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.