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.