Long story here - I wanted a Spanish gun crew to support my (growing) Spanish Brigade. I had a spare Minifigs 20mm Austrian gun crew in bicorns and a generic Scruby officer to hand. As the Spanish artillery went over to French-style shakos by regulation of 1812 this seemed the best option - I may cobble together a crew in shakos later - as I aim generally for 1812 as this gives the option of using pre- and post- 1812 uniforms together, allowing for difficulties in supply.
The Austrians have short tailed coats, which make them more suitable as horse rather than foot artillery for the Spanish. However, I wanted a suitably chaotic extemporised limber and team, so have ended up with two Hinton Hunt oxen (H41 Portuguese long horned oxen) pulling a Hinton Hunt French limber AL 3, using a Jacklex oxen yoke. The gun is from Newline (French 6-pdr) and has been done, like the limber, as unpainted wood.The whole thing is topped off by a SN 51 muleteer (the Spanish used civilian drivers). The oxen are David Clayton castings and the muleteer is an original Hinton Hunt one.
The whole set up is a bit impressionistic but I hope is suitably characterful.
6 comments:
A very successful assembly of compatible figures and equipment. Nice job Clive!
Clive-
Too funny - "horse" artillery pulled by oxen! There's no historical basis for that - or is there? In any case, made my day!
Keep up the good work
Jack
No precedent that I know, Jack - I'd wanted some kind of improvised draught arrangements, had painted the crew before working out what to do, and then realised the Austrian gunners approximated better to Spanish Horse than Foot artillery. I think I will do a second crew in the later (1812) French style uniform. When that's done I will try to do a parade for the whole contingent.
Roy, my information is that the bell-topped, French-style shako became official dress for the Spanish artillery by general order of 12 Dec 1811. I could be wrong, though.
How right you are, Bueno has it as the 1810 regulation that moves the artillery to French style shakos.
Roy
Roy - I can hear the faint sound of angels dancing on a pin-head, but I think Bueno actually says that the Spanish artillery moved from the 'sombrero' to the French-style shako in 1810 - I've never seen reference to an actual regulation in that year; the 12 Dec 1811 regulation was a catch-all to try to standardise on changes which had occurred during previous few years - in particular the adoption of British-style dress. I, of course, have not seen the actual regulation, though Chartrand seems to have done so. The horse artillery had been wearing shakos for years - albeit with side plumes - plates from the Suhr collection and by Ordovas show such figures around 1808.
I think we all agree that the guys in the foot artillery were *supposed* to be wearing shakos by 1812, though no doubt the reality would be horribly different!
Cheers
Tony
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