Wednesday 6 April 2011

57th Foot


The 57th Foot was originally raised in 1755 as the 59th Foot. The advance up the list of seniority occurred the following year when the 50th and 51th regiments were disbanded. The 57th acquired the county name of West Middlesex and is probably best known for it's bloody performance at Albuera in 1811. The call to the regiment by its commanding officer, Colonel Inglis, that it "die hard" provided the regimental nickname of "the Die Hards". Apparently at that battle the regiment suffered some 442 casualties out of a complement of 600. In 1881 the regiment was amalgamated with the 77th Foot to form the Middlesex Regiment, which in turn was amalgamated with other regiments in 1966 to form the Queen's Regiment. The 57th Foot lives on today in the Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment. The 57th does not appear to have done a huge amount in the AWI. It appears just once in the "British Grenadier!" scenarios, as a 12-figure unit for Long Island.

I painted this unit in November last year and forgot to post pics. Ideally for the Long Island scenario you would have Brits in charging and marching poses, but I wanted to use up my remaining Foundry firing line figures and I had just enough for a 12-figure battalion. The Long Island scenario is in the newly-published 3rd "British Grenadier" scenario book, available from Caliver Books. I gather that photos of our 2008 recreation of Long Island feature in the new scenario book. He's a link to my post on the game to whet your appetite. I am sorry for the silence over the past 2 weeks. As so often, both work and family life intervened and conspired to reduce my available time for hobby-related activities. On the painting front I am close to finishing the 4th Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard for 1815 and Armand's Legion cavalry for the AWI. I have some completed Carlist War infantry who just need a flag and they should make an appearance soon.

12 figures. Painted November 2010. Flags by GMB.

UPDATE: 6 figures were added to this unit in May 2016 to bring the units up to 18 figures for the Hudson Forts scenario, as shown in the photo above.






9 comments:

Mericánach said...

Hi Giles. Good looking unit, as always. Nice to hear that some of your stuff will feature in the new BG scenario book.

Is there any chance of you popping up a bare metal pic of those Eureka dragoons you mentioned previously?

Giles said...

Hi Pat - thanks for the comments. I'm intending to do a write up on the Eureka dragoons when I've finished painting my first batch (whcih hopefully will be tonight!). So I'll aim to have something up over the weekend.

Mericánach said...

I'm trying to get a review of Greg Novak's pair of AWI OOB books together, but work is being less than co-operative.

I'll look forward to the post featuring the Eureka dragoons.

Best,

P.

Iowa Grognard said...

Great stuff as always. I look forward to seeing the dragoons.

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

Lovely work Giles and making me feel guilty for not paying more attention to my AWI.

Cheers
Christopher

Bluewillow said...

lovely Giles,

I hope you had a great holiday in Oz.
I plan to start my British in June this year so I plan on stealing all of your research!

cheers
Matt

Tim Abbott said...

The 57th were part of Knyphausen's Springfield Raid in June, 1780 which featured engagements at Connecticut Farms and Springfield, NJ. Perhaps this will be a scenario when the 4th edition BG comes out...

Mosstrooper said...

Nice looking figures as always !

andy said...

Hey Giles

Just wanted to say thanks for more inspiration! Some lovely figures once more.

I have just started my own blog, led on by others such as yourself - feel free to have a look!
http://haveacare.blogspot.com/

Best wishes, and keep painting!