Railway Lines

Back again with the fourth and for now final part of my recent project of building terrain pieces to complete the Franco-Prussian War battlefield. The first three parts were the earthworks, barricades and abbatis. In principle I aim to do three more such mini-projects and then I really will be done for this period. They would comprise (1) a couple of small masonry forts as featured in the battles comprising sorties from Metz and from Paris (2) a third chateau, this time based on a medieval castle and (3) something to represent vineyards. These projects may yet happen, but I've got other things to attend to for now. So my next model will be a master model for Bavarian FPW guns, as part of the Perry range. And then I need to move my actual wargaming boards forward a bit.

Before getting on to the construction process, a word about railway lines in nineteenth-century wargames. Few European railways except in the vicinity of a station or goods lines were built directly on flat ground. They were mostly either on more or less of an embankment or in a cutting. The effect of both would be to provide cover to infantry but to be impassable to cavalry, artillery, staff or even despatch riders. All these would have to look for the bridge or whatever where a road crossed the railway. In a game you could designate certain lengths of railway as being on the flat, on an embankment or whatever. But my preferred rule of thumb is to consider all railway on flat terrain to be embanked and all on a hill or slope as being in a cutting.

MAKING PLANS

Anyway, here's the freestanding railway lines I've been building over the last six or so weeks. Railways crossed about half the battlefields of 1870-71, and I also wanted to cover what's needed for the battles of 1866 (and these will serve for other periods such as WWII).  As ever, the very first step was to work out how much railway line I needed, and any particular junctions/ points and sharp curves. To work this out I used the excellent, clear battlefield maps in Bruce Weigle's rulebooks. I decided I needed maybe 12 feet of straights and gentle curves, some specific curves sharper than railway modellers like to have, an 'X' junction and one or two 'Y' junctions. So about 16' in all, which is quite a length, but I foolishly thought this would be quite simple to make up, using Hornby 00 gauge track. But as regular readers know, I like to moan about how laborious most projects turn out to be, and this one is very much a case in point! I will talk you through the whole process, because you just might want to make some railway yourself and there are some pitfalls I hope you will be able to dodge better than I did.

So why 00 gauge railway, which is supposed to be 1:76 scale when our figures are about 1:56 scale, and might be more closely matched by the larger 'S' gauge, nominally 1:64? Two reasons: firstly there's the issue of compromising between figure scale and terrain scale, as with my "condensed" buildings, and secondly 'S' gauge model railways are more a US thing, hence expensive and hard to get hold of in the UK.

I did wonder about about all sorts of railway-related accessories with this project, but decided against all of them for different reasons. An actual train did puff its way onto one or two FPW battlefields, but modelling one would have been too much of a rabbit hole even for me. A station might have been feasible, but somehow I didn't want to go there just yet. I thought of buffers for the lines that end on the battlefield, but they would be a real obstacle to units on the table. I would have liked to do a couple of signals or indicator boards, just mounted on pins, but sadly couldn't find enough information about their form and colour to model them.

TRACK TROUBLE

The next step was to source the track sections that I needed. I was able to get straight sections, gentle curves and points second-hand on ebay, and purchased two metre-long sections of "flexible" track direct from Hornby. All this was a quite reasonable £51, even including postage. But other knick-knacks (see below) would come to another £50, which I wasn't expecting.

The basic method of construction was to use track sections as they came, or cut them to the lengths required, then base them on mounting card about 1.5mm thick. The width of the sleepers is 29mm and I allowed 2mm each side of that for a chamfered edge, so the bases are 33mm overall. The tracks stick down fine to the bases with UHU, so long as you rough-sand the underside of the plastic sleepers first. The rails are mild steel, but can be cut with a fretsaw or half-cut with clippers then snapped. In either case you will need to file the ends level and smooth. The ideal tool supposedly is the "Xuron track-cutter", sold for this very purpose, and it sounds tough, huh? But as an indicator of the troubles I was to have, mine actually snapped right in two! You wouldn't think this could happen, so I'm disappointed with this product.

The very sharp curves can be made with the flexible track sections that Hornby supply. Unlike the normal track sections the metal rails just slide out of the plastic web of sleepers and "chairs" (railway-speak for the little claws that hold the rails to the sleepers). The web will stick down to your base sections and naturally form an even curve. Now comes a tricky bit though. The rails being mild steel are very springy, so you have to bend them to a curve roughly corresponding to the sleepers and base. Do this with your hands and a pair of pliers, a little bit at a time but using as much force as necessary. It won't be a totally even curve but that's OK. The curved rails will now slide along into the chairs quite easily and you hold them in place with a bit of superglue.

I encountered my first really big problem with getting the ends of the bases to the right length. I made and glued them flush with the final sleeper of each section then found they really needed to be about 1.5 or 2mm longer, as do the tracks. The gap between each sleeper is 4mm, so this should have been obvious, but I missed it.So all the rails had to be torn off the bases, sanded clean, new bases made and stuck together a second time.

The next troublesome area was the "fishplates" as they call the little clips that join model railway track sections together. I could have left this aspect out and just had the sections butting up against each other, but I figured they might drift apart on the table, so I'd use the fishplates and have everything joining up nicely.. I needed to buy a couple of dozen of these little accessories, so looking into it I ordered a 24-pack of PECO OO/HO "fine standard" fishplates. These absolutely don't fit the Hornby track however, so were wasted and I had to order some Hornby ones. They sell two types, "standard" and "insulated". The latter are slightly cheaper for some reason, so I went for them. But this was also a mistake, as they fit, just about, but are very flimsy, and a number of them were to snap off during and since construction. I should have got the standard ones. Oh yes, there's another business you have to attend to at the end of each section: the plastic of the sleepers has to be cut away to allow for the fishplates to slide in. The ready-made rail sections come with this at each end, but you have to do it yourself where you cut shorter lengths of track and for all the flexible sections. 

Once finally put together and before ballasting it was time to paint the tracks. The sleepers come in a dark brown plastic, which is a good start, so I just drybrushed them with a grey brown and then a light grey. The rails and "chairs" I painted rust brown then used thinned contrast paint on top, in a black-brown, for shading. When everything was complete I scratched everything off the top edge of the rails to leave the steel surface. At least the painting part of this project was straightforward.

BALLAST BOLLOCKS

Now we come to the really hard part of this project. To start with I had bought a 250-gram bag of grey ballast. But this struck me as probably not enough in fact, and when I tried it out the colour looked "too much grey" with the mainly grey sleepers. Next I mixed up my own  nicely-speckled brown ballast with the granulated cork I use for foliage, but quickly realised it was too flyaway to do the job. So I ordered a larger bag of brown ballast from Javis. 

OK, how do we fix this ballast in place? I was wary of anything that would involve soaking things with water or watery PVA, as I didn't want the mounting card bases to warp. So I was attracted to the product they call "Ballast Magic", despite it not being cheap. It's basically a glue in powder form which you mix with the ballast, scatter and brush the mixture into place and then spray lightly with water. The water then activates the glue and the mixture sets hard. Supposedly... Sounded good, so I sent off for some, mixed and applied it very carefully, and it really doesn't work well at all. Most of the mixture is crumbly at best and falls straight off when dry. I repeated a couple of times, increasing the proportion of powder glue but it's a dead loss. I think the issue may be that the glue powder doesn't mix at all well with the the crushed stone ballast, being a very different granular size and weight. Anyway, this is a crap product. When I had a look at Youtube videos it turned out I wasn't the only one to be disappointed.

So I reverted to an older method, putting the ballast in place, spraying with water to increase the flow, then soaking with a 50:50 mixture of PVA and water, dropped on from a plastic bottle. This was better but there were still bare patches. So I went back and forth over the track sections using more and more heavy-duty methods, stopping only just short of supergluing individual ballast stones in place! Finally I mixed up a "scenic cement" of 80:20 water and matt medium and sprayed this heavily over the whole thing. This did finally lock it all down and matt any shine from the plastic sleepers and the PVA. Of course the bases had warped up somewhat from all the soaking, but they can be straightened out with gradual but very firm pressure. Last of all I applied and drybrushed some patches of static grass along the outside edges and just a few spots between the rails. This added something to the appearance of the finished pieces, integrating them better with the board and figure bases.

If I haven't totally put you off the idea of making some railway lines, please avoid my mistakes! It's probably best to avoid the fishplate issue and just butt the sections together. You don't need to be as meticulous as I have been in avoiding getting ballast on the sleepers. And avoid Ballast Bollocks and stick it down with thinned PVA.

Abattis

 As promised, here's part three of my current project of terrain items for the Franco Prussian War, namely some abattis. What, you may conceivably ask, is an abattis? It's a form of field defence created out of trees, brushwood or branches arranged so that they create an obstacle to attacking enemies.The name abattis comes from the French meaning 'cut down'. The trunk or main branch of each item is placed towards the defending troops, and a tangle of branches and twigs project in the face of any assailants.They were usually built under the supervision of engineer officers and were used from about the 16th century onwards. Barbed wire served the same purpose and mostly replaced abattis, although I've seen photos of this older method in use on the eastern front of World War One 

Generally the cut-down trees were simply dragged into a line, or brushwood and branches were piled into a line. But there were various refinements. Trees on the edge of a wood could be almost cut through and then dragged down to create an obstacle that could not be pulled out of the way by attackers becuase it was still attached to the ground. You may read that the ends of the branches were sharpened, but I think this was actually quite rare. Sometimes the trunks might be fastened down somehow, or the abattis laid in a ditch, to create an obstacle without impeding the defenders view or field of fire. Anyway, not wanting to build something that would fill up my table I went for the brushwood kind of abattis. We'll start with some of the reference photos I found.

Here's an abattis from the American Civil War. This is the "friendly" side.

And the same sort of thing from the enemy side.

My abattis. Frankly I am chuffed with how these came out. They are made from twigs and a few root fibres (see below). I glued them to the bases in layers of a few pieces at a time, which was a bit fiddly. Tacky glue holds such items adequately, but lacks "grab" so you need a bit of superglue in places.

Here you can see better how things are arranged from the rear. The bases are all 50mm deep, cut with irregular, chamfered edges, and in sections 2", 3"and 4" wide. I made 42" in length overall. The bases were grassed before I glued on the twigs.

French infantry defend a length of abattis. You've seen these guys before, but this gives you an idea of the scale of the abattis.

Here's what I used to make the brushwood/ branches, if you fancy having a go yourself. Most of the twigs are this type, which I got a big bag of from Dioramapresepe in Italy a few years back. They keep changing their range, but I'm pretty sure this is the stuff: Mixed twigs for trees, bushes and landscapes Diorama Nativity scene 12 pcs It comes in much bigger pieces than you see here, but breaks apart very easily. I did also use some garden twigs, specifically from box (buxus) bushes, and these might be easier to find. Finally I used some wispy pieces of root, woven in amongst the twigs to give a slightly denser effect. None of these items needed spraying or painting in any way as they are naturally the right sort of colour and texture.

To the Barricades!

With uncharacteristic elan, I am dashing on to the next little part of my project to complete the terrain elements I want for the Franco-Prussian War. This time it's three sections of barricade. As part of preparing a village for defence the roads in the enemy's direction would be blocked off, and cover created to fire from, by building improvised barriers like these. 

The barricades that perhaps spring most readily to mind are those built by revolutionary populations within cities, notably during the Paris Commune of 1870 and the Europe-wide revolutions of 1848. These were actually rather different in construction, because nineteenth-century cities generally had their roads paved with stone blocks. These were laid on sand rather than being cemented together and were the perfect thing  for pulling up and building into substantial stone barriers, from which to resist the forces of oppression!

Anyway, our more rustic barricades were built by sending soldiers into the houses and farms of the village to find what could be piled up to create an obstacle to an enemy charge. What they came back with was piled up higgledy-piggledy, but was enough to give cover from bullets and to give resolute defenders an advantage over anyone struggling to surmount or remove the obstacle. As always when I am building something new, I search online for images that will give information and inspiration, crop and assemble these into a Word document and print it off using the best quality available. This then sits in front of me as I plan and build the item in question. The single best image I found was that of  Le Bourget during the Siege of Paris, and a cropped version is below if you scroll down. Helpfully it is in colour, giving an idea of the different shades of wood involved.

Here's the three sections from the front. The most common materials were wagons/ carts, furniture and storage containers, mostly barrels. You might also see logs and cut timber, wheels, ladders and farm tools such as harrows and ploughs. Doors and shutters could be torn from their hinges for use. Mattresses could feature, usually at the back of the barricade, both for resisting bullets and as something for the defenders to lean against. Illustrators and modelmakers seem to think dead horses were also a component, but I am sceptical as these would quickly decay and produce a horrendous stink.

The same from the back. The pieces do have backs and fronts to a certain degree. I sort of imagined the defenders clambering onto something to fire over the higher parts.

Here is one barricade, defended by Prussian infantry. As with the earthworks these pieces are useful for other periods as improvised barricades must have been built from ancient times onwards, and remained in use notably in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930's, or even street-fighting in World War Two. Strictly, the available material would change; the piece here uses a lot of "bentwood" chairs, which were only around from the mid nineteenth century. But few wargamers will be very picky on such details.

This time the French defend a barrier based on a farm wagon. This wagon was a plastic item from Rubicon Models. It works OK here, but probably a metal wagon from one of the Perry Napoleonic range would have been better detailed and cheaper. Boxes and barrels are available from any number of traders.

The third one is based mostly on furniture, and here the Rubicon Domestic Furniture set is ideal. Building the pieces on bases helps hold everything together. I painted them as the bare earth of the roads. By the way, each piece has some metal barrels or whatever within it, just to give it enough weight not to float out of place on the table. The defenders here are French chasseurs a pied, painted by my friend Garry Broom.

From the defending side. A bit more of an action scene than I usually get around to arranging. That line from the 1964 Zulu film springs to mind here: "thousands of 'em"!

Finally, the best image I could find for reference, the Prussian Guard Grenadiers storming the village of Le Bourget in October 1870 during the siege of Paris. I used a lot of elements from this, but as ever "condensed" to fit the scale of my wargames villages.

The next stage of this project is going to be some sections of "abbatis". I'm still at the planning stage with this, but hopefully will have something to show you in a few weeks time.

More Prussians, More Earthworks

Here are some Prussian infantry and artillery painted over December to February, and then a project to build the earthworks needed to refight some Franco Prussian battles. So without further ado...

Infantry Regiment No 50 (3rd Lower Silesian) march out of a Lorraine village.The figures are from the Perry plastic set of course, but with the odd conversion.

Here No 47 (2nd Lower Silesian) advances to the attack. I really like the "advancing at the trail" pose you can get out the plastic sets. There are a couple of metal figures in here and some major conversions, but even without that you can get a very varied unit with no two figures the same. The flag is hand painted, and I cut away the huge streamer that forms part of the set's flag-top, nice as it is, because this regiment only had the 1866 campaign streamer.

The whole brigade storms forward. 

Two four-pounders and a six-pounder (left). These are the three Prussian artillery packs in Michael Perry's range: crews loading and firing for the light gun, loading only for the heavier piece. Even though it was me who built the masters for these two guns, they were a bit of a job to assemble! Locating holes for the more fiddly fittings have got lost in the moulding and casting process so have to be drilled out. The crew figures are in accurate poses for serving the guns and well animated, but I'm afraid some of the sculpting detail isn't the best ever from the Perrys.

This closeup may be a little help to anyone painting these models. The woodwork on the guns was mid-blue, not blue-grey or pale blue as many seem to think, and the seats were all black-painted ironwork (which can't have been very comfy to ride on). The barrels were steel, but chemically treated to avoid rust, producing a dark brown effect. They were supposed to be polished with linseed oil, so presumably had a dull sheen, at least for parades.

Moving on, here's my new batch of earthworks. I have done eighteen sections to add to the four built a couple of years ago and shown then. I used exactly the same method this time, ie triangular sections of blue foam backed with Renedra wattle fencing. Filler and glue provides the earth texture. 

The medium sized sections accomodate two of my bases, which are 45mm wide by 40mm deep. For compatibility I kept the same height as before, ie 20mm. That was designed to fit my older FPW figures from the old Foundry range, but the new figures are a good bit taller. They still just about fit these fieldworks.

The smaller pieces fit a single base of infantry or artillery. Earthworks played a part in many FPW battles. Sometimes the defending French dug themselves in, more or less, and the various sorties from besieged Metz and Paris came up against extensive field fortifications. These included barricaded roads and abattis, both of which are next on my list of projects.

Prussians defend the edge of a fortified village. 

More French 1870 Generals

Hello again, back with a series of French 1870 converted command groups. I'm sorry it's been a while again since the previous post; I have been fairly busy painting, but not got around to photography. A session with the camera yesterday, however, has produced these images and there are some more of Prussian units I've painted, ready to be posted shortly.

I previously showed two corps command groups, of three mounted figures each. One of them was Frossard of the 2nd Corps, so these generals start with his three divisional commanders, on two-figure bases. All are fairly heavyweight conversions.

First of all here is the splendidly-bearded General Laveaucoupet of the 3rd infantry division. I think the figure started off as an American Civil War general. As you can hopefully see I have tried to get some likeness to the real generals, which included researching and modelling the medals each one wore at the time of the FPW. Laveaucoupet is accompanied by Lieut.-Col Billot, who evaded capture at the surrender of Metz and was massively promoted to command a corps of his own in the Army of the Loire. Sadly he proved a bit rubbish in this role, and was largely responsible for the Frennch defeat at the Battle of Beaune-la-Rolande. This figure began as a Napoleonic Russian staff officer.

Next we have General Bataille of the 2nd Division. This figure started as a one-armed ACW general. I used elements from the plastic infantry set to get his arm and kepi. In his portrait Bataille has rather floppy hair, which I've sculpted with green stuff. The aide de camp is no-one in particular -I just wanted to get an officer of Spahis onto the wargames table, because of the replendent uniform: scarlet, sky blue, black and gold: what's not to like? The figure's position is more of a conversion than it may at first seem. I did him standing in the stirrups of his dappled horse, craning his neck to see whatever the general is waving his hat at.

And this one's the 1st Division commander, General Verge. He looks a little bit caricatured, but most wargames figures are more or less that way. Again a former ACW general figure. I'm quite pleased with how the map he's holding came out. The assistant here is  from a lancer regiment in the 1868 uniform. Curiously, junior officers wore bigger epaulettes than more senior ones.  The figure started as a Prussian officer from North Star and is mounted on an Empress horse. 

On to a couple of cavalry generals now. I couldn't find a portrait of this corps' actual cavalry commander, but here we have General Bonnemains, who commanded the sacrifical cuirassier division at the Battle of Worth. He looks pretty standard in his photo, other than wearing rather baggy trousers, which the figure I've used reflects. It is a one-piece casting of a general from the Paraguyuan War a few years earlier. Bonnemains is accompanied by a cuirassier trumpeter, converted from a plastic Napoleonic trumpeter. 

Last but very much not least is General Legrand who commanded the cavalry division of 4th Corps. He is wearing a dolman in the portrait drawing, but wore the standard plain black frock coat at the Battle of Rezonville, where he led the largest cavalry charge of the war. We know what he was wearing because it's been preserved in the battlefield museum, ever since he fell in action, killed by a Prussian sword-stroke. Mort au champ d'honneur! The figure started as a general of the Carlist war. His assistant is an officer of the staff corps, for which I used a figure from the chasseurs d'afrique command pack. The staff corps had cuffs and kepis of amaranthe, a pinkish red in practice.

To wrap up, here's some of the generals grouped together against the background of a Lorraine village. 

The Bavarian Guns 1836 to 1873 -A Historical Article

I will soon have a second batch of French 1870 staff conversions to show you, but for now here is an article I wrote for the Foreign Correspondent, the journal of the Continental Wars Society. This group exists to study all the European wars and armies of the period 1815-1914. It's been going for decades now, headed by the stalwart Ralph Weaver, a name you might know from excellent titles published by Caliver Books.

Joining the group is strongly recommended if you are interested in the period. It has the rather splendid distinction of having, in 2024, no online presence whatsoever, so you have to email Ralph to join: ralphcws@hotmail.com 

THE BAVARIAN GUNS 1836-1873

As a modelmaker, over the last few years I have had the privilege of making masters of Franco-Prussian War field artillery pieces for the Perry Miniatures 28mm range. When you have to make a three-dimensional model of something it forces you to try and establish exactly how that thing looks without any fudging. So the process has made me piece together what documentation I could find, mostly online: descriptions, paintings, line drawings, photographs and even a scale view here and there. The evidence turns out to be adequate, just about, and I thought it might be of interest if I wrote it up, starting with the little-known guns used by Bavaria

The 1836 “Zoller” System

The artillery that sufficed up to 1815 soldiered on for decades longer, but in the 1830’s or so despite very little technological change the gunners of each nation felt it was time to update and rationalise their equipment. The outcome for Bavaria was the 1836 System, named after the artillery commander General von Zoller, also referred to as C/1836 (C for Construction, ie “model”) It comprised a 6-pounder and a 12-pounder plus short and long versions of 7-pounder howitzer to complete light and heavy field batteries. These were state-of- the-art designs at the time, and served Bavaria well in the wars of 1848-9.

One improvement over Napoleonic practice was that the gunners no longer had to walk, being carried on the limbers of the guns and those of the ammunition caissons. So instead of being “foot batteries”, these were now properly referred to as “fahrend”, literally “driving” or “riding” batteries. Each gun commander and officer was individually mounted, as were all the gunners of the 6-pounder horse batteries. 

The 1836 twelve-pounder painted later by the famous Bavarian military artist Anton Hoffmann. Note the two, splayed trail spikes of all Bavarian guns and their correct paint colours: light-medium grey for the woodwork and black for iron parts.

The C/1836 six-pounder. The whole thing seems to have painted over in a single colour at some point.

New Technology: the Shell Gun of 1856

A furious period of technical innovation hit the military world in the 1850’s. For artillery the first big step forward was the “shell gun”, first put in service by France from 1853, and later to comprise the most common piece used in the American Civil War, where it was known as the “Napoleon”.  Bavaria was ahead of other German states in introducing their own version in 1856.

These guns were invariably of 12-pounder calibre, ie the bore would fit a solid iron 12-pound cannonball (so in fact 117mm in later terms). But they no longer fired solid cannonballs. Instead their main projectile was a spherical hollow shell with a time fuse. Given the large calibre they also had a powerful cannister round and could in principle fire shrapnel (although German gunners never placed much confidence in this type of ammunition). The top selling point of the shell gun was that it could fire both directly, like a cannon, and at high angles like a howitzer, removing the need for two types of piece in every field battery. It was a “universal gun”. On top of this, they were lighter than traditional cannons, so the 12-pounder shell gun used the 6-pounder carriage of the 1836 system.

The new gun replaced all the 6-pounders and associated howitzers in field service, and was designated the “leichter Feldzwolfpfunder”, the Light Field Twelvepounder, rather than being designated by name or by year number. It replaced all the foot and horse 6-pounder cannon and their associated howitzers, although the 1836 12-pounder soldiered on in the heavy batteries for a time.

Here’s an original Light Field Twelvepounder, in the Bavarian Army Museum. Note the relatively short barrel.

It has to be said that the Bavarian gunners took their desire for progress a step too far at this point, the standard shell used having it’s gunpowder-filled core offset to one side, as this diagram shows. The unduly optimistic idea was that one side of the shell being lighter than the other it would spin in flight and stabilise itself. It was designated the “eccentric hollow shell”, appropriately enough. They must have tried this out on the ranges and convinced themselves it worked, but the experience of the 1866 campaign would prove otherwise.

Newer Technology: Mr Krupp’s Rifled Steel Breechloader

The Italian campaign of 1859 indicated that the future lay with rifled artillery, and the Prussian company Krupp of Essen pushed its high-technology product hard: a gun that was not only rifled, but loaded from the breech and cast in solid steel. In 1861 all the states of the German Confederation (except Austria which had its own programme for rifled guns) resolved to equip at least 25% of their batteries with Krupp’s guns.

In every case Krupp supplied only the barrel and breech, with each state finding a carriage from their own resources. For Bavaria this was once again simply the six-pounder carriage of the 1836 system. The piece itself was designated in Prussia the C/61, but in Bavaria simply the “gezogene Sechspfunder”, ie rifled 6-pounder. Once again “six pounder” was referring to the calibre which would accept a solid cannonball of that weight, some 92mm in fact. The breech-closure  was effected by a double system of plugs, one screwed in from behind and the second passing through it from the right side to lock it in place.

The actual shell fired was about 15 pounds in weight, pointed in shape and with a fuse that (usually) detonated on impact. This was certainly the way to go, for several reasons, and would prove very effective in both 1866 and 1870. A slight downside was that the cannister round was smaller and less effective than the stuff fired by 12-pounders, and this comforted the illusion that there was still an important role for the shell-gun.

At any rate Bavaria purchased 48 of the Krupp gun and it replaced the smoothbore twelve-pounder. In the 1866 campaign Bavaria started with 48 six-pounders in six foot batteries each of eight guns, which was 35% of the guns they fielded.

The Guns of 1870

In all theatres of the 1866 War smoothbore guns showed themselves vastly inferior to rifled guns, which had in simple terms the same accuracy at twice the range.  And the method of loading from the breech added to this accuracy since the shell no longer needed to be pushed down the barrel from the muzzle, so could be a much tighter fit to the rifling. Hence all the German states dropped their smoothbores and muzzle-loaders. The existing Krupp guns would be fine, and Bavaria decided these would meet the six-pounder needs of the first of their two army corps. New four-pounders would be purchased from Krupp. But for the second army corps’ six pounders Bavaria would cast its own version of a breechloading rifle, out of bronze!

All three guns were to be mounted on locally built carriages, updated versions of that in current use and now known as the C/1866 . It looks very similar to the C/1836 carriage, though two changes stand out. Firstly the trail sides no longer bend down slightly about halfway along. And secondly the older carriage had an oblong chest between the trail sides for an emergency cannister round; on the new carriage that’s replaced by a smaller chest for tools and cylindrical holders for emergency rounds on the upper right trail side.

The Bavarian contingent in the FPW was heavily equipped with artillery. Each of the four divisions had four batteries of six foot guns, two being four-pounders and two being six-pounder batteries. Each of the two army corps had a further six batteries, all of six-pounders and a single horse battery armed with  four pounders. Additionally each corps had a cavalry brigade with a second horse battery. Thus the total was thirty-two batteries, amounting to 192 guns in all, reinforced by a further six batteries in October 1870.

Krupp Six-Pounder on Bavarian Carriage

The first of the three standard guns used in 1870 was the existing “gezogene Sechspfunder” on the C/1866 carriage. (The actual guns were all of the original version, C/1861 in Prussian parlance, whereas a slightly newer model was now commonly used by the Prussians themselves.)

A Krupp six-pounder dashes into action in 1870. It’s pulled by six horses and the crew comprises the five gunners clinging precariously to the limber plus the mounted NCO gun commander seen just in front of the team. Steel gun barrels were painted black in Bavarian service to protect them from rust, but the breech plugs were of steel and brass.

 

Krupp Four-Pounder on Bavarian Carriage

The four-pounders of the foot and horse artillery were Krupp breechloaders of the latest model (C/1867) used by Prussia, but mounted on Bavarian-built carriages and referred to simply as “rifled four-pounders”. These were steel rifled guns, with a different system of breech closure here, what was called a “wedge” closure. Two steel wedges fit into a square void in the cubical breech. Turning the handle on the left side pushes the wedges across each other making the breech gas-tight. The carriages of these guns were slightly lighter, but only marginally different in appearance to the standard C/1866.

The first artillery shot of the 1870 War, at the battle of Wissembourg. This is a four-pounder of the foot artillery. The nearest gunner  is the gun commander. Being a mounted man he has a horseman’s gear: slung sabre, cartridge box on a shoulder belt and riding trousers.

The Bavarian-Built Six Pounder

The third main gun was Bavaria’s very own cast bronze six-pounder breechloading rifle. It was unusual for a breechloader to be made of bronze, but the Austrians took the same approach after 1866 and it evidently worked well enough, firing the exact same ammunition as the Krupp six-pounder. It used a wedge-closure mechanism with a big handle on the left of the breech block, similar to the Krupp four-pounder.

Aiming the Bavarian six-pounder. The colour blue-grey seems to exercise a fascination over those painting artillery pieces, whether artists or wargamers, but all the woodwork of Bavarian guns was grey in fact.

Scale plans of both six-pounder versions, the bronze rifle at left and the Krupp version at right. The carriage was the same for both. Canvass travelling covers are shown over the muzzle and breech of the second gun.

Uneven Reinforcements

Six more batteries were raised and sent to the Army in France during October 1870. The I Corps, fighting hard in the campaign against the French Army of the Loire, gained two more batteries of six-pounders, model unknown. And both corps received two more unusual batteries: one of twelve-pounders and one of Bavarian-designed machine guns.

The twelve-pounders were rifled conversions from the old shell gun and my sole source on these ( Lutz) is puzzling. Such conversions had been started on during the 1866 war and the large numbers adapted had been held in reserve. They are said to have been rifled breechloading guns using wedge breeches, but how they might have gone about such a conversion mystifies me on several levels, I have found no images of such guns to shed light on the matter, so will have to admit defeat as regards these particular few guns.

Bavaria’s Own Machine Gun

No such mystery attends the two batteries of four machine gun, odd as they were. The Bavarian inventor Johann Feldl had come up with this rival to the mitrailleuse and Gatling, which on the face of it was more lethal than either, with a cyclic rate of fire approaching 400 rounds per minute. It used four parallel barrels of the new Werder rifle and fired the same metal-cartridge bullets as that excellent weapon. One gunner stood on the gun’s left and turned a large crank which powered the mechanism, while a comrade aimed the thing, sitting on the little trail seat and operating controls for elevation and direction. Ammunition dropped from the four large magazines on top and the box underneath collected the empty cartridge cases.

The I Corp's Feldl battery was seriously engaged just once, at the unsuccessful battle of Coulmiers. It blasted off up to 7000 rounds, which must have made an impression on the French, but three out of the four guns were rapidly jammed solid and out of action.  The machine gun saw no further use after this, despite the inventor’s protestations that the problems were only due to poor training of the gunners and inadequate quality control in manufacturing the ammunition. He might have been right, but the view of most gunners by 1871 was that conventional artillery had won them battle after battle so they didn’t need to bother with less promising weapon systems.

The Feldl MG in all its mechanical glory.

After the Franco-Prussian War

In October 1871 the newly formed German Empire adopted the metric system, which led to more rational designations based on the (approximate) calibre of the guns in centimetres. So the four- and six-pounders were henceforth referred to respectively as “8 cm steel cannons” and “9 cm steel (or bronze) cannons”.

From 1873 a new artillery system was introduced, incorporating the lessons of the war. Henceforth all foot artillery was to be of 9 cm calibre and only the horse artillery kept the 8 cm calibre. And no longer would each state have its own artillery models. They were all “German guns” now, all Krupp 1873 models in fact, and this brings us to the end of the story as regards specifically Bavarian artillery pieces.

 

 

Principal Sources

Kriegsgeschichtliche Abteilung der Grossen Generalstab, Der Deutsch-Franzosische Krieg 1870-71, Berlin 1878

Lutz, Captain Luitpold, Die Bayerische Artillerie von ihren ersten Anfangen bis zur Gegenwart, Munich 1894

Muller, Major K, Die Entwickelung der Feld-Artillerie, Berlin 1873

Sauer, Karl Theodor von, Grundrisse der Waffenlehre and Atlas zum Grundrisse der Waffenlehre, Munich 1876

Schott, Captain J, Grundriss der Waffenlehre fur Offiziere un Offiziersaspiranten der Norddeutschen Bund, Darmstadt and Leipzig 1868

Wille, Captain K, Leitfaden der Waffenlehre, Berlin 1874

Witte, Captain W, Die Gezogenen Feldgeschutze, Berlin 1867

All of these books are online and can easily be found via Google as I did, but you have to be able to read German printed in the gothic script. Lutz is by far the most informative. There are very helpful articles on the Prussian artillery pieces in the German-language Wikipedia, and these have good diagrams of the working parts, taken mostly from the books listed.

French 1870 Staff and Artillery

 

Hello everyone, I'm here today with some news and some photos of Franco-Prussian figures I converted and painted a little earlier this year. As ever you can click on the pictures to get a proper look.

The Other Partizan 2024

I attended the Autumn Partizan show yesterday, and what a good day out it was. It was great to catch up with so many old friends and nice to see my work forming parts of one or two fine demo games. I'd particularly like to mention a wargamer called John Carpenter who came up to me to say nice things about the blog, as someone who views it keenly but never comments(!) Great to meet you John, and please feel free to make contact if there's anything I can be of help with. The regular comments from some visitors are very much appreciated and help reassure me that all this is actually reaching the outside world, but from the figures Google tell me, there are a lot more who don't say anything but do come back more or less. Between on and two hundred as far as I can tell. So hello to you all, don't be shy to comment on posts, but you could also join those who email me (address in profile). 

At any rate this was a vintage Partizan show for demo games. I usually scour the trade stands before getting to the games, but this time made a beeline for the actual wargames. No idea who won the little prize they give out, but the top game for me was The SYW presentation from David Imrie, Simon Chick and others loosely calling themselves the Bodkins. Figures and terrain were crisp and bright rather than dull or gaudy, all handsomely set off by a cloth mat in perfectly verdant shades of green. It's all shown here, and David explains how he did the cloth (1) Facebook I will be looking into this for my own setup, perhaps instead of the faux-fur arrangement I have long contemplated. 

Other fine demos were the Marlburian game by Simon Millar, a huge 30 Years War Battle, splendid WWII efforts, quite a showing of paper figures and a British landing in Egypt 1800 by the Perrys. Talking of which: 

Perrys Franco-Prussian Bulletin 

You heard it first on Hand Built History!😀 You may remember I was previously on about making masters of Bavarian artillery pieces. To move arrangements forward I pinned down Michael Perry for a proper chat. The first news is that the plastic Bavarian infantry were planned to come out by Christmas as I thought, but now it's more likely to be January. Most of the remaining work is on the box and instruction leaflet, where Stefan Huber (of Bavaria Miniatures) is providing generous help. 

Some metal packs are in hand and I will be getting masters for the guns into Michael's hands by the end of this year. What guns the Bavarians used in 1870 has long been a bit of a mystery, but my research has got to the bottom of it. It turns out their 4-pounders were the Krupp gun, but on a locally-made carriage. All the corps-level foot artillery was 6-pounders, but each of the two Bavarian army corps used a different model. The I Corps had Krupp 6-pounder pieces on locally-made carriages, where the II Corps had Bavarian-made pieces. These were rifled breech-loaders but, unusually, cast in bronze rather than steel. The upshot is that there were three different guns but all on pretty much the same Bavarian Model 1866 carriage. hence I will be making just one carriage and the bronze 6-pounder barrel, whilst only needing to adapt the existing Prussian barrels for the other two types. You should get a choice of all three barrels in the pack and theoretically Michael could box off the Bavarian artillery with just a single set, although he is inclined to make a couple of crews to give some variety.

He has also completed sculpting a number of metal packs to fill some of the gaps in the FPW French. Apparently there are Gardes Mobiles, Lancers and Cuirassiers, with a start having also been made on Zouaves. I'm not sure when these will be moulded and released, but presumably in the next few months.

You may be aware that Michael hasn't been in altogether good health for some years now, which has had an impact in terms of how slowly the FPW range has come out. I am pleased to say that he is now anticipating a routine operation in a couple of weeks time, which after some physio will see him fighting fit again. He is in good spirits and looking forward to getting this done. 

Anyway on to the pretext for all these ramblings. These are heavily-converted French staff figures and some artillery I completed earlier in the year.

Here are the staff, mainly two corps commanders. On the left Marshal Canrobert and on the right General Frossard. These two fought in all the battles around Metz so the background buildings in the Lorraine style are just right.

Canrobert, with kepi doffed and a staff officer at front. Canrobert was quite a stout fellow, so I built out both his body and his face with green stuff. In the Panorama of Rezonville he is shown with the full dress saddlery. The fiercely waxed moustache was made from very thin brass rod. All these figures started life as Perry figures but from many ranges. Canrobert was an ACW general and the staff officer a Russian Napoleonic figure. Others came from the Carlist War, the ACW, the Paraguayan War range and elsewhere. A lot has been scratch built, incluuding nearly all the saddlery.

The command stand and two more converted officers. The chap at the back is a portrait of General Lapasset, wearing the standard general's campaign uniform The French general staff corps (front right) dressed rather like generals, with the same frock coats and trousers, but wore gold aiguilettes and their kepis were of "amaranthe", a pinkish or mauve shade.

Here you can see the fanion bearer properly. Most French generals had a cavalry trooper (here from 2e Hussars) who carried a small flag on a lance to mark the commander's position. This practice was widespread but unofficial and only regulated later. Corps commanders usually had a plain tricolour fanion. Generals of division sometimes had fanions too, the patterns seemingly anticipating the 1876 rules. So comprising vertical red bands on white, one stripe for the first division of a corps, two for the second, etc, all equally spaced.

Here is Frossard with an officer of Chasseurs a Cheval and a dragoon fanion bearer in waistcoat.

Another view. Frossard was a typical general of the French Imperial Army, ie a veteran campaigner, personally brave as a lion, but passive and lacking initiative as a commander. At least he had the sense to get his men to dig rudimentary cover before the battle of Gravelotte, which undoubtedly saved lives and helped hold the position against Steinmetz's fierce attacks.

One of the individual command figures, this time a senior artillery officer to command the corps artillery in terms of my wargame rules.

And here's the main punch of the corps artillery, the rifled 12-pounder muzzle-loader. It's quite a big beast, though I'm sure I made it to strict 1/56 scale like all the other guns. Incidentally this photo and others in this post were taken using the "macro" function of my camera. I don't really enjoy photography to be honest, it's just the means to an end, but I recently made the effort to decipher the menu buttons and whatnot, as I wanted to show guns and staff from close up.

Here's the whole batch of artillery. From left we have a mitrailleuse, the 12-pounder, a 4-pounder horse artillery battery and a mounted officer.

Note that the mitrailleuse stand only has two crew figures. In my wargame rules a gun with four crew represents the typical pair of batteries, ie 12 guns, where the mitrailleuse came in single 6-gun batteries. Strictly the base width should be half that of the double battery's 45mm, but there would be no way of getting a 28mm gun onto such a narrow stand, so the compromise is 30mm wide.