Lutzow's Black Uhlans

I've been away from the blog for the past few weeks. I have been busy but I haven't taken any pics to share (but I will soon). During the past week I've also been painting a new unit to add to my Napoleonic Prussians and, in particular, my version of Lutzow's Friekorps.

The Black Uhlans are only two squadrons strong and, I think they may have actually been a single strong squadron but I can't remember off hand. Whatever way it was, I decided to make them as two regular squadrons as they appeared during The Hundred Days. I already did the Black Hussars the last time I was painting Napoleonic's but I included them here to show the unit as a whole.

This is a really nice little unit with a great history. In General d'Armee they are considered a small unit and when brigaded with the Lutzow Hussars make a nice little mobile force. In an 1815 scenario they will combine to make the full 6th Uhlan Regiment.

I don't know what flag they carried and I can't find anything definitive. One picture I have seen claims to depict the infantry carrying a blue flag which is actually the standard of the 2nd Battalion of the 35th Regiment of 1806 whilst the troops depicted are not the Lutzow Friekorps. So I just chose a cool looking flag for the infantry and made a smaller pennant using the same design for the lancers. I'm not sure but I think I might have actually created this flag from various sources. Or maybe I didn't. I can't recall.

As mentioned above, I did these hussars a while ago. I just decided that now is a good excuse to take more photo's of them. They are made from Perry French Hussars with spare heads from the Perry plastic Prussian Infantry box. I recently bought a new box of the French Hussars and with the 4 leftover figures from this set I'll be able to make a full regiment when I get around to painting them... (That's what I said... When!).

These little fellows have already been on the table so they're battle hardened and they can lend their experience to the new uhlans when they take the field.

One great thing about this unit is that I have been listening to an audio book called Waterloo by Tim Clayton and there were a couple of examples of the 6th Black Uhlans in action whilst I was painting them. I told them; "That's you guys he's talking about. I hope you're listening because you have to live up to the real thing!"