108th Ligne

This unit represents the 108th Line regiment at Waterloo and completes Campi's brigade in Bachelu's division of Reille's II Corps. I have been following the order of battle available on the General de Brigade website, but mixed up the 72nd and 108th Line regiments - I gave the former two battalions and the larger only one, when in fact it's the 108th that has the two battalions. Idiotically, I've just make the same mistake with the two regiments in Husson's brigade...Anyway, the orbat has the battalion at 30 figures. The brigade skirmishers number 12 figures and I have divided those equally between the 72nd and 108th (in fact I gave each battalion of the 72nd 4 skirmishers, to I have 2 left over). This means that the 108th does actually have 36 figures, a "full strength" French line battalion.

As I said a couple of posts ago, I had a sudden urge a couple of weeks ago to paint some more French infantry for 1815. I painted two 6-figure stands of the Perry metal French infantry years ago when the figures first came out, and it seemed sensible to add to those and make a full battalion. Those earlier figures were painted in a rather different style (the faces in particular) and I add to continue a couple of "mistakes" in the uniform to ensure consistency - so, for example, there are no "N"s on the cartridge case flaps. The command stand comprises the figures from the metal regimental command pack, save for the standard bearer which is from the plastic box. A problem I had not appreciated would arise is that the plastic eagle pole is too short to accommodate a GMB flag. The metal eagle in the metal command pack is fine, but for some reason the plastic one is shorter; I've no idea why this is the case and it's a bit annoying as it means you have to increase the pole if you want to use GMB flags (which are larger that the freebies that come in the Perry box). I foolishly tried to attach a bit of steel rod by cellotape and it looks rubbish, so I'll need to change that at some stage.

As I've said before, the Perry plastics are wonderful figures to paint - very easy to do, with excellent detail and good, natural poses. There are a couple of metals on the skirmish stands (the bases of which are from the Perry box). I'm just over half way through the next unit, the second battalion of the 61st Ligne. When that's finished I might paint Campi himself and an artillery crew and then return to the AWI or Carlists for a bit.

36 figures. Painted January 2007 and July 2010.