A Foray into Napoleonic Wargaming

I’m just putting the finishing touches on some British Light Dragoons. I experimented with some different paint colours for the horses, so wanted to make a note of the schemes for future reference.

I had a bit of a read around the different colours of horses used by British for their light cavalry, and couldn’t find a definite answer, beyond trumpeters riding grey horses (to help them stand out in the field so their officers could locate them in a scrum and thus get their orders signalled to the rest of the troop). I’ve previously read somewhere that the different squadrons within a cavalry regiment had distinctly coloured horses, but couldn’t track it down again, and I had an idea that this was more a Germanic thing than British. I expect that any sort of distinction of horse colour by squadron probably would shortly dissolve during a campaign, as getting a remount of any colour was undoubtedly more important than visual niceties.

With hindsight, I’d wash the manes and tails with black instead of umber to get a darker colour, but I’m pretty happy with the end results. There’s a few more bits to finish on the riders before the regiment is ready for basing, but I’ll be putting them up as a next post soon.

A pointless fact to finish – the modern British Army has more horses on strength than tanks.

In a change of pace from painting various infantry battalions, next I tackled a troop of Royal Horse Artillery. The uniforms are largely similar to the foot artillery, distinguished by the fact foot gunners wore shakos, whilst the RHA gunners wore ‘Tarleton’ helmet and the tailless dolman in imitation of the light dragoons.

The dark blue jackets made a nice change from painting red coats, and the variety of poses from the models means each stand naturally forms a little diorama.

There’s models from two ranges here, Campaign Game Miniatures and Xan. The crew mix pretty well, with the Xan gunners sporting a bread bag and water canteen that the CGM miniatures lack. The Xan cannon has slightly thinner wheels, but I think I prefer the gun carriage to those by CGM. All the guns were supposed to be 6 pounders, but there’s a clear size difference between the two ranges. Doesn’t bother me too much, I like the slightly non-uniform look.

I dry brushed some light sand paint over the wheels and bottoms of the guns as they looked too clean otherwise.

The Black Watch is my third finished infantry battalion, which is enough to form my first infantry brigade.

Having got one brigade completed, I’ve been planning what next to add to my Peninsula British collection. There’s two packages in the post bringing the next wave of miniatures.

The first is enough infantry for a second brigade, including a few more highlanders so I can paint the Gordon Highlanders, another line battalion and a light battalion. The second batch is some cavalry, namely a battalion of both hussars and light dragoons.

The final element to a rounded force is some artillery, and there’s already some Royal Horse Artillery awaiting assembly on my painting desk.

When deciding to put together a collection of Peninsula British, I definitely wanted to include the 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment, more commonly known as the Black Watch. The regiment was awarded ten battle honours during the six years that it serviced in the Peninsula, with either the first or second battalion present at the majority of the most significant battles against the French.

The title of ‘the Black Watch’ can be traced back to the foundation of the regiment. In the aftermath of the first Jacobite Rebellion in 1715, militia companies were raised from loyalist Highland clans for policing and peacekeeping duties. These companies were commonly known in Gaelic as ‘Am Freiceadan Dubh’, or ‘The Black Watch’, due to the dark coloured government-issue tartan, and their role to “watch” the highlands. In 1739 King George II requested that four such companies should be raised and formed into a single line regiment. The Black Watch became the regiment’s official name in 1881.

The Black Watch had a different system of coloured company plumes to other British line infantry regiments. Centre companies had all red plumes, the light company had red over green, whilst the grenadiers wore red over white. The drummers wore another different coloured plume, being red over yellow. There’s no drummer in my battalion, but I thought I’d paint the piper that way regardless of historical accuracy, as it looks quite distinct.

All the figures are from CGM, flags are from GMB Flags. When it came to adding the flags, I found them to be too long for the poles. First time I’ve hit that snag, but I got around it by snipping the corners to fit around the hands and pole tops, leaving the main part of the flag unaltered. Not ideal, but I think it works okay.

Rather than cracking on with more Highlanders, I decided to get the skirmishers for the two completed infantry battalions painted up. I also thought it was time to sort out a proper officer to keep the rabble in line.

The skirmishing flank company are by Xan, and the officer is AB. First time I’ve tried some of the Xan miniatures, and they’ve got a nice degree of detail in the sculpts without going too overboard for the size of the figures.

Had a bit of a nightmare when painting the last highlights on the horse, but I think I managed to rescue it and the end result doesn’t look too bad.

No excuse to put off more Highlanders now though, so next up will be a battalion of the Black Watch.

Four bases of skirmishing Highlander flank companies completed, two in the colours of the Black Watch, and two Gordon Highlanders.

Step-by-step images are below to compliment a previous post that sketched out my planned approach.

Whilst it might be possible to go further with more detail on the kilts, I think this is a sensible end point for models of this scale.

The tartan was most awkward on the kneeling figure, which makes me glad that the 40 odd Highlanders I have to still paint are all in a marching pose, with a nice broad flat surface for the pattern.

Painting the patterns on the hat and sock bands was actually more challenging than the kilts.

With another dozen line infantry finished, my second British foot regiment has been completed, this time sporting the colours of the 24th, the 2nd Warwickshire Regiment of Foot.

Figures are from Campaign Game Miniatures, flags from GMB.

Well, I say completed, but I want to add a pair of bases to represent skirmishing flank companies, which I also need to add to the first regiment. But first I want to have a crack at some Highlanders.

I’m going to start with Highlander skirmisher bases. I’ve got some AB miniatures for these that I am really looking forward to painting. The plan is to paint four as Black Watch, and four as Gordon Highlanders, which will let me have a play at both tartan patterns I intend to have.