It's not that they won't be employed on the field of battle, rather that they are unlikely to be used together as a full army, especially as they will normally be operating alongside the British in any games our group undertakes:
All things considered, this was slightly more satisfying to put together than my Essex Miniatures 15mm Spanish army, mainly because there were a few figure variations in each pack of the infantry (as opposed to a single pose with the Spanish infantry) to break things up a little and relieve some of the monotony of painting several hundred figures:
I decided to go with black chords on the jackets of the Cacadores rather than yellow, on the basis of the Rene Chartrand Osprey where he implies that yellow lacing and chords was a relatively short-lived phenomenon, even before the Cacadores had swapped their Barretinas for the British-supplied stovepipes. This was apparently due to both expense and lack of supply, but I am still wrestling with whether I have done the right thing here, especially as many other examples I have seen are sporting the yellow:
All up, I have counted 603 foot, cavalry and artillery figures, 41 horses (33 of them cavalry), and six artillery pieces:
Now off to do the same thing with some Front Rank 28mm Portuguese, which I am quite looking forward to getting into as I do feel much more comfortable at that scale. Looking at the above, I should probably also consider having the kitchen repainted...
Awesome sight of figures!
ReplyDeletecongrats for completing your (project) Army and hard work putting the figures together and painting... well done!
cheers,
Thanks Phil, much appreciated. It is always a nice feeling to have completed a project.
DeleteA beautiful and impressive army, Lawrence. 650 figures or so - immense! Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteThanks Peter. I have around the same number to do in 28mm, which should keep me occupied until the end of the year.
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DeleteI have seen it mentioned that the black frogging on the Cacadores jackets faded quite quickly to a paler almost white colour. Maybe this is where the yellow reference stems from?
ReplyDeleteRef for above comment
Deletehttp://www.napoleon-series.org/military/organization/c_cacadores.html
Thanks for the link Anthony, and the Napoleon-Series is one of my favourite sites to visit. According to Rene Chartrand they started with yellow when they still wore the barretina, but stopped switched to black primarily due to expense and availability. He is primarily talking about the shako chords here, but notes in the next paragraph that a general order was issues in July 1811 decreeing that the jacket chords were to be black, and implies that this had been adopted unofficially before that point.
DeleteMy dilemma is whether I can get away with painting Cacadores in the barretina with black lace and chords, mainly because it is easier to do them with a grey highlight than having to go over them several times with yellow.
Anyway, thanks again Anthony. I might ponder the question until it is time to do them again in 28mm, which will hopefully be in another two or three months.