Russian Napoleonic Queries

[SJWi]

I am about to start a 6mm Napoleonic army part of my group's project to game 1812-15. I drew the Russians, and have a few questions as I only have two Ospreys as reference material;

Did Russian infantry regiments have their own skirmishers. I know there were separate Jager units but I have seen one reference to regimental skirmish lines. I ask as we may portray our units in line with a skirmish screen.

Secondly, can someone recommend which shade of green to use for the uniform? My preference would be a Vallejo or Revell Aquacolor as they are the ones easiest to source.

Thirdly, any easily locatable books as reference material?

Thanks
 

[Jemima Fawr]

As I understand it, each infantry battalion (and jaeger battalion, for that matter) included a flank company that was split into a grenadier platoon and light platoon, though I've no idea re skirmishing tactics or effectiveness, sorry.

The light platoon in a regiment's 1st battalion had yellow pompoms, with yellow-over-green for the 2nd battalion and yellow-over-light-blue for the 3rd battalion (the 3rd battalions normally stayed in depot, though some divisions sent their 3rd battalion flank companies to war as combined grenadier regiments).

[Tony Barton]

The green should be very dark, described at the time as " almost black ". I use Vallejo Black Green 70.980 , and add Dark Prussian Blue 70.899, and then a dash of red. You might need to experiment a bit on a palette to get proportions. My basic premise is that it was the same dye mix as dark blue, ie Indigo, with yellow dye ( almost certainly Weld) added.
At the risk of beefing on about a personal obsession, dark blue uniforms at the time were also very dark, though you would hardly guess that by looking at most wargame figures.....and the Dark Prussian Blue most people use for dark blue should be darkened by adding red.
Works pretty well.

[SJWi]

Thanks, since I posted this I've remembered that I have a set of Russian postcards depicting the army of 1812 which I bought on holiday there in I think 1986. The green is indeed darker than you see in some gaming websites plus with Google Translate I can finally almost read cyrillic!