4tes Battalion, 15te Schlesische Landwehr

Silesian Landwehr
[although these men are from a 2nd battalion as denoted by their red shoulderboards]

So this is the last Landwehr (Infantry) unit for my Völkerschlacht von Leipzig (Battle of Nations) project, the 4th Btln. 14th Silesian Landwehr. As usual, the minis are all Calpe Miniatures either in charging or trail arms positions. Now this might seem strange, but in the Prussian Army Trail arms was the standard pose while advancing towards the enemy, since it kept the left hand free to control the infantry sabre / hatchet hanging from their left hip. Only just before reaching the enemy did the men actually take their muskets in both hands and I wanted to depict that very moment with most men leveling their muskets, while the slower were still at trail arms.

Anyway back to the unit itself. This unit was  408 man strong at Möckern. At the 1:20 ratio for R2E this translates into 20 minis. They were part of Major von Klüx detachment of the advanced guard, which means that my units for his detachment are nearly complete. Only the Guard Grenadiers are missing (but they were only attached to his detachment for the 2nd assault anyway, so I am fine in painting them a little later as well ;-)) and some Austrian Jäger that were attached to this unit, more by accident then anything else, but more on them in a later post.

I have not been entirely happy with the looks of my flags lately. Not with the flags themselves (I really love those GMB flags), but the way they curl. So far I have always cut them, glued them together with a glue stick, attached them to the staff and shaped them. But lately they always seemed to unfurl while drying and ended up somewhat flat for my taste. So this time I brushed some diluted white glue on the inside and shaped it this way. This time it kept its shape. One thing I did though was make a copy of the flag first. To my knowledge GMB flags are inkjet prints and the diluted white glue would make the colours runny. So I made a copy with a laser printer and used that, which worked fine.

But now without much further ado here are some pictures of them:

4-15te Schlesische Landwehr

4-15te Schlesische Landwehr

4-15te Schlesische Landwehr 1st stand

4-15te Schlesische Landwehr 2nd stand

4-15te Schlesische Landwehr 3rd stand

4-15te Schlesische Landwehr 4th stand

4-15te Schlesische Landwehr command stand

4-15te Schlesische Landwehr command stand
[side view]

While these were painted last year and I already showed them in an earlier post, here are the skirmishers for this unit:

Skirmishers for the 4tes Battalion, 15te Schlesische Landwehr