Generic French Ligne battalion

Well, so I finally managed to finish these after all.

What can I say about these. Well first of all I plan to use these as a stand in for a marine artillery battalion at Möckern. As I said before, there is very little use for these men (marine artillery that is) outside this battle. So the three battalions already painted will be the maximum for me and the other six battalions will be served by stand ins.
Which is just as well. With the standardisation of the French uniforms during the later parts of the Napoleonic wars, the only difference between one unit and he other are the inscriptions on their flags. So having a generic battalion of Frenchmen comes in handy.
These Calpe minis here are just perfect for a generic unit. First of all their greatcoats swollow up what little difference there might be in uniform. The other thing is, that they come with flags and fannions covered up in oilskin. This easily masks the last destinguishing mark of the unit. Usually I would have removed these and replaced them with proper GMB flags (after all Napoleonics are about splendor, right!), but in this case I was just fine with that and kept them this way.
What else is there to say about these? Well as usual I loved to paint these. The detail of the Calpe minis is just great, as is the quality which makes the a joy to paint. While I keep repeating myself in this regard, I really mean it and I have to say with the Calpe French range expanding, I already regret having so many I unpainted Perrys lying around. (Face it… The animation on the Perrys is great and they are almost as detailed, but the casting quality is abysmal.)

Anyway, on to the paintjob itself. As usual I went for a muddied “on campaign” look, with greatcoats and trousers of different colours to represent men that had been everywhere for Napoleon and had to take what they could get, to replace lost items.
I painted stands for the Voltigeurs, Grenadiers and first to third companies. Right now I only need small 400 men battalions as stand ins, so this is enough. When done with the Möckern preparations, I shall return to these and paint them another stand for the 4th company to bring them to the average strength for the period I am playing, but this is the existence they will need to lead right now. So on to the minis themselves:

Generic French Battalion (frontal view)

Voltigeurs

Command – 1st Company

2nd Company

3rd Company

Before anyone mentions it. Yes, I know the Pom Pom colour for 3rd Companies should be rather a pinkish red. Not sure why I went for yellow here. I will change that soon.

Grenadiers

Generic French Battalion (march collumn)

Now those remembering my last post will ask “what will we see next and when?”.
Well in recent days I felt like I have gotten over my painters block. But you will not see anything new from me till late August at the earliest. We will be off to a three week hiking and festival trip to Scotland and Wales soon. After all the stress of recent months, I really feel I can use it! So if you see someone who looks like a Wargamers happy to unwind on a Ben or Munro in Scotland, up on Mount Snowdon or at the 40th anniversary concert of one of my favourite bands (Runrig)… say hi! 😉 When I return, there will hopefully be pictures of the next French unit, those riverboards I have bee working on or even better… another game report!

Take care!