Here are a few random bits and pieces that I’ve painted for my SYW Prussian army over the last 18 months or so. The artillery were painted only last week, but the grenadiers and adjutant were painted in January of last year and I simply forgot to post them at the time.
Firstly, Fred and his friends are looking a lot better than they did in Part 1, now that they’ve had a spray of matt varnish over their 1990s-vintage gloss! Everything in my collection has had a similar treatment and I’m slowly working my way through the bases, changing them from my old (pre-1997) ‘green with a yellow dry-brush’ style to my current ‘earth brown with a sand dry-brush and patchy Woodland Scenics flock’ style.
Frederick needed an extra ADC on his staff, so here’s a cavalry Flügeladjutant of the Prussian Royal Staff. I think I must have been having a bad day when I painted this chap, as he’s more than a bit slapdash…
Unlike Prussian general officers, who had no prescribed uniform and therefore wore a version of their regimental uniform, the Flügeladjutanten had a regulation uniform. Those officers drawn from the cavalry had the uniform shown above; namely a white coat with red Swedish cuffs, linings and pocket-piping (no collar or lapels), silver buttons and Brandenburg buttonhole-lace, lemon-yellow smallclothes, red horse furniture with silver edging and silver scalloped hat-lace. Those officers drawn from the infantry wore a blue coat with all other details the same. This is an Old Glory 15s figure.
Grenadier-Bataillon ‘Manteuffel’ (37/40) was formed for the Seven Years War from the grenadier companies of Füsilier-Regiment ‘Kursell’ (IR 37) and Füsilier-Regiment ‘Kreytzen’ (IR 40). Unlike many other grenadier battalions, they changed their commanding officer (and therefore unit title) only once during the course of the war, in 1759, to ‘Kleist’.
The uniforms, as with most Prussian füsilier regiments, were fairly plain and lacked lapels and buttonhole-lace. The ‘Kursell’ Füsiliers had red collar, cuffs and linings with yellow ‘metal’ and white smallclothes. The ‘Kreytzen’ Füsiliers meanwhile, had white ‘metal’ and rose-pink collar, cuffs, smallclothes and (most unusually) linings. Almost all other Prussian regiments had red linings, but those of the ‘Kreytzen’ Regiment matched the facing colour. Another unusual feature of the ‘Kreytzen’ Regiment’s uniform was that the officers had lapels and silver Brandenburg buttonhole-lace. Neck-stocks were black and cuffs were of Swedish style for both regiments.
The grenadier cap front-plates matched the ‘metal’ colour for both regiments and the backs, including the head-band, matched the facing colour, with white piping for both regiments. Pompoms were white-over-red for the ‘Kursell’ Regiment and plain white for the ‘Kreytzen’ Regiment.
These are Old Glory 15s figures. I scraped this unit up from the spares box, where they’d lain for 25 years or more. Consequently there are a couple of missing pompoms.
I needed some Prussian Jäger for our Combat of Zinna game a few weeks ago, so quickly knocked up a couple of skirmish-stands for the Prussian Feldjäger zu Fuss. Frederick was not exactly known for his love of light troops and usually left that sort of underhand nonsense to the Frei-Corps, but nevertheless, he did retain two companies of Feldjäger zu Fuss, as well as two squadrons of Jäger zu Pferde, with each unit totaling some 160-170 men. The Feldjäger zu Fuss fought at a few notable battles, such as Breslau, Leuthen and Hochkirch, but in 1760 were almost wiped out by a Russian raid. Nevertheless, the unit was restored in 1761 as a full battalion of four companies and fought at the Battle of Burkersdorf.
The Feldjäger zu Fuss and Jäger zu Pferde wore an almost identical uniform, consisting of an olive-green coat, with red collar, linings and Swedish cuffs, yellow ‘metal’ and a yellow aiguillette on the right shoulder. The waistcoat was also olive green, while breeches and gloves were buff leather. There was no cross-belt. The waist-belt was white, but was largely hidden by a natural leather cartridge-box. Neck-stocks were black and boots were of tall, cavalry style. The hat had a black cockade secured by a yellow strap and green-within-white corner-rosettes. Officers had gold scalloped hat-lace, gold aiguillettes and gold buttonhole-lace on the waistcoat.
The two notable differences were that the Feldjäger zu Fuss had yellow lace edging to their hats and apparently had uniforms that were a distinctly lighter shade of olive green. However, neither of these differences are confirmed by all sources. The Jäger zu Pferde also had green horse-furniture with yellow lace edging.
Here’s a rear view of the Feldjäger zu Fuss, showing the yellow aiguillette. The uniform of the Feldjäger zu Fuss is very similar to that of a number of Frei-Corps Jäger detachments, so will do extra duty as stand-ins for those units (in the Combat of Zinna game they represented the Jäger detachment of Frei-Regiment ‘Wunsch’). I’ve got some put aside to do the Kleist Frei-Corps at a later date and I’m also going to paint the spares as Hessian and Hanoverian Jäger.
Lastly, I needed some more Prussian artillery, especially light battalion guns:
These are Eureka figures with Blue Moon 3pdr guns. I went for the Blue Moon guns, as the Eureka guns are rather ‘meaty’ and are akin to my Old Glory 12pdrs! I needed guns that would be recognisable as light battalion guns, without the need for a label.
There is a popular misconception that battalion guns were manned by the infantry. While the infantry may have provided some extra muscle-power when necessary, Prussian battalion guns were in fact manned by detachments from the Prussian Field Artillery Regiment.
Above: Prussian artillery uniforms were relatively plain, being a blue coat without collar or lapels. The cuffs were Brandenburg-style and were blue, as was the shoulder-strap. The neck-stocks, coat-linings and the piping on pockets and cuff-flaps were red. ‘Metal’ was yellow. Smallclothes were straw. Belts were white and the circular powder-flask was black, bound in brass with a brass central plate. Hats had white lace and pompoms coloured (from top to bottom) yellow, black, red and white. Guns were brass and had light blue carriages with ironwork painted black.
That’s it for now. There’s lots more SYW stuff to come, including the British-Hanoverian cavalry, artillery and generals, the ongoing Bohemia Campaign, a French v British-Hanoverian battle, a scenario and battle report for the Combat of Pretzsch and I’m presently painting a load of Austrian artillery and yet more Prussians in preparation for a forthcoming Leuthen game…
Lovely stuff as usual, similar project but in 10mm almost finished here.
Cheers Nick! 🙂
Great work as always and I do love those illustrations:).
Thanks Steve! 🙂
Hi Mark
Thanks again for this as usual. Regarding ‘battalion’ guns, I have been wondering for a while now about just how effective they were in practice (as opposed to the theory at the time) and what evidence there is to support it either way. Just musing as usual.
Cheers Paul
Yes, that was exactly my concern, which was what led me to downgrade them in range and firepower (though they do get an advantage in unlimbered mobility). There’s a reason that every army eventually ditched the concept, after all. 🙂
My thoughts were that Light Batteries as per the rules, are concentrated guns, with a decent amount of ammunition nearby, with good fire control from a trained artillery officer, able to concentrate fire on a specific target.
Battalion guns by contrast are dispersed pairs (sometimes single) of guns, usually commanded by an NCO, unable to concentrate their fire onto a specific target. However, they did prove most useful when conducting close fire support at close range. Leuthen is a case in point; the Itzenplitz Regiment suffered heavy casualties at point-blank range from Wurttemberg battalion guns, but then their own battalion guns deployed and gave it back in spades.
Although not SYW, Culloden is another interesting case-study, where mere 3pdr battalion guns caused much consternation among the inexperienced Jacobite troops, who were simply not used to being under artillery fire (probably the primary reason for the Jacobite leadership losing control of the army, resulting in their doomed charge).
On the other side of the coin, there are also some interesting instances (such as Minden), where the infantry abandoned their battalion guns in order to move faster.
Just some random thoughts. 🙂
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