Boudet’s 4th Division
Général de Division Boudet’s division that defended the village of Essling was composed of three French infantry regiments – two line and one light – in two brigades, totalling seven battalions (see Orders of Battle). Aspern-Essling orders-of-battle gave the following numbers of men: 3rd Legere: 1,489 men in 2 battalions 56th Line: 2,290 men in 3 battalions 93rd Line: 1,401 men in 2 battalions Initially, I tried keeping all battalions a standard size of 12 figures following the conventions of several rule-sets I liked the look of. This gave two regiments of 24 figures and one of 36. However, at 1:50 the number of miniatures actually totalled: 3rd Legere: 29 figures 56th Line: 45 figures 93rd Line: 28 figures The standard battalion size had its advantages – and it was a convention I thought I might return to – but I didn’t mind giving battalions of different sizes
a try, in keeping with the historical
orders of battle. More importantly,
I much preferred to make my units
better represent the historical units
with their different frontages. As a
result I decided, instead, to simply
divide the figure totals by six (the
number of figures on my bases).
This, then, gave the following
totals:
3rd Legere: 24 figures
56th Line: 42 figures
93rd Line: 24 figures
However as I mentioned in Post 21,
LEFT The beginnings of the French 4th Division. I
cut the 25mm-square bases from 3mm MDF on a
table-saw. I painted the sides of the bases with
emulsion paint then stuck steel paper to the
underside of the bases – together with magnetic
strip this would help to keep the models safe in
their storage boxes. They were then ready to have
figures mounted on them.
while it seemed appropriate to be
conservative with Austrian roll-call
numbers it seemed appropriate to
be liberal with the French. For this
reason while rounding down all
Austrian numbers, I made the
decision to round up French totals
that were just one figure below a
multiple of six. As a result 3rd
Legere became a regiment of 30
figures, giving me one more base of
figures to paint. This all seemed
fine and fair – except, of course, for
the 93rd Line’s 28 figure total, just
one figure away from an upgrade.
But where to stop? However
unfair, I resolved to stick to my guns and
rule only to round up by one figure. This
made the final figure totals of the regiments:
3rd Legere: 30 figures
56th Line: 42 figures
93rd Line: 24 figures
Just to make sure, I checked the numbers of
the overall division. There were 5,180 men in
the division. At 1:50, this gave a total of 103
figures. My total was 96 figures, which
seemed fairer than the standard-battalion
division total of only 84. I could also raise
the division to 102 figures by adding another
base to the poor old 93rd if I felt like it in the
future!
The above base numbers were important to
me because I planned to use Boudet’s
division to test my homebrew rules and the
balance between size of built-up areas and
the size of units able to defend them.
POST 170
170
