Napoleon’s Giant

Jean Lannes was a talented soldier who rose from the ranks to become one of Napoleon’s original eighteen marshals of France. During the campaign in Italy he personally intervened to save Bonaparte’s bacon at the bridge of Arcola and thereby earned the eternal affection of the Emperor. Some of the other marshals weren’t quite so keen on him however - notably Murat with whom he had a long running feud.

Lannes was always in the thick of things and commanded the left of the Grand Armee at Austerlitz and further distinguished himself at Jena and Friedland. The Emperor took him along to Spain in 1808 where he won a rare French victory at Tudela. At Ratisbon in 1809, when his men were looking shaky, Lannes seized a ladder and ran forward shouting “I was a grenadier before I was a marshal!” then attempted to scale the walls himself. On the second day of Aspern-Essling he was mortally wounded by a shot from a 3-pounder cannon and carried from the field. The Emperor later said of him “that he had found a pygmy and lost a giant.”

Marcus Hinton never included a figure of Lannes in the personality figure series but Roy suggested that he probabaly chose the subjects in order to represent as many different uniforms as possible rather than for reasons of popularity. So I decided to use my vintage casting of FN224 French General in cocked hat (one-piece casting) to represent marshal Lannes and here he is – in pygmy version.

What I have mostly been doing (Off Topic #12)

Those of you who drop by on a regular basis will probably notice that my Hinton Hunt painting output has been pretty weedy for the last few months. The main reason is that I became sidetracked into rebasing my 15mm Napoleonic collection. This picture shows the results of my endeavours so far.

My 15mm project has been an on and off one since 1984 so most of the figures are Minifigs old style (before the range was redesigned). I have a few of the newer Minifigs mixed in and also some more recent AB Figures bought before the range went down under. I was surprised at how nice the current Minifigs are and I will be using their figures to complete the project. It’s good to see Minifigs under new ownership as I feel the brand has been crying out for some TLC for a long time.


I’ve said before that I definitely have some sort of compulsive disorder when it comes to basing figures and most of these troops are now on their third bases. This time I have opted for the system given in Age of Eagles as I will probably use an adapted version of these rules for my games. According to Rafa this is also the same basing system used for Napoleon’s Battles so that’s a double result.

So why have I got distracted in this way? Well I blame it squarely on Noel the Garage-gamer who invited me into his wargaming heaven a few months ago (actually come to think of it I invited myself). Noel has converted his double garage into a fantastic wargame room with two huge tables, lovely hand made terrain units and literally thousands of beautifully painted 28mm Napoleonic figures (click here for Noel’s blog).


Anyway, this inspired me to look again at my old 15mm armies with a view to doing something similar but in a much smaller way – perhaps the box-room gamer? The point is that at the rate I am currently painting my Hinton Hunts I will never have enough ready to play a decent sized wargame with them so 15mm is more practical from a gaming point of view. The idea is to add to the 15mm collection via eBay with occasional units painted by myself and base everything in the same style for uniformity. Meanwhile I will keep plugging away painting the HH forces myself.

On the subject of 15mm Napoleonics take a look at Napoleonics in Miniature (click here) for some nicely painted 15’s including some of the very same early Minifigs I have in my own collection.

Hold on to yer hat

When I painted my RHA limber I had completely forgotten that I had a limber rider lurking in the Hinton Hunt lead pile so he missed out. Having just come across him I thought it only proper to paint him up and seat him in his rightful place. The figure is BN26 Gunner riding on limber (right side).

I must admit that the overall effect is now more reminiscent of someone engaged on a pleasant pony and trap ride rather than thundering into action with the Royal Horse Artillery. I think this is due to only having a two-horse team rather than the six required for a serious bit of kit. As I’ve said before this is due primarily to a lack of HH limber horses in my collection but also because such a large model would take up too much precious room on the wargame table.

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to see the King’s Troop RHA put on their display at the Devon County Show. It was a stunning sight (only to be equalled by seeing the Naval Gun Team at the Royal Tournament as a kid) and I was very impressed with their skill at manoeuvring the limber teams at speed. It gave me a small glimpse of what a Napoleonic battle may have looked like and it occurred to me that just watching the enemy deploying in battle must have been a very unnerving experience for the participants - no wonder the Duke of Wellington preferred his men to lie down on a reverse slope where they couldn’t see what was coming.

Hold yer horses

Thanks to Roy my Prussian limber is no longer a runaway and has been brought under control by the addition of an artillery driver. Roy kindly donated this casting of PN38 Artillery driver, positioned for riding horse (H/1).

I couldn’t find any uniform information on this one so I’ve based him on a picture of a Prussian train driver (no doubt this limber will always run on time) I found tucked away in my copy of Blandford’s Uniforms of Waterloo. The blurb in the book says that the train drivers were responsible for moving all the heavy equipment and baggage in the Prussian army so maybe this included the guns as well.

This is yet another occasion when I wish I had kept my original Hinton Hunt painting instruction sheets as every single figure Marcus Hinton produced was accompanied by full uniform information. If only modern figure manufacturers would do the same!

Galloping at everything

General Ponsonby has just held a full review of the British heavy cavalry. From left to right: The Grey's, The Blue's, The Inniskilling's, The Royal's (click on any image for a close up).

The Blue's and The Grey's sweep past on their fine chargers.

The Duke and Copenhagen enjoy the show.

Captain Mercer fires a one-gun salute for the Duke of Wellington.

Ponsonby leads out the Grey's.

How the Brigade might have appeared on a wargame table back in the 1960s'

RHA Limber

This is the limber to go with my RHA gun and crew. The horses (H1 & H2) and the limber (AL2) are vintage Hinton Hunt castings. The rider is almost certainly by Der Kreigspielers as he seems too weedy to be Hinton Hunt but I can’t say for sure as I have no vintage HH figure to compare him with.

Stripping the old paint from the limber and rider was quite a pain as firstly the rider’s crop broke and secondly a wheel came off the limber under the gentle scrub of the toothbrush. The crop had to be re-attached with super glue for a second time during the painting process and to be honest I’m not sure if the finished result is up to the rigors of campaign.

You may wonder why it has taken me so long to paint a couple of horses and a limber and I would have to say it’s because I’m still distracted into my on-going project to re-base and reorganise my 15mm Napoleonic armies. When I return to full-blown HH painting I will probably be tackling some French infantry but please be patient.

Mercer’s men

Captain Mercer’s battery of Royal Horse Artillery was probably the third most popular Napoleonic wargame unit in the old days (i.e. 1970’s) coming just behind the Imperial Guard Grenadiers and Scots Grey’s in ranking. It’s only fitting therefore that my little group of Hinton Hunt RHA gunners will represent the gallant Mercer’s men in my army.

These figures are all vintage castings that I have stripped and repainted. In my opinion the artillery crews sculpted by Marcus Hinton are among his better creations and I think that these lads have bags of character. In the end I settled for ochre for the froggings (Foundry 4C) for all ranks having taken Matt’s advice not to use gold for the officer. The bright yellow I used originally (see last post) just didn’t look right but I’m pretty happy with the final result. The gun is a contemporary Newline Designs model. The figures are as follows:

BN21 Gunner (firing the gun)
BN22 Gunner (holding cannonball)
BN24 Gunner (ramming home)
BN25 Officer (holding spy-glass and pointing)

I just have a couple of limber horses to complete now and the British heavy cavalry contingent will be finished. Once I’ve done this a full parade will be ordered for General Ponsonby’s inspection - it’s possible that the Duke himself may attend although rumour has it he’s not a great fan of the cavalry.