"Baking for Napoleonic Armies" Topic

I have just been lucky enough to acquire some superb French Revolution figures from Eureka in Australia. Cossacks looting, a chasseur watering horses, a cantiniere and cart, a field bakery, a wheel wright and a sword smith. Not really directly applicable to a battle but excellent little vignettes to liven up 'behind the lines' or even the storage shelves.
Anyway, I was wondering who did the baking? The artisans are definitely soldiers and their jobs are on the normal orbat of a unit, but who were the bakers? Were they soldiers who happened to have the skills or civilians employed for the purpose? The new figures will go to my Imperial French army with little conversion work necessary but I would be keen to know whether theses worthies should be in uniform (Train d'Administration perhaps?)or not. An odd question I know but does anyone have an idea?

For the battalions, it was the soldiers themselves, usually some drafted baker. For the staffs, it was a hired professional cook.

The bakeries were carried along with the troops in many armies. Brick by brick they were assembled and torn down. Towns were strategic if they had a large baking capacity. Lose your train with the bakery, might as well pack it up!

IIRC, Marlborough would march for 3 days then stop and rest until enough bread could be provided for another 3 days. Always wanted a wagon loaded with bricks to represent this high value target in my baggage trains!

Which scale and manufacturer were those figures? I can't find them at Eureka, but would love to get them.

Who baked the bread varied depending on army and place. I know that Sgt. Bourgogne wrote that one of his regiment's cantinieres made a deal with a local baker early in the Russian campaign: he baked white bread and she carried it on her cart and sold it to the soldiers.

In the Austrian army, Gunther Rothenberg states that bread was "prepared in large brick ovens at the main magazines or in efficient mobile iron ovens at the smaller field magazines and with the supply columns." (Napoleon's Great Adversaries, p 31) It doesn't say who baked it, but I suspect civilian contractors.

They are Eureka 28mm, but as new releases are not yet in the catalogue. Normally you can get your hands on them if you ask Nic nicely.

bonjour

Crunchy Frog

Just email me
rob
eureka miniatures usa
robwalter556@yahoo.com

Of course for the Imperial Household there is the mobile bakery captured at Waterloo. It was originally in the RA Museum at Greenwich and is now in the Royal Logistics Corps Museum in Winchester. The curator was a huge help in providing unpublished photos and dimensions to create my model for Waterloo in 20mm. I undercoated and painted it today and you will soon see it in Le Caillou. The courtyard already contains a Cuisine Roulante that really belongs at Austerlitz and his green carriage, from the same, is outside the gates, but who will quibble over 10 years?

We are assured this was his personal bakery oven. Bit like "his hat" which sells for millions but was one of over 50 documented or the various carriages that "survived the Retreat from Moscow" despite construction after 1812. At least there is a provenance, placing this in 1815, whoever enjoyed the baguettes.

Very nice work indeed Mr D.

Best wishes,

Chris