10th Battalion, British Auxiliary Legion

For my second British Auxiliary Legion battalion I thought I'd do another of the Irish units. The 10th Battalion was named the Munster Light Infantry, although I don't think there was any particular distinction in training or use between those battalions which were called "light infantry" and those that were not. There does seem to be evidence, however, that the battalions were often organised into "English", "Scottish" and "Irish" brigades, so the 10th was a natural successor to my 9th "Irish" Battalion.

I wanted to portray this unit in a really ragged state. As mentioned before, the BAL suffered appallingly during its first Spanish winter, with many troops falling victim to disease and the cold. In addition to having trousers in different colours and painting lots of patches, I used green stuff to rough-up some of the trousers and tunics and I also opened up a couple of shoes to show bare toes underneath. I then added lots of mud to the figures once the painting was complete. I think the result looks suitably shabby, although I'll ensure my next BAL units are much more regular in appearance. The Adolfo Ramos flag collection for this period seems to do 4 numbered flags for the BAL infantry - the 3rd, 4th, 8th and 9th battalions. It was simple enough to paint over the 4th's flag and replace the "4" with a "10"; one trick I've picked up when amending flags is to paint the numbering in black first and then go over that in gold (or whatever), so that the gold top colour has a small black border to help the numbers stand out.

The reason why I paint FCW units in pairs is that each command pack in the range contains sufficient figures for 2 units. Given my self-imposed rule of not buying any more FCW figures until I paint the ones I have, this means that I always have two similarly-posed units to paint before I can order any new figures. So at the moment I am working on the second greatcoated battalion of the Borbon Regiment and the second of my pair of provincial regiments (the first of which will be posted at the end of this week). I'm now very close to Baby Zero Hour, but I think the next pair of FCW figures will be some Isabelino light infantry or perhaps the new BAL figures running at trail. I will then have a dozen or so Isabelino units so it will be time to turn to the Carlists.

20 figures. Painted August/September 2009. Flag by Adolfo Ramos.