This is how the Livgarde figures turned out. There are some details that need to be adjusted, but this is what the basic figure will look like. It is not catastrophic, but I was more happy with the grenadiers, who where easier to model as well. But I suppose these work OK, especially if I can manage to do some nice looking officers to lead them. But painting these reminded me of why I dont like painting plastic figures that much… I just dont like the feel of plastics (the base figure is from the plastic Spanish box by Perry).
These figures are a simple conversion from the standard Perry miniatures Swedish infantry. I am pretty pleased with these and it doesnt seem unrealistic to convert enough figures for a couple of battalions, which is what I would need.
The paints used are: Coat d’arms Royal Blue, Cda Blood Red, Vallejo Gold Brown (sash), Cda Tanned Flesh and Cda Flesh.
These plates are the best ones on the grenadiers. There is much confusion surrounding the uniforms, as they are easily mixed up with the Livregementesbrigadens grenadjärkår, which is a different unit. The weird hat has also caused the artists problems, such as is the case with Eben in the first image, who also has the color of the coattails wrong (should be white not red). (Digitaltmuseum/Armémuseum)
The regiment’s hat was distinctive and as you can see below, it was quite different from the guards’ hats that I discussed in my last post. The good thing about this hat is that its shape is so similar to the standard Swedish infantry hat that its is fairly easy to convert the figures. All you really need to do is remove some of the part on the left hand side where the hat has a fold and brass cordon (which the grenadier hat doesnt have) and then add the plume with a roll of green stuff which can then easily be given some texture with a sculpting tool.
Swedish grenadier hat m/1807. (Digitaltmuseum/Armémuseum)
Livgrenadjärregementet apparently had serious problems with the supply of uniforms in 1809. Not all soldiers had received the new (1806) uniform, presumably some would have worn the older 1792 version, which had a white collar and white trousers. Those uniforms were certainly very worn by that time. A few soldiers had the new greatcoats, as seen in the illustration above. Whether all soldiers had the new hat, I do not know. Some newly arrived recruits and reserves would have worn civilian clothes. All of this means that it might be reasonable to (for example) paint some soldiers with white, grey or brown trousers or even mix in one or two with civilian clothes.
In contemporary depictions, the confusion is no less apparent. Adelborg has a drawn a soldier wearing the 1806 uniform with the 1807 hat. The trousers lack the pattern and side stripe though. Also, that drawing may have been made later (even in 1814). The grenadiers did after all have 6 battalions, in what was in practice two regiments, and these units may well have had different uniforms. This was indeed the case later on (1816), when they were officially divided into the 1st and 2nd grenadier regiments.
In 1808, the Swedish army had several guards and grenadier regiments, with ever changing and sometimes confusingly similar names. However, only some of these troops took part in the war in Finland, and those that did did not play a key part. I will try to give an overview of the uniforms and flags of these regiments as they pertain to the 1808-1809 period (for the later Napoleonic period, uniforms changed, so this information will not be very useful for that period). First, I will concetrate on the foot guards.
In the Swedish literature, these regiments are sometimes grouped together under the title “Kungl. Maj:ts liv- och hustrupper”, “His majesty’s life- and household troops”, and they can be said to have had a certain status. However, among these troops were soldiers of different types, both enlisted (värvade) and alotted militia (indelta), so that some of them in practice were very similar to the regular alotted territorial regiments.
The foot guards regiments
Illustration A:Private, Finnish guards regiment, 1807; Private, Life guards regiment, 1807; Officer, Life guards regiment, 1807. One might think that this uniform was the one used in 1808, but that does not seem to have been the case. In fact, the jackets portrayed here were not issued to the troops until 1812. (Vinkuijzen collection, NYPL)
At this time, there were three guards infantry regiments: Livgardet (the Life guards), Svenska gardet (the Swedish guards) and Finska gardet (the Finnish guards). Because of later name changes and traditions, Livgardet is often called Svea livgarde, as the unit was later so called. Similarly, Svenska gardet is sometimes identified with the subsequent unit Göta livgarde. In Swedish, the names (Svea) livgarde and Svenska gardet are particularly easy to get mixed up, but they are and always have been different regiments. Indeed, I myself mixed the names up when writing this article (now edited).
The history of these regiments is quite complicated, but for our purposes it is sufficient to say that Livgardet was an old unit which had been functioning under the same name and similar organization since the 17th century. The other two regiments, on the other hand, originated in various enlisted regiments that went under different names during the 18th century.
To make matters worse, these regiments were renamed already during the course of the Finnish war. The king was so displeased with their performance at the landing at Helsinge in late September 1808 that he abolished their guards status and renamed them after their respective commanders. Livgardet became Fleetwood’s regiment and the Swedish and Finnish guards were merged into one unit called af Palén’s regiment.
The guards regiments had varied in size over time. Livgardet and Svenska gardet were both organized into two battalions each up until 1806, when they were reduced by more than half. By 1808 therefore, the three regiments only had one battalion of around 530 men each. These battalions participated at the landings at Lokalax and Helsinge in September. A weak battalion of Livgardet, by this time rebranded to its modern name, Svea livgarde, also participated in the battle of Sävar in August 1809.
Illustration B:Guards battalions on parade before king Gustav IV Adolf on Åland, 31 July 1808. (Contemporary painting, in a Finnish museum somewhere…)
Illustration C:Official uniform plate for the Finnish guards, 1806. Note how the private on the right wears black gaiters and no epaulettes, just like the troops in the review on Åland (ill. B). (Riksarkivet/Krigsarkivet)
Uniforms
In the 1802 model, the guards regiments wore a jacket which was similar to that of the standard infantry uniform, with a few small details which distinguished them from other troops. The most distinctive feature was bands of white lace (silver for officers) on the front of the collar, on the cuffs and across the plastron. In addition, the jacket itself had longer tails than the standard Swedish infantry coatee (which was very short). The guards’ uniform also included white gaiters. However, in the field, black gaiters of the same type as those worn by the rest of the infantry seem to have been used. Similarly, the uniform jacket had epaulettes, which seem to have been omitted in the field (see illustrations B and C).
Furthermore, over time the distinctions between the regular infantryman’s uniform and that of the guards increased, as changes to the regular uniform did not affect the guards. When the plastron was removed from the regular infantry uniform in 1806, the guards retained them. And when the model 1807 uniform was introduced, all grey with dark blue facings, for all regiments, this again did not affect the guards. Neither does the change to grey trousers, in 1806, seem to have affected the guards. Apparently, the guard units also retained the older type of white waist belt, and did not use the blue-and-yellow sash of the regular infantry. Judging by the painting of the troop review on Åland, the guards battalions were still wearing the 1802 model uniform in the summer of 1808, but with the new hat. Some illustrations, such as those in the Vinkhuijzen collection (illustration A), show the uniform jacket open towards the waist, similar to French uniforms of the period. However, the offical plate of the model 1802 (illustration C) uniform as well as the Åland review (illustration B) show the jacket buttoned all the way down. Also, the waist belt seems to have been worn over the jacket (again, B and C), not underneath it (as in A). This accords well with Bellander (Dräkt och uniform (Stockholm, 1973), p. 407), who states that the new uniform with the open front was issued to the regiments only in 1812, and that the uniform and equipment depicted at Grelsby in the summer of 1808 is indeed of the 1802 model (but with the modern hats).
Another distinguishing feature of the guards was their headgear. In fact there was a plethora of different helmet- or hat-like creations for different guards and grenadier units of the Swedish army at this time, which also changed over time. The three guards regiments previously wore a bicorne, and the bicorne was still worn by officers of those regiments in 1808. However, the private soldiers wore a tall, rounded hat with a black plume which ran diagonally across the head (Illustration D). On the left hand side, the brim was folded up, and the company pom-pom and a tall white plume was fastened in a way similar to that of the regular Swedish infantry hat. The hat had a brass cordon with an emblem on the front. The emblem showed the royal emblem (three crowns inside a crowned blue oval) for the Livgardet; a lion over diagonally white-and-blue (Göta emblem) for the Swedish guard and (presumably) a Finnish lion on red background for the Finnish guard.
Illustration D:Hat, model 1807 of Livgardet/Svea livgarde. (Digitaltmuseum/Armémuseum)
All three guards regiments wore white buttons. The three regiments were distinguished by their facing colors. Livgardet wore yellow facings. The Finnish guards wore red turnbacks and plastron, but yellow collar and cuffs. The Swedish guards wore red facings. As can be seen in illustration C, the guards also had a brass plate on their cartridge box. Officer’s jackets were decorated with silver lace, while other ranks’ had plain white worsted lace bands.
Illustration B, which was drawn from life during the conflict, as far as I understand it, is interesting not only because it tells us something about how the uniform was worn in practice. It also shows an officer sporting an interesting variant of the uniform. The blue trousers do not appear in any other illustrations I have seen, as white seems to have been the regulation color for officers as well as men. There are similar trousers in other Swedish uniforms at the time (Horse Life Guards in particular), and several authors mention how officers took some liberties with regulations to deck themselves out as best they could. The officer also wears epaulettes, in contrast to the men (although mysteriously, the opposite is the case in ill. B!).
Extant uniforms
As these were guards regiments, it is not surprising that more items of clothing and equipment has been preserved from them than is usually the case in this period. The Swedish army museum in Stockholm has a large number of items which is identified being of Livgardet and Swedish guard provenance. However, the dating of these is problematic. However you look at it, the uniform jackets do not match the depictions in the plates above, if the museum datings are correct! On the other hand, there are a couple of jackets that do look very much like the one in the plate (m/1802, ill. C). Now, the uniforms of the guards did not change all that much in the years after 1809, but they changed slightly several times. So, it may be that these are indeed later jackets. But from my amateurish point of view, the livgarde uniform below looks very much like the 1802 in terms of the cut of the waist. In 1807, the jacket was open in the lower plastron. In the later model (1815), the waist was much more straight at the front.
This must be m/1807 (officer’s jacket).m/1807 and m/1815.Illustration E: Some interesting jackets in the Army museum collection. (Digitaltmuseum/Armémuseum). At bottom, two portraits dated c. 1803 and 1808 respectively. Notice that the one on the right wears the newer (open plastron) jacket, although it is clearly dated 1808 by the artist, a date which is also supported by the armband which would not have been used post revolution (i.e. not after May 1809, when the king abdicated). The uniforms in these two portraits look very similar but apart from the open jacket, the newer model also has a shorter plastron (three pairs of buttons instead of four).
Sappers/profosser, musicians
There are also some interesting items showing the dress and equipment of drummers and sappers, or rather profosser (provosts). The profoss in the Swedish army looked like the sappers of e.g. the French army, but were really a form of military police (or executioner…) rather than an engineer or carpenter. The profoss seems to have worn opposing colors, so that the profoss of the Livgarde, with yellow facings, wore red facings and a red-shafted axe, while the profoss of the Swedish guard (subsequent Göta), which had red facings, had blue-shafted axe. The profoss also wore a bear skin hat. Some of the equipment shown below is a bit later, but I assume the principle to have been the same. The profoss jacket however, is actually of the model 1802 (according to the museum).
There is a distinct possibility that Livgardet/Svea livgarde received new uniforms in time for the battle of Sävar in 1809, but after their participation in Finland in 1808 (the new 1807 model replacing the 1802). However, in this case, the uniform would at least have been very similar to the old one and the hat would have been the same.
Jägers
If you thought that the standard guards uniforms look a little weird, you should see the guard jägers! As with other regiments at the time, the guards regiments had their own, integral jägers. However, in contrast to regular line regiments, where the jägers were chosen on campaign and marked out with different colors to their plumes and blackened belts, the guards jägers had a (very) distinctive uniform and hat. This was green, with white facings or piping. The hat was similar to the standard guards hat, but had the plume on the front instead of on the side. I would like to thank Traveller on the Lead Adventure Forums for reminding me of the jäger uniforms.
Illustration G: Jägers, Livgardet. Livgardet had a yellow collar and yellow piping, the Swedish guard had white collar and piping. Illustration by Strokirch, Digitaltmuseum/Armémuseum.
Flags
In contrast to the uniforms, the flags for the grenadier and guards regiments are quite uncomplicated. Most of them carried flags of the same type. The king’s colors (livfana) were the same as the regular infantry, only with a small crown in each corner. The company colors featured the royal monogram instead of the royal emblem, but were otherwise the same as the king’s colors.
Illustration H:Company colors of a guards or grenadier regiment (left); king’s colors of a guards or grenadier regiment (right). (Digitalt museum/Armémuseum)
When the guards were demoted in late 1808, new flag designs were created (as the guards flags clearly marked their status) (Illustration I). Whether these new designs were ever used I do not know, but they are elegant. It seems unlikely that they would have been used at the battle of Sävar. By then (in August of 1809) the king had been deposed and his successor had already been crowned. The humiliating demotion of the guards was indeed a contributing factor, although probably a minor one, to the deposition of the king. It is therefore more likely that they carried the old flags, but modified so that the emblem of Gustav IV Adolf was replaced by that of Carl XIII. Such modifications seem to have been quite common and were probably relatively easy to make. This happened again, when Bernadotte (Carl XIV Johan) succeeded Charles as king in 1818 (Illustration J). The only reference I know of is Törnquist, who states that both guard regiments had relatively new flags at the time and that the old ones (with Gustav IV:s monogram) were only replaced in 1810. (Leif Törnquist, “Colours, Standards, Guidons and Uniforms, 1788–1815”, in Between the Imperial Eagles (Stockholm, 2000), p. 146).
Illustration I:Proposed company colors of the Fleetwood and af Palén regiments (1808). (Riksarkivet/Krigsarkivet)
Illustration J:Company colors of guards regiments, 1809 and 1818 (Queen’s Life regiment and unknown guards regiment). (Digitalt museum/Armémuseum)
Figure availability and modelling ideas
Perry miniatures do not make any figures for Swedish guards at the moment. Lets hope that they decide to make them at some point in the future… But until then, one has to make do with some sort of conversion. My plan is to try to combine the heads of the Perrys’ Värmland jägers with bodies taken from their recent Spanish plastic infantry. The Värmland jägers have a hat which has the same shape as the guards’ hats, and should do nicely. The plastic Spaniards have most of the elements that I need for the rest of the uniform: plastron, gaiters, similar length of jacket (I think!?). I will need to add waist belts with greenstuff, but there shouldnt be that much else.
I should also mention that Eagle figures sell Swedish guard figures in 28mm. However, these are both quite dissimilar to the Perry figures in style, but more importantly, correspond more to 1813 and later periods. Elite miniatures and Steve Barber have ranges of Swedish napoleonics, but they are clearly for the later period and also have no infantry with guards or grenadier headgear. Connoiseur miniatures (sold by Bicorne) have Swedish grenadiers, but I do not know how these figures look and therefore not how they would work as guard figures. There is a website (digitalsculpt.se) which sells loose heads (resin) with the guard hat which could be an option for anyone who wants to kitbash together guards at a reasonable price.
There are likewise figures in smaller scales. There are 15mm figures by Naismith designs (not sure these are currently in production?), which look OK. There are also 15mm by Blue Moon; the figures labelled “grenadiers” could be used, although they have a single row of buttons on the jacket which is wrong, but perhaps not impossible to cut away with a knife. Blue Moon are otherwise good in that they wear clearly modelled gaiters. Old Glory 15:s look like they could also be an option. I dont paint 15mms and dont have these figures to hand and therefore cant really comment on the quality of the figures based merely on pictures.
In a previous post, I have tried to provide details of the organization of the Swedish army in Finland as it was fielded in 1808. It would be natural to do the same for the Russian army. However, this is not quite as straightforward as one might expect.
The brigade organization of the Swedish army was relatively stable, despite the fact that the brigades were not permanent, peace-time units (the only exception being the Savolax brigade). There were changes to the composition of the brigades and there were detachments made from them. But on the whole, much of the brigade structure, which I detailed here, stayed the same throughout the year of 1808, with the three main (1st to 3rd) Finnish brigades sticking together until the surrender at Kalix in March of 1809.
This was not the case at all on the Russian side, where the brigade structure varied widely or was abandoned altogether. When the Russians invaded Finland, the army consisted of three divisions: the 5th, 17th and 21st divisions, all of which were stationed in the Russian part of Finland at the time. The 14th division, which was stationed close by in Estonia, moved behind them as a reserve. To provide an example of the Russian army structure, I will give samples of the brigades below. However, in the battles in the summer of 1808, the divisions had become very much intermingled and the Russian forces did not necessarily follow the original brigade structure in the field. Instead, it seems that the Russian commanders organized their forces in ad hoc formations, often with one or two larger main columns, with a smaller avantgarde ahead of them. To recreate a particular battle, one has therefore to look at the organization and composition of a particular force at a particular point in time.
The Russian army was at this time still recovering from its recent defeats at the hands of Napoleon in the previous year. The divisions deployed in Finland were not up to full strength, which led to some organizational changes. The infantry regiments’ normal three battalions, many of which were understrength, were combined into 2 battalions per regiment (consequently some battalions were in fact rather big). The cavalry of the three main divisions was mostly from the 14th division, rather than their own.
Still, the three divisions had a clear three-brigade structure. Each brigade consisted of two regiments of infantry (4 battalions), with cavalry and artillery attached to each brigade.
Each division totaled between 7000 and 9000 men, for a total of around 24 000 men. This surprisingly small force was considered adequate for the task of conquering Finland. Large Russian forces were tied up elsewhere, but more importantly, it was the logistical challenges involved in supplying an army in the region which made it difficult to deploy a larger force – at least all at once. As the war dragged on, the Russians did bring in considerable reinforcements. By the war’s end in the summer of 1809, the Russian army in Finland and Northern Sweden was more than twice as numerous as the one that invaded in February of 1808.
Below are the units of the 5th and 21st divisions early in the campaign, with their strengths as given in the Swedish general staff history (Sveriges krig åren 1808 och 1809, vol. 2 (Stockholm, 1895)), which in turn is based on Russian reports and journals.
Russian 5th division, Feb./March 1808
Sevsk regt. (1164 effectives)
Mogilev regt. (1114)
Kaluga regt. (908)
Perm regt. (1004)
23rd jägers (733)
24th jägers (938)
Grodno hussars, 2 sq. (181)
Cossacks (189)
17th art. brig. (186)
21st art. brig. (187)
Russian 21st div., Feb./Mar. 1808
Velikie Luki regt. (1198)
Neva regt. (1469)
Libau regt. (1450)
26th jägers (1007)
2nd jägers (1349)
25th jägers (1059)
Grodno hussars, 3 sq. (321)
Cossacks (203)
1st & 7th art. brig. (etc.) (157)
Below is the brigade structure of the 21st division, as it looked on the march at the beginning of the campaign. It shows neatly typical brigades of 2 infantry and 2 jäger battalions, a half-battery of artillery and a couple of cavalry squadrons in each:
1st brig., Müller (later Rajevsky)
Vel. Luk. regt.
26th jäg.
1 sq. Grodno huss.
Cossacks
4 guns
2nd brig. Sasonov
Neva regt.
2nd jäg.
1 sq. Grodno huss.
Cossacks
4 guns
3rd brig. Schepelev
Libau regt.
25th jäg.
1 sq. Grodno huss.
1 sq. Finland dragoons
Cossacks
5 guns
The 5th division already at this stage looks different, with a ”main column” and two smaller detachments:
Main column
Sevsk regt.
Kaluga regt.
23rd jäg. (1 or 2 bat.?)
1 sq. Grodno huss.
Cossacks
8 guns
Detachment Bulatov
Perm regt.
Mogilev regt., 1 bat.
1 sq. Grodno huss.
Cossacks
6 guns
Detachment Turchaninov
24th jäg.
1 sq. Grodno huss.
Cossacks
2 guns
Already in April, a detachment from the 21st division (1st brig.) had come under the command of 5th division. In the battles of the summer, elements of 14th division and others had also arrived as reinforcements. Therefore, the armies that fought at e. g. Lappo and Oravais no longer resemble the original divisions and brigades very much at all. Still, these orders of battle can be useful when thinking of the Russian army in Finland in general, and can serve as a useful starting point when collecting your forces for wargames.
Having been away for a bit, I havent painted much lately. These skirmishers for my Prussians required little effort to finish and are an important element in the brigade. In fact I will need a few more.
I started painting a handful of figures for the Västerbotten regiment several years ago. Apparently, I changed track to finish the Finnish units first, so I never came around to completing them. However, I had prepared and primed some Swedish figures. After moving house, I have realised how many primed figures I have lying around, and am now trying to work through them. Finished figures take up much less space after all; and its certainly better to finish what you start before moving on to the next project – we all know this, but we all also dont follow this simple rule.
After adding these 10 figures I only need five more and the battalion is done. That will be excellent, as the Västerbotten regiment figure in a number of important battles, including Oravais, Alavo and Ruona-Salmi.
The flag which you can see in the photo above is, unfortunately, not quite of the correct model. I learnt of this only some time after I painted it. I will therefore have to scrap it and re-do it. The correct flag for Västerbotten (in 1808) is an updated version of the 1686 pattern – which actually looks quite different from the original 1686 model (which I naively used as the basis for the flag above). For this flag we have particularly good evidence, as there is both a model drawing in the archives, as well as a preserved flag (in the Army museum in Stockholm) which matches it (images below).
Ive slowed the pace of painting lately. Partly because of work, partly Ive just been tired. However, glad to be back into it. As I have detailed in earlier posts, the Prussians are speed painted to the extent that the time taken per figure is a lot less than with my previous projects. This is helpful when you dont have the time or perhaps not feel 100% inspired. You will still finish a few every week without having to work your behind off in the process. As Ive said before, they look great still, perhaps even a bit more “realistic” this way, so a win-win situation. The figures are Perry miniatures with the flag by GMB designs.
Just a small addition to my Prussian brigade. I have many senior officer and general figures by Perry and Foundry, so Ill likely be adding more in future. However, there are also huge numbers of more rank and file troops to do. I removed the epaulettes on these figures, because they were not worn in 1813, which is the campaign I am painting my force for. Prussians are some of the least extravagant looking Napoleonic figures that you can find. Even the senior officers are mostly wearing campaign outfits or fatigue dress. I do have a few Foundry generals, some of which have slightly more of a full dress look, badly needed for this army!
As a little side project, I have painted a few LOTR miniatures. They are old ones, sculpted by the Perry brothers. Ive had my eye on these for some time. Warhammer figures seem to have degenerated somewhat these days, but the old LOTR range includes many great figures. A friend has started painting some of these, so I decided to get on the bandwagon too. I took the opportunity to buy some of the older sculpts before they go OOP, as the newer figures are not in the same style – and much more difficult to put together. These guys come from a very simple plastic set. You just glue the shield to the figure and the figure to the base, and thats it. The newer figures that are just coming out have a ridiculus amount of parts, which really put me off. A new-style Eomer character figure was included in the start set that I got – Ill probably not bother with it as I have older, metal, character figures I can use instead.
Left: new GW set, right: old set. The number of parts has increased enormously, and of course they had to add the now ubiquitous “jumping” pose… I am so glad I pinched the old figures while they were still available.
Basically, the figures are sculpted in the same style as the Perrys’ historical miniatures. The painting was pretty straightforward. I did do more highlighting on these than I would standard rank and file Napoleonic figures. But I only have less than 50 figures, so its not a huge project. There are two main drawbacks with the GW LOTR figures. First, they are bizarrely expensive. Considering the fact that they are sculpted by the Perrys, the ridiculousness becomes all the more apparent! At the local hobby store, these sell for just under twice the cost per figure compared to standard Perry Napoleonic plastics. And the figures are really quite comparable: same size, same sculptors, same level of detail, etc. However, the plastics are very cheap compared to the character/hero figures. There is a command set including two foot figures and one mounted. This is comparable to a set of Perry Napoleonic generals. The GW set costs almost exactly three times as much as the Perry set. Again, same material, same sculptors, equivalent quality, etc.
Apart from the financial setback, I am reasonably happy with how the first batch turned out and looking forward to doing the cavalry and character figures.
There it is. Pretty much the whole of the core, Finnish part of the Swedish 1808 army, the 2d-4th brigades (the understrength 1st brigade effectively being included in 2d brigade). Each brigade is around 100 miniatures strong. This roughly corresponds to at least a 20:1 ratio as compared to the historical forces.
Below the three Finnish brigades, I have also taken a photo of the Swedish battalions I have done so far. These are most of 2d and part of 1st (Swedish) brigades.
Someone asked me how I decided on the size of the units. That is a good question and the answer is actually not very straightforward. A common ratio of miniatures to historical soldiers is 1:20. However, if one holds strictly to such a ratio, the numbers of figures will vary wildly and a basing system with 6 figures to a base will have to go out the window as soon as you start putting your force together. Ive seen people writing up historical scenarios detailing the exact number of figures per battalion, such as in The Last Summer and The Turning Tide scenario books for Finland 1808 by Sword and Sabre (publ. 2009). An example from those books looks like this:
(Russian vanguard under Kulnev, April 1808)
1 battalion 23rd jäger regiment, 16 figures
2 companies 26th jäger regiment, 14 figures
2 companies 24th jäger regiment, 9 figures
As you can see, none of these units can be represented with a basing solution using 6 figures per base. Only the first could be represented using bases of 4. So for practical purposes, there is no way that anyone would play according to a strict ratio like this. Instead, it is necessary to adopt standard unit sizes.
I started out planning to do standard infantry units of 16 figures. I based them on single bases which fit in movement trays. Originally I had thought that the figures might be used for a skirmish type game as well as a division sized pitched battle and tried to accommodate both. At that time (around 4-5 years ago), I regarded painting even a brigade of units of that size to be a mammoth task that I was unlikely to ever finish. Up to that point, I had painted mostly WW2 figures in platoons of maybe 30-40 figures, consisting of a few units of 8-10.
After a couple of years of painting the 1808 figures and playing a few games, I realized that the basing and unit sizes were not ideal, for several reasons. The skirmish type game never really happened. The basing system with movement trays was impractical and annoying, as the figures never really stuck to the trays well enough. I also realized that the standard for Napoleonic gaming is 24 figures per unit (minimum). And in this world, keeping to an established standard is key. Napoleonic wargaming is not huge in Sweden, and games have proven to be few and far between.
Anyway, I found that 24 men per battalion was a good standard, while aiming for a very approximate 20:1 ratio. I base the figures 6 men to a base, with a 15mm frontage per figure. This works very well for the marching pose, although I tend to put only two figures in the second rank of the command base, to leave some room for the somewhat over-sized flags!
However, many of my figures are in a firing line pose. With a 15mm front, such figures will fit on the same type of base, but I found that the bayonets tend to stick out from the base or in front of the face of the next figure. This looks ridiculous and can make it difficult to arrange the bases in practical formations, which is useless in a game. So for the firing line poses, I have fewer figures per base (4 or 5). For the jäger units (which were almost invariably smaller anyway), I have only 4 figures per base. I also have a few bases of three figures and many bases of 2 figures. These are of course meant to be used as skirmishers, but in combinations they can also represent smaller units. Many scenarios for 1808 include half battalions or smaller detachments of just a single company. I think that the basing I have done for the Finnish troops will be useful for many situations and rules sets. For the Russians, I still need to add some more skirmish bases (I am still in the process of re-basing and beefing up some of the old units).
Ive re-based everything except the cavalry. This is fine for the moment, as Finnish cavalry was so few in number that 6-man units is good enough in most cases. However, further on up the road, I will probably want to make them into 9-man units (maybe 12 for Nyland) and base them slightly closer together.
I am very happy with the way the basing looks. I think it looks better than before, even though I have now simplified the basing somewhat. I used to base the individual figures with gravel before I primed them; now I base the painted figures and then cover the bases with Vallejo’s earth texture product. When that is dry, I drybrush it slightly and then add the basing material. I used to put single tufts of slightly taller grass on the bases first, then the fine turf material of various types, and finally some static grass. For these, I just omitted the tufts, and it works just as well. This way, the ground looks very much like Nordic wood- or bogland of the meager sort you find in many places in Mid- to Northern Sweden and Finland. Ive been thinking of adding small branches and clump foliage to imitate spruce and pine scatter, but that will have to be done at a later date.
The guns of 2d brigade still lack a limber team. I have planned to do this, but it will require some slightly difficult conversion work. The Swedish 3-pounders had three-horse limbers of a type for which there are no good proxies available. But it should not be impossible.
The next step for this project is the Västerbotten and Österbotten regiments, which were partly outside the brigade structure, but were deployed together with the Finnish regiments. For my purposes I will only need one battalion each of these regiments, and I have in fact already painted about half of the 2d Västerbotten battalion.
After that come the two Swedish brigades, of which one is already pretty much done already. The Swedish brigades were slightly smaller than Finnish ones, so they dont require quite as much work. After that, Gyllenbögell’s corps (equivalent of a brigade) is an interesting project to try. What is slightly mind-boggling is the number of battalions this would amount to if all of it was indeed painted at some point in the future. The thought that I would have 25 fully painted battalions…
However, before I add more to this lot, Id better paint some more Russians for them to fight! I will never need quite as many Russian battalions in total, but they are seriously outnumbered at the moment. I also happen to have something completely different in the works… Stay tuned!
Pancratist 