"Mounted French Line Artillerymen - Wargame Uses?" Topic

Any ideas? I have enough on their own horses for a couple of cavalry regiments but don't know what to do with them. They look unrealistic crammed on the cannon base with the loaders. And the full limbers with six horses are unwieldy enough without adding more. Their horses have cavalry shabraques and the men have whips and swords. I can take off the whips but what are they for? Are they meant to be attached cavalry? Could they be spotters or messengers?

Could I re-paint them? They have shakos and tailed jackets with infantry chasseur-like epaulettes. Yet they have cross belts which, I think, renders them useless as cavalry officers.

So they are drivers of the artillery train I suspect, rather than mounted horse artillery gunners (for any nation, in 20mm, that would be too good to be true). The whips and cross belts confirm that view, but about the shabraques. Are they light cavalry pointed style or the square look, with a sheepskin that we expect from heavy cavalry? Do they have big boots and breeches or full length overalls? Fringed epaulettes might suggest Imperial Guard. Any chance of a photo, even the simplest image off your phone?

You mention limbers, but do you have any caissons to resupply the ammo. Might be a good use for your figures?

deadhead
"So they are drivers of the artillery train".

Could be, if seated on the pulling horses. Or perhaps artillery officers. I've got ammunition chests and wagons for a "run out of ammo" feature but not sure how these mounted men could be involved. I guess as officers, they could be required to stand within a command radius of a battery to receive orders, even if the games I play don't normally act out divisional commanders passing on orders.

Here you go:
link

I think I'd take a look at the douaniers and the gendarmerie, and possibly the local "Guards of Honor"--not the big "hostage" regiments, but the little assemblages of local dignitaries. Your castings look pretty close to those of Amsterdam, Haarlem and the Hague, for instance--all "French" cities in 1811. But each town had its own detachment and its own unique uniform.

Sticks in my mind that some of the Scout Grenadiers had a similar cut, but I can't off-hand find an image to confirm.

Oh. And "enough for several regiments" conveys very different notions to players of CLS and of Napoleon's Battles. How many of these people are we talking about? And do your rules have a range of allowable sizes for regiments?

Deadhead is probably right in his analysis but a picture tells a thousand words.

Chris

Chris, cacadoress put a link to a picture in his second post.

From a quick glance through my collection of uniform plates, I cannot see any uniform that fits with how the figure has been painted.

If they belonged to me I would repaint the figures into a couple of cavalry unit that I wanted (needed) & get rid of the non-ammo pouch cross belt (and the whip of course).

Thanks Robert I missed that.

Artillery train driver in my opinion.

Best wishes,

Chris

The photo does help and he certainly is a French Artillery Train driver (and a very nice figure too). I do not think that is his intended horse however. It lacks the harness to tow anything and there seems to be a pair of pistol holders each side, together with a square shabraque and portmanteau. The latter features would do for an officer of many units, or indeed troopers of the Grenadiers a Cheval or Gendarmes d'Elite. Personally, depending on the numbers involved, I would buy a few French caissons from Newline (assuming you are UK based), but, having typed this, it them occurs to me that you would not have the driven horses. Seemed like a good idea at the time!

I got that wrong, viewing a small image on my phone. Seeing it now on the PC monitor, the horse carries a light cavalry pointed shabraque, with a rounded portmanteau. So, apart from my suggestion of using him as a train driver, forgetting that there are no driven horses, proving to be impossible and my misidentification of the horse furniture……I have not been of much help here.

deadhead,
"…I have not been of much help here."
Au contraire: you got me thinking. If I keep him with the artillery, then he's just a mounted horse gunner – most of them were independently mounted. I know some people like to glue one onto the cannon base to indicate it's a horse gun but I always thought that looks a little naff when the piece is being towed.

So I've made my cannon bases so that I can slide the gunners off. I quite like the idea of gunners sometimes abandoning and then later re-manning their guns in the face of attack. I could have a scenario where the enemy player can choose to give spiking equipment to certain cavalry squadrons.

Anyway, when a horse gun is on the move, a base with them on could be swapped with the standing gunner models (which slide off the cannon-bases) as a necessary part of limber towing.

In a skirmish game mounted men from the artillery train could play more of a role in requests for ammunition re-supply.

robert piepenbrink
"I think I'd take a look at the douaniers and the gendarmerie, and possibly the local "Guards of Honor"

I'm only using 6 per cavalry unit and I've got at least 12 of these. Gendarmes are a good idea, especially something like the Gendarmerie d'Espagne. I've already got a number of gendarmerie with bicorns. Except for having two chest belts, that shabraque could make them Gendarmerie Cheveu Legers Lanciers if I paint away the brush part of the epaulettes. The lance is easy enough: last time I made them myself because the ones my lancer models came with were too short. I just straightened out some black hair-pins and put a paper pennant at the end.