56th Line Infantry Drummer
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To convert the Pendraken figure to a fusilier drummer, I modelled ‘swallows nest’ wings over the epaulettes. I snipped off the figure’s plume and rounded the top of the pompon with putty.93rd Line Infantry Drummer
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The figure featured in Post 77 was intended to be the drummer of the 56th Line Regiment. However, I had him switch regiments and changed his plume colour to match his new regiment’s colour scheme. Philippe-René Girault who wrote of the 1809 campaign in his memoirs was a musician of the 93rd. He was probably 33 years old at the time. He also had to switch regiments in his military career.Band of Drummers
I painted a Pendraken line infantry drummer figure as the drummer of each of the three infantry regiments that defended the village of Essling, the light regiment as well as the two line. RIGHT I had difficultly working out what was what in the area where the figure’s sable hilt, drum apron and sling come together – another of those spaghetti junctions of 10mm figure detail. Since photographing the drummer in Post 77, I changed the detail of this area a little. As it turned out, I ended up painting the area slightly differently on all the drummers.
Rousselot’s Napoleon’s Army includes superb
reference for the 3rd Light Infantry that
derives from a diary of an inhabitant of
Luneberg kept from 1807 to the end of 1808,
slightly predating the 1809 campaign but
providing regimental distinctions that I, for
one, just couldn’t ignore. I got out the green
stuff and set to work to try and match the
distinctions of the Rousselot reference, which
was of a carabinier drummer. He is
illustrated with no shako plate. I removed
the figure’s plate and I added a simple green-
stuff shako cord to match the sparse cords of
the reference. I
kept the fringed-
epaulettes because
the drummer was
a carabinier
drummer. As a
point of interest,
his drum cloth
was not white but
of a brown fur.
RIGHT This figure
came from a different
batch of castings and
thankfully, unlike the
other two drummers,
the base of the drum
was fully cast.
3rd Light Infantry Drummer
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POST 81
81
