Happy New Year. 

Last post of this strange 2020, with more GNW Russian Dragoons.

The Life Regiment in its 1708 uniform. The regiment was raised in 1707 from men of Zybin’s Dragoon regiment (disbanded in 1706). The first uniform was with a red coat. It was at Holowczin, Lesnaja, Poltava and Perevolotjna. Then at Riga 1710, at the Pruth disaster in 1711 and finally in Poland 1711-18. From 1719 it becomes the St. Peterburgski Dragoon Regiment.

The other newcomers are the dismounted dragoon from the Zvedza box (with some Strelets added). They are not intended to represent specific regiments, rather act as war-games “tokens” to represent the dismounted status of a unit.

That’s all for 2020. I wish you all to have a happier 2021.

Russian Infantry (I)

Another step in my Poltava project, the Russian Guards and some Grenadiers (once again they are mostly Strelets with some Zvedza).

First of all the Preobrashenski regiment represented here with four basis, one for battalion:

there were of course some variations in the uniform details, as ever with the russians. I opted for the red socks/gaiters version. The grenadier headgear is of the type introduced from 1709-10. At Poltava they had more probably a grenadier cap of this sort:

The Semeonovski regiment which I painted in this shade of blue:

A nice thing of the Russian is that one can paint different regiments in various shades of the same color (indeed this happened at company level, many times with different coat colors within the same regiment). In both cases the flag were scanned from the Hoglund book. The regimental commander, Prince Golytzin, was wounded at Narva. The regiment was on three battalions.

The DuBois grenadier regiment: according to Hoglund it was raised in 1708 from the grenadier coys of  7 regiments. 

Its full name was “General Enzberg’s Grenadier Regiment” but at Poltava was know with the name of its commander, De Bois or Du Bois. From 1712 it became the 4th Grenadier Regiment.

One of the various Strelets oddities is the so-called “Streltsi Bonus figure”. In many boxes there is a single Streltsi miniatures, the full list here. By collecting those I had I was able to muster also a Streltsi regiment. 

I choose the 12th Moscow regiment (Nechajev), an unit with a long battle history, from Saladen (1703) to Poltava (1709) were it seems that it garrisoned some of the redoubts.

A final view of the russian infantry painted thus far, the equivalent of 37 battalions: to complete the Poltava OoB I need at least 14 more battalions whose uniforms will be red, white, green, yellow and blue, just to add some more uniform variations.

Russian Cavalry "augmentation"

I completed the first eleven regiment of Russian cavalry put on two bases each: these were the cavalry units from the Holowczin OoB which I painted with only one 40x40 mm base for each regiment. I changed the Vladimirsky flag I did previously, which I incorrectly depicted with the 1712 model, with a 1700-1708 model taken from the Hoglund book and changed some details, like the Belozersky karpus. Let introduce them again (the spelling may be incorrect, who knows..):

Vladimirski: the flag is a 1700-1708 model of an unknown regiment; the regiment campaigned from 1701 and was at Holowczin (according to some sources), Lesnaja and Poltava.

Astrakanski: raised in 1701, campaigned in Pomerania in 1711-1713 after Poltava.

Tversky: the flag is correct. I added a dragoon in karpus to add variety. Raised in 1702, after Poltava in the Finnish campaign.

Riazansky. Raised in 1705, at Kalisz 1706, in the Pruth campaign 1711, disbanded 1715.

Sankt Peterburgski. Another regiment raised in 1701, all campaign till Pruth. Disbanded 1711.

Jarovslavski Grenadier: raised 1706. At the Perevolochna surrender: then in Pomerania and Holstein, 1714.

Troitsky Grenadier. Raised 1701, campaigned till 1718.

Belozersky (the standard is from an unknown regiment and was captured at Narva, 1700. Since I have no idea what would be the correct flag, I opted for this one which I like very much). Raised 1703, Holowczin and Poltava. Disbanded 1711, the personnel transferred to Sibirski.

Novgorodski. Raised 1701: some sources give karpus.

Pskovski: the flag is a generic Colonel one. After Poltava at Pruth, 1711.

Azovski: raised in Moscow 1706 from "conscript and disbanded units", not a promising start. At Holowczin, Poltava and Pruth.

The whole bunch:

Now, to complete the Russian cavalry for Poltava I need to paint at least 7 more regiments: I plan to use some Zvedza, together with the reliable Strelets miniatures.

A small pause and new projects

After completing the Swedish for Poltava, a little pause before the next achievements. Next goal will be the completion of the Russian Army which is underway. Then I shall double all the Danish cavalry bases.

At this point  something of out-of-the-track could be done. I am already planning to do a couple of Tremannings regiments in gray coat and the Valacks, these by using the Orion cossacks. By the way the Valacks can be used either as Polish or Russian Cossacks, the only difference will be a “command base” with a swedish officier for Valacks, a Polish flag for the Poles and I don’t know what for the Russians.

Having done the Swedish, Russian and Danish armies (enough to refight Holowczin, Poltava and Helsinborg), it could be the time to move my attention to the Saxon-Polish army which can widen the horizon to Klissow, Fraustadt and Gadebusch as well as to a lot of smaller actions (the crossing of Duna in 1701 would be an interesting scenario, look here for an example)

The uniforms are well documented, at least for the Saxon part. Besides the Hoglund book there are the Dan Schorr tables from his defunct site Northernwars.com. For the Polish contingent some informations can be obtained by the two Osprey volumes of R. Brezinski on the Polish Army and from the blogs Oderint dum Probent and Kadrinazi. Anyway it will become necessary at least to have some Winged Hussards, a colorful addition to any collection. The other cavalry (Pancerni, Jadza Lekka, Dragoons and Arquebusier, Cossacks) and the elusive infantry units can follow later.

Since I had a very good experience with the Mars Saxon Infantry, which I used to represent the Danish, I’ll probably use them to depicts my Saxon Infantry. I have not yet decided if I’ll use the Zvedza or the Strelets miniatures for the cavalry. 

I would like also to finish the Kolin analysis, this time with V&B and DB-Hx (or HFG) and give a similar treatment to some GNW battles. 

The completed Swedish infantry for Poltava

General Lewenhaupt presenting my 32 battalions of Swedish infantry to the wounded King:

So I have completed the Swedish Army; it is time to paint the Russians...

However, since every project is born within a previous one, I also put into the painting line two further carolean regiments, namely the Uppland and Sodermalands Tremänning, which, to add variety to my army, I decided to represent in the gray vadmal uniform they had at the beginning of the war. 

In this outfit they were for instance present at Klissow, 1702: this means that, sooner or later, I’ll do some Saxons and more interesting, some Polish cavalry.

The Russians are coming

The painting line for the next weeks: 

on the left the “augmentation” of the existing Russian cavalry which shall be put on the standard of two bases for each regiment. On the right the infantry regiments which are necessary to complete the Poltava OoB, the existing regiments being based on the Holowczin OoB. One of the regiment is a Streltsi one mustered from the “Streltsi bonus figures” which I collected between my Strelets boxes.

To complete the OoB however I need further 7 two-bases regiment which I plan to represent by using both Strelets and Zvedza miniatures.

In the first line you can see the five yet unfinished redoubts whose building I showed in a previous post. I am going to use the same techniques to represent the Russian Army camp which is a serious affair like we can see in these near-contemporary prints:

Swedish cavalry for Poltava completed

With these regiments I completed the swedish cavalry for Poltava: now I have 24 bases which can be used as 6 V&B 3”x3” Brigade stands or 6 four-bases units for Maurice or Black-Powder.

The first regiment is the Karelska (Viborgs och Nyslotts län): at Poltava its outfit was the standard blue coat with hat; however I decided to represent it in the 1702 uniform with grey coat and karpus. To do this I converted the Strelets figures by cutting away the tricorne and putting on its place some spare karpus from the worst figures of the Swedish infantry box:

This is the result:

The Adelsfana i Sverige och Finland is indeed an “augmentation” because one base was already done before. I added a second base with the flag-bearer: the 1686 model flag was captured at Poltava. The regiment was with the King main army since 1702.

The following are Dragoon regiments which, at this stage I decided to represent with only one base (maybe one day I shall “augment” also them to two bases each). These three regiments are a selection of the many understrenght dragoon regiments which were present at Poltava, namely the Heilm ( former Stenbock, yellow facings), Gyllenstierna (red facings) and Meyerfeldt (orange facings) regiments.

The Heilm kettledrummer came from the Swedish cavalry box with a tricorne head in place of the helmet. The Meyerfeldt regiment didn’t partecipated at the battle, being in guard duty at the swedish camp in Pushkarjova: however the orange facing are so tempting…

Finally, after having done all the swedish cavalry with Strelets miniatures, I decided to paint the last two regiments with the Zvedza “Swedish Dragoons” figures. They are a real pleasure to paint indeed, a very different style form Strelets. However, to be fair, the Strelets have a definite “character” and is a real satisfaction to get the best from them, because at a glance they didn’t look so inspiring. The Zvedza are indeed on an another planet. Anyway they mix well enough (not in the same base, clearly) and to have some units in a “smarter outfit” gives variety to my army.

In detail they represent respectively the Norra Skanska regiment

and the Sodra Skanska regiment, this one with the coat in a lighter blue shade:

The Sodra Skanska trumpeter livery is a result of an educated guesswork, since no informations on the uniform are available. Both the regiments belonged to the King’s Army from 1702: captured after Poltava were reraised but used as garrison troops because of  lack of horses and equipment.

As far as the flag is concerned, Zvedza gives a dragoon flag with the tails and with a cross engraved (strangely enough, since such a flag can’t be found in the Hoglund book), which is probably the only drawback of an otherwise perfect kit. I cut the tail to have a squarish standard and overpainted the Norra Skanska flag with two heavy coats of the Mordian Blue GW “base color”, finishing the flag at hand.

Finally, the complete cavalry lot:

Together with the 32 infantry battalions (which I will show soon) these figurese represents the equivalent of 96 squadrons which with the complement of guns and general officier allows to represent the Swedish Army in all the GNW battles. In the future however I plan to add some bases of the elusive “Valaker” (I’ll probably will depict them as cossacks with a swedish officier since they were indeed polish cossacks) and a base with a cart, useful to represent objective or camp for the rules which require such an item, an example of which is given in this 1711 print representing the swedish trophies captured at Poltava entering in Moscow: