Marquis de Grouchy

Grouchy was a Johnny-come-lately amongst the glittering ranks of Napoleon’s Marshals, being the last of them to receive a Marshal’s Baton in April 1815. His career wasn’t particularly distinguished – in fact during the battle of Novi in 1799 his attempt to surrender himself to the Austrians was misinterpreted as an ambush and he received 14 wounds before they realised their mistake. Fortunately for him the story that came out after this incident was of his heroism in trying to “resist” capture.

The Marquis was a cavalryman and he commanded the Heavy Cavalry in both Spain and Russia and led the Emperor’s personal bodyguard during the retreat from Moscow. He didn’t do much to endear himself to his colleagues – on one occasion he begged Marmont to give him a sword his men had captured from Prince Yurosov (saying that his own sword was hurting an old wound by rubbing on his hip) he then showed it off in Paris claiming to have captured it himself. It’s not surprising then that history has pinned a large part of the blame for Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo upon him. Whether this is fair or not I really do not know.

I adopted a novel approaching to varnishing this figure – after spending two evenings carefully painting him I managed to accidentally drop the poor Marshal directly into my pot of Humbrol Satin-Cote. Rather bizarrely, when I had fished him out and brushed him off, he actually dried with a proper sheen rather than the annoying glossy effect I’ve been achieving of late. Perhaps this is the answer to my varnishing problems.

Hinton Hunt didn’t make a figure of Marshal Grouchy so I used FN/354 Marshal Ney with riding coat worn over his shoulders mounted on horse BNH/10 instead. This is a repaint of the scary looking figure originally posted here.