The emperor’s cousins: Tirailleurs Corses

 The promised pics on my second new unit; Tirailleurs Corses (AIP Napoleonic French in Brown).

As mentioned her there is some uncertainty as to the units uniform color, but I have gone with the more unusual brown because they are more distinctive in a sea of French blue, and they were available (a key virtue these days!) https://www.napoleon-series.org/military-info/organization/c_corses.html

While this unit was historically part of II Corps (and thus outside scope of my “French left” scenario), the availability of the new AIP sets (and dearth of other available troop options these days) lead me to decide to create this unit and make it part of the Lobau defense garrison under Reynier, which will be an optional part of (some of) my scenarios (particularly those involving Austrians getting close to the French bridges).

My Reynier OOB includes historic units;

 Saxon grenadier battalions Hake & Winkelmann (CTA Brit 1776 gren)

 Neufchatel Battalion (AIP French mustard)

 French 21st light Regiment, 4th bat (Hat Voltigeurs)

But also replaces some historic units with;

 Tirailleurs Corse (replaces 103rd light regiment, 4th bat)

 18th line Regiment, 4th bat (AIP French dark blue; replace Baden 3rd regiment moved to IV Corps)

Makes for a more colorful command but more importantly, one I have now completely acquired and bagged into inventory.

Cheers

Possible Hat Austrian German grenadier and Landwehr sets

 Hat is considering production of these sets from upsizing figures from existing masters used to product 1/72 sets.

https://hat.freeforums.net/thread/1211/feel-1-32-austrian-sets

Personally I am always thrilled by any progress toward more Austrian 1/32 troops!

While I had always expected these troops to be made available through swapable heads by Hat, we saw that dream die due to complications with the Austrian German Fusilier sets now in production (but not yet delivered).  

The possible new sets would be one set of Grenadiers and one set of Landwehr, each set with 6 poses including 4 action and 2 marching poses in the set (not separate Marching & Actions sets like the fusiliers).  With the Existing separate Austrian German command set including swappable heads with bearskins that is all is really needed for these (although I would love a swapable officer’s bicorn for the Landwehr), and a bugler use when converting the Landwehr to Jagers).

Cheers

Update on Hat’s Austrian German Fusilier sets

So Hat continues to move forward with getting these produced.  They shared test runs of the sprus which look good;

https://hat.freeforums.net/thread/1143/1-32-napoleonic-austrians?page=2

Still not sure when they will be available, but with the molds done well enough to produce what look like quality figures (I see no excessive flash, hollow spots, or otherwise deformed figures, and the scale looks pretty good as well) hopefully they will be for sale very soon.

A couple of new units for the French

Armies in Plastic recently came out with their French infantry in several new colors, including 2 that are appropriate for 2 Wagram battalions that fought for the French.

 First up is the mustard yellow “Battalion du Prince de Neufchâtel”;

This unit was raised in 1807-08 after Prussia ceded the territory to French and Napoleon made his chief of staff Marshal Berthier it’s prince.  Berthier himself designed the very unique colored uniforms.  

The unit didn’t arrive in the French camp near the Marshfeld unit after Aspern.  On July 5th and 6th is was part of Reynier’s force guarding Lobau island and the vital bridges over the Danube.  Supposedly it saw a little action on the second day of the battle.

It was a fairly small battalion of only 460 total at Wagram according to John Gill.

(Unfortunately for it) like so many units of allies of the French, in 1810 it was sent to the meat grinder that was Spain during the Peninsular War.

NEXT UP; the Emperor’s cousins in brown.

Austrian infantry formations; Line, Division Mass & Battalion Mass

Forgive the crappy photo, but it has been very helpful for me to do diagrams of Napoleonic infantry formations to understand them, and their relation to there own other formations as well as those of other nations,  so I thought others may benefit from it as well.

In 1809 Austrian infantry battalions were composed of 6 companies, just like the French.  However, Austria’s infantry battalions official size in number of men was much larger, the largest in a Europe.

This was because the Austrian line companies official strength was the largest as well; 

180 (German) 200 (Hungarian) rank and file +

14 NCO 

4 officers

2 drummers 

2 Zimmermen (pioneers)

And while many battalions were well below official strength by Wagram, many others had been brought back up to at or close to this level in the lull between Aspern and Wagram. 

Austrian battalion tactical sub-company units were; the half company (obvious as to what this is) and the Zug (1/4 company).  

The main Austrian infantry formations were; line, battalion mass & division mass (where here division = 2 companies).

Line: was used to engage enemy infantry (attaching and defending) and its nature is obvious.  But worth noting that the Austrians formed in 3 ranks, and the company sub-units can clearly still be seen even in this most uniform of formations. (Top of below pic)

The other 2 formations were used more when cavalry was more of a threat, or when not in the front line, or otherwise when space between units was deemed necessary.

Battalion Mass: was formed 1 company wide X 6 companies deep (bottom of below pic) multiple battalions of these could be deployed in checkboard fashion much like the smaller division masses, with artillery batteries deployed between them.

Division Mass:  was formed as 3 separate masses of men of 2 companies each (hence the name); each mass was 1/2 coy wide by 4 coy deep.  And these masses were formed with 2 up and 1 back, spaced so that they could easily form into line when appropriate. With this spacing, friendly cavalry can move around your units, or artillery can be set up in the open spaces, and any enemy cav that attacks will face lots of bayonets and support musket fire.  (Middle of below pic)

Here is my little diagram that shows each of these formations for comparison (but to be clear the units in these 3 formations would not deploy one directly behind the other as in the pic, that was done purely to facilitate comparison to each other and their frontage and spacing. 

Cheers.

The die is cast (as it were)

 So the good news is that Hat is proceeding it’s production of their 1/32 Austrian German fusilier action and marching sets!  Now almost 14 years after the original masters were shown on their site, these figures will finally be available!  Truly great news.

https://hat.freeforums.net/thread/1143/1-32-napoleonic-austrians?page=2

The bad news is that unfortunately Hat was not able to have them produced with swappable hats, so these sets can’t be easily made into Grenadiers or Jagers or anything else without cutting off their heads and finding a suitable replacement; they will ONLY be produced as Austrian German fusiliers with helmets… PERIOD.

Still, they look good, and I very much look forward to buying a LOT of them to fill out my need for Austrian German fusiliers in helmets in my Wagram scenario.  

Since I have stand-in Hungarian fusiliers (BMC Mexicans painted white) for my scenario already, the biggest issue for me now is finding figures to make grenadier battalions.  I have about 5 battalions worth of Italeri grenadiers already, but that still leaves me 14 battalions short of what I need.

Cheers!

Ideas for favorite unique figure poses

In reorganizing many of my various units some things this hobby come into focus.  My various units’ figures come a variety of different sets, made by several different manufacturers , each with their own style and often similar types of figures in their sets.  

Take Hat for instance;  many of their type of troop sets are fairly standardized to either;

1.  For a unit troop type they produce separate action, command and marching sets, with 6 different poses in the command and action Sets, and 2 or 3 in the marching sets, 18 figures total in each set.  The Bavarians, Prussians & Russians sets follow this pattern.  The upcoming Austrian sets will follow this pattern.

2. For a unit type they produce 1 combined action & marching set with 6 poses (either 1 or 2 marching), and then a command set of 6 poses, but that also includes figures for a similar, but slightly different type of troops.  Sets like this include the French light infantry chassuers, voltiguers and Carabiniers sets, and the Wurttemberg line and grenadier sets.   

I like this approach better than that of many other manufacturers that either include too many drummers or officers or flag figures, or even worse; a bunch of odd, not very useful figures, like figures being shot, oddly contorted charging figures, or those using their musket as a club. 

While Hat’s approach of focusing on the most useful poses, their sets are very efficient.  However, a downside of This approach is that many sets contain very similar poses, which can get a little boring when putting together a few hundred battalions.  Don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t trade this efficiency for anything, but it makes me apprciciate those unique poses which fit into my units where the figure are available in sufficient numbers to do so.  Here are a couple of my favorite fairly rare/unique figure poses that I find useful.

The first is actually made by Hat; from the Carabiniers set, I find this figure helpful in braking the monotony of fire lines with stand fire in front and reload behind;

The next figure is from Armies in Plastic’s French infantry set, and while I typically try to avoid kneeling figures, this pose is useful as either a skirmish, front rank of a square, or a fire line.

Another figure is from Accurate’s excellent AWI British, which is very useful in rear ranks of advancing battalions (particularly when you run out of marching figures);

I will add more useful uniques later.  Cheers!