Three Brigades for le Roi du Soleil

As mentioned in previous posts I've been working on my French for the War of the Spanish Succession, or "the Marlburian Era" for those readers with a more Anglo-centric bent. These have been going a lot slower than I expected due to various reasons (including an old injury to my neck affecting my ulnar nerve not helping at all!!).

Also in a recent post, I debated the possibility of rebasing my initial bunch of units. I did a test unit and really liked the result but I then took some advice from Ken the Yarkshire Gamer (Never Re-base!!!) and decided against rebasing; even though I preferred the look of the test unit... So I re-based that single test unit to go with the rest. Then I thought: "I have more units to do and I intend to do a Gramd Alliance army too. I know what I'm like and I know I won't be happy and I'll end up rebasing them anyway at a later date. Better to do it now when I'm just starting out." 

So I rebased all the infantry (the horse and guns are fine). Sorry Ken. 

Anyway, as you can see in these pics my little French army has grown from one brigade of foot to two brigades of foot, a brigade of horse, a couple of guns and several commanders. I'm also in the process of painting up a brigade of dragoons. This is certainly enough for a small battle.

These first photo's are Tourouvre Brigade led by Chevalier Tourouvre (who'd have guessed). It consists of 1st and 2nd battalions of le Regiment de Toulouse (green & yellow flags), 1st Battalion Regiment de Loraine (blue and green flag) and the red flag is Regiment d'Isenghein which is a Walloon battalion. D'Isenghein is from another brigade but I included it to make the brigade up to 4 battalions (and because I had left over figures).

Below is a photo of the first brigade I made: Montmorency's Brigade. I've mentioned this previously but the reason I made this brigade is because the suburb next to the one where I grew up is named Montmorency. I use to live there 30 odd years back. This brigade is, of course, lead by Chevalier Montmorency.

Below is Silly's Brigade minus one regiment. The regiment s on parade are Orleans (three squadrons), Montreval (centre) and Ligonday (left). Missing is Pouanges (I have the figures and I'll paint them up when I finish the dragoons). I've based the horse differently to the infantry. The foot are on 25mm or 1" squares and the horse are on 50mm x 25mm. I'm not certain but I think they could be commanded by Mr Silly.

In my opinion these 10mm figures don't really lend themselves to close up photography as they're better suited to mass effect. At least my efforts aren't going to win any prized for miro-detail. However, I do like them. They have enough detail for a nice paint job without the need for the detail that I deem necessary for 28mm. A battalion or a horse regiment can be done in a couple-o'-three days. I've been going slower than I planned but these new additions are about three weeks work.

My cannon: Just the two for now. I don't know how guns of this era were organised. As far as I can tell there wasn't much organisation where the guns were concerned. I'm saying that one model equals 2 or 3 field guns so my little contingent is a half dozen cannon and I'll leave it at that for the time being.

And the commanders: The general at the centre and his subordinates are Pendraken - like the rest of the army- but the brigadier figures are from Van Dyke. The Pendraken command figures are lovely as are the VanDyke, the problem is, is that the VD figures scare me a bit. They are so detailed that I find them intimidating to paint. I have their French Army box and they are just too detailed. I intend to paint them as Garde Francaise and Garde Suisse because they won't fit with the Pendraken figures so I feel I need to make them as a distinct brigade.

And here's the whole little army again with the Comte d'Arco out front and ready to lead them into battle. The extra brigadier will be in command of the dragoons.

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As you can see, I made some small scale woods (I'll post how I made them at a later date). You'll also notice the buildings. These are from a collection of a dozen or so miniature buildings that my mother collected. I inherited them when she died and I've had them for a while and not known what to do with them. So I've had an idea and I intend to do something with them to incorporate them into some terrain.

I also have a Pendraken order in the post for the aforementioned Grand Alliance army. I'm looking forward to building it so I can incorporate troops from various nations. I've ordered enough figures to build an equivalent sized force and I've already started researching uniforms etc.