28mm - Napoleonic French 21e Legere Regiment - Perry Miniatures

This has been a serious venture! I think most of my free time of the last month has gone into painting this battalion of the 21e Legere.   I'm not complaining though - it is nice to have a project to look forward to coming home to each evening and these have been so interesting to research and paint.

The 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 21e Legere Regiment  were heavily engaged at several of the major battles of the Peninsular War.  Notably they were in the thick of it at Albuera in Gazan's Division in the main infantry attack on the British and Spanish centre. 

I decided to paint up 12 figures at a time to make this project manageable.  Doing all of them in a production line would have been intensely painful!  Progress could be measured and the 'win' of completing 12 figures was the spur to doing a further 12.  I started with the Carabiniers and Voltigeurs as they are so interesting.  

I chose to paint up the 21st Legere mainly because of the actions they were at.  On researching this regiment I discovered that they were an early recipient of bearskins for the Carabinier company.  In addition (and unexpectedly), source material showed that they wore the shako plate on the front of the bearskin.  This presented a potential issue in how best to represent this.  I decided to use my modelling blade to carve the plate into the fur and then paint it on. Much of the plate would be behind the bearskin cord anyway.

I saved the Command stand until last along with the final Chasseur stand.  I realised at this point that I had not checked to see if the correct flag was commercially available!  Thankfully it was - GMB Flags to the rescue.

My only regret with the command stand is that it looks so 'busy'  I should perhaps have reduced it by a figure, but then, which would I lose? I really liked all of the figures so did the best I could to get them all on and leave space for the flag.  I could have gone for a larger stand, but for gaming purposes I try to keep my troops in close order to give that 'look' and to maximise the use of space on the table.  In the end I stuck with 6 figures, but alas, some of the fine detail on the command set is slightly harder to see. A small sacrifice but there we are.

The voltigeurs with their tall plumes are absolutely spectacular. It was a joy to see these come into fruition.

I thought that the Chasseurs would be the least interesting being the bulk of the battalion and not being in the elite companies, but this was far from the case.  I really enjoyed seeing them develop as each colour was carefully applied and I think they have quite possibly my favourite French uniform.

I try to make the troops a little less 'parade-ground' and hint more towards campaign with showing the use of local brown cloth and different colour greatcoat/blanket rolls.

It is recorded in primary sources of the French putting on their best uniform items and plumes prior to battle, so I bear this in mind to avoid going totally ragged with uniforms and keep things looking plausible with a lean towards smartness.

It has been so interesting to read more into how the Legere were used on campaign.  It would seem that the Legere were known for their aggressive attitude.  This possibly comes from the way they were often used to spearhead assaults, rather than just skirmish, which is how they are often portrayed.

I must caveat this post on the 21st by saying that there were some things that I had to make best guesses at with uniform colours. So much seemed to be at the whim of Regimental colonels and not everything was recorded.  It is possible that towards the later campaigns, much more brown was used to create the uniforms. I have found one illustration showing them with a full brown uniform of Spanish cloth. I opted to go slightly earlier in the campaign to when the illustration was set, so hopefully having more of the blue uniform would be more accurate.  

I made a best guess with the red topping the plumes, which seemed common with many Chasseur companies of Legere, but not in all regiments.  I hope I got this one right but we might never know (I'm not changing it now!). 

More Napoleonics to follow...I'm on a roll and finally playing General d'Armee2...just solo so far but what a brilliant Napoleonic set of rules they are. Very inspiring!