Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Age of the Big Battalions => Topic started by: Chillyray on 21 May 2024, 04:49:52 PM
-
I am painting up some epic scale Prussians at the moment. I really like the figures and will post some pics when my dragoons are finished. The horses are excellent, very lively poses and they paint up very well. 1813 and 1814 are the campaigns that interest me mostly. Something that I am curious about is the descriptions from Warlord Games of their old guard Chasseurs as middle guard ? They are the same figures as the old guard Grenadiers! All the references for the middle guard online show the the middle guard in shakos with big plumes and lots of lace. They are never depicted wearing bearskins! The old guard seems to have been made up of Grenadiers and chasseurs, both wear their characteristic bearskins and both carried eagles? If anyone can add some light to this topic I would be most grateful.
-
Chasseurs a pied were Old Guard. Their bearskins didn't have the front brass plate, plumes were red over green.
AFAIK the Middle Guard wore shakos.
-
This all stems from wargames of the 70s and 80s, when classifying the French forces in the 1815 campaign, making a distinction between on the one hand the 1st and 2nd Grenadiers and Chasseurs a Pied, and on the other hand the 3rd and 4th regiments of the same. Every rules designer knew and had to reconcile two things:
(1) They all believed implicitly that the Old Guard could never, ever rout - they might die to the last man but they were incapable of fear; and
(2) The battalions of the 3rd and 4th Grenadiers and Chasseurs that made the final French attack at Waterloos _did_ in fact rout, albeit under circumstances that might well have caused the same result in any other troops on the planet.
The appearances were saved by classifying the 3rd and 4th regiments as "Middle Guard", despite the fact that they were not actually so designated and that the true Middle Guard infantry regiments - the Fusiliers-Grenadiers and Fusiliers-Chasseurs - were not reconstituted for the 1815 campaign. Those are the fellows you're seeing in the earlier campaigns with the plumed shakos (supposedly at one point one of the colonels of the Fusiliers made a pitch for putting his lads in bearskins, to which the Emperor replied not just no but hell no).
Warlord has apparently decided to throw a sop to the old school by designating the 1815 Guard Chasseurs as "middle".
-
Without going to my books and relying on my rusty memory, regardless of whether they wereclassed Middle or Old Guard, the 3rd and 4th regiments were hastily constituted regiments comprised of old line regiment veterans. Their uniforms and headwear were a bit of a mishmash of what could be found. Probably it is reasonable to have bearskins, shakos, forage caps etc.
I can try to have a look later, but there will be others here who will know the answer better.
The fact that the Allies could identify these units as Guard makes me think there must have been quite a few bearskins.
-
http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/Imperial_Guard_at_Waterloo.htm
The third picture shows a mixture of headgear and uniforms.
-
...
(1) They all believed implicitly that the Old Guard could never, ever rout - they might die to the last man but they were incapable of fear; and
(2) The battalions of the 3rd and 4th Grenadiers and Chasseurs that made the final French attack at Waterloos _did_ in fact rout, albeit under circumstances that might well have caused the same result in any other troops on the planet...
Ah yes, forgot about that. In any case, Cambronne supposedly said "the Guard dies but does not surrender" or "merde", depending on what source you read. But he was indeed captured in the end and I don't believe the entire battalion of undisputedly Old Guard troops died to the last man.