Command & Control - Napoleonic Marshal's Uniforms

 I regularly play BBB in 6mm, in this ruleset Generals are either represented - because their presence could positively influence a battle - or they are not on the battlefield.  As my regular opponent Mike and I work through the excellent "Napoleon's Bloody Big Battles" scenarios, so I need to field an impressive number of Marshals.

In Napoleonic battles the need to be seen and instantly recognised was important, especially for Commanders.  Which is why you get nice bright uniforms and lots of gold bling (this was true of other periods of history as well).  I saw a comment on a Facebook forum asking for information about French Marshals and their ADCs (Aide de Camp - assistants).  So, i did a bit of searching and found that some ADCs were in quite striking uniforms.  Bright, distinct colours were especially important for ADCs, who were used to transmit messages.  Napoleon, when looking at the ADCs from his Marshals, needed to instantly know which ADC to give which set of orders to.

ADC uniforms went through some transitions.  In the Revolutionary period Generals recruited protection escorts, often from hussar regiments, which meant that they have a lot of brightly coloured uniforms.  In the early Empire ADC uniforms were regulated, but Marshals could choose their own colour scheme - so they did!  It all got out of hand, so there was a reversion to less elaborate uniforms again, followed by a slow creep back towards flamboyance.....

If you play BBB your General, with one or two ADCs and an escort, is often almost 1:1 model:real life soldier ratio, unlike your units, who may represent over a thousand actual soldiers with 6 - 8 figures.....

Anyway, on with the pictures:

Overview of Marshals painted & labelled to date:

Davout

As far as I can tell, Davout and his staff wore the standard uniform for Marshals & ADCs.  For the ADC this was dark blue breeches & coat, light blue facings, white brassard on left arm, Bicorne with rank plume for ADC, Dark blue shabraque with yellow trim.  The Davout model is the Baccus figure from the French Generals set - he's going bald and has got glasses.

Davout wears the standard Marshal Uniform - Blue Coat with lace collar and cuffs, Bicorne with gold lace and white feather trim, white breeches, black boots, gold waist sash and most had the red sash of the "Legion d'honneur" worn over the right shoulder.  Red horse furniture with gold trim.  Figures are both Baccus "French Generals"

Lannes

Lannes wears the standard Marshal uniform and his ADC wears the Hussar uniform - with a blue pelisse, black fur Colpack hat with red bag.  His ADC wears the plume appropriate to his rank.  Figures are "French Generals" for Lannes & "French Elite light cavalry" for the ADC. 

Mortier

Mortier goes further - his ADC is dressed as a Hussar with a yellow Pelisse, Green Shabraque trimmed yellow, yellow/green sabretache and black compact with yellow bag that hangs to the left.  For this model I filed off the existing bag and built up a new one using plastic card.  Figures are "French Generals" for Mortier & "French Elite light cavalry" for the ADC. 

Murat

Murat was one of Napoleon's most flamboyant Marshals.  He redesigned his uniform on several occasions and his favourite colour was pink.  So my model tries to capture this in 1/300 scale.  I added a head to the back of the horse furniture and paper legs and a tail to make a tiger skin.  I painted Murat in his white uniform with pink boots and lashings of bling.  His ADC has a uniform that is mainly pink with a white pelisse.  Figures are Baccus "French Generals" & "Austrian Hussars"

Napoleon

Finally, here is my Napoleon command stand.  I altered the hat to make it more like Napoleon's and his ADCs are two troopers from the Guard Chasseurs, which has long been my favourite unit.  Napoleon is from the "Austrian Generals" set and the Chasseurs are from the "French Elite Light Cavalry" set.

So, with a little bit of converting you can make some really colourful command stands that will, hopefully, add a splash of colour to your war-games table.  I regularly use other nationalities Generals for the French in order to get the look that I want.  I hope that this inspires and encourages you to have a go!

Figures Baccus 6mm, Games Workshop & Revel paints, Warbases circular bases.  Sources were the Funken books and Pinterest - especially the plates by Plumet-Rigo.

  

French Artillery for Fleurus

 Another part of my collection got an upgrade - French revolutionary artillery.  

Foot artillery - I wanted a "ragged" look, so this was done in two ways:

1. I bought Spanish artillery with French guns - the individual figures were mixed in with the standard Baccus French figures - the Spanish don't have backpacks or great coats.

2. I gave some gunners overall trousers in grey or brown to break up the uniformity.

Here are the results

I also needed horse artillery.  As far as I can tell French Horse Artillery wore the Bicorne, the Mirliton or the Tarleton Helmet.  Yup - Tarleton helmet - pretty close to British Horse Artillery.  So I made two bases of French Horse Artillery, basically just British Horse Artillery with a paint job .  The leftover British guns will be going to the Spanish.

So, with a bit of mix and match and a paint job, I've got FRW Foot & Horse Artillery in the right uniforms.

More troops roll off the Lead pile - French Carabiniers 1810 - 1815 and Empress Dragoons

Some more of my troops have escaped the lead pile - in this case French Carabiniers in helmets and French Empress Dragoons.  Both are nice, colourful units and both were conversions of a minimal sort.

Firstly the Carabiniers.  Way back in about 1980, a friend and I visited his local model shop.  There was a war-game set up with 25mm figures and the Carabiners caught my eye.  Black horses, white uniforms, buckets of shiny brass, red crested helmets!

So, here's my unit:

How are these conversions? you ask.  Well, they are not Baccus Carabiniers, which you can, of course, buy.  These are actually Russian 1803-1808 dragoons (NRU9).  I've used these figures for Saxon heavy cavalry as well.  IMHO the crested helmets are really great.  I may actually paint some as Russian Dragoons!

Second on this post and second French Guard Cavalry unit - the Empress dragoons.  Easy conversion - take a "bog-standard" dragoon and fix a plume on the side of the helmet.  Plumes being sourced as snipped off bayonets.  The rest of the conversion is a paint job.

As ever I hope that this inspires you to have a go at painting different units to put on your battlefields.  Figures Baccus, flags sourced on the internet.

Lancelot - or Lancers 4 ways and counting...

 I thought I would put up some of my Baccus French Guard Lancers (NFR36) showing some alternative colour schemes to that in the catalogue.

These figures are modelled in full charge mode - galloping towards the enemy with their lances levelled, pennants flapping in the wind.  I would not want to be on the receiving end of that!

Here's the troops from the catalogue:

As you can see, you get a lancer (with lance, obvs...), an officer and a bugler.  Sadly no standard bearer, but this is where you re-purpose a French chasseur a cheval trooper.  

To do this I added card shapes to make a shabraque, gave him a drastic lobotomy about half way up the shako and added a square of plastic card, set diagonally on his head.  This was then filed to make the card and shako blend and some teeny cords were added (wire from a bottle of wine that had a net on the top of the neck.  (Ooh posh! I hear you cry!)).  File off his sword (you already lost part of that when you sliced his shako) and add a wire flagpole in his right hand.  Careful painting will help him blend in to the rest of the unit.

Firstly, here's my go at Dutch Lancers of the Guard.  My uniform source was L&F Funcken supplemented by pinterest.  French lancers were created after the 1809 Austrian campaign, so I went with an 1812 flag (found on a flag website for free). 

A note of caution - when I first got this pack of figures I tried converting a lance holder into flag bearer (rather than repurposing a chasseur).  I used a dremel tool to try removing the lance, but the vibrations snapped the legs, so went with converting the chasseur.

I am also assembling troops for the Peninsular campaign and decided some Vistula Legion troops would look good, especially as they have bright yellow facings.  Here's how these turned out:

 Flag I sourced on the internet.

I also used these figures for Austrian lancers, which were used throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.  The Czapka was slightly smaller at the start of the wars, but Hey!  this is 6mm!  it's really not a problem.

The two completed stands here will be joined by a third, once I get round to painting them...

They make for a vivid splash of colour and look suitably aggressive. 

I trust that this inspires you to have a go.  Most of the conversion work is in the uniform and shabraque colours - you don't have to make standard bearers if you don't want/need to.

Future plans are Polish Lancers of the French Guard, Lancers of Berg and I think I will still have enough remaining for at least one more unit.

French Revolutionary War - French infantry stands for BBB

A little while ago I got the idea that I could create French line infantry stands with flag for use with BBB rules.

I searched high and low on the internet but could not find any 1/300 French infantry in Tarleton helmets that I could use, so I repurposed Baccus Spanish skirmishers by creating drummers and flag bearers from the "loading" figures.  The front rank is firing and the second rank loading, drumming, flag waving or leading.  I have taken a British horse artillery officer (leader figure in Tarleton) as an officer on one stand.

I plan to add some figures in bicornes, as well as those in tarletan helmets, to mix it up a little on future bases.

I created the flags in excel and then printed my own sheet.  By choosing regiments that had easy to reproduce geometric shapes, these were easy to knock up (why make life harder??!).  

Here are the pics of the first two units:

The facing colour over white plumes really "pop"

Here are the units in the classic "ordre mixte"

Here is the top of the sheet I created for the flags:

Here is the master flag - the hoist part of the flag is sized to go round a 0.5mm pole in 6mm, which is why it's a bit wide...   This gives you an idea of the teeny tiny detail on there.

So, there's more of these bases in the pipeline - and I readily admit that I really like these colourful additions to my FRW French army.

Just in case this inspires you to have a go, the figures are Baccus NSP19 Skirmishers in Tarleton, with a RHA Officer thrown in.  

Contact me if you'd like a copy of the flag sheet as a word document.  I've done 2 flags x 3 sizes, enough to test fit on models and make the occasional mistake.

Enjoy!