Artillerie à cheval de la Garde impériale - Old 28mm flats

Pictured above is a set of French horse artillery of the Imperial Guard, 2nd Empire.  Purchased on German eBay, they were sold as Heinrichsen and there's no particular reason to question that. They are the small figures prevalent ca.1860.

Bidding was light and I got them cheaply. Perhaps because the figures had been modified at least to some extent and clearly the bore brushes had been redone due to breakage.  Good idea but I think the previous collector erred in his choice of very light gauge wire. As seen below, I reworked this and of course repainted. I wonder about the figure at left, a bit larger and more dynamically posed, perhaps he's from another set.

 

And the "original" paint jobs below in comparison to my own rework.  I found also when I stripped the paint that the figure reaching into the pouch had been quite crudely modified with the pouch and hands cut away. Rather than tossing the figure, I repainted with his arms at his sides (see last photo). The figures as sold certainly have the period look of simple facture paint, but enough was changed that there's absolutely no guilt on my part about "colorizing Citizen Kane", a criticism once leveled against me at TMP for committing sacrilege by repainting antique figures.

As can be seen in contrast with the 33mm Rieche figure, the old 28mm's are quite diminutive.

And a couple of parting shots.

Rather statically posed soldiers but I do like the uniforms, a definite throwback to Napoleonic times. Too bad there's no mounted figures in this grouping, but likely some will surface sooner or later.

I had intended to post the 28mm Austrians next but as they're pretty mediocre, I'll put up some Rieche Franco-Prussian war sets soon.

Heinrichsen French Infantry - Old 28mm Flats

Here's a set of old Heinrichsen 28mm flats which I've gradually repainted over the months.  More about them on this previous post.  It's a bit embarrassing to see that I'd predicted a 3 week completion time for this unit at that time, now 7 months past. Not that they take long to paint, they don't. But I'd left them in the queue 3/4 completed until this month. Well, better late than never !

Yes, they are small.  This photo showing the vagaries of scale between musicians of the Heinichsens and Eureka Toy Town soldiers (ostensibly 28mm scale), is rather comical.

"I'm 28mm." .... "No, I'M 28mm !"

And as completed.

If I game with them, I'll need to mount them simply on cardboard bases as repeatedly knocking down the ranks like dominoes while setting up for the photos was an exercise in frustration. 

I do like the old school appeal of these figures, and as a lot were produced back in the 19th Century, there's enough old sets and castings still around to make a go of assembling both a French and Austrian army.  The unit sizes tend to run around 20 foot, 10 horse which actually suits horse & musket gaming in the Featherstone style rather nicely. Most of them are factory painted and can certainly be sent to battle that way for the near term. And Heinrichsen has re-issued a few things.

Next up, first painted examples of some Austrians in this same antique style of figures.  I also recently scored a very nice deal on a set of Garde Imperiale horse artillery on German eBay, which will effectively take care of the guns for the French side.