"21st Legere, Egypt, 1800 - 18mm Fighting 15s" Topic

Just finished and added to my blog – the 21e Demi-Brigade Legere in Egypt 1800 using fighting 15s miniatures.

There are a couple of errors to the uniform I think, but they were fun to paint and I'm happy how they came out…

The unit is based on this image…

More pictures and information on my blog, here…
link

Thanks for looking,
Colin

As always, really great work. I enjoy following your blog, even though I do not own a single figure for the early Napoleonic period.

I was intrigued to read that the 21st DBL was made up of Negro slaves. Was that the entire regiment? I read that one battalion was composed of local Christian Copts who, it was suggested, were the troops that penetrated Moore's Right Flank division of the British position at Alexandria during the French attack before dawn on 21st March 1801. It is also suggested the battalion was a composite unit of DBL carabiniers.

They were discovered marching along the position, in between the Left and Right Wing of the 42nd RHR standing one in front of the other, and were then pursued into the ruins of an old Roman fort where troops of the 58th joined the 42nd in putting about 30 to the bayonet when, clustering around their colour, they refused to surrender. The colour was wrested from a French officer by Major James Stirling of the 42nd who handed it to Sgt Sinclair of the grenadier company.

Sinclair was later ridden over by French dragoons and lost the colour. This was later said to be the colour handed into headquarters by Pte Antoine Lutze of Stuart's Regiment and sent back to London. There it was dubbed 'The Invincible Standard' by the press who attributed its capture to the 42nd- which started a 15-year controversy over the 42nd's alleged claiming of another regiment's trophy.

I think the French recruited black men as musicians as was fashionable more generally.

IIRC Napoleon contemplated the wholesale recruitment of Sudanese soldiers to build his army, but this didn't come to anything.

The French in Egypt is one of few armies I have finished. OK, I could do one more infantry unit, and I have an ammo wagon. Then it would be finished. Except for some supporting boats.

Db

According to Haythornthwaite the negroes "filled out the ranks" so I put at least one European nco on each base, and the elite and command all European and filled the rest with Africans. If I were to do further battalions I'd probably make them all European.

I think I read somewhere that the Coptics were created into a battalion of "guides". I'll need to look for that again.

Very nice demi – brigade d'infanterie légère, nihe figures as well, a lot having "havelocks" – is there a possibility to chose between the figures and pick those which haven't , as I don't like them for my Ado.

There Alan Perry is also sculpting the Ado (Armée d'Orient) – it is time to brush up my knowledge.

As usual there are a lot of contradictions in the sources, like the regulations – what woolen colour should be given, then the reality – orders of change given and then – the actual woolen samples of each demi brigade still in the files of SHA in Vincennes, which is again different to the usual conception.

As for 21e demi brigade d'infanterie légère the coat should be light blue with yellow facings, the cloth samples in Vincennes show light blue coat with pink facings, Rousselot gives a mix im his series about the AdO.

4e dB Infanterie légère should have light green coat but the cloth sample looks like a yellowish olive green, the samples are stored in the papers and therefore weren't exposed to the sun.

I did not know that 21e db d'infanterie légère did mostly recruit from negros, what is the source for that?

There was a coptic legion

Very nice work!

Very nice demi – brigade d'infanterie légère, nihe figures as well, a lot having "havelocks" – is there a possibility to chose between the figures and pick those which haven't , as I don't like them for my Ado.

The figures are provided at random from whatever comes off the mould. Nowadays, there is not much time for me to do anything else.

Best wishes, Ian

Nice work, BTW, Colin. You'll beat me to the completion of my project. :-)

Ian

VonW: "I did not know that 21e db d'infanterie légère did mostly recruit from negros, what is the source for that?"

I don't know if they MOSTLY recruited Negros, just that in Philip Haythornthwaites "Uniforms of the French Revolutionary Wars 1789 – 1802" he says that 'the ranks of the 21st were made up of Negro slaves bought by Kleber from Abyssinian slave dealers'. I'd assume that this was to replace dead or injured French troops in that Demi-brigade and I decided to only have them in the one battalion.

Thanks Ian, they're not as nice as the ones you did though.

I've just tracked down some information on the Coptics.

Seems to have been a single battalion that fought as line "musketeers".

More pictures and info on my blog here… link

According to the Domange plate 22

La Légion Copthe fur organisée par le général Kl´ber le 1er prairial an 8 (21 mai 1800) …

Cette légion comprainet 2 bataillons de 300 hommes à 5 companies don 1 de grenadiers. Elle était commandée par le chef de brigade Gabriel Sidariu

General Reynier stated "le second bataillon [21st DBL] parvient à se retirer, mais trois compagnies du troisième bataillon, composées en partie de Cophtes enrôlés dans la Haute-Égypte, et qui étaient dispersées en tirailleurs, sont forcées de se rendre; trente hommes qui gardaient le drapeau se font tuer avant de le céder aux ennemis.
(L'Egypte après la bataille d'Héliopolis, 1802)

Hollander (Les drapeaux des demi-brigades d'infanterie de 1794 à 1804, p.111) mentions this in his discussion of the standard of the 21st DBL taken at Alexandria and eventually housed at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, till it fell apart. He explains that 300 Copts were drafted into the 21st to make up numbers.

I find it interesting that in the accounts of Alexandria that there is no mention that the battalion involved in this celebrated incident of the battle was composed of negro slaves from Abyssinia. It's the sort of detail that would have been commented on.

Andrew Dowie, a private in the 42nd, commented in his memoirs fifty years later that the men of the regiment believed that they had defeated a unit of Bonaparte's "bons grenadiers" and did not hear of the phrase "Invincibles" until their return to England.

@42flanker

very interesting, thanks

So you think Haythornthwaite has got it wrong about the Negros? It would be helpful if we could identify his sources.

It's fair to say Haythornthwaite is not infallible, and the FRW book, handsome as it is, was published about thirty five years ago. So much more information is available now particularly primary sources, and, as importantly, is being shared.

Much that was taken on trust even 10 years ago has turned out to be of limited reliability. Everything is worth revisiting.

Perhaps Haythornthwaite, relying on an ambiguous source in French, overstated the case.

I checked Haythornthwaite on that, no such source given, also his assesment that no water canteens were issued is wrong, a lot of white metal water bottles were indeed produced under Kléber.

The negro soldier appears in a series ofD.S.V. Fosten and R. Marrion in the Old Tradition Magazine, series of 3 articles

It is an interesting study, like 9db de ligne, curiously still called de bataille in Egypt, should have red coats with white facings, but due to shortab of white – green facings were issued, tunic of the tambours – green, tambour major – like officers coat with long caot tails, grenadiers – got hats made in Egypt and green epaulettes, there are a series of excellent articles in the Carnets de la Sabretache in 1899 – the scarlet red – green faced tunis is supported also by the original cloth samples in the Kleber files in Vincennes

I just found a site with some nicely painted flats of soldiers in the Egyptian campaign. What are your thoughts on these:

link

Quite a few more, and I loaded them on my blog…
link

there are much better sources on the net, such as Rousselot's complete series about the Armée d'Orient