The French Wars of Religion

I know, it's been six months since I last posted, and back at the end of October I was promising to show something from a new wargaming period that I'm starting. I actually had a small first unit (12 infantry figures) almost painted then, but I kept adding to it and thinking "when this next bit is finished I'll do some photos and post them". I kept on painting: it was twelve, then twenty-four, then forty-eight, then I rushed on to a second unit of 48 figures and finally a first cavalry unit. I don't normally paint figures in such numbers. But here we finally are.

The new period is the French Wars of Religion (FWOR), 1562- 1598, contemporary with the Dutch Rebellion against Spain and several other wars between that over-mighty empire and Elisabethan England, France and others. The figures are suitable to do all these conflicts, but it was the FWOR that inspired me so I'm starting there. There were no less than eight successive wars fought across France in the late sixteenth century, partly as a protestant vs. catholic thing and partly to do with brutal rivalries between the leading noble families of the kingdom. The Valois dynasty died out as France's royal family, to be replaced by the first of the Bourbons, Henry IV, already king of the tiny land of Navarre. He was one of the many swashbuckling characters who strode through the thirty-odd years of savage wars, assassinations, duels, invasions and massacres. Dozens of battles were fought, hundreds of towns and cities besieged.

And all this was done by armies of the greatest colour and variety: the first versions of France's classic infantry regiments, Swiss pikemen, Landsknechts, Spanish Tercios, Italians sent by the Pope and English sent by Queen Elisabeth. Pike and shot yes, but with a much greater variety of mixes than usual: from 90% pikes (the Swiss) down to 0% (Protestant French). And when it comes to the cavalry it gets more interesting again. There were lance-armed gendarmes versus pistol armed ones, plus both flavours in lighter form: "chevaulegers". Then you had thousands of black-armoured Reiters, mounted arquebusiers and Stradiot light lancers. So more different troop types simultaneously on the battlefield than any other period I can think of. 

The action took place of the whole of contemporary France, so there's an enormous variety of local building styles that I will be choosing from eventually, to say nothing of the chateaus. 

Here's the first unit, 48 catholic French infantry, "gens de pied" as they said. Red sashes were worn by the catholic side. The proportion of pikes seems to have varied from up to 50% early on, down to none at all in some later instances. So some pikes but a minority is the most typical therefore, here 16 pikes to 32 arqubusiers.

Each actual company had one flag, and those of catholic infantry featured a white cross. The background colours and patterns are little-known, but typically each was a variation on a common theme. Here I've started with red for the four "cantons", with a different pattern on each. These might be a very early version of the Regiment de Picardie.

I've organised the bases and the positioning of the flags to allow units to split down into two smaller ones. My figure scale is one to fifty men, so the full unit equates to 2,400 men and divides into two of some 1200 soldiers. There was a broad trend over the period for more but smaller regiments.

My second unit is of protestant infantry. That side were known as "huguenots", though no-one is really sure where the term comes from. Anyway their infantry had very few pikes, or mostly none at all. This gave them high firepower and worked well for sieges, skirmishes and defending obstacles, but they were in big trouble if caught on their own by enemy cavalry. The huguenots' symbols were white sashes and a white diagonal (a "bend" in heraldic terms) on their flags, over a plain or striped background. Inscriptions were rare on infantry flags at this time, but this one "Tout pour dieu et le roy" was shown in a contemporary painting.

Sometimes uniform clothing was issued to the rank and file, though sadly we know almost nothing about the colours. Uniform might go to one or more companies or a whole unit, and it might be a single garment or a suit of clothing. Here I've given the subunit at the back dark red doublets and the one at the front has light blue doublets and breeches with "tawny" jerkins. These colours are known to have been widely used in the Elisabethan infantry of the time as the dyes were cheap and readily available. In general all clothing was of soft, low-saturation colours, although wealthy commanders could afford more vibrantly coloured dress.  Infantry officers were usually armed with spontoons and swords, together with a shot-proof buckler. 

The trend for smaller units was more marked amongst the protestant infantry, so this unit breaks down into two of twenty-four figures or four of twelve, as here. 

The figures are mostly TAG, sometimes with slight conversions. But for variety they are mixed with Wargames Atlantic plastic conquistadores. I also bought a bag of 30 Old Glory arquebusiers, which I came to regret! Their heads are oversized and all needed transplants, although thankfully the conquistador box has lots of spares. They blend in tolerably but are just not very nice figures at all by modern standards. I used 17 but then binned the remaining 13!

Here's the first cavalry, which are pistol-wielding protestant gendarmes. Wargamers call these guys "millers", although this term wasn't used at the time. It refers to their white coats, properly called cassocks, this being an overgarment with hanging (ornamental) sleeves at the back. The cassock was always worn over the breastplate but under the shoulder armour for some reason. Fashions changed over the period, starting with a close fit and flared skirt reminiscent of those worn in the Italian Wars, then becoming looser, perhaps open at the front and slit at the sides too. 

Now you would think that the haughty gendarmes would be the last people to wear uniforms, but not a bit of it. Each company of gendarmes ( maybe 60 men), and some of chevaulegers and mounted arquebusiers wore a cassock in its own uniform colours. The protestants were nearly always white but the catholics used every colour of the rainbow, sometimes with a white cross on the breast. On both sides the base colour was set off by contrasting ornamental braid. So one stand here has red braid and the other blue. Trumpeters wore no armour or helmet, but the same cassock as the rest of their company. 

The gendarmes of both sides started off armed with lances plus perhaps a single pistol and a mace, cutlass or warhammer. For various reasons the protestants dropped the lance and used a pair of pistols, the change coming apparently between the two battles of Jarnac and Moncontour in 1569. The catholics seem to have kept their lances to the end, although the evidence isn't chrystal-clear.

Quite seperately there was a trend away from forming just one or two ranks deep, "en haie", to being in six or seven ranks which was referred to as "en escadron". The trend was uneven and quite separate from the abandonment of the lances so apparently at Moncontour the protestant gendarmes were en haie but armed with pistols and the catholics en escadron but lance armed. This seems odd but it was recorded by Francois de la Noue who was in the thick of that very battle, so he should know!

 Bavarian Artillery Master Model

Hello again guys. I'm back with my latest effort after a five-month absence. It's the sixth and last Franco-Prussian War gun master for Perry Miniatures. After doing the Prussian light and heavy guns, and the same for the French plus a mitrailleuse, it was high time for the Bavarian artillery to get a look-in. I've recounted the story and organisation of Bavarian artillery in the middle third of the nineteenth century in an earlier post: Hand-Built History: The Bavarian Guns 1836 to 1873 -A Historical Article . The upshot for the South German state was that they had three types of artillery piece in the FPW, but all mounted on the same "C/1866" carriage. So there was only one carriage to build but three different barrels, even though two of them are just the existing Krupp pieces with new trunnions to fit this carriage.

This master model will be in the post later today to Michael Perry, who's been waiting to sculpt a Bavarian guncrew, or he reckons two, to man this model. You may get a choice of all three barrels in each final pack, or there may be two packs with different crew and different barrels. I don't know when these packs will be available -in a few months time I suppose.

When you do get them assembled and ready to paint, the woodwork wants to be a light-to-medium grey in colour. That's a neutral grey, neither a warm tone nor a blue grey. All the metalwork was painted black, including the two Krupp-built barrels, in contrast with the Prussian practice of chemically browning them. The Bavarian bronze barrel was unpainted.

Here is the model in assembled form, the barrel here being the Bavarian bronze 6-pdr rifled breechloader. A rifled breechloader is a bit of an unusual thing to find cast in bronze rather than steel; it was a transitional technology on account of bronze being easier to cast than steel. Apparently it worked well enough, and the Austrian artillery went the same way for a time after 1866. But it did call for a thicker barrel compared to the Krupp guns, in order to withstand the discharge. 

Some points of detail now. When putting the parts together to photograph, I have somehow managed to assemble the twin trail spikes a bit out of alignment. They are supposed to be splayed apart, but will fit more symetrically when you superglue the finished product together. The drag brake piece is attached to the side of the trail here with "White-tac". Note that the T-shaped fitting on the wheel hub is shown the right way up here: the bar of the "T" is meant to be at the top and horizontal.

I only made one correct wheel for this model, ie the one with the white styrene tyre. This was to save a little bit of time. When the master model is moulded and cast obviously you will get two correct wheels. At least the Bavarians had conventional, dished, 12-spoked wheels, so I was able to start with one from an existing model rather than building up the wheel from scratch this time.

Here are the parts laid out. When you make a master like this it's a bit harder than just building a model of the original, because it has to consist of parts that will work with the processes of moulding and casting. Each piece needs to be essentially "flat" or two-dimensional. This can slightly increase the number of parts: I would have liked to incorporate the elevating gear with either the carriage or as part of each barrel, but it just wouldn't work for casting. There also has to be a very positive system of locating pegs and holes for each part. It should be obvious where each goes, and only one place it can actually fit. I've got better over the years at organising the pieces to work with these requirements. 

Incidentally the twin cylinders at the front corner of the carriage are containers for emergency cannister rounds. The trail box only contained tools on this version of gun carriage.

Here's the model with the Krupp-manufactured 6-pdr barrel. All the 6-pdrs in the 1st Bavarian Corps were of this model, and all those of the 2nd Bavarian Corps were the bronze type.

A Change of Wargames Period

Most wargamers work on different armies/ historical periods, or flit between them like butterflies. Each to their own of course but I have always really focussed on one period at a time, for years at a go, building armies and terrain, researching and writing rules. I just like to do things thoroughly. After engaging with the Franco-Prussian War in this way for maybe six years now, it's high time for a change.

My next project will be for a very different historical period. I hope to have a first unit of figures painted quite soon and then you'll find out what the plan is! 

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.