On parade! The Truchseß Dragoons of the Barryat of Lyndonia

In Part 7 of this series of ‘On parade!’ postings featuring the units of my ‘imagi-nation’ army, we meet these dragoons based on the real-life Prussian Truchseß dragoon regiment.  

My imagi-nation, the Barryat of Lyndonia is based on the movie Barry Lyndon. But there are only a few cavalrymen in the movie, who are basically in Prussian infantry uniforms with attached plumes, and don’t do anything for me.

So I decided to do a completely new unit, not from the movie at all, but picked for an entirely different reason. When I met my wife back in the 80s, pink and light-blue were the ‘in’ colours. She not only wore (very attractively, I might add) pink and light-blue eye-shadow, but we painted our first house together white with pink and light-blue trim. Despite being well out of fashion now, I still have a fondness of that colour combination, so how could I resist painting a real-life regiment that had light-blue uniforms with pink facings – the Prussian Truchseß dragoons?!

I don’t organise my regiments  in any historical way – they are merely for playing fun wargames, not simulating history. When I painted this regiment back in 2012, it initially had 24 figures –  two officers, one drummer and one standard bearer (all based singly) and two squadrons of 10 troopers (based in pairs).  

However, I later added a couple more troopers to each squadron, as I found 10 to be an unsatisfying number for arranging my regiment in symmetrical formations!  

The figures are all 28mm Minden Miniatures (along with Crann Tara Miniatures, the most exquisite 18th century figures around, in my opinion). The standard is merely printed out from a lovely picture on the Kronosaf website.

I was particularly pleased with how this haughty officer came out. As this figure was originally a Minden Hanovarian officer, and not a Prussian at all, he is wearing his sash incorrectly across his shoulder for a Prussian (who wore them around the waist). Even though with an imagi-nation army I’m not bound by accuracy, I decided to paint the sash as a real military decoration ribbon instead – the orange ribbon of the Order of the Black Eagle.

The horses were under-coated with rust-coloured car primer, then rubbed with burnt umber or black oil paint.  This oil paint used to belong to my Dad, who passed away in 1984, so it imbues my figures with a touch of personal memories, and also shows you how long oil paint lasts!  

Oh, and I had some expert help on painting horses from Sammy, who is seen inspecting the results in the above picture!

Go forward to Part 8 of this series: the artillery contingents

Go back to Part 6 of this series: the Lynden Hussars