Sunday, July 15, 2012

French Infantry

The "bulk" of my e-bay deal was formed by French; so I started to rebase them for Volley&Bayonet: as usual, I prefer to stick my work around an historical OoB. In this case, since I already have Prussian , Austrian and a sizeable Reichsarmee, I choosed Rossbach. Indeed also the previuos owner should have had Rossbach in mind, with some oddities.

Therefore, two regiments of infantry of the original lot were easily rebased into the Saint-Chamond and Deux-Point regiments by simply adding the mounted officers. Notice that the Deux-Point uniform is the grey-white one used before 1758, when a light-blue one was introduced: also the flag is probably that used in a later period (for sure in the AWI): however I didn't dare to over paint such a nice paintwork done by Kronos.




The Saint-Chamond (nr. 21) was badly mauled at Rossbach and spent the rest of the war on garrison duties on the coast. It is a typical regiment with red cuffs and yellow hat-lace.




The regiment Deux-Point (nr. 119) was a "German" regiment of two battalions increased to three and finally to four in 1758. It had a distinguished career in the SYW, fighting at Sanderhausen, Bergen and Minden. According to Mouillard the flag is the 1770 pattern: however, some contemporary manuscripts give such a flag in 1757. Since the earlier type flag is the following (from Kronoskaf): 



I had no doubt in deciding that my regiment had the later, fancier type.

The third unit of the original lot was the regiment of the "Grenadiers de France, nr. 40" which was not present at Rossbach. However, it was a very thought unit, present at Hastenbeck, Krefeld, Minden and Vellinghausen. 


A fourth unit in the lot was the "Royal Artillerie" Regiment. In the V&B scale such a regiment didn't make any sense and accordingly I converted it into an infantry battalion. Since the coat was dark blue, the obvious choice was a German regiment present at Rossbach, namely the nr. 66 La Marck with yellow facings.



The flags are in paper, drawn with a simple graphic program from the Kronoskaf originals.

I remained with enough leftovers to muster two further regiments, this time adding more drummers, nco, officers and standard-bearers. My choice was for the regiments of Cosse-Brissac and Piemont.


The Cosse-Brissac (nr.57) had a nice flag, a yellow and black drummer and an undistingushed career after Rossbach, were it was badly-mauled, the Colonel Chevalier de Lemps being taken prisonier;



the Piemont (nr. 4) was instead one of the oldest units in the French army with a four-battalion strenght and the unique black cuffs. It was at Lutterberg and Bergen.


4 comments:

lekw said...

as usual fantastic looking figures.

Scheck said...

Splendido! The french regiments look great. I like very much the proportion by base in your employment.
Go on!
Monseigneur

Izzak Grimnebulin said...

Very good purchase and I like the way you have organised the basing very much.

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Saintonge said...

Good choice going with the 'fancy' flag for the régiment Deux-Ponts; the other flag you showed wasn't theirs! It belongs to the régiment Pons and had been on the battlefield for over a century before Deux-Ponts was created in 1757. You'll find Pons and their violet and red flag featured in the 1721 Collection des uniformes et des evolutions militaires de troupes français and again, both illustrated and described, in each of Lemau de La Jaisse's Carte générale published in the 1730s-40s. Come 1757, the same flag is still among the upper echelon of the regimental hierarchy (the numbers were just a ranking, and varied from year to year) but the name of the regiment has changed to Mailly, and by 1771 in Chaligny's Tableue Militaire des Drapeaux it is known as Guïenne / Guyenne. All of which makes the error in Montigny's 1772 publication that much more awkward as he mixing the Régiment Royal Price de Pons up with the newly formed foreign-raised régiment Deux-Ponts.