French line foot artillery (3)

Here are 2 further artillery pieces and crews that I put together with the additional figures contained in the Perry Miniatures packs, FN20 "infantry hired help" and FN21 "extra artillery crew".  I like mixing up the figures supplied in artillery packs, so long as the end result matches some kind of realistic activity.  When putting all the French Napoleonic artillery crews together I looked at a number of books for details on exactly who stood where and for what purpose.  Adkin's "The Waterloo Companion" has some good info on all this and also of use were the old Osprey "Napoleonic Artillery" MAA and the Almark "Nations in Arms" book on Napoleon's Artillery by Paddy Griffith. (Did Almark ever release any other titles in the "Nations in Arms" series?  I've only ever seen one other book on British cavalry.)  Painting all these Perry packs coincided with the release of the Befreiungskriege limited edition artillery-ish pack (which I painted the other week while on paternity leave) and some artillery-related goodies from Westfalia Miniatures which I am hoping to paint up soon.

Anyway, about these 2 pieces.  The story with the first is that the trained crew has largely been lost due to counter-battery fire (I'm ignoring Wellington's orders at Waterloo against this) and a wounded officer is explaining to two infantrymen "hired help" what needs to be done.  In the meantime, the remaining artilleryman examines the ammunition situation.  I gather than while the ammunition wagons were situated behind the batteries, each gun's little ammunition box (not sure about the correct phrase) was kept quite close.  In the second set, 2 artillerymen with trailspikes are positioning the gun while another gunner gives some orders to an infantryman helper carrying some drag-rope.  Asn I mentioned in my previous post, making up extra crews like this is good fun but you then need extra guns to go with them.  Perry Miniatures seem to have a policy of not selling artillery guns separately, so the options are either to buy them elsewhere (for example mega-expensive Foundry or Front Rank) or buy some of the Perry limber packs that come with guns.  It is an easy decision really, so I bought one Perry French 6-pounder foot artillery limber set, but I'm a still one gun down; I'll probably just wait a while and then buy some other limber packs.

A couple of readers asked about the buildings in the background of this sequence of Napoleonic artillery posts.  They are from Tablescape, from whom I've been buying a variety of stuff over the years.  As well as making buildings to order (like my AWI Ring House and Harvard Church) they do a lovely range of ready-to-go Mediterranean buildings that can be used for several different theatres and periods.  These buildings are very light and nicely painted, and blend in well with my other Touching History Spanish-style terrain.     

8 figures and 2 guns.  Painted January 2013.