So I did order additional Hat Carabiniers in the new true French blue! Lol

 Decided to buy another 5 sets of the Hat Carabiniers in the latest dark blue of the recent restock to (re)make my 2 guard Chasseur bats.  

Will use the turquoise Hat Carabinier figures formerly used for these Bats somewhere in the similarly colored Army of Italy. And to spur further improvements to my Army of Italy, which includes 2 bats made from Hat Elites in greatcoats, I also bought 3 boxes of the recent restock of this set (which I hope is in the same turquoise as my existing Longcoat figures, or I have a new problem).  Perhaps I will use these as part of a build out of Broussier’s Div (which until now I have not done because I reassigned it to the French right as emergency reserves to counter Johann’s army approaching from Unter Siebenbrunn).  We shall see what opertunities this creates.

As for the Austrians; after assembling all the I Korps Fusilier Bats/Regiments I kinda lost some steam (as I Korps alone has about 1,800 figures).  Still need to assemble all the German Fusilier units in III, V & VI Korps.  I have purchased them, just not put together the figures or units yet; Although I have assembled & organized all the command figures for each of these battalions.

Cheers!

Latest haul and the issue of inconsistent figure production color

 Latest haul

So I’ve been looking to change up the figure composition of some of my units that use Hat foot Chasseur so was very happy Hat did a restock of this set because it’s been out of stock everywhere for a few years.

Only needed 6 of a few of the poses so only bought 2 sets (each set = 3 of each firing, reloading, high Porte & advance poses + 6 marching figures).  They arrived today (which is great because I leave for 10 days thanksgiving tomorrow).

But now I have a problem; Hat decided to manufacture this restock in the darker true French blue, instead of the turquoise blue of the previous restock (which all my other figures of this type are molded in). The Chasseurs were in the same color as the Hat French command set below (that set being torquise also cusses me trouble… but I digress).

Now don’t get me wrong; I much prefer the darker blue as it is much more historically accurate and looks much better when set up (especially with a bunch of similar colored units).

BUT… to best adapt to the variation in the color of available figures, I long ago decided that I would use light blue armies in plastic & turquise colored Hat Chasseurs and Longcoat infantry figures for the French army of Italy, while the Grande Armee French would all be in the darker blue.  There is of course no historical precedent for this; the French units in the army of Italy wore the same (though often more worn out) uniform as the rest of the French troops; but it allowed me to build each of these forces at the same time and each in a uniform color.  

As of now my Hat French Chasseur populate 4 battalions: 2 battalions of 112th French infantry regiment in the army of italy, and the 2 old guard Chasseur battalions. 

Solution?  

Buy 5 more sets of the new dark blue Chasseurs and use the dark blue figures to do the Guard Chasseurs, while the turquoise figures (with a lot of unused extra figures now) stay just in the 112th regiment. I hate having so many unused figures (while having to buy new ones as well).

Cheers

Hat Hungarian fusiliers in shako

 Fingers have been crossed and it looks like these are progressing to production soon!

https://hat.freeforums.net/thread/1184/hungarian-infantry-size-testing-stage

Austrian Infantry Regiments by region

 In the time I was waiting for the Hat Austrian sets to come out I dug into any information I could find about the Austrian army, the most relevant parts of which I have stored in the Excel file that has all my plastic soldier inventory and OOB.

The geography of the Austrian Army’s units was one of these subjects.  Managing a multi-ethnic/lingual army presented certain challenges to the Habsburgs; from basic issues of communication to more complicated considerations like moral and level of interest/investment in (or in the case of their Polish subjects of Galicia in 1809, outright opposition to) the Habsburg’s interests/continued rule over them.  From what I understand, the Polish units serving in the Austrian army suffered much higher desertion and surrender/capture rates than regiments of the other Habsburg regions.  In the Polish theater these men helped swell the Duchy of Warsaw’s new army, but in the the main Hauptarmee this higher attrition rates are noticeable.

Looking at the Infantry Regiments it is interesting to see how heavily the Hapsburg army relied on their non-German and non-Hungarian populations.  Inner & Ober Austrian together account for less of the infantry regiments than less reliable Galicia, while the Bohemians & Moravians/Silesia (which I see I misspelled in the above chart) provided almost 40% of the regiments.  Meanwhile Hungary-proper provides only 7 regiments, less the the 2 other “Hungarian” regions together do.  The Hungarian nobility and their historic privileges severely limited their contribution to the Habsburg’s military.  

It was rare in 1809 for regiments from different regions to be brigaded together for obvious reason, but it happened. This included brigading Ober Austrian IR #45 de Vaux with the Hungarian IR #32 Esterhazy at the start of the war in the VI Korps; a rarity of “German” and “Hungarian” regiments in the same brigade.

Of further interest is the mix of Korps IRs at Wagram;

I Korps; 6 Bohemian & 1 Moravian 

III Korps; 5 Moravian & 2 Galician 

VI Korps; 2 Ober Austrian, 1 Slovak, 1 Hungarian & 2 Transylvanian 

V Korps; 2 Galician & 2 Moravian

Biggest Austrian battalion fire line vs typical French battalion fire line

 One of the issues I have with most wargame depictions of Wagram is that they understate the size of Austrian battalions particularly how much larger they typically were than the mostly under strength French battalions.

While many Austrian units were eroded down, their larger starting size left their average battalion size much larger than that of the French Army.  I estimate that French line & light battalions averaged only around 565 men vs about 790 for the Austrian line battalions.

These numbers are slightly different in My OOB because I consolidate some under strength battalions in both armies; French rises to 612 men vs Austrian 830 men.

A full strength Austrian bat in fire line is more than half again as long as a full strength French fire line.

Since there were no full strength French battalions at Wargram, and many that were close and smaller than average, I thought I’d show a typical French fire line vs a full sized Austrian one.  Even this understates the Austrian size advantage, because I can’t have the Austrian bats too unwieldy, but at least the ratios in men still hold to the historic.

So here’s some pics (with Dr. Strange as the background);

Austrian IR #17 Reuss-Plauen, II battalion

 Here’s a look at the second battalion of this Austrian “German” (actually Bohemian) Infantry Regiment from Bellegarde’s I Korps, Division Dedovich, Brigade Hennenberg. 

It was part of the largest regiment at Wagram, which deployed a total of 3,516 men (in 3 bats for average of 1,172 men, basically a fully maned regiment).  In my scale of 12.5 the OOB of its bats are 89, 95 & 95 men each.

The regiment was in the thick of the fighting, deployed in the front line of the Korps during the French night attack on July 5th, and again in the front line between Wagram and Aderklaa on the second day.

Some of my favorite figures & set

Hat Industrie has made many great sets and figures, for many eras, but particularly Napoleonics. Their French light infantry sets are universally great in terms of the composition and execution of the poses, the detailed sculpting and proper scale.  

Unlike any other series of sets Hat did, for the French light infantry they did 1 mixed command set, and 3 separate “troops” sets, each set with 5 or 6 poses, for each of;

1. Chasseurs: in shakos

2. Carabiniers in bearskins (without front plate)

3. Voltigeurs: in busbys

My favorite set is the Chasseurs (3 of 5 poses shown)

But I love them all!

In fact I love the sets from this era of Hat’s production (I think around 2010’ish).  The Napoleonic sets from then are universally great, including the;

1. Wurttemberg; 1 set line, 1 set grenadiers, 1 set gren/line command, as well as 1 set light infantry & 1 set light command.

2. Bavarian infantry in the 3 separate sets MAC (March, action & command) format

3. French elites in long coats (1 set troops + 1 set command)

As I’ve been putting my new Hat Austrian German fusilier figures together and into units it makes me very focused on how the figures in a set go together, call it pose optimization.  I’m sure everyone has their own ideas what they like/want in a unit, and there is plenty of room for this.  But when trying to organize my figures into so many units efficiency is key; I don’t want to have to buy a lot of extra figures, or stated a different way; I want to try to have the least number of leftovers when I am all done.  

Versatile poses makes this much easier; so here are what I consider the best execution of the efficient flexible poses that make me happy; 

Unsurprisingly 3 of my favs are from the Hat French Chasseurs.  But I prefer the Hat Wurttemberg grenadier reloading pose, and the Carabinier marching poses to those in the Chasseur set.  The Chasseur marching pose is slightly under scale, while the reloading pose is fine, I just prefer the efficient proportions of the Wurt gren better.

More on how these make for efficient units next time.

Cheers