An Austro-Russo-Hanoverian

It's a dark and stormy night here in Wellington, but the fire is roaring in the hearth and there's a wee dram of very fine single malt parked up beside me, so all is well with the world.

As promised, I have a new general to show off. He's a beauriful old vintage Hinton Hunt RN 85: Russian General Staff General with spy glass, who had a rather adventurous journey before he finally came to me, but he got here in the end. He's painted almost exactly as specified in  Marcus Hinton's painting instructions (thank you Clive!). He is to be Ludwig Georg Thedel Graf von Wallmoden, aka Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn, the commander of my Anglo-Russian-Hanoverian corps (which I really must get round to finishing some day).

Wallmoden was an extremely capable and very highly decorated Austrian soldier who also happened to be a grandson of George II. He was a specialist in leading light troops, so in 1813 he was just the chap, or so it seemed, to  keep Davout's Corps safely locked up in Hamburg while the rest of the allied armies marched against Napoleon. He succeeded in this task very well, although he could never quite manage to corner Davout or his Danish allies. Nevertheless, in doing so he kept the Prussians out of Hanover, which was all that his British paymasters really cared about.

Wallmoden was in Russian service in 1813, so this is probably what he would have been dressed like during that year. His Chief of Staff was none other than the famous Carl von Clausewitz, who was also serving the Tsar at this point, so I'll probably need to paint him too.

The RN 85 was the only Russian General produced by Hinton Hunt so until I can get another one I thought he'd also do very well as a temporary commander for the Leib Grenadiers.

Auf Wiedersehen and Do svidaniya

WM

Half Life

I've finally finished the first half battalion of the Garrison Leib Grenadiers.

I couldn't work out why it was taking me so long to paint these, but when I thought about it for a bit the fact that it takes nine separate steps just to paint their wee cuffs and collars probably has something to do with it.

Thankfully, I was able to rescue the flags by coaxing just a little more blue out of my tin of Humbrol 89: Middle Blue by mixing the paint properly. They're still not all that vibrant, but definitely a bit bluer.

The last shot illustrates the difference in height between Garrison RN 8s, Hinton Hunt RN 17s and Lamming FI/1s (Lamming didn't do any Russians, unfortunately). The HH is definitely on the short side compared to the other two, but it's nothing that can't be cured by a bit of stand thickness variation.

It'll clearly take me a while to get the second half of this battalion finished, but I've a new general to show off in the meantime who'll probably be making an appearance next week.

Toodle pip,

WM