Tuesday, July 6, 2021

French Napoleonic Hussars

 Here’s some more of my figs. This time it’s mostly Italeri’s first release of French hussars.


Two regiments, the 3rd leading the 7th. I used Funcken’s books on the Napoleonic wars as a guide. I also used Airfix British Waterloo Hussars as is for elite troopers. I mixed in a few Hat horses as well.





A few observations on the Italeri figures. Disappointingly, they mostly lack a pelisse. Now I don’t know why, but my idea of a hussar is a fancy uniform, and a coat on the shoulder flying out behind them as they charge forward. Why Italeri opted for such lack lustre figures, I’ll never know.

Also those Airfix figures are going on 50 years old. But Italeri are lucky to have been existent for half that time, yet they are brittle as wax. Horse tails, arms, legs, all snap off with the least provocation.

Anyways...

I also am putting up some shots of a fun diversion I did during the last Covid shut down. I took some of my banged up Giant artillery caissons and added some gunners, and a base of generic horse artillery riders made from cowboys.






An interesting aside, I should have rewatched Ridley Scott’s “The Duelists”, as Kieth Carradine’s character was a Third Regiment Hussar:



I shoulda used a dull grey...

C’est la Guerre.....



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some more pix



2 comments:

  1. Doug, they look absolutely spiffing, I remember using the Airfix Hussars as Russian Hussars with busbies chopped up to look like shakoes and the pale yellow plastic was left unpainted for their yellow dolmans. They looked terrible but the 14 year old me was quite happy with them.

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    1. Hi Paul. It’s funny you should say that as I bought some Airfix hussars from a guy in Alberta, and he did the same thing. Kiwers from Busbies.

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