I sold off my 20mm figures back in the 80's but had a yen to have a really nice contingent for future play. Since most clubs and players eventually moved to 25/28mm figures with the offerings that were being made available I decided to go full bore and had these lovely Front Rank miniatures painted by the kindly people at Siam Painting Service to represent Wrede's Division during the 1809 campaign. It was my first foray into off-shore painting and represented quite an expense at the time but was and remain very happy with their results and have enjoyed displaying and occasionally playing with the figures in the rare CLS games that a buddy hosts now and again.
The Division consists of 10 battalions of foot (8 line and 2 jaeger) with supporting artillery and a light cavalry brigade of 2 regiments (one of Light Dragoons and one of Chevauleger).
I think that en masse they look impressive...
The brigades have the jaegers to skirmish out front and each battalion also has eight 'schutzen' figures to screen the battalion (at least this is the organization blessed by Fred Vietmeyer in his collection of OB's annexed to CLS).
The schutzen (which Front Rank offer) are the four 2 man stands across the front of each battalion. I confess they by rights should be on bases that are 1/2 as long on the frontage but it made sense to me to extend the frontage so each company covered the full line infantry base stand. My fellow CLS players have allowed me this but I do try to make sure they don't give me an unintended advantage when paying the game since lights screen troops behind them.
The jaegers are on eight 4 man stands as prescribed by the rules so no problem there and they would screen the whole brigade front when deployed in two lines with supports.
The organization of the Bavarian Army for 1809 still followed earlier practice so a battalion had one grenadier and three fusilier companies all of equal strength. Two battalions made a regiment.
The Bavarians did not convert to the French battalion model till late 1811 so no 6 company stands for me.
I had the flags created by the Siam Painting Service folks based on prints by 'Rigo' from his 'Le Plumet' series as shown below:
Very nicely done and in accordance with everything I have seen on Bavarian flags for the period. The Madonna icon flag was discontinued in use by the Bavarians around 1806 as they started incorporating areas that were not all Roman Catholic by choice into their 'kingdom'.
The artillery were all done by me using Foundry 25mm figures and lack some of the complex finishing of the line troops but with a dark blue coat and black/red facings I can get away with it!
The limbers are Hinchliffe 4 and 6 horse limbers again finished by me with the riders in the light grey coat of Bavarian artillery train attendants. The pontoon train is a Perry set that I simply painted as Bavarian with appropriate colors for the fatigue caps.
The initial cavalry brigade, again by the Siam folks included one light dragoon and one chevauleger regiment of 27 figures each (or in CLS terms, 4 squadrons of 6 plus a 3 man command stand).
Enough light cavalry at 2 points apiece for CLS and Bavarian had no real heavy cavalry during the period for 1809 so I am happy with these.
Playing CLS one realizes that in large battles one has to have lancers so I belatedly added a regiment of them using Front Rank figures but with my own painting plus a 'half regiment' of Hussars since the sky blue coats were impossible to pass on. These represent a later period (1812/1813) so I try not to use them unless the scenario falls in that period but that's another uniquely CLSism with the group that I play with.
Looking forward to the next encounter in CLS land for these guys.
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