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. 

Buildings of Ancient Greece

You may have noticed that so far I haven't shown anything going back beyond the Middle Ages or so. Partly that reflects my own favourite wargaming periods of mainly "horse and musket" plus World War II.  But when I was working on commissions it was just what people wanted me to build. There was an exception however, as my late friend Mark Sturmey had interests which very much included the ancient world. Specifically he built up armies for the Trojan Wars, and for Republican Rome versus Pyrrhus of Epirus. For the first of those wars he was very taken with the tales in Homer's Iliad, where the Greek and Trojan armies clashed outside the city of Troy. So he asked me to create some suitable buildings to set the scene, and we had a number of games using the "Impetus" rules with some special abilities for the various heroic commanders, reflecting the favour of the gods.

Something for Sale

These buildings never got photographed for reasons I've related before, but they have come back into my posession recently, following Mark's family selling his collection via Hinds Figures. As with the Basque stuff shown in the last post it was nice to see them again, and good to photograph them for the record. But I honestly don't think I am likely myself to ever need wargaming scenery for ancient Greece. Having thought it through therefore, I have decided for once to sell these models on. The first sensible offer will therefore secure these four buildings, and I'll be glad to see them go to a good home. To give you an idea, I am thinking of a sum in the low hundreds of pounds. If you have wargaming pals who might be interested I would be grateful if you could mention this to them.

News on the Perrys' Franco-Prussian Range

A couple of years ago I was dragged away from doing my own stuff to make masters for the French and Prussian artillery pieces of 1870. I feel it as a certain honour to be part of the Perry project. If you are interested in this period you will know that Michael Perry is now currently working on a third plastic set currently, ie Bavarian Infantry. So the news is that I have been commissioned to make masters of the Bavarian four- and six-pounder guns for this period. I've promised Michael that these masters will be in his hands before the end of this year at the latest. These will be the most accurate models of these little-known but distinctive guns available to the wargamer in any scale. 

I am able to update you a little bit more on the progress of this popular but ever-so-slowly-appearing range. Michael, whose range it is, says he is very conscious he needs to do more to complete the French army, not least Zouaves, Turcos and the remaining cavalry. I have mentioned to him the need for some generals for both sides, and horse artillery crews. Anyway, we haven't seen anything at all since being shown the "3-up" masters for the rank and file Bavarians in April, despite it being over a year since the last metal packs. I think work has been focussed on completing the plastic Bavarians, but my guess is that their release (by the end of 2024?) will be accompanied by some metal (Bavarian) packs. Would it have been better to complete the main armies before starting the Bavarians? Absolutely, imho, but artists have to go where inspiration takes them. 

On top of this I don't think it's giving too much away to say that Michael hasn't been in the best of health for a couple of years. However I am pleased to hear that the trouble has turned out to be of a less serious nature than first thought, and Michael is positive about being fighting-fit once again before too much longer. So there's good reason to see the FPW range as moving forward more swiftly again soon. 

So, on with the Ancient Greek buildings:

I researched the buildings for this period and culture and was pleased to find plenty of information online, based on archeology, reconstructions and surviving fragments. As with all vernacular architecture the materials had to be available close by and for free. But the way those materials are put together varies from one culture to another. In this case we have stone bases, tapered inwards slightly, with upper walls reminiscent of the torchis method.

The roofs were flat because this isn't an area with a great deal of rainfall or snow. They were based on a layer of logs covered with a mixture of mud, dung aand straw. In modern reconstructions they always appear darker than the walls. The inhabitants apparently used the roofs as a living space, accessing them by ladders.

These buildings are designed to work together as a group, a village or whatever, rather than being large individual models.

I added quite a few details in this courtyard and on the roofs: jars, amphorae, baskets, mats, etc.

The wicker mats were made of real wicker, so to speak, so they look quite convincing. I wove them out of coconut fibres around thicker vertical strands. 

These buildings were made specifically for the Trojan wars, so part of the Mycenean Greek culture. But the styles of construction wouldn't have changed over centuries. Hence they are suitable for Greece and Asia Minor over the whole ancient period and into the Byzantine era.

Something of a picnic seems to have been laid out here. I expect that watching heroic combats, inspired by the gods, still called for a few snacks...

This building is based on modern reconstructions of a small temple from the Mycenean culture.

We're Back!

I know, it's been six months. And blogs are dying like flies. So you would be forgiven for thinking Hand Built History had gone the way of all flesh. But nope, the show is back on the road, with enough material for about three more posts after this one.

So what has kept me from feeding the blog so long? Loads of things and nothing much. Heath issues (nothing terrible, touch wood). Been working hard on my Franco-Prussian rules. Don't enjoy the process of photographing my stuff as much as some folks do? Slothfulness mostly. Thanks anyway to those of you who have been in touch during this downtime. But HBH is back in the groove now. So without further ado:

An Unexpected Turnup

Some of you might remember me musing wistfully, a couple of years ago, about the "projects that got away", the models I had made for customers and got no photographs of. I meant three particular sets of things back then: a German village done as a commission for Jonathon Marcus, a layout of Basque/ Northern Spanish buildings and a group of  ancient Trojan buildings. Both the latter being done for (or with) my late friend Mark Sturmey. 

Jonathon Marcus got in touch with some great pictures of the German village, which you can see if you click on that "label" in the right-hand sidebar. Then some photos (of mixed quality) emerged of the Basque setup, from a demo game which Mark did at the Reading show. But neither hide nor hair of the Trojan stuff. 

However recently I was alerted by my friend Martin Gane that wargames buldings looking a lot like mine were for sale through Hinds Figures, who trade in second-hand wargames figures mostly, but also some books and terrain items. It did turn out that Mark's collection had been moved on in this way. His numerous wargames armies had been bought, mostly by a well-known UK gamer, but the vanished buildings were being sold (at insultingly cheap prices, ahem!) by Hinds via their Ebay page. Evidently the Spanish buildings had been split into four lots and the Trojan stuff into two. Someone had already snapped up one Trojan lot plus the very detailed Basque church. Martin himself picked up two more lots of Spanish buildings. And I took the plunge and re-acquired the remaining one lot each of Spanish and Trojan things.

It was a pleasant if slightly strange feeling to unpack these models which I had built but not seen for about twelve years, and not had decent photos of either to remember them by. We will be coming on to the Trojan things in the next post, but we'll start with:

Basque Buildings

In my humble opinion someone got themselves a heck of a bargain with the Ebayed Basque Jesuit church, judging by the prices being asked for the other lots, but good luck to whoever it was. There's one or two pictures of that model if you click on the "Spain" label.But the rest of this project is now either back with me or with Martin, who was kind enough to take some nice pictures and send them over. 

Village dwellings in the distinctive, rather dour, style of northern Spain. The whole setup was partly made by me and partly by Mark and myself jointly. The two structures here were originally constructed as a single L-shaped building as part of a town. On re-acquiring this I decided it wouldn't really fit with my notoriously small village layouts, so I cut it apart and re-worked things a tiny bit to create two smaller houses.

Thes models were mostly built from the Wills sheets as I've often described, with a few of my cast doors and windows. The walls use the "Random Stone" sheet, which makes a change form the standard stonework sheet. If I'm to be picky, the chap who originally sculpted this sheet was a bit careless of how stone walls are "coursed" by the mason, but it all drybrushes up very satisfyingly.

These three buildings can now go in the big box with my other Spanish stuff. One day I'll get to play with them.

This building is what's called a horreo. To be seen across most of Spain, they are storehouses for grain and other produce. The stone "mushroom" legs are to make it hard for rats and other critters to get in. I made this little model as a present for Mark.

The last three photos are by Martin Gane Here we have a town block, which Mark and I put together very much as a joint effort. Good memories. We aimed to show the three building styles common in this part of Spain: stonework, timber framing with brick infill, and rendered stone with some faint pretension to a neo-classical style.

The back of the same block. There was also an old tower and other small items in the town display, which you can see if you click on the sidebar "label". 

Finally a tradional Basque farmhouse, a basseri, which was another one I made for Mark as a present. These farmhouses worked on the principle of "a whole farm in a single building", common across much of Europe but totally contrary to what we expect in Britain or the US say. In this case, the little door you see in the centre was for animal access to a byre or stable. The living quarters are upstairs, with a balcony to take the sun. The covered place at the front was a covered outside work area, where you could sit to mend things or do rustic crafts. Tools were hung around this area and you should be able to see at least a sickle and a tiny saw which I made to go here.

The Defenders of Lorraine

Off to a rather slow start to 2024 here at Boadle Towers. I had finished two 1870 French line regiments and started to do a flag when I was brought to halt by some virus, bug, flu, Covid or whatever the heck it was. That knocked me out for about three weeks, so I've only just finished the flag (see below) and got round to photography. Even then I didn't quite summon the energy to properly compose shots of all the Lorraine village stuff being defended by the new French. That will have to wait, but in the meantime here's the figures and the flag. And a small offer, if my approach to doing the flags would be of help to anyone else doing 1870.

By the way, please note that my email address has changed, though the old one will still find me for the moment. The updated address is now on the profile page. 

Here's the 32nd Line marching boldly towards the invaders. France had some 102 line regiments dressed identically except for a too-small-to-read regimental number on the kepi band. The uniform (almost) reflects the french tricolour and in painting these I focussed on producing bright, clear colours. In particular when you paint the piping on the kepi it's possible to end up with something untidy and "muddy", which I was determined to avoid.

Another characteristic was the mountain of field kit which the French soldier carried piled up on his back. This approach had come about from campaigning victoriously around the world in the decades before 1870: from the Sahara to the Baltic, from Mexico to China. Every soldier carried the means to shelter himself and to cook his rations. The Prussians had never needed to give a thought to this, reckoning to just pile into the nearest barn, which actually worked better when campaigning in well-populated areas, which was the case in 1864, 1866 and 1870-71. The Perry figures show all the proper kit very nicely; it's just a little bit fiddly to paint. This unit has got a "cantiniere" from the metal command pack. The job of these ladies was to provide the soldiers with tots of brandy from the barrel they carried, although there are many tales of them helping the wounded under fire, bringing up ammunition and so forth. They were dressed in a feminised version of their regiment's uniform.

With the plastic figures of the two packs you can create units doing one of three things: marching, charging and firing line. Here the 77th are blazing away with their long-range "Chassepot" rifles. In the open, a firing line would mostly be prone at this time, but when there's a little bit of cover, such as the walls around a village, you would have seen the men both standing and kneeling. The poses in the plastic packs do allow a dynamic mix.

I mount my figures on what some would regard as unfashionably ( or unfeasibly) small bases: 45mm x 40mm for six figures. This is for two reasons. Firstly it's more realistic. Soldiers in close order throughout the 18th and 19th centuries formed up elbow to elbow, so less than two feet per file. At our scale, even the 15mm width I give them is quite loose, but many gamers use 20mm frontage, or even more with open areas on each base, never mind sabot bases and other whatever. Each to their own of course, but I try to avoid "overbasing" because it's unrealistic. Secondly, without going into the obvious arithmetic the smaller your bases for a given size of unit the larger area your tabletop represents, and I want to do big battles.

I planned to do a flag which could be printed off for multiple line units, so my method was to start with an image of an 1812-pattern flag, the pattern of which was broadly copied for the Second Empire colours. I scanned it into the PC, blew it up to almost A4 size, printed it off and then overpainted the whole thing to equate specifically to the 1853-pattern flag carried by the 32nd Regiment. (This flag was captured when Metz surrendered and photographed later on, so we can be certain of its historical appearance.) The colours are on the dark side and I used buff for where the gold will end up. So here's what that looked like (complete with my workings-out). Now there's a lot I could say about the slightly differing patterns of flag used by French line infantry in 1870, but I'll spare you. My approach was to do one single, 100% accurate flag and then just fudge the details for the other regiments. The size of script used for the list of battle honours (different for every single unit and not always even known) is such that when reduced they won't really be legible, hence will do for any unit!

The painted flag was then re-scanned and sized to suit 28mm figures, the colours brightened a bit and the flag copied to produce a printout sheet of six flags. I then painted metallic gold over the appropriate areas and wrapped the flag around the pole using dilute PVA. You want the flag to be sufficiently soaked to bend freely into soft folds, without actually falling apart. Once dry I highlight the areas of red, blue and white which would catch the light. Finally I give the whole thing a coat of PVA, partly for strength and partly because I figure the flags were of silk and would have a slight sheen to them. 

So that's my method of doing flags. If you think this printout might be of help to you in doing French line flags for 1870, please email me (note new address on profile page) and I will send it over as a Word document. You can then print off a set of flags to the size you prefer and finish them to your taste.