Kielmansegge's Jaegers

There has been a bit of a delay in posting photos, as my camera broke. But a new one has been obtained, so onward with the photos. These were part of my 7th submission to the Painting Challenge.

FeldBattalion Lüneberg

This is the last battalion needed to complete the 1st Hanoverian Brigade at Waterloo.

The battalion fielded 617 men and officers at Waterloo under Lt Col Von Klencke. You can see the rest of my Hanoverian brigade in the background.

FB Grubenhagen

Field Battalion Grubenhagen fielded 643 men and officers at Waterloo. A unit like this is what makes this brigade, some variation is always necessary and it was nice to paint some green rather than red.

Lovely Perry figures as usual.

Feldbattalion Osnabrück (Duke of York's)

Here we have the first battalion in the Hanoverian order of battle: FB Osnabrück sometimes referred to the Duke of York's battalion. They fielded 632 men at Waterloo under Major, the Baron Bülow.

These are Victrix figures with the Hanoverian metal heads and back packs. They were again assembled by Lord Hill. I will not go into it, but bonding the metal heads to the plastic bodies gave both myself and Martin quite a lot of trouble, and I would not recommend purchasing them. I am sure in their first outing, half of them will end up headless! These were painted in the last week.

Feldbattalion Bremen

Next up, as promised, is FB Bremen. These are Perry figures and are quite distinct for their caps and their blue trousers, although most references appear to support shakos rather then caps.

Some Hanoverians:Feldbattalion Verden

Needed a little break from the Injuns. The 1st Hanoverian Brigade at Waterloo has been a project long sitting on the side table. I have done bits and pieces over the last few years. Initially started when I was still doing 12 figure battalions, at the time I did FB Verden and Bremen, as well as parts of Luneberg and Grubenhagen. I had also substituted some Calpe Landwehr for the feldjager company and have done part of the Hanoverian Foot Battery; both associated with the brigade at Waterloo. Being obsessive  this was driving me crazy, I needed to complete this unit! Over the last two week I have added 12 figures each to the FB's Verden and Bremen as well as almost completed FB Duke of York. The remaining figures needed for the Luneberg and Grubenhagen battalions are in the mail as well as the Howitzer for the foot battery. I hope to get the first 3 battalions painted, terrained and posted in the next few days before I go on my hols.

British Foot Artillery

I recently finished 3 stands of artillery to make up 2 batteries of British artillery. One stand is Front Rank and the other two are Perry. I must say I like the Perry figures more and more and they really lend themselves to my painting technique. I use GW Fenris Grey for the cannon carriages, maybe if I had my time back I would have gone with a more grey colour rather than blue, but these are fifth and sixth battery of British or allied artillery I have painted and I am not going to start again. The Perry figures are actually marketed as Hanoverian artillery (BH 12), but I do not believe there is any difference.

Hanoverian unit to the right and British to the left.

I actually plan to buy 2 Perry Howitzers (BH47) and make a second unit of Hanoverians, this time with a howitzer and 2 cannons each.

I believe I will add one further battery of RHA and try to stop there. My artillery for the my Anglo-Portuguese army will then include 1 battery of Portuguese FA (Redoubt), 2 batteries of RHA (1 Redoubt and 1 Perry), 3 batteries of British/Hanoverian (1 Front Rank and 2 Perry) and a battery of RHA Rocket Corps with 4 stands. I have one limber done and another ready to go and I also plan to paint up those nice Perry (BH 49) mounted Artillery commanders.


If anyone has a link to a nice print of British artillery please sent it on as I like to post a print at the beginning of each blog entry and I could not find one.


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The Hanoverian Grubenhagen Leichtes Bataillon

This is the first unit that I have finished for my Hanoverian Allied Brigade for Lasalle. The brigade is modeled on the 1st Hanoverian Brigade under Major General the Count Kielmansegge, 3rd Division, First Corps of Wellington's army at Waterloo. I picked this unit do first as I had the figures on hand (or I thought I did) and I need the unit for my Hougomont project. 
I will use 3 manufacturers for this brigade, Perry have a line of Hanoverian figures. They are quite nice figures although they have an enormous mount of flash. I will use the Perrys for the Lueneberg and Grubenhagen light battalions and the Bremen field battalion. For the other 2 field battalions I will use Victrix figures, with their Hanoverian heads. For the Jagers, I have decided to be a little inaccurate and use some Calpe figures that I had painted up as Kielmansegge's Feldjägers for my Wallmoden project. I realise the jägers in the 1st Hanoverian Bde had rifle uniforms, but the Calpe are very nice figures. Anyway here is the OB, I will have to think a little more about their ratings, so have yet to assign them.

I used the Mont St Jean site as the reference for the uniforms, clearly so have the Perry brothers. Here is their plate for the Grubenhagen light battalion. Here also is a TMP link, which I believe to be quite an accurate accounting of the Hanoverian uniform in 1815, look at John Franklin's post.

So good so far, but as I was painting my last 6 figures, that these were actually for the Lueneberg light battalion. I wanted to mix field caps with shako's but when I was putting the final touches on the figures, I noticed that the capped figures had 3 rows of buttons rather than 1. I have shoved them in anyway until I get some mores figures, not a big deal as I was planning to paint the Lueneberg next anyway. For my Hougomont project, I need to break off the light companies from these 2 units, so I decided to use the Perry rifle figures for these 4 bases. These are much more dynamic figures, the specific Hanoverian figures are a little static.

Front View

Flag View, I know, no flag, but I like flags. No idea whether this is right or not, from Flag Dude.

View with Lueneberg figures (in caps)

 Command Figures, I really thought these were quite nice figures.

 Back View

Kielmansegge's Feldjãgers. Here is a Knõtel print, of what they looked like in in 1813-14.

So I used Calpe figures, as they seemed at the time a good fit. They are not bad, although the earlier reference I had, described a brown rather than a green cap (I like the brown a little better). Also of course the cuffs are wrong and what I did not notice at the time, is that they have muskets rather than rifles. Great figures though, really my favourite to paint.

So whats next, well I really have to do the hard graft of painting up at least 3 more french  battalions of legere. Here are 2, and also a little treat, some cuirrassiers. If you are going to do Hougomont, it is just as well to plan for La Haie Sainte as well!

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Evolution of Hanoverian OOB 1813-16

I have been trying to paint the up the Hanoverian-British division of Walmoden's Korps at the Battle of Gohrde 1813. This is a pretty obscure unit and it is quite difficult to find information about the uniforms and to source figures. I decided to go with some Perry Hanoverians, although I know these are for their 1815 line. The uniforms would have changed significantly over this period of time, but what of it and I can use them maybe for some Waterloo project in the future.

To be fair though, I said I would trace back the 1815 units to their parent units as they were formed from 1813 onwards. This ended up being a pretty obscure area of scholarship. After several hours on the net and looking through some books I have, the following table evolved:

I used a number of references as note above. I have the Osprey Men at Arms 206 on the Hanoverian army and that is where I got some of my basic information for 1813, I also had researched the OB for the Battle of Gohrde in an earlier post. I also used some references from the following links as listed above: the Napoleonic Series, Gen de Brigade forum, a nice clickable reference to the Battle of Waterloo OOB, the Mont St Jean site and this pamphlet by WJ Rawkins. I also used Siborne's well known uniform table as follows, although there is some debate about it's accuracy.

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