Rifles it is! Work in progress on the 95th

Many thanks to everyone who voted! In the end there were just a couple more votes for the Rifles but next up I'll do a squadron of the Scots Greys (the runners up), I promise.

So here is No.1 Company (Miller's), 2nd Battalion 95th Foot. The 2nd Battalion formed part of Adam's brigade and, along with the huge battalion of the 52nd, really hammered the final advance of the Imperial Guard late in the day. So I'm going to have both this battalion and the 52nd in a desperate firing line, with the 71st and 3rd Batt 95th advancing in line (being at the other end of the wheeling line, by the time the 71st had formed up the French had already taken to their heels).

So... early days but such a pleasant change to all that horrible white lace.

The Battalion was only six companies strong at Waterloo but to compensate for this, each was very large. No.1 Company had a nominal strength of 115 men. They suffered 25% casualties in their sharp exchange with the Guard - 4 men killed and 25 wounded.

The company was commanded by Captain George Miller who was wounded by cannister shot fired by a British cannon which had been captured by French troops, “They fired it three times, loaded with grape, into our square, and did great execution.”  A Peninsula veteran, Miller had received a special gold medal for his conduct at the Nivelle. He was promoted to Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel for Waterloo and died in 1843.

Man down at the front - poor Tom Plunkett!

40th Foot - finished!

This is, of course, a bit of a lie - they're not finished: I still have to base them and there are still a few drummers, serjeants' stripes, sword pommels and missed bits here and there to complete. But for the moment, they're going back in the box and I'm going to move on. My job has really picked up recently so I haven't had much time, and the 40th have kept me busy since Christmas.
The blogger stats show this site popping up on all sorts of wargaming and modelling forums - French, German, Canadian and others - and its amusing/weird for me to read people discussing my project. The two most prominent sources for discussion are a) I'm mad and b) I'll never finish in time for June 2015.
The first point may be true but as far as b) goes - no, of course I will never get close - I'd need several more lifetimes and triple my meagre salary to manage it but I love doing this - for me it's the history of each, ordinary, forgotten individual that I find fascinating, far more so than analysing grand scale tactics, the battle itself and so on.

So here are the 40th Foot forming square one last time before they go back into a box for a good while.

I'm not sure what to do next; I have a choice of the following:
1) One of the 3 Rifles battalions - all that green would make a nice change
2) Scots Greys - I haven't started on the heavy cavalry yet, and I should get a move on
3) a Horse Artillery battery - I don't have many figs yet, I was keeping fingers crossed for plastic one day. I've done an RA battery already (as you can see here) so one from the RHA would be nice.
4) one of Halkett's regiments (30th, 33rd, 69th, 73rd) - bloodied and much reduced (thank heavens!) from Quatre Bras - I'm using all Victrix for these.

I don't know if enough people read this to actually have a poll - but please, if you see this, it would be fun for me to hear your opinion and I'll use that to make my decision. It's as good a system as any even if there's only a couple of votes!

40th Foot - part 3 - nearly there

On it goes - broken the back of the buggers now and the end is (maybe) in sight.
I'm still not sure how to base them - I think I'm going to have to have one row kneeling (not 2 as I know was correct) and 3 rows standing. At the moment I have a front rank kneeling, second rank firing or presenting, third rank with muskets raised skyward and fourth rank either at the ready or resting. I'd welcome anyone's thoughts on this.

 As always, still plenty to be done - but at least most of the incredibly tedious lace is now finished.

One of the best accounts of the 40th comes from Serjeant William Lawrence of the Grenadier company - I fancy this might be him in the centre of the pic. He served with the 40th in South America, the Peninsula and 1815. His writing is very much an infantryman's point of view - he spends as many pages describing the finding and preparation of a ham and two chickens after the battle as he does in the combat itself.

40th Foot part 2

On it goes...nothing to see here, move along please...

At the back you can see a mounted colonel. Unfortunately colonels are the only choice we collectors of British 28mm Napoleonics get - Perry make 2, Victrix make 2, and Front rank make 3.

So to keep every unit unique I've put a Perry head (covered shako) on a Victrix Colonel.  This doesn't solve the problem of Adjutants (who were usually Lieutenants and also mounted). Every British infantry battalion had a mounted adjutant yet nobody makes such figures which seems odd when you consider some of the more obscure figures which are produced.

The 40th would actually have had at least 3 mounted officers, none of whom were colonels - Major Arthur Hayland (who was killed), Major Fielding Browne, and the adjutant, Lieutenant William Manning. So I'll need to get to work on two conversions to make these two other chaps - I bought some Front Rank horses last week with specifically this project in mind and I shall post updates here.

40th Foot

Not much to report since Christmas - been working on the 40th Foot who, unfortunately for me, were not at Quatre Bras and were therefore pretty much at full strength at Waterloo which makes them - with a nominal strength of 840 -  rather a large unit to do. Last time it was tartan tartan tartan, now it's buff buff buff.

I'm going to do the 40th in square which leads to the usual problem of not having enough kneeling figures. As I understand it, regulations stated that, at full strength, a square should comprise the first TWO ranks kneeling and the third and fourth ranks standing. Even with some generous donations I would need as many as 400 kneeling figs and that is never going to sit well with my bank account. So I'm going to cheat and have only the first rank kneeling and then three ranks of standing.

Here, from much later in the century, is a company square (not battalion) so only two ranks. A formation much favoured by historical renactors (all 17 of them).

Famous painting by Lady Butler - damn! Two kneeling ranks!

Hurrah! Only one rank kneeling! But again, from another war, and hardly a definitive historical source.

I'll just have to hope someone comes forward with a scrap of historic evidence for my 1-rank-kneeling, 3-ranks-standing to which I can cling!

So here are some very work-in-progress pics just in case anyone thinks I've been shirking the task.

Ahoy there me hearties!

Faced with a flat growing ever more cramped thanks to my 28mm obsessions I decided to call a temporary halt to the Waterloo project and make some space. For ages I've had a shoebox full of the marvellous Abbots' naval range - half British and half French. I finally had to accept that, lovely fun figs that they are, they don't really fit into my great master plan so they would have to go.  However, in my limited experience of ebay, it seems that unpainted figs often don't do very well, so I decided to paint them. Here are my efforts with the British crews- I've divided them into 6 sets - each with a mix of sailors, guncrew, and marines, so I hope people might find them useful for skirmish games. The basing was a bit of a quandry - presumably a sandy base (which I'd been looking forward to doing) would look odd if the figs were on a ship, and similarly a "decking" base would look odd as they stormed onto the beach! So I've gone for a neutral brown base which could be adapted easily to their eventual owner's whim.

There's some weird white discolouring on some of the bases which I shall have to fix.

Here are all six crews together

It's been lovely to have a break from 1815 - really fun figs to paint - but I'll probably leave the French sailors and Marines for a while and get back to my main project. Hopefully these jack tars will bring in a few pieces of eight which can go towards more Victrix and Perry artillery and cavalry!

Camerons - finished! I promise!

Ok this is the last time I bore you with these guys - I spent the last few days basing them and adding the names of each man to the bases. Even having deducted those known to have been casualties at Quatre Bras there are still over a hundred individuals missing - something to come back to I hope.

Here they are company by company:

No. 1 Company - Commanded by Lt Ewan Cameron (both the senior officers had been wounded at Quatre Bras). (51% casualties)

No. 2 Company - Captain John Cameron has been fatally wounded at Quatre Bras. (50% casualties)

No.3 Company - Commanded by Captain Peter Innes. (49% casualties)

No. 4 Company - Commanded by Lt McPhee - he had been slightly wounded at Quatre Bras but took command at Waterloo. (53% casualties)

No.5 Company (Grenadiers) - Captain Neil Campbell had already been wounded at Quatre Bras and was then killed at Waterloo. (61% casualties)

N0. 6 Company - Commanded by Captain Robert Mackay at Quatre Bras until he was captured. Captain John Sinclair took command of the company at Waterloo and was killed. (46% casualties)

No.7 Company - Commanded by Captain James Campbell who was wounded at Waterloo. (52% casualties)

No.8 Company - commanded by Lt John Powling who died of his wounds in England in October. (44% casualties)

No.9 Company -  Suffered the heaviest casualties of any company at Waterloo. (72% casualties)

No. 10 Company (Light) - Company commander Captain William Marshall had lost an arm at Quatre Bras. (53% casualties)

Command base - flags still to be added. In foreground is Piper Kenneth McKay and Serjeant Major Masteron McIntosh.

Each individual is labelled on the base. Pink lettering = wounded, red = killed or died of wounds.

Not enough space for one long firing line so here they are in 3 lines.

All of the battalion's drummers (except those with the flank companies) stood together behind No.8 company.

Sorry for terrible pics - I wanted to get this done and couldn't wait for any decent light in London. Had the lights on since lunchtime so no chance of taking them outside!