (as if that wasn't just a single battle). Not to speak of the liberation and unifications wars on the Southern American continent... (total blank in German schoolbooks)

South Carolina militiaman

Well. Research on that matter wasn't as hard as I had expected. And due to my surprise, I found a hell of a lot different uniforms. In fact, back in 1812 even the US Army hadn't adopted a completely uniformed appearance. From grey to brown to blue to black to fawn, in the beginning of the war there was a large number of uniform colours to be seen even in the regular regiments, not to speak of all these militia units that were sent by the different states.

One thing that makes it fairly easy to make up an army for the US/British war of 1812 is the fact that both armies used pretty much the same sort of uniform and equipment. Differences, as for example the backpacks that looked different in US use (or were just the same backpacks, but covered with blue cloth that often had a 'US' or state mark on it), can be easy emulated.

Early Upper Canada militia

I had seen on the pages of Hagen miniatures that they offer a range of British soldiers in colonial uniforms for the early 19th century campaigns. As many units, especially in the early phase of the US/British conflict, wore these hats as well, I thought that these figures could be a good basis for my little '1812 tryout'.

Canadians, Left: Montreal militia

Canadians, Right: sharpshooter of the Leeds rifle company

2nd Glengarry regiment (Canadian)

At first I found out that these figures are not as hell of a much detailed as the Rifles from Hagen were (see on the right side, you can use them as light infantry (i.e. the Glengarry regiment) as well). But thinking about it again when I had the first ones painted, I don't think that this matters much too much.

First: these are still very nice metals. Not chunky, not clumsy, though not too crisp. But they have their details where you need them and will surely make a great appearance in masses on a wargaming table or in groups on a diorama.

Second: their uniforms aren't that splendid anyway. For many units, you need to trim away all the laces, slim up the cuffs, cut away the plumes etc., so all that's left is more or less a very blank uniform.

Pennsylvania militia (l-t-r): volunteer brig.Porter/113th regiment/Pittsburgh blues

So do these figures do their job as War of 1812 militia? Yes, of course they do. And as a Napoleonics enthusiast, I can only recommend other miniature painters to give that theatre a go because what I show you here is only a slight piece of the mass of different units you could paint.

There's loads of different militia units. There's lots of different line infantry units. There's lots of colourful flags never to be seen on the European continent.

And there's a lot to be learned about the early years of US/British policies and to what this war (which is not even that much noticed in the USA itself) led concerning the development of the USA and it's neighbours.

More British rifles

Here's the rest of the photos I made of my British rifles. In fact, these are figures on the march. Hagen also offers standing figures and Riflemen in battle.

If you ask me, these figures are marvellous because they have sort of an 'in the field' look. Not that shiny clean 'regulation book' style in which soldiers under field conditions never really looked like.