Colonel General of Hussars 1804

 I am sitting here looking at a large collection of military postcards which arrived today. There are around 80 sets of Rene North Paint Your Own Cards, unopened in their original envelopes,around ten unopened packets of Charles Stadden and others, along with some loose cards from the Imperial War Museum and other series.

If anyone has an FN 358, General Andoche Junot in his uniform as the Colonel General of Hussars, ready to paint this card may provide an additional reference to the Hinton Hunt painting instructions posted here.

I will add this image to that post as well. Blogger is messing up the format of this post - I apologise for this and will try to fix it later

Prints Militaire NF1 Infantry of the Line, France, 1808-12 (other ranks)

Prints Militaire NF2 French Imperial Guard, Polish Lancers of the Guard 1807-14

Prints Militaire NF3 Chassuers a Cheval de la Garde, France, 1800-15 officers,musicians etc

Prints Militaire NF4 Infantry of the Line, France, 1808-12 officers,musicians etc

FN 304 French Imperial Guard Cavalry Red Lancer of the Guard

No picture of this figure is currently available

Can you ever have enough artillery?

After the last three weeks, my answer is yes, especially if you have to paint them all.

Things have been quiet here on the posting front as I have been conducingd a major audit of my French and British artillery, sorting into crews, allocating guns, and painting and basing the unpainted and unbased. The results are posted below.

I had thought I had finished, but have found one extra painted British gun, for which I will paint up one further RHA crew, and also I need to paint up a small number of extra French artillery drivers.

Though I wouldn't swear to it, I think the final tally is in the region of:

French

23 guns and 3 howitzers
4 caissons
6 limbers
around 30 horses

British

24 guns and three howitzers
Siege train of 2 18 pounders and a 10" howitzer
A rocket troop in light order (pack horses rather than rocket carts)
1 ammunition limber
12 limbers
around 50 horses

Guns are a mixture of Hinchliffe 20mm, Hinton Hunt, Der Kriegspieler and Newline Designs. There are also a couple of Fine Scale factory siege guns

It has to be said that Marcus Hinton was not at his best with artillery guns and equipment - managing to get them looking chunky and underscale at the same time.

The old Hinchliffe 20mm pieces are miniature masterpieces. The best currently available substitute for Hinton Hunt guns and limbers are those from Newline Designs - a big range, and as they are small 20mm pleasingly recall the slightly undersize look of Hinton Hunt ones, while being considerably more detailed.

My French artillery arm suffers from the usual over-representation of Guard units and the absence of line horse artillery from the Hinton Hunt range. I am intending to second some Guard horse artillery units to support of my Grand Duchy of Warsaw forces.

The acquisition of 30 or so Der Kriegspieler Royal Artillery gunners helped achieve a better balance between foot and horse artillery units for the British. I am also pleased with the siege train - I will sort out some trains for these, as I have considerable numbers of Jacklex oxen which serve a bridging train and colonial artillery units, and which can easily do double duty for the Napoleonic period.

Next task is a second (Der Kriegspieler) Hesse Darmstadt battalion. This will leave me with some new Russian and Prussian acquisitions to complete; and audit of my Austrians; and then facing up to around 100 battalions of French and British infantry - and then the cavalry.... I think in the circumstances the approach of completing national contingents has worked quite well

French Artillery - Guard Horse artillery

Eight crews with Hinton Hunt guns

French Artillery - Guard Foot artillery

Six Hinton Hunt crews, with Hinchliffe 20mm guns and a single howitzer, on the extreme left of the line. This crew contains one Minifigs 20mm gunner. The Guard Foot artillery have recived my best gun models, the majority of the long guns are 12 pounders.



An Alberken/Minifigs 20mm crew serving a Newline Gribeuval 8 pounder.

French Artillery - Line Foot artillery

10 French line foot artillery crews mostly with Newline guns, and an 11th crew with a Der Kriegspieler howitzer (this is on the left hand side of the line).



The final picture is of an Alberken/Minifigs 20mm French Line crew, also with a Newline Designs gun

French Artillery - Caissons and Limbers

Horses, drivers, and most of the limbers are Hinton Hunt.

Caissons are Hinton Hunt but are rough castings. Some of the wheels are replacements from Newline. There is also one Hinchliffe 20mm limber.

A couple of the drivers (on the extra teams for the caissons) are Guard, the others are Line. I probably need to paint up a few extra drivers so each caisson has one.

French train

I finished these pieces of French artillery equipment for my Gilders' recent first outing. The horses, limbers, caisson and drivers are Hinton Hunt; the gun is Newline (actually the one from my Spanish "horse" artillery); and the howitzer is a Hinchliffe 20mm model, from the Peter Gilder collection.

They show the technique of leaving enough room on the base to accommodate the gun hitched behind the limber. For my British RHA I have used a variant, with limbers having a two horse team, but then having some extra bases of two- and four horse "add ons". This is partly because basing a six horse team and limber and having space for a limbered gun is unwieldy; partly because I don't have enough horses for all my British limbers at four or six horses each.

I have some Hinchliffe 25mm British baggage wagons I bought from Terry Wise once. These have teams of Jacklex oxen; the wagon is on one base, the team on another, and there is a single long sabot base they can both be placed on. The wagon's base is permanently glued to the sabot, the team is not. This would also give you the option to swap horse for oxen draught if you prefer.

As ever the usual disclainmer - this is not a painting blog, I know I am not a good painter and my style is limited to achieving as neat a block painted finish as I can manage. The idea is just to show the toys....

Der Kriegspieler Dismounted French Dragoon

These thirteen figures are Der Kriegspieler foot dragoons, which clearly have been mastered from a Hinton Hunt FN 147 dragoon horseholder with the addition of a musket. They come from the DK pack code 825-45, dismountable dragoons.

They have come out looking a lot better than I expected, and will join my odds and ends of Hinton Hunt foot dragoons to form a full unit.

Some Peter Gilder Hinton Hunt items for sale

With some regret I have decided to list a few of my Peter Gilder Hinton Hunt items on e-bay. These include 6 French one piece casting hussars FN 114, a French Old Guard Foot Artillery crew with Hinchliffe 20mm 12 pounder Gribeuval gun, and two one piece casting Guard Chasseurs a Cheval. These are a real slice of wargames history and the auctions will close on Friday 1st January 2010. I have listed them as the ultimate Hinton Hunt wargames figures and I think this is not overstating the case.

Units - Chassuers a Cheval

A recent seam of e-bay purchases yielded 20 Hinton Hunt Chasseurs a Cheval, in addition to Minifigs 20mm Polish (or possibly Dutch) Guard lancers, and Minifigs 20mm/Alberken Cuirassiers - these will be posted on the Old Metal Detector blog. The figures are FN 122 one piece castings. Often overlooked in favour of their flashier lancer or hussar brethren, the Chassuers were the workhorse of Napoleon's light cavalry.

More pictures of those Peter Gilder Lancers

These two pictures are taken from the original series "The Napoleonic Wargame" by Charles Grant, published in Military Modelling. These pictures were published in August and October 1972. The unit is the same one as are pictured at the head of the right hand column of this blog. I now own half this unit, unfortunately without any of the command figures.

The Uniforms of Leipzig - France and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw

The Uniforms of Leipzig - The French Empire

The Uniforms of Leipzig - Polish Lancers of the Guard

Hinton Hunt Painting Instructions: FN 2, 3 and 9 line infantry grenadiers