Russian orders of battle for the Finnish war of 1808 (sort of)

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.

Prussian skirmishers

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.

Returning to the Västerbotten regt.

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).

1st bat., 2d East Prussians (IR3)

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.

Prussian officers

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!

And now for something completely different…

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.

The Finnish army of 1808

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!

Another battalion completed

Nothing very exciting to report, really. On the painting front things have been very slow lately – we have been moving house and I have barely touched the stuff.

I did manage to paint a couple of more flags and do some basing. The Björneborg 2d battalion is interesting in that it is the only example known to me of a regiment who carried two flags of different models at the same time, and into battle in 1808. The regiment first received a full complement of 4 flags of the 1686 pattern in 1752. Presumably, one of these was damaged or even captured (perhaps in the war of 1788-1790?), because a single flag was replaced in 1792.

The flags were painted using the following color combinations:

Yellow: A base coat of Vallejo Gold Brown, highlighted with a mix of Vallejo Gold Brown, Vallejo Flat Yellow and white.

Blue: Base coat Coat d’arms Royal Blue, highlighted with mixes of Royal Blue, Vallejo Prussian Blue and white.

Green (laurel wreath): Coat d’arms Angel Green highlighted with Coat d’arms Goblin Green mixed in with the base color.

Gold: Vallejo Glorious Gold highlighted with Coat d’arms Enchanted Silver.

Bear fur: Vallejo Dark Rust highlighted with a mix of the base color and Vallejo Leather Brown (and possibly some white).

The whole flag (base colors) was shaded with a mix of Army Painter’s Dark Tone and Light Tone wash and finished with Winsor & Newton matt varnish.

More Finnish conversions – and a milestone reached!

With these figures I have completed the first and most important goal of my 1808 Finnish war project. I have painted all the figures I need for the first three brigades of grey-uniformed Finnish troops, i e the core field army that fought the Russians in Finland. Some basing is still to be done and there are a couple of flags to finish, but all the miniatures are painted!

Together with one Swedish brigade that I also have painted up so far, this amounts to 16 battalions, four of which are jäger units. This totals over 400 figures, including around 25 artillerymen, and a few cavalry and commanders. There is also a number of bases of skirmishers for both the infantry and jägers, in addition to the basic units.

My further goal is to do the equivalent of two more brigades: one Swedish brigade and the Free Corps (volunteer militia). There are also some unbrigaded units and at least one battery of Swedish artillery. But even so, I have painted 2/3 or more of the whole lot, and I have in fact started on a couple of the additional units already. I also feel that the infantry that remains should be relatively easy to do considering that I have learned to speed paint the basic figures better than when I started out 4-5 years ago. I have painted the equivalent of 6 or 7 battalions only in the last year and a half or so – and I was doing hundreds of other miniatures during the same time. Most importantly, what I have now is a fully playable army which covers major battles such as the one at Lappo very well.

I hope to soon be able to take a few shots of the whole army, but we are in the middle of moving house at the moment, so that will have to wait a few weeks.

The last bunch of figures for my Finnish army (or the first three brigades of it at any rate) are some more converted figures in greatcoats. The conversions are based on Foundry ACW figures. That is, except one – the guy holding his hand over his eyes, the body of which is made by Raven Banner (also ACW union infantry). I replaced the heads with heads from Perry figures, I added bayonets and I sculpted a collar and the gaiters (stibletter) on a few of the figures. The most difficult of those details by far was the gaiters. I am no pro when it comes to sculpting, and the gaiters caused trouble in several ways. I found it difficult to sculpt the buttons in a way that looked reasonably convincing, but most annoying was the tendency of the green stuff to stick to everything but the metal of the figures.

However, I am very happy to have done this. Converting a large number of figures is a daunting task and there is a risk that youll get stuck. I managed to get through what I had planned: two units with around 1/4 of the figures in greatcoats.

A visit to the archive (sort of…)

I have, for a long time, planned to visit the Swedish National Archives to take a look at some material pertaining to the Finnish war there. One of the things I was interested in looking at was the contemporary uniform plates, which display the uniform patterns which were approved by the king. These plates were made in the 1790ies and early 1800s. They should be reliable in themselves, but, unfortunately there were changes to the uniforms after these were done, so there is obviously more to it than just following these as a guide to the uniforms of 1808.

Now, I still havent actually gone to the archive (which is sad!). However, I did e-mail them and ask if it were possible to order digital copies. The answer is yes, but the downside is that this is relatively expensive. Black and white paper copies are pretty cheap, but in this case I needed color, and it didnt seem to be able to get anything less than professional quality scans in full color. So, it would be very good to actually get myself down there at some point, and take some photos myself. There are a number of images and documents I would like to look at. In the meantime, I just ordered three interesting scans of uniform plates. These were of the Nyland jägers, the Adlercreutzska regt., and a plate portraying a “labor corps” of the Western Army (i. e., the Swedish army on the border with Norway). The two infantrymen’s uniforms are of regiments which I have seen very few good images of, so I was particularly interested in them. The labor corps uniform was just an oddity that caught my eye in the archive inventory.

Looking first at the Nyland jäger uniform plate, I was happy to see that my guess at the uniform (in a previous post) was mostly correct. The uniform is grey with collar, cuffs and turnbacks grey piped blue. It is clear that the musket sling is black and that the hat plume is yellow (not green, as one might expect for jägers). I did miss the blue piping on the turnbacks, but that is pretty minor. I was sort of hoping that the uniform would include a shako. However, if the battalion received shakos at a later date, the evidence from this plate doesnt really rule out the possibility that they wore them in 1808.

The Adlercreutzska uniform is also interesting, but as in the previous case, there is no real surprise here, just a confirmation that information given elsewhere is correct. It is generally interesting to see that the uniform is very similar to the Nyland jägers, and it would have been even more so when the plastron was removed, as it presumably was around 1806. In general, this regiment looks like it was meant as a jäger regiment, even though it isnt called the Adlercreutz jägers specifically, having black belts and musket slings. At around this time of course, it was decreed that all Swedish infantry regiments were to be considered “equally light”. The Adlercreutzska was newly founded (1804), and surely in that spirit. The uniform of the Adlercreutzska is also interesting in that it has a color combination that differs from all other Finnish infantry regiments in that it includes a red collar. As this regiment was very numerous among the garrison at Sveaborg (four battalions, almost 1/3 of the total), some of whom escaped to join the free corps, I will likely be painting a few figures in this uniform.

The labor corps uniform is also interesting. The jacket is double breasted, which is curious as it is dated 1808, when all other uniforms ought to have had a single row of buttons. It is also different in that the soldier wears a sword belt worn over the shoulder, instead of around the waist. By this time, the short sword and the waist belt had been dropped for the infantry. But it would be logical that these troops would have had use of short swords or huggare as they were called in Swedish. The uniform also includes different legwear, which is also worth noting. The labor corps were, as I understand it, the regular troops or workmen of the engineer corps or pioneers. Such troops were deployed in Finland too (with the Swedish division), and they would have had a lot of work to do, building, reparining or demolishing bridges, perhaps building fortified position, etc.