28mm - Napoleonic French - 13e Regiment de Chasseurs a Cheval

 

As if finishing one cavalry regiment recently wasn't enough, I have now done another one!  This time a regiment of Chasseurs a Cheval, equipped and painted as the 13th Regiment in the Peninsular War.

The figures are from the Perry's box set of 14 very nice plastic cavalrymen.  As so often, the Perry's have given a lot of extras and options, so that the unit can be a little more parade ground or dressed in the later Bardin reform Spencer coat.

I opted to go for the earlier Kinski coat and gave the unit a campaign look with covered shakos  and a mix of trousers.  These are either the issued pattern or the locally Spanish fabricated versions in brown wool but with the leather trim and buttons.

I chose to represent this regiment because it was in so many of the Peninsular War battles.  At Salamanca it appears to have had the most squadrons in the field of any French light cavalry formation.

One of the added bonuses of painting this unit was the magnificent contrasting facing colour of light orange which really sets them off. I really like the trumpeter in his reverse facing coat, one benefit of going pre-Bardin reform.  The orange shade probably looks very light due to the camera flash (the daylight bulb went bang this evening!), 

The Officer was a joy to paint also. His uniform is also quite magnificent.  I bought an Osprey book just to assist me with some of the small details, though it does not take much in the way of reasons for me to purchase an Osprey uniform book!

I decided to paint the unit with pom-poms for the 4 x squadrons.  As I wanted to base the figures in pairs (I have tried them in threes previously but found it made the bases unwieldy on the board), I had to have stands where the two cavalrymen are from different squadrons.   This is something that I am ok with. When the unit is acting as a regiment I only have to place the the mixed stand between the others and it works.  The pictures of the regiment together demonstrates this.

Numbering on saddle rolls is something that I'll hold off on until I can get some transfers.  Badly painted numbers would spoil the effect, and I don't trust myself to get the numbering looking correct (my handwriting is bad enough, never mind painting digits!)

Paints used were a mixture of Wargames Foundry and Vallejo.  

I really do like the character that the Perry's sculpt into the faces of their figures. It is not to excess but they do have character!

I still have a large coffee jar of cat litter which I use for rocks.  As I probably place about 50 or so rocks in total per regiment, I might consider the coffee jar to be a lifetime supply!

I normally spray the horses with a matt varnish. I do wonder if they are little too dull and a semi-gloss sheen might be of benefit.  I guess the dust might tone down the sheen in reality. I don't spend time around horses to know how much effort it takes to make them go as shiny as a racehorse.  I might have to research this further.

The Elite Companies always look something quite special.  I kept the colpak and plumes as befitting an elite squadron who undoubtedly would want everyone to know they are the elite of the regiment.

And it was left to label up the magnetic base with the regiment details and take photos for the blog.

I'm not sure I can paint any more cavalry regiments at the moment.  The effort of painting two up  in a couple of months was quite hard going.  I fancy doing something completely different now, something a lot simpler!