Volontaires Étrangers de Clermont Prince

The latest regiment in my 18th century fictional army is a unit of light troops, the Volontaires Étrangers de Clermont Prince.

“Ah, but they’re not fictional,” I hear you say, “they’re a real French unit!” True. But my ‘imagi-nation’, the Barryat of Lyndonia, contracts real-life regiments from all over Europe to man its armies. This cunning subterfuge allows me to use any real-life units I like!

These wonderful 1/56 scale figures (i.e. about 28mm) are produced by Crann Tara Miniatures. The detail is beautifully sculpted – just look at the lace on the men’s pockets and the officer’s lapel.

The models are depicted wearing the conical red hat called a ‘pokalem’, with a chamois front flap decorated with the French fleur-de-lys, and a white plume.

The Volontaires wore a uniform based on the livery of the House of Bourbon-Condé: chamois with red cuffs, collar, turn-backs, left-side lapel and waistcoat.

I once again followed my new-found passion for using GW’s Contrast paints, which are perfect for painting such detailed figures. Every bit of shading on these models was done by the paint itself – I just slopped it on!

The way I have organised my unit is not based on real-life, but is of my own devising, though influenced by the 1967 book ‘Charge! Or, How to Play War Games’ by Brigadier P. Young & Lieutenant Colonel J. P. Lawford.

Here’s one of my two companies, with an officer on the left, twelve infantrymen on four bases, and a drummer on the right.

With the two companies grouped together, I have quite an impressively large unit.

You’ll see the men are arranged in a ragged firing line representative of light infantry, rather than the more regimented line-of-battle troops.

I guess this is the sight that I, as the player, will usually have of my unit on the wargames table (unless it retreats or routs, of course – which in my case is quite likely!).

PS: I did this posting using the new Gutenberg editor that WordPress have foisted upon us. My, what a non-intuitive application! An awful a lot of swearing and cursing went into getting this fairly simple posting formatted properly, I can tell you!