I can still remember the excitement I felt when I first opened my copy of
The Campaign of Leipzig 1813 (London: Osprey Publishing, 1979) by Jeff Parker with photos of figures supplied by the legendary Peter Gilder. It was produced as part of a series of Osprey wargame books edited by Terry Wise that didn't seem to go any further for some reason. One of the most spectacular images in the book was of the fighting in the streets of Mockern on 16 October 1813. A French column, preceded by a skirmish screen of voltigeurs, is confronted by an enormous mass of Prussian landwehr marching into the town square. Those in the lead had red facings and carried a red flag. I've wanted some red Prussian landwehr of my own ever since!
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| PN 18: Prussian Landwehr Infantry Charging |
I haven't done any other test figures so far, but in this instance I felt compelled as I wasn't at all sure about the best way to paint his linen bread bag and canvas knapsack, or whether to paint the whole of his cuffs in facing colours or just the piping.
The results of the experiment are shown here. The figure is
PN 18: Prussian Landwehr Infantry Charging, painted to represent the 2nd Neumark Landwehr Infantry Regiment. I chose this regiment for its attractive red facings and because it was brigaded alongside the 10th (1st Silesian) Infantry Regiment within Count Bulow's Prussian IV Corps during the Waterloo campaign.
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| Not sure about his knapsack! |
I'm not sure about his knapsack. I think I chose this particular shade of grey as that was the colour of the 1950's pattern webbing pack that I bought from the Oxford Army Surplus shop in about 1984, and after years of using it to cart around university library books this is pretty much what it ended up looking like. Not sure about how it works on the figure, however! Comments welcome.
Really nice - the knapsack looks fine to me!
ReplyDeleteLandwehr wore very disparate equipment, scrounging whatever they could. Some kit was made lcally, some was captured stuff, some being acquired when French fortesses were taken together with magazines of stores so it might well be accurate to have a variety of bags and packs. Quite few must have stored their stuff in their blanket roll.
ReplyDeleteTrousers will have varied in colour too and foats would vary from almost black to washed out denum as they were not supplued to central standards. The only item one could take issue with is the musket having brass bands around the barrel. It is a common wargamers conceit much like having silver or brass buttons on gaiters. A brass banded musket might be OK for a guard unit or a Voltigeur company or a presentation puece, but the vast majority of the rank and file had steel bands to hold musket to stock. Still its a wargamey thing to do them in brass.
Yes, the musket bands were a bit of a conundrum. I agree that steel banding would probably be much more appropriate, particularly for landwehr. I'll give it a go.
DeleteThe other big question is whether or not to vary the colour schemes within each battalion. I'm really torn about this. Uniformity seems more 'Old School' somehow!
It does and there is also the problem that there are only three positions of figure and that the clothing and accoutrements are all the same.nThere was, after all, only one original dolly. That means that the only difference would be the colours, rather than the pisition if hat, coat length, knapsack type and way of slinging it, type of waterbottle, etc.
ReplyDeleteSo uniformity is the safe convention.
Roy
Excellent looking figure. I must admit to having a soft spot for the landwehr - takes me back to the old Airfix days! Personally i would go for uniformity - the old school look demands it!
ReplyDeleteI had those Airfix landwehr too, which put me in fear of this lot as I painted them dreadfully badly.
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