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 

Impressions: 2.0

 UPS (after a week of incompetence & drama) finally found & delivered the last smallest box of Austrian German Fusiliers from Hat Industrie.

My latest impressions of the figures;

Still very happy to have them, and can’t wait until they are all fully assembled and organized.  So far I’ve only been been able to organize 1 Regiment of 3 battalions (IR #17 Reuss-Plauen; the largest regiment at Wagram).

But I have to say…

DAMN it’s lot of work taking the figures & their pieces off the spru and then assembling the figures.  For all figures this requires cutting them and their equipment off the very complicated and interconnected spru and gluing on the backpacks.  

These separate backpacks I’m used to, so NBD.  BUT the reloading figures separate arm is an unnecessary pain in the ass.  Must say the construct is well thought out and executed with the arm’s peg nicely fitting into the figure’s shoulder arm hole.   But the extra time & effort cutting the separate arm from the spru and then the hassle of applying a 2 part plastic bonding glue to secure such a small is just such a hassle.  

Having now done 60 of these I dread having to do the same for almost 400 more reloading figures I’ve purchased. 

Still looking so forward to seeing them all assembled into units!

Cheers

Impressions 1.5

 Good news;  second big box from Hat showed up today; leaving only 1 small box still not delivered by UPS.

Further impressions on the figures (now that I’ve fully assembled a few);

While the loading figure looks fine with the separate ramming right arm, I wish Hat had just gone with an attached arm like for all it’s other 1/32 Napoleonic reloading poses (i.e. Wurttembergers, Chasseurs, etc) because looking ahead to attaching at least 456 of these with Loctite 2 part plastic bonder makes my head (and finger tips) hurt.

The backpacks seems slightly oversized relative to the figures, particularly in their depth.  I am using hot glue to attach them, and also cutting down the back peg these were made to hang from, so they look fine on the figures. Cutting down the peg provides room for the hot glue to bind to the inside of the backpack hole to keep it attached to the figure.  This also allows the backpack to be pushed tighter against the figure than possible with the peg untrimmed; which frankly I think would look bad as the backpacks do not fit easily against the figures backs even when the peg is trimmed.

But enough of the negatives; I am both very happy to finally have these figures and more than a little overwhelmed by home much work I have to do to get the figures completed and ready to put into units.

Careful what you wish for…

Cheers