Sunday, 1 November 2026

Isabelino cavalry (1)


This is my first unit of Isabelino cavalry - a line cavalry regiment of 12 figures. As I've stated before, the terrain over which many battles were fought was not conducive to large cavalry charges, although there were some during the course of the war.  Cavalry tended to be used more for scouting activity, and when cavalry units do pop up in orbats they tend to be quite small, e.g. a couple of squadrons. I'm thinking that around 24 figures per side should do for most things, at least initially. So for the Isabelino side, this means one unit each of line and light cavalry.   

I painted these figures during Lockdown in 2020. I'd spent the first 6 months of Lockdown on Frostgrave, but then decided I needed a total change of scene. However, I then realised I didn't have the right lance pennants for these figures, kept forgetting to buy them, and didn't even base the figures until a couple of weeks ago! The yellow and light blue uniform is quite fetching. This dates from 1835, so it's a bit "mid-war" and line cavalry previously had dark blue coatees; but who cares? I'm not going to paint two sets of cavalry just to reflect an early war uniform as well.  All line cavalry regiments had the same uniform and there don't appear to have been any differences in facing colours. Both the Cairns/Perry book and the Osprey MAA state that trumpeters wore a red coatee rather than the more usual reversed-colours. I'm not quite sure what happened with the second row of figures - they are supposed to be holding the lances upright, but it's clear that not all the figures can do this. I don't think I bought an extra pack of front row figures by mistake, but I'll have another go at the lances in due course and see if I can correct this. Two more First Carlist War posts to go; 3 if I can finish the Don Carlos command stand - then it's Frostgrave week!    

12 figures. Painted September-October 2020. Pennants and flag from Adolfo Ramos.










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