"Portuguese 3rd Cacadores" Topic

Another regiment completed:

There are a few more photos on the blog for anyone interested: tinmountain.blogspot.com.au

I love the basing, figures, paint job, everything!

Does anyone know if Cacadore battalions ever had rifles for all the men? It the early uniform, as above, were there many/any?

I converted a bunch of Stadden 30mm Russian Pavolvskis, Prussian Jagers to early cacadores, and understood at the time (1980's) that none had rifles during the Barretina shako period.

More recently, Victrix made metal cacadores (now Brigade Games in the US?) some with rifles, some with muskets. I understood that these were used throughout the battalions, and that the Atiradore elite company had a mix – not all rifles.

Any current information, for I hope to expand my Victrix 4th Cscadores to 30, adding more musket men.

GdeP

GdeP

Lovely painting. Like your blog, great Spanish 28mm army your have done.

Very nice work!

Indeed, very nice work.

When I come over to Australia I really want to have a game!

Thanks for the kind words everyone, and you're definitely on for that game Brian. The Woolshed does look a far more picturesque setting for a game than inner-city Brisbane however.

To Garde de Paris, I went back through a couple of sources and Nafziger does not mention much at all about the rifle-armed cacadores.

I knew I had read it somewhere and it turns out it was in the Rene Chartrand Osprey where he states that there was a plan to distribute the Baker rifle to "some or all" of the cacadores, but that these were not available until a shipment of 2000 rifles in 1810.

It appears that quite a few rifles may have been held in reserve however, and that an average of 200 were distributed to each regiment.

Given a nominal strength of 650 or so including administrational staff, this would equate roughly to a rifle issued to approximately one in three.

Not a bad ratio, and it would be my guess that the atiradores would have been the first pick to receive them, and the remainder distributed amongst the other ranks.

May not still be interested, but the 1st and 3rd battalions were part of the British Light Division and they had rifles for the companhia de atiradores by 1812, the rest were musket armed. The remaining 10 battalions were musket armed.

A side point being- manfrs do what is popular and sells, not what is accurate.
d