More 1815 Dutch Militia

I have now completed both D'Hauw's 1st/1st Netherland Brigade and De Eerens' 2nd/1st Netherland Brigade both of which form part of II Corps st Netherlands Division.

Both brigades side by side

In my last post regarding painting and basing Dutch Militia, I mentioned that the metal figures I was using purchased from eBay from a seller who had them listed as manufacturer unknown.

Rated as poorly trained with low morale they hopefully will have lucky dice

Fortunately a number of readers (Doug - from Doug's Soldiers blog, Archduke Piccolo -from Archduke Piccolo blog, and two anonymous commenters) were able to identify the figures as Warrior Miniatures 25mm Napoleonics, and part of their Spanish range (click here for more details).

The flag is pure conjecture

As these are smaller 25mm figures they do seem to work well with the rest of my Napoleonic collection which is primarily 1/72 plastic. They also seem to work with other figures....

Silver bayonet anyone?

Prussian 25th Infantry Regiment

I have just recently finished making another two V&B stands for the 100 Days campaign. The brigade stand represents the main body of the Prussian 25th Infantry Regiment (25 IR), while the skirmish stand represents a detachment from the main body.

Full frontal Prussians

An excellent online source for the uniforms of the 25 IR is "Les Uniformes pedant la campagne des Cent Jours Belgiue 1815" website (click here for the Prussian 25th Infantry Regiment entry). This has been the main source of information for my paint scheme.

The bulk of the figures have come from the HaT Waterloo Lutzow Freikorps & Nassau Grenadiers set (PSR review here). The figures are perfect for the 100 Days campaign as the 25 IR as they were still primarily wearing the black uniform of the Freikorps.

Unfortunately the set doesn't contain any officers, musicians, or flag bearers. However it does contain a figure with a ring hand, which means that accessories from the HaT Waterloo Dutch Infantry set (PSR review here) can be used to create a passable musicians and a flag bearer.

Skirmish stand that can be detached from the main body.

Noting that some sources have some senior officers of 25 IR wearing the uniform of regular line officers I decided to use a rather nice figure from the Strelets Russian and Prussian Chiefs of Staff (PSR review here). I think having the officer in the regular army blue and grey is a nice contrast to the black uniforms of the rest of the figures.

I couldn't find any definitive answers with regard to the flag used by the 25 IR - or even if they had one! Based on what I could find, I decided that a draped red flag would look good and be easy to do.

KGL 3rd Regiment of Hussars

 I am continuing to slowly raise forces in order to conduct the 100 Days campaign as outlined in the V&B scenario book "Napoleon Returns". In order to do this I have been reviewing both my existing collection, and the Orders Of Battle (OOB) listed in the scenario book to see what additional stands I need to acquire. Fortunately I don't need to paint figures for every unit in the campaign - just ones that would be representative of the stand listed in the OOB. 

Label added on stand with bonus paint smear.

Greatly assisting in this project has been the set of unit labels for "Napoleon Returns" from Keith McNelly's excellent Volley and Bayonet site. Keith's site is an invaluable resource to Volley and Bayonet players. I have printed off the labels and started the process of identifying existing elements in my collection to populate the respective OOB for each of the three armies required. 

Full frontal Hussars! Only eight of the twelve figures could fit.

The most recent result of this project has been the refurbishment of one of my older stands that I acquired many years ago, but required quite a bit of work to restore as the original head swap conversions had parted way from the bodies.

According to PSR the saddles are correct for the Crimean War.

The base figures are from  Esci Set 230 British Light Dragoons (PSR review here) with the heads coming from Esci Set 227 French Line Infantry (PSR review here).

Only after basing the figures did I realise that I only put one figure on with a carbine 

The paint job seems to have been based on Haythornwaite's "Uniforms of Waterloo in Colour" which aligns well with the information from the "Les Uniformes pedant la campagne des Cent Jours Belgiue 1815" website (click here for the uniform plate for the 1st Squadron 3rd Hussars KGL).

The main differences appears to be regards the colour of sash barrels for troopers, and the colour of the saddle cloth. Since the Esci horses have the wrong saddlery for the Napoleonic era anyway, I wasn't going to correct it, nor was I going to change the coloured barrels on the sashes. So it is possible that all my troopers are wearing the officer sash instead of the correctly colored trooper sash:) 

Now with added black wash on the horses and troopers:)

Previously I had used these figures as generic light cavalry, often representing sub par cavalry, as I wasn't sure what nationality they were:), but their tabletop performance had always been first class.I hope with their recent refurbishment that this will continue:)