Baden Garde du Corps

 

This is my final unit for my Grand Duchy of Baden contingent, the Garde du Corps. These are metal Piano Miniatures, and they are excellent. I doubt they were ever in action but they will be at some point in my wargaming world - they’re too good looking to ignore.Barry painted these for me and I did the bases.

More Brazilians

My final unit of Alliance cavalry is this Brazilian regiment which could be either regulars or National Guard. 

Being Brazilian they are in as close to a thin vertical column as I can manage. 

I have one more battalion of Brazilian infantry to do, then that’s the lot for the Alliance. Well, maybe apart from a few tabletop fripperies.

An Italian Wars Oddity Perhaps....? A Blast from the Past!

 Many, many years ago, by which I mean 30 or so, I had a Games Workshop Dogs of War army. I'm not ashamed to admit to this any more than I would be ashamed to say if I was an addict of some sort. I had all the available units and single figures but they are now long gone, having sold them for an impressive sum, at least for the early 1990s.

This is the only figure I have remaining, discovered in a box of bits and pieces. It is the Lucretia Belladonna character miniature. I painted her last week and she will now join my Italian Wars armies as a female character (maybe Lucretia Borgia or Catarina Sforza). I am quite pleased with how she has turned out, especially as all bar the face (and boobs) were done with paint pens.

Napoleonic bits

 Not much to report. I’ve got some Bavarian light infantry doing skirmish-type stuff. These are Piano Miniatures 3d resin prints. 

Next we have Saxe-something-or-other riflemen who were attached to the Prussian army in 1806. They were only a small unit of perhaps company size but I’ve done a full battalion ‘cos I can. These are from a German firm whose name escapes me. IIRC I bought them at a pre-Brexit Crisis show in Antwerp. 

That's all for now.

Two new Bob Marion originals

 Two more wonderful examples of the late Bob Marrion’s work just back from the picture framers. I acquired quite a few (maybe 20) to add to my collection for about £5 each. A bargain. All I need now is enough wall space to display them. I particularly like the triptych of French Imperial Guard Sappeurs (I think?) and the other shows all the different contingents that made up one of the Confederation of the Rhine regiments.. 

More to follow…..

More North Star 1672 Personalities - Wot I Did Instead of t’Other Partizan.

I managed to finish these personalities over the weekend. I’m quite happy with them and again much of the work was done with paint pens rather than a brush. 

This is the Great Conde on foot, accompanied by D’Artagnon.

The real d’Artagnon.

Conde again, on his horse.

William of Orange.

D’Artagnon again.

 These photos remain awful as I need to get a new phone - my excuse but the lens seems to be stuck in ‘permanent fuzzy’. What is about workmen and tools? They look much better in the flesh so to speak.

And yes, I didn’t make the Other Partizan on Sunday as there was no chance I would survive two hours each way in the car and several more of circling around the exhibition hall as my back, though improved, is still buggered. 😢

The Sailor and the Dancing Girl.

Andy Copestake’s latest, The Sailor and the Dancing Girl is exactly the kind of book that reminds me why history is far livelier than anything my school textbooks ever managed to suggest; at least the ones I was given clearly missed a few chapters.

Set in the closing years of Mughal power, the book gathers together soldiers, adventurers, political operators, mercenaries and a splendid cast of people who seem to have treated caution as a minor inconvenience. General George Thomas and Begum Somru give the story plenty of drive, while the campaigns, shifting alliances and ambitious scheming make even the most difficult modern committee meeting look calm and orderly.

One of the pleasures of the book is the range of personalities who wander, march, plot and occasionally blunder their way through its pages. It is remarkable to see European adventurers not merely turning up in India, but rising to command armies and influence local struggles for power. The military detail is another strength, giving a vivid sense of a world in which authority was constantly shifting and tomorrow’s ally might very easily become next week’s problem.

What Andy does particularly well is bring this extraordinary period to life without letting it become a dry march through dates, battles and uniforms. The people involved feel properly vivid, the narrative has more than its fair share of twists, and I found myself wondering how some of them managed to get from breakfast to supper without accidentally starting another war.

The illustrations add a great deal too: colour plates depicting various troop types, black-and-white photographs of places and surviving objects, contemporary portraits, drawings and some very useful maps of battles as well as ones of the theatre of operations. I was especially grateful for the maps, as my grasp of Northern India is not quite as confident as my knowledge of the south; in other words, they spared me more than one geographical embarrassment.

Warm, engaging and full of fascinating detail, this is a thoroughly enjoyable read. I would happily recommend it to anyone who likes their history served with adventure, intrigue and a generous helping of wonderfully eccentric characters. Another good one Andy.

ISBN: 978-1-806722-55-6 213 pages Paperback