Sunday 25 July 2021

Napoleonic era Swedish artillery created

Digging through the boxes of lead can lead to interesting projects.  I found a few Old Glory 1809 British artillerymen which is a bit early for my interests but more importantly for which I have no guns.  However I was just researching the uniforms of the Swedes during the Napoleonic wars (that is a very obscure topic and apparently even the Swedes themselves have little knowledge in the topic as there is dearth of information to be found in their archives if the old researchers are to be believed).  However in my hobby-within-a-hobby old papers consulted, at least one of the Swedish artillery unit's wore peak-less shakos in my 1813 time-frame and which to my wargamer’s squint, the version provided in the Perry’s British Hussar box would suffice.  I simply loped off the British heads and replaced with these plastic versions.  For the gun, I found an old miscellaneous howitzer to be painted a ‘bluish-green’ 




The bluish-green of the gun carriage is a guess. But I had not used that colour for awhile so what the heck!  The space on the back of the base is to attach a label with the Corps commander's name for identification during the game (a blue artillery unit look all the same from three feet away!) The thick base is used as we have down many units in plastic and encourage players to handle the base than the somewhat fragile figures so the thick base is easy to handle.


ed. note:   I missed the 'white collar' notation so must go back and repaint them.  Sounds a bit wrong having the collar a different colour than the cuffs but the Swedes certainly did have a different fashion sense in this era! 

ed. note No.2:  the buttons need to be white metal apparently and the shoulder straps need a repaint and I painted the plumes the white rather than yellow - Wow, I really did not read that caption well enough! Luckily I got the correct headdress glued on I think.....