Will's War of Spanish Succession

[Minuteman]

Fine work, I see that your WoSS forces are expanding nicely!

As your various units show, French Dragoon regiment uniforms of the period used pretty much the whole colour spectrum, and painting these five regiments in their different colour schemes does achieve the dual aims of (a) creating a lot of variety and (b) making them easier to pick out on the tabletop.

The Dutch dragoons are interesting, and there is little enough information on exactly what Dutch dragoons wore as headgear...so the fur lined cap as per French Dragoons is prefectly reasonable. When I get around to it, mine will be Dopf Dragoons in red coats with white facings, and will wear tricornes...but this is as much because I have a significant number of Zvezda dismounted GNW dragoons in my stash, and these need a role.

[Peter]

Wonderfull painted Dragoons Will!

But I miss "Santa's Dragoons"!

[Fire at Will]

Time seems to fly by, I am way behind with my plan for the month. I had taken account of my weeks holiday, but on returning all my painting efforts have been diverted to 1:1 scale redecorating the hall. Still I have managed six cavalry units, three each of British and French.


Magnac's brigade, made from the Strelets late war dragoons painted as horse as I have plenty of dragoons


Regiment de Fourquevaux


Regiment de Abusson


Regiment de Vivans


Wood's brigade, again Strelets figures, British regiment of horse late war.


The Queens regiment of horse commanded by Lumley


Earl of Plymouth's regiment of horse commanded by Wood


Duke of Shrewsbury's regiment of horse commanded by Cadogan

[Kekso]

If there will be plastic shortage you'll be one of responsible persons. As always, nice paint job.

[Peter]

Great painted cavalry Will!

[Minuteman]

Fine work, and a continued high level of productivity despite the need for you to carry out a 1:1 Hall redecoration (hopefully not in British scarlet)! Quite where you find time to do all of this is remarkable.

I do like the 'late war' cavalry sets from Strelets, even though the 'chunky' appears to be creeping back into their design/sculpting a bit. But these two sets are full of character, and the French 'Late War Dragoons' (a.k.a 'Line cavalry') is a particularly useful set for creating lines of cavalry awaiting an order to advance.

I see you have mounted Shrewsbury's 'at ease' troopers on moving horses...nothing wrong with that of course, although the chap with the clay pipe might have some difficulty 'lighting up' on a moving steed?

Keep up the good work!

[Susofrick]

Looks great!

[Rich W]

Nice work again Will! What's next?

[Fire at Will]

My finalFrench dragoons are now deployed on foot, they are the Strelets French dragoons skirmishing, and to make up the required numbers I have added some Zvezda GNW Russian dragoon horse, which are a close fit. Again I have picked units to give a variety.


Bretagne


Rohan Chabot


Vasse


These are the last WSS figures in my stash and I'm now awaiting Strelets restarting production so I can acquire more of their promised sets.

[Peter]

Nice painted figures again Will!

[Minuteman]

These look very good, well done!

Mixing in horses from the Zvezda dragoon set(s) looks fine here, even though the Zvezda horses are a bit more 'race-horse' looking than the sturdy Strelets steeds.

With a fair number of Strelets WoSS sets yet to be released and on hold during the present hostilities, it is inevitably a case for us collectors of considering whether to wait and hope, or forge on with the sets that are available.

[Rich W]

Great job again. I think the dismounted dragoons set is one of my favourites by Strelets in this range.

[Fire at Will]

I could easily have painted all the new Strelets Garde do Corps figures as that unit as it comprised eight strong companies, but instead I only painted one "company" from that unit and painted the rest as Gendarmerie de France.


For the Garde du Corps company I selected the 1st Scottish company, this will join the Grenadiers a Cheval and Gendarmes of the Guard in my Maison du Roi Brigade


The Gendarmerie also formed a strong Brigade and I selected the Reine, Dauphin and Bourguinon companies. I much prefer the paper flag I used for Bourguinon rather than my attempts at hand painting the moulded on Strelets flags.

[Rich W]

Very nice Will. The Garde de Corps set is an absolutely superb set of figures. I like the idea to convert some to Gendarmerie, who had such a busy role at Blenheim. Have you found many uniform references for the Gendarmerie for WSS period? Is there much difference in uniforms (apart from colours obviously!) between them and these Garde de Corps figures?

[Fire at Will]

Very nice Will. The Garde de Corps set is an absolutely superb set of figures. I like the idea to convert some to Gendarmerie, who had such a busy role at Blenheim. Have you found many uniform references for the Gendarmerie for WSS period? Is there much difference in uniforms (apart from colours obviously!) between them and these Garde de Corps figures?

According to Robert Hall

The coat was completely red, laced in silver, waistcoat buff leather, a bandoleer of buff leather bordered in silver. Around 1700 the cuffs were round. [Guerard] Beginning 1730 the bandoleer was distinguished with the particular colour of the company which also appeared in the cord of the sabre or sword, on the trumpet-flags and the kettledrum covers. Note that the distinctive colour was the same for those companies which formed squadrons but that the leading company had a darker shade than the second. The cuffs were round and pockets horizontal, breeches and stockings were red, the hat bordered in silver and with a black cockade. The horse furniture was red with the monogramme of the company in silver. [Susane] The monogrammes are shown in the plates. Unlike the Gardes, the musicians of the Gendarmerie did not have false sleeves at the back of the coat.

To help distinguishing the units I used their bandoleer colour used after 1730

[Minuteman]

Very nice Will. The Garde de Corps set is an absolutely superb set of figures. I like the idea to convert some to Gendarmerie, who had such a busy role at Blenheim. Have you found many uniform references for the Gendarmerie for WSS period? Is there much difference in uniforms (apart from colours obviously!) between them and these Garde de Corps figures?

I agree, nicely painted figures making an impressive wargames brigade of French Maison du Roi cavalry. Fine work!

With regards uniforms: I think the Strelets Gardes du Corps set and the Gendarmes/Chevaux-Legers set are sufficiently similar as to enable some mixing of these sets to create units. The obvious difference is that the Gardes du Corps have the distinctive cross-belt, with its square pattern. The cross-belt supports the carbine, which in the Gardes was apparently often rifled. The pattern on the cross-belt also denoted, by colour, the different company colours: 1st (white) was the 'Scottish' company; in 1698 the 2nd company was blue, 3rd yellow, and 4th green. (source: Rene Chartrand).

In the Osprey Campaign 275 'Ramillies' book by Michael McNally, the Order of Battle of the Maison du Roi Brigade (Montesson) is given as:

The Maison Rouge: 1 squadron each of Chevauxlegers; Gendarmerie; Grenadiers a Cheval; and 2 squadrons of Mousquetaires, giving a total of 1,060 officers and men.

The Gardes du Corps (Maison Blue): 4 companies, each of 2 squadrons, giving 8 squadrons and 1,720 officers and men.

[Fire at Will]

After what seems an age I have finished painting some units. These are the Strelets British Dragoons and I have painted the units from Ross's Dragoon Brigade plus one extra.


James Wynne's Regiment of Dragoons later the Royal Irish Dragoons


John Hay's (Grey) Dragoons later the Scots Greys, some writers think they rode grey horses, but the Grey Dragoons title came from the coat colour immediately prior to the WSS and there is one picture that might show a couple of dragoons from the regiment on grey horses at Schellenburg.


The Erbprinz von Hessen-Kassel Dragoons made up the third regiment of the brigade


There were only two British dragoon regiments that served in Flanders through the WSS, so for a third I added Cunningham's/Killigrew's Dragoons that served in Spain

[Beano Boy]

Very interesting to read the comments along with the added information of the uniform colours of those regimental galloping fellows of heavy horse. Great sight to see them all painted up too. BB

[Rich W]

Great stuff again Will!

[PaulRPetri]

You are a painting machine Will!! Great stuff!!