I finally got to the printer and got a set of flags printed for my Piedmontese. I got a few sets of 15mm and a couple of 28mm, so if anybody is after these they are now available.
I also quickly did some artwork for the 42nd (Highland) Regiment, otherwise known as the Black Watch, for their 1756 colours suitable for the French Indian Wars and Seven Years War era. This was for a little side project where I was sorting out my lack of Scottish troops in my collection, which didn't seem right as I am Scottish.
There are loads of these already on the market, but those available for free were not to the standard that I wanted. So I went and did my own. Again, I got a few sets of these and the rest are available for sale at as cheap as I can afford.
So here are the Piedmontese finally 100% finished (except for the fact there are no Grenadiers or Chasseus - which I may add using Eureka's Saxons if they look ok).
Yet again, its taken a while from starting these figures to getting them finished. I started them away back in September 2014, so not quite a year in the painting. Quite a success for some of my figures.
As I said in Part 1, I am using Old Glory Saxons as Piedmontese as there are not are no appropriate figures available; these were purchased from Timecast UK. Old Glory are either loved or hated. My OG Austrians were great to start with but I soon discovered there are other better sculpts. These are obviously from a different sculptor from the Austrians and the details, faces, weapons etc are much better, but some of the walking poses are a little bit strange.
The main issues with the figures are the collars and the packs. Piedmontese had flat collars rather than raised, and I could find little evidence of blanket rolls.
Nonetheless, these painted up really nicely. I still have to add the flags, and although they are designed, I haven't been able to get to the printers. First my boy had chickenpox and now its my wee girl, meaning I won't get to the printers until next week. Rather than wait I wanted to post what I had done so far.
So here they are. They look a little bright, especially the blue, but that must be from the flash of the camera as they look fine in the flesh...
Here's a preview of the flags. They were created in Adobe Illustrator with a bit of shading in Photoshop.
I also found some reference pictures while searching the internet that I wanted to share. These are various Italian re-enactment groups. The one with the flag with the pale blue border is the La Marina Regiment.
According to James R Arnold's Marengo book, the Piedmontese had "Four National and ten Provincial infantry battalions". I will probably do the other four national battalions, and should probably add grenadier companied to these, but the "provincial" battalions are a little bit of a mystery, so any information would be appreciated.
One of the interesting parts of James R Arnold's Marengo and Hohenlinden book that grabbed my imagination was his reference in the Austrian Offensive in Italy chapter of his book to Piedmontese allies who fought alongside the Austrians against the French.
"To supplement the army of Italy, the Austrians hired a substantial Piedmontese force. Some of the soldiers were veterans of the Sardinian Army that had opposed Bonaparte in 1796. Four National and ten Provincial infantry battalions, each with an authorised strength of 876 men, composed the core of the Piedmontese contingent. Along with the cavalry and artillery, there were 14,389 Piedmontese troops in Melas' army."
Although these troops were never anywhere close to being involved in the battle of Marengo I really wanted to include some in my collection. Unfortunately there are no miniature manufacturers producing dedicated figures for this army, so what was I to do?
First off I visited the amazing TMP (The Miniatures Page) website and asked the question in the Napoleonic message board, and the suggestion was to use Saxon infantry from 1806. These were almost perfect compared to the illustrative references I found online - the main difference being the collars, but as I will be using 15/18mm figures then I was happy to forgive the discrepancies.
There were two manufacturers that I found that produced suitable miniatures. The first was Eureka, available from Fighting 15s in the UK. Their Saxon range is great, and although the figures are slightly slim they have a very elegant feel to them, and had everything I needed to make a start.
The other range was Old Glory, which is available from Timecast. Old Glory is one of those ranges that people seem to either love or hate. I've built a few battalions of Austrians using their figures and I'm happy with how those turned out, but there are clearly different sculptors in their ranges. Their Saxons have been sculted by a different person, and are larger figures, closer to the newer 18mm figures in scale. They are also one of the Old Glory ranges that draw criticism for there strange poses, even though they some fantastic detail work.
I decided to go with the Old Glory. This was for two reasons. The main was cost, but the other was that these were to represent Piedmontese soldiers who were of poorer quality, and I kinda felt that the poses looked less disciplined than the elegant figures from Eureka. The other reason was cost. Old Glory figures are quite cheap.
I've painted a few as a start and was happy with how they looked. But something kept distracting me, and that was a question about the artillery. What guns would they have used? Again, TMP was an invaluable resource, with Artillery guru Steven Summerfield being the biggest help.
Again there was no clear miniature suitable for the purpose of showing a Piedmontese artillery piece - which should be a 3 pounder Mountain gun apparently - so I had to make do.
I used a Blue Moon 4-pdr French gun, trimmed some of the carriage, narrowed the axel, and built a basic representation of the quick-fire mechanism using green-stuff.
I've painted and based my first (of two) artillery pieces, along with an artillery gun crew in the lighter artillery uniform which I hope is correct for Piedmont. The gun, and Saxon figures are not perfect but I think it are good enough at this scale. The figures are Eureka, and I can see where I need to do a little bit of touching up on the details. Any comments would be welcome....
Here are some of the Piedmontese infantry that I've started....
