French Column at 1:5 Ratio

French battalion at 1:5 ratio (144 figures). Elite Miniatures. Click to enlarge.

Just for the fun of it, I pushed two of my 1806 French battalions together to increase the casting to figure ratio from 1:10 to 1:5. So now a company increases from 12 figures to 24 figures. Now I have no intention of gaming Napoleonics at a 1:5 ratio, but it is an interesting exercise in optics. In the top picture, I provided a little bit of spacing between the companies of the column. The column is actually a column of grand divisions, of which it has a frontage of two grand divisions (48 figures x 5 = 240 men). So in theory, the French could fire off 240 muskets in three ranks when deployed in a column of grand divisions and facing an opponent in line formation (2 or 3 ranks deep).

UPDATE: the formation shown in the picture above is called colonne a grand distance with a 2-company (peleton) frontage per the 1791 regulations. There was an interval of 22 yards between the companies when they were in column and they had a 2-company frontage of about 44 yards.

1791 Regulations Column as used in 1805-1807 Campaigns

OOOO   OOOO
OOOO   OOOO    = 2 peleton frontage (grand division) for a column
OOOO   OOOO
                                =  interval of 22 yards between companies in the column
OOOO  OOOO
OOOO  OOOO
OOOO  OOOO

OOOO  OOOO
OOOO  OOOO
OOOO  OOOO

OOOO  OOOO
OOOO  OOOO
OOOO  OOOO

OOOO
OOOO                 = grenadier or voltigeur company
OOOO

In the picture shown below, the companies or peletons have been closed up in a formation called serre en colonne (close in column).

I have to say that I am sorely tempted to change my 1806 armies over to the proper 1791 Regulations organization of 9 companies. I would probably want to add 9 more figures to my 72-figure battalion, resulting in 81 figures or 9 companies of 9 figures. For the Peninsula War, I could change the movement trays (sabots) back to the six stand organization.

1808 Regulations used from 1808 to 1815

In 1808, the 9-company organization used in the 1806 campaign was now organized as a 6-company battalion (which is shown in my French armies for convenience' sake). So two peletons or companies in the 1791 regulations are equivalent to the a single company in the 1808 regulations. So now the companies are larger and they thus have a wider frontage. A column of grand divisions is shown below. This is the traditional "attack column" that we depict on the wargame table with six stands of figures, two stands wide and three stands deep.


OOOOOO   OOOOOO
OOOOOO   OOOOOO    = 2 company frontage for the attack column
OOOOOO   OOOOOO

OOOOOO   OOOOOO
OOOOOO   OOOOOO
OOOOOO   OOOOOO

OOOOOO   OOOOOO
OOOOOO   OOOOOO
OOOOOO   OOOOOO

The companies or grand divisions are closed up in this picture.

In the picture above, I have closed up the companies in the column so that there is little space between the individual companies. This is more of a wargaming formation than it is an actual formation, as there has to be some room between the companies. However, for wargaming purposes, we hardly ever depict any space between the companies when they are in column formation.

Work in Progress

French 1er Chasseurs a Cheval. Elite Miniatures.

Here are ten of the old Elite Miniatures French chasseurs a cheval that I painted over the weekend as the 1st Regiment of Chasseurs a Cheval. The entire Elite range was resculpted at some time during the 1990s and the older castings were discontinued. The new figures have definite scale creep as they are closer to 30mm whilst the old figures were closer to 25mm. I think. At any rate, I kind of like these older figures and I have been able to acquire 30 of them, which is almost 3 squadrons of 12 figures. I will have to use some (six to be exact) of the new  Elite chasseurs a cheval to fill out the regiment in my 1806 French army.

Eventually, I will have the 1st and the 12th regiments of chasseurs a cheval, both of which served in Davout's III Corps as the light cavalry contingent.

The picture is kind of dodgy and was taken with my iPad in the basement. The full size picture is a whopping 5 megs so I had to reduce it down to about 700 megs so that the pictures do not take up too much of the storage space that Blogger provides to me.