Diablo Jon goes Napoleonic for 2023 now with French Provisional Dragoon Regiment

[Diablo Jon]

I’ve had a desire to do something Horse and Musket for a while I wanted horse, foot and guns to push around the table and some pageantry and fancy uniforms . I toyed with the Seven years war, the war of Spanish succession even ACW but in the end Napoleonics seemed to trump the others either because it was more colourful (than ACW) or much easier to source the miniatures and cheaper due to the availability of plastic sets (than WSS or SYW).

Once I’d decided to go for Napoleonics I then needed to decide what theatre and year. My first thought was the Peninsular war mostly thanks to Messrs Sharpe and Harper however I’ve had a long standing love of Austrian uniforms ever since I had a set of ESCI 1805 Austrians and Prussian as a kid. So when I saw the Perry and Victrix plastic Austrian sets I was sold. I wanted my Austrians in helmets (which are way cooler than Shakos imo) so that meant 1805 or 1809. Frankly the Austrians were crap in 1805 while 1809 they gave the French and their German allies a much harder fight. Having settled on 1809 I was trying to workout what division from each side, from the frankly huge armies fighting in the main theatre, to represent when I jogged a memory of the Battle of Gefrees.

Gefrees was a very small battle by Napoleonic standards and was the main battle in a side show that happened in Bohemian, Saxony and the Bavarian Bayreuth region. As a side show the forces were small and of a very mixed bag. The Austrian forces included only two regular infantry Battalion and a regiment of Grenz regular border troops the bulk of the Austrian forces being made up of Bohemian Landwehr battalions. The Austrian cavalry was cobbled together from reserve squadrons of various light cavalry regiments. On top of that Austrians were supported by some small Freikorps made up of German rulers and their followers who lost their lands after Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine the main one being the famous Black Brunswickers of the duke of Brunswick.

Against this ragtag Austrian force was arrayed the Kingdom of Saxony. Unfortunately for Saxony the vast Majority of their army had been sent to support Napoleon in Bavaria. Which meant the defence of Saxony fell on Johann von Thielmann with another scratch force including 2000 men combed out of depot battalions many of who were invalids although he did have a regiment of the Zastrow Cuirassiers. Along side Saxony was the newly formed kingdom of Westphalia under Napoleon’s younger Brother King Jerome on paper the army looked quite good but many of the men were quite raw and king Jerome had already had to weather two uprisings, one lead by one of his own trusted officers, in his kingdom so there were questions over the loyalty of these German soldiers to their French King. Jerome could also call upon some Dutch troops from the short lived Kingdom of Holland who had already help put down the uprising of the Prussian hussar officer Ferdinand Von Schill in Northern Germany in early 1809.

The French also had forces in Northern Bavaria in the form of the reserve corps made up of a division of 4th infantry battalions which were made up of raw recruits and the elite companies of the old French regimental depot battalions, some scratch artillery crewed by infantry and some horse artillery gunners and two provisional Dragoon regiments cobbled together from the 4th squadrons of various different Dragoon regiments (and allegedly so raw that hadn’t even been trained to charge mounted yet). the French were also supported by a small forces of Bavarian infantry and artillery drawn from local depot companies.

The more I looked into this campaign side show the more it appealed the lack of elite formations, the smaller sizes of the battles (or almost battles), the fact the Austrians did quite well and the variety of different units involved really spoke to me. Now I had sorted out my theatre of operations I need a rule set. I decided I want something simple and quite old school my children had brought me a copy One Hour Wargames by Neil Thomas for my Birthday a while back but I hadn’t done much with it. Revisiting the rules I decided they would fit my needs really well. The rules are very simple but the simplicity allows to me add a few house rules for flavour with bog everything down.

Now I have a plan nailed down to build several small forces in 28mm based on the forces in Bohemia in 1809 I will try to stick to units in the various orders of battle but I may have to play around with numbers especially in the case of Austrian cavalry reserve squadrons, various depot companies and German freikorps to turn them into useable units under my chosen rules. I may also bath tub some of the larger forces because, for example, I don’t want to paint 14 battalions of Austrian Landwehr or the whole Westphalian army. To kick off I painted a test battalion of Austrian regulars though I've painted many different miniatures in almost 40 years of painting these are my first ever Napoleonic miniatures. I've tried to simplify my painting technique on these miniatures as I figure mass effect is more important than detail. Even though my units are smaller than most I've seen online (mine are 16 figure units many seem to like 24 or 32 figure units) as I'm painting up both sides I'm still going to have to paint a fair few miniatures. This is the 3rd battalion of IR 10 who were part of the Austrian XI corps in Bohemia in 1809 hopefully the first of many.

[has.been]

Nice idea, logic & start.
I wish you well with this & will follow with interest.

[Armstrong47]

Great start to a very interesting project.

[Alan Mercer]

That's a good start.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Brilliant! 👍

[OSHIROmodels]

Lovely 

[vodkafan]

I very much like the way you parsed it down through a process of elimination to a workable size project that is meaningful to you, that will sustain your enthusiasm I am sure.

[CapnJim]

I like those guys.  They look great!

[Diablo Jon]

Thanks guys.

My second unit for my Napoleonic project is some Austrian Landwehr. I’m modelling my Austrian forces off the XI corps in Bohemia (Czech Republic today) which contained 11 battalions of Landwehr (in contrast it only contained 2 battalions of Regular infantry and 2 battalions of Grenz infantry). The Landwehr were 2nd line territorial units called up in war time from men not in the military. They were equipped by the state and were meant to be uniformed but from what I can tell this wasn’t always the case. When I found an order of battle the Austrian XI corps I was pretty chuffed as it gave me the names and battalion numbers for all the Landwehr battalions for example 4th Koniggratz. Rather naively I thought this would make tracking down the uniforms and flags of the units easy but it turns out Landwehr uniforms and flags, in 1809, is a bit of a murky area.

Firstly Bohemian and Austrian Landwehr had different uniforms. Those from inner Austria tend towards grey uniforms with red facings those from Bohemia, which is were all XI corps Landwehr originated, tended toward blue trousers with Hungarian knots, long boots with Brown coats and red facings and black equipment. That’s when uniforms were available it seems some units actually wore civilian clothing under a long grey coat (possibly with blue epaulettes) to give some uniformity. For head wear the corsehut, the round hat which seems to have the most popular in Bohemia and various civilian style hats were in use however in the case of the Prague volunteers they wore a shako. There is some suggestion that some Landwehr units adopted the facing colours of the infantry regiment recruited in their area rather than the standard red so the Saaz Landwehr might have adopted orange facing to match Infantry regiment No.42 for example. On top of this, other than some units from Prague (none of who where in Xi corps), there doesn’t seem to be any info on what individual Landwehr battalions were wearing. Where with regular Austrian infantry regiments you can easily find facing colours and button colours with a quick internet search or in numerous books when it comes to the Landwehr (at least the Bohemia ones) there doesn’t seem to be the information out there.

Flags are another issue there is some debate about whether the Landwehr carried any, and if they did, if they were old pattern flags from before 1806 or possibly special flags bearing any Austrian Ordinärfahne on one side and a local coat of arms on the other. Honestly by now my head was starting to hurt. To compound my stress slightly more my kids had brought me some lovely Victrix Landwehr that are very nice but their uniform is more suited to inner Austrian Landwehr (for example they don’t have long boots, Hungarian knots and only have an option to wear the corsehut) than Bohemian Landwehr that I wanted to use. In the end I just decided to say b*****ks to it I’d paint up my Victrix Landwehr as best as I could to represent Bohemian Landwehr. They might not be quite right and they might give button counters the cold sweats but they will do the job. It’s the same thing with the flags I’ll give them normal Austrian flags because frankly its the easiest thing to do.

So here are some pictures of my second Austrian unit some (maybe not quite right) Bohemian Landwehr

[Grumpy Gnome]

Another great unit! 👍

[OSHIROmodels]

Brill 

[CapnJim]

Another great unit! 👍

And a hearty +1 to that!

[Freddy]

Great looking models!

[MaleGriffin]

Great looking troops! They're ready to get stuck in!

[vtsaogames]

This your simplified painting technique? Holy Moley.

Great choice for a project, all those landwehr and the sweepings of the depots. I assume you've found the OHW groups.io folks, should you want to bolt an extra rule or two onto the basic framework. Waiting to see your first battle report. With OHW, hopefully you can get your kids involved.