French Grenadier

This is my test figure for the next infantry unit in the painting queue. It’s a vintage casting of FN2 French Grenadier Charging. I only noticed while taking the photo that it looks as if a round shot has gone clean through this poor chap just below his left shoulder – perhaps I need to get a smaller rat-tailed file.

In the very last order I made to Hinton Hunt in 1973 I ordered 72 of these figures along with a few other types. I think I have explained before that back in those days I had very little knowledge about unit organisation and had no idea about the correct ratio of grenadiers to fusiliers etc. I simply made all infantry units up of 24 of the same figures so three battalions of grenadiers was no problem.

I was going to follow this same principle with my new armies but I ran into a snag because I didn’t have quite enough fusilier figures to complete a full unit and had to double up on command groups to make up the numbers (click here for a reminder). However, this has bugged me ever since so my solution will be to spilt the fusilier unit in two and add 12 grenadier figures to each. This isn’t quite as crazy as it seems as I will paint half of the grenadiers as voltigeurs so I’ll end up with two more balanced looking infantry battalions. This is the plan but I still have 23 more of these figures to paint before I get there.