French Generals for Fleurus

 Finally, in the run up to Fleurus, I made a couple of big command bases for Generals Jourdan and Kleber, the army commanders on the day.

As senior commanders they get 2 ADC/escorts, so this is my chance to make them catch the eye!

General Jourdan - with ADC and Cavalry trooper escort

General Kleber - with ADC and Hussar escort

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.

Dutch troops for Fleurus and Flanders 1793-95

 Here is part of my Dutch army for Fleurus 1794 at Joy of Six on Sunday.  Figures are a mixture of Baccus 6mm early Prussians, Austrian Grenadiers, Spanish & Prussian Hussars in Mirliton and Generals of various nationalities...

I will do a proper army page soon... honest!

William V, Prince of Orange - leading the first column on the day.  His escort is an officer of the Timmerman Hussars.

Timmerman Hussars - a mix of Spanish & Prussian Hussars in Mirliton with added shabraques

Fire support - Dutch 12 Pdr artillery.  Prussian Artillery, with a Spanish officer, firing an Austrian gun.  I went with red for the gun carriage.

Grenadiers - Austrian SYW Grenadiers left over from my Neerwinden '93 project.  See here for the second play test and here for the Austrian army page.

Finally, light infantry - Prussian skirmishers and some British AWI in roundhats...

Please bear with any blurring in the photos - the figures are really quite small, photography is not my strong point!

More French FRW Flag stands

 A while ago I posted pictures of my first two FRW French infantry in white coats & Tarleton helmets - flag stands.   You can see my earlier blog here.

Two more flag units have now been produced and will be making their debut at Joy of Six on Sunday 14 July.

Black faced unit - 1st Bn 3rd Regt, Pink faced unit - 1st Bn 36 Regt 

Both stands have Grenadier figures in Bicorne - not all troops got/liked/retained their Tarleton helmets, many that did get them then got rid of them!

Flags I made on my computer...😊

Baccus 6mm Spanish Light infantry, British Horse Artillery Officer, French skirmisher in Bicorne.

Valmy - 20 September 1792 - refight 3 May 2024

 Most wargamers have heard of the battle of Valmy - it's famous for the French artillery stopping the Prussian army advancing to Paris.

It makes for an interesting game - 32,000 French defending against an Austro-Prussian army of 34,000.  My regular opponent Mike took the Allies.  The scenario (on the BBB io.group) has the Allies as passive, whilst the French are a mixed bag of raw, trained, veterans, some passive and some aggressive (i'm not sure if some were passive-aggressive!).  

This is another Matt Bradley scenario.

The Map:

The French occupy a ridge to their right and have reserves that are moving up.  The Prussians need to clear the ridge and take two villages to gain a victory.

French deploy first, Allies move first.

The refight

Mike bravely moved East - or that was the plan, but his passivity meant that his troops were slow or stopped.  My French moved to block him and took casualties, going spent, but they hung in there!

Photos from French turn 3:

French on the ridge.  The mid ground French unit is passive, aggressive, spent, disrupted and low on ammo.  It's also in the way, thus annoying the Allies by just existing!

French hold the ridge

The highly decorated French infantry watch the cavalry melee....

Brave defenders of the ridge.  To the left can be seen my "French infantry in Tarletons" see here for how they look in close up

Close up

French left wing - a very small unit holds out whilst collecting counters...

Photos from turn 4

French right - continuing to hold the Prussians at bay

In the centre, French reinforcements cling on to the ridge with artillery support.

On the French left fresh troops march up to hold the line, which is stretched very thin...

The Austrians turn up to bolster the Prussians.

Photos from turn 7

On the left, the French late arrivals counter attacked and drove the Prussians from Orbeval - the objective village the Prussians had taken.

Next along, the French denied the left hill objective to the Austrians. 

On the right hand objective hill, the French stormed the Prussians who had managed to climb it, thus keeping it in French hands.  

On the next part of the ridge, the battered French collect counters and hang on...

On the French right, the French cavalry slows the Prussian advance.

It was at this point, after several hard fights along the line but with no objectives held and no more turns left, Mike conceded the battle.

Conclusion

It was a really enjoyable battle for me, my troops performed enough for a win, I got to use my white coat command bases and some newly painted FRW infantry.

Mike had tried hard and fought well, but his troops reluctance to fight (apparently not only were they deep in France, they were also suffering from both lack of supplies and dysentry, so not happy with the idea of combat) meant that his attacks were hard to co-ordinate as units moved slowly or not at all.

The scenario is in the io.group files - give it a go!

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.