3eme Ligne

The final battalion I needed for Bachelu's division in the French II Corps is the 3eme Ligne. In the "General de Brigade" orbat the battalion fields 30 figures and skirmishers. I have done what I always do for units of this strength: 5 companies of 6 figures and then the voltiguer company out on skirmish stands. All figures are the Perry plastic infantry save for most of the command stand, which are from the metal "Command in Greatcoats" pack (the drummer and officer I will save for the next battalion I paint). As I mentioned before, I sculpted some moustaches onto fusilier heads to provide more variety in the grenadier company. The Perry plastic box gives you lots of spare heads, but hardly any have moustaches. Rather than use the same old heads yet again I decided to convert some of the fusilier heads. It's interesting to see that once you add a moustache the character of the face changes completely - I suppose that may be one reason why people grow moustaches! I admit that I found this a bit of a challenge; the trickiest parts were ensuring equal growth on each side of the nose and retaining the nose itself. I'm not sure if I've executed these conversions particularly well, but at least I have some different faces in the grenadiers' ranks. I have a couple of other figures left over which look rather better.

I decided to give this unit a more uniform look by painting all the greatcoats and shako covers the same colours (respectively, Foundry palettes "Slate Grey 32" and "Palomino 56"). I also corrected a mistake I've made on all my other Napoleonic French infantry and did not add red edges to the coat turn-backs (which I gather was dropped around 1812/13). Otherwise, these were painted pretty much as all my previous French.

I'm working on some First Carlist War units at the moment (3 are "in the can" awaiting photographs) but the next Napoleonic work will be on brigade and divisional command stands and artillery. For the latter, I'm still undecided on what paints to use for French artillery woodwork. I wasn't satisfied with my earlier effort (using the specific Foundry triad), so if anyone has any tried and tested acrylic recipes I'd be most grateful to hear them.

36 figures. Painted November/December 2011. Flag from GMB.