A few pictures of a heavy cavalry regiment for each side, arranged opposite each other.
Kuirassiers #3 Herzog Albert:
Historic = 541 men in 6 SQ (3 Divisions)
Mine = 27 men in 3 Divisions of 9 each
French 5th Cuirassiers:
Historic = 589 men in 4 SQ (2 Divisions)
Mine = 32 men in 2 Divisions of 16 each
The historic, as well as my current and goal OOB of this Corps’ infantry.
There are some difference with the historic OOB, mostly for personal taste, but despite these I’ve tried to keep the overall strength, and that of the divisions, in line with what fought with the Corps on the Marchfeld. The Baden contingent includes those units that historically were pulled from the Corps to serve guarding Lobau island. The French units in Lagrand’s Division have been reduced to offset this and maintain parity with the historic OOB.
Almost met my goal OOB for the Austrian Reserve Cav divisions available on their right.
Assigned to I Korps at Wagram as part of its advance guard, this regiment had 800 men in 8 squadrons.
At my 1/20 scale they are shown here drawn up in 4 divisions (10 figures each) of 2 squadrons each.
I will post more discussion of this, but wanted to start by posting what figures I’m using to represent the types of troops, starting with the Austrians. The colors represent availability, with dark green available and representative without modification, light green requiring some modification (usually coloring), and red = not yet available.
It would be all but impossible to do Wagram without Austrian German Fusiliers, but unfortunately at the moment no company currently manufactures these in 1/32. However, Hat Industries is developing these in their standard 3 set (command, action & marching) format. The figures look great, and I very much look forward to buying many of these sets as soon as they become available.
Links to pictures of the Hat 1/32 Austrian German fusiliers currently in development.
Command set:https://hat.freeforums.net/thread/885/first-napoleonic-austrian-command-sprue
Action & Marching sets: https://hat.freeforums.net/thread/723/austrians-marching-action-input-requested
Original masters: http://hat.com/Prev/Austrian/Austrian.html
Below is my Wagram “French Left” target OOB. The target scaling is 1/12.5 for infantry and 1/20 for Cav. This reflects the higher cost & size of cav.
I will shortly post more details on the composition of the units.
Brigade Hoffmeister;
3 Battalions each of IR #60 Gyulai & #39 Duka (both Hungarian Regiments)
Light Brigade Mariassy; (plus some other light units)
1st & 2nd Vienna Volunteers, and 4th UMB Landwehr (Hussars not shown)
1st Battalion Warasdin-St. Georg Grenzer #6
Wanted to list some of the key Resources & References I use;
Napoleon’s Great Adversary: Archduke Charles And The Austrian Army, 1792-1814, Gunther E. Rothenberg
Napoleon's Last Victory and the Emergence of Modern War, Rodger M. Epstein
With Eagles to Glory: Napoleon and his German Allies in the 1809 Campaign, John H. Gill
Thunder on the Danube, Vols I, II, III, John H. Gill
Osprey Campaign Series, Aspern & Wagram 1809, Ian Castle
Osprey Men at arms;
#176 Austrian Army of The Napoleonic Wars 1: Infantry
#181 Austrian Army of The Napoleonic Wars 2: Cavalry
#299 Austrian Auxiliary Troops 1792-1816
There is more, I’ll add as I can.
A little summary of what I’m trying to do and why.
Why?
I’ve been fascinated with military history since I was a kid. It started with the battle scenes from the movies like John Wayne’s “The Alamo” and Yule Brynner’s “The Buccaneer”, which inspired countless hours digging through the family encyclopedia for knowledge of more and more historic wars and battles. Then came a Sunday afternoon local TV broadcast of the movie “Waterloo” that I recorded on VHS and watched over and over, which cemented my fascination with the Napoleonic period.
As a kid I had a fairly large collection of 1/32 plastic soldiers in eras from knights to the American revolution, Alamo, civil war and WWII, as well as a giant sandbox and some friends with their own collections to allow for even bigger battles. But unfortunately I never had, or knew there were, Napoleonic 1/32 plastic figures when I was a kid. As with most kids, playing with toy soldiers gave way to sports and other interests by high school. It was not until I was in my thirties and I saw an ad for The Toy Soldier Company in a history magazine, and received their paper catalog, that i restarted my affair with these figures. I bought some and painted them, something I wasn’t very good at, nor enjoyed. But I LOVED a the way the finished figures looked when massed together in formation. I painted about 350 of them, but my interest waned again over the expense and limited availability at that time.
About 2 years ago I started collecting again, this time with more income and a focus on the 1809 France vs Austrian campaign, and the availability of a much wider selection of figure sets relevant for that period, a goal started to form in my head; why not try to build the forces to do a game of one of my favorite battles; the battle of Wagram. Specifically, the French left, focused around the Saxon IX Corps and surrounding forces, including the Army of Italy, IV Corps, Guard, and Cav reserve. Opposed by on the Austrian side; I Korps, The Reserve, III Korps & IV Korps.
Daunting task to to be sure under the best of circumstances, but one all but impossible given the lack of any current manufacture of 1/32 Austrian fusiliers or Grenadiers. This kept my dream on the back burner, and limited the pace of my purchases, until discussions on Hat Industries (www.hat.com) forum showed that the company was looking to restart development of their long dormant 1/32 Austrians again. While these figures are still in development, the promise of their availability in the not too distant future inspired my efforts to build out the rest of the units in the mean time. And thus, my collecting shifted into overdrive, driven even further so by the COVID shutdown of pretty much everything else.
More to come, thanks for listening.
Unfortunately, I am at a different location than most of my French & allied units at the moment, but here is a couple pics of what is with me currently; a French division of 6 line & 2 light battalions.
Some recent pics of portions of my troops.
Unfortunately because of COVID my collection is currently split between my own place (in the city) and my parents place (in the country). Therefore I don’t yet have any pics of larger formations.
Descriptions of below pics (pics 1 & 3 are of same formations, as are 2 & 4).
#1. Austrian brigade including (Bottom to top); back line; Landwehr, 3 Battalions of Hungarian fusiliers; frontline; German fusiliers, Jagers, German fusiliers, Jagers.
#2. Saxon 1st division, including; Grenadiers & grenadier guards (in rear), 3 battalions of musketeers & 1 of Schutzen skirmishing.
For 1st pic; (left to right/top to bottom) Italeri Austrian, Replicants Austrian, Accurate 1776 British. I very much favor the color of the Replicants figure for the Austrian infantry. Unfortunately many producers have chose the cream color (like that of the Italeri figure here).
While the cream color may be a better representation of the color of the Austrian uniforms when first produced from raw wool, these would in use become much more white from the pipe clay and chalk used to “clean” them, making the Replicants color a much better color use in production of plastic Austrian Fusiliers & Grenadiers. As can be seen, this share of white plastic better shows the figures details than the bright white of the Accurate figure as well.
Hello and welcome to my crazy attempt to reproduce a large portion of the Battle of Wagram 1809 using unpainted 1/32 plastic figures.
At some later stage I will perhaps try to explain “why”, but for now I need this site mostly to store pictures that I refer to in discussions with producers, and of course will also share pictures and stories of my progress.
Sorry that I won’t be delivering much in the way of juicy content at the start, but building a following is not my goal here as much as storing needed pictures. That said, feedback is welcome, and I do expect to share more pictures and stories as things progress.
For now I will say that I’ve amassed about 10,000 infantry and over 1,000 mounted 1/32 plastic figures representing the many types of troops from the 1809 campaign of France and her allies, and the Austrians.
I look forward to sharing more with you.
Cheers
In reorganizing many of my various units some things this hobby come into focus. My various units’ figures come a variety of different sets...
