54th Ligne (1)

I'm afraid work and real life have invaded hobby time again over the past couple of weeks, so apologies for falling behind with regular posts.  Here is something that I started painting back in January 2012 and then added to from time to time until I decided to finish it off in February 2013: more Perry French infantry for Waterloo.  After finishing off Bachelu's division, I looked around to see what division to work on next.  I settled on Quiot's division in d'Erlon's I Corps, so I'm basically working my way east across the battlefield, having started with the division at the end of Jerome's Corps.  So the focal point for my Waterloo project at the moment is the area between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte.  These are all plastic figures apart from the 3 command figures.

This is the second battlion of the 54th Line, part of the 1st brigade of the 1st division of I Corps.  I painted the brigade commander, Colonel Charlet, last year.  At 1:20 for the "General de Brigade" orbat, this battalion has 24 figures.  As I worked through Bachelu's division I decided to standardise the shako covers and greatcoats in each battalion.  I've now decided to use the colours of the shako covers to differentiate between divisions.  So while Bachelu's troops have canvas-coloured covers, Charlet's troops will have black oilskin ones.  A couple of the grenadiers have "fusilier" heads with extra moustaches that I sculpted with green stuff.  I cut off the right arm of one of the voltiguers and glued on the arm from the skirmishing figures to suggest he'd trying to adjust his straps (or something like that).  I forgot to include the additional skirmishing voltiguer bases in the photos, but they do exist.  You can also see from the photo above that I forgot I was painted grenadiers at one point, because the chap on the left of the grenadier base has a voltiguer horn on his cartridge box! The 54th is one of the French regiments for which GMB do special battalion flags.  The building in the background is by Touching History, and the walls are (I believe) from the Hovels Hougoumont sets (painted by Touching History). 

As I said above, my painting time has really take a body blow since little Monty was born.  It's not so much having to deal with 2 boys rather than 1, but rather the fact that Hugo now doesn't have his afternoon nap - this means I no longer have a good 2 hours each weekend day (and bank holidays) and so painting is limited to about 45 minutes in the evening, if I get home from work before 8pm (increasingly rare these days).  Luckily I'm still working through my backlog of finished units from earlier this year.  I'll have some 1815 Hanoverian riflemen at the end of the week.

24 figures (plus 4 skirmishers). Painted at various times from January 2012 to February 2013.  Flag by GMB.