Half a Brigade of Grenadiers
As I mentioned back in Post 128, my
battalions of 12 grenadiers would have
the facing colours of just two rather
than their actual three regiments. This,
of course, had the advantage of
restricting one base of figures to one
facing colour, meaning also that the
based miniatures could, potentially, be
more useful for other games with a
different ratio of figure to men.
However, what with the Habsburg
command moving and mixing units
about before and after Wagram and
producing improvised brigades here
and there, matching the facing colours
within battalions seemed much more
important than making sure that my
first two battalions were in the same
brigade at any one time.
As a result, I finished off the Hungarian
battalion as the Scharlach battalion by
matching the IR31 grenadiers with
yellow-facings with a base of IR51
grenadiers with dark blue facings. My
Austrian grenadier battalion choice was
heavily influenced by two of the line
infantry regiments that I had painted
up. They were painted as the Portner
battalion with the facing colours of IR44
and IR46, madder red and dark blue.
I didn’t have any Austrian grenadiers painted and I certainly wanted to
see what the Pendraken Austrian grenadiers looked like painted up. I set
myself the task of completing one battalion of Austrian and one battalion
of Hungarian grenadiers. That would provide half of a brigade on the way
to completing a full brigade. But which brigade? Which facing colours?
After reading John Gill’s new book (see
the previous post), my immediate
thought was that I needed to get more
Austrian grenadiers painted up. The
Grenadier Reserve featured heavily in
the Battle of Znaim and in the actions
leading up to it. I was itching to see
some of that on the tabletop.
I only had one base of Hungarian
grenadiers completed (see Post 128),
painted as grenadiers of Benjowsky
Infantry Regiment No. 31 with emperor
yellow facings. At Essling, they were
part of an improvised brigade of
grenadiers that Archduke Charles
ordered to assist in the attack on the
Great Garden and Granary. This
‘improvised brigade’ was, in fact, an on-
the-spot grouping of two battalions
from one brigade and two battalions
from two other grenadier brigades – two
Austrian and two Hungarian battalions.
POST 227
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