Tuesday, June 11, 2019

French Dragoons

Minden French Dragoons painted as the Apchon dragoon regiment.


I am working my way through the French army codes in the Minden Miniatures figure range and adding pictures to the on-line catalog. So when you want to buy one of the items you will have a picture of that product code and see what the figures look like. If there are 8 figures in the  pack, then all eight figures shown in the picture will be painted.

French dragoons are now painted and added to the webstore. These are MFC-003 Dragoon Command Pack and MFC-004 Dragoon Troopers. Click on the link below to visit the Fife and Drum Miniatures webstore:


The samples shown in the  pictures below are painted as the Apchon dragoon regiment. There is no information about the uniform of the mounted drummer, but Kronoskaf indicates that the musicians wore the livery of the House of Apchon, which is unknown. The regiment had a cavalry guidon with a green field and gold edging, so I speculated that green and gold (yellow) might be the colors of the Apchon livery. 

Apchon Dragoon Regiment guidon.
(source: Kronoskaf)
The drummer's coat is a very light yellow with green turnbacks and cuffs. I used green for the shabraque for the same reason, speculating on the Apchon colors, but I also used the blue and yellow border that the dragoon troopers had.

The standard bearer's staff is painted in a striped green and yellow design, barbershop pole motif, using the Apchon colors. Again, this is pure speculation and I wanted to have a little bit of fun with the samples.

MFC-003 French Dragoon Command
Minden Miniatures

French dragoon troopers (MFC-004)

The Apchon dragoons - Minden Miniatures

You can read the history of the Apchon dragoon regiment on Kronoskaf HERE

Well, now that I have six figures of the Apchon regiment painted, I might as well paint six more troopers to give me a 12-figure cavalry regiment. Because French cavalry regiments tended to be smaller (only 1 to 2 squadrons), I use 12 figures to represent a French regiment. I then usually brigade two such units to form a 24-figure cavalry unit.

Next up on the painting table, some French hussars that will be used as catalog pictures.

7 comments:

  1. "Magnifique travail Monsieur!"

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  2. Excellent Jim, the drummer and standard bearer add a lot to the figures, well done.

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  3. Agreed. You really nailed the horse coats and the flagpole too.

    Best Regards,

    Stokes

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  4. I very much admire your dragoons. It's nice that you made the musician very colourfull. The French dragoons were looking somehow boring compared with the cavalry as they mostly had red uniforms, except the royal regiments (Du Roi for example). For the WAS you would need bigger regiments, because the French dragoons had 5 sqn.s. Therefore I rate the French dragoons large and the horse Units (4 sqn.s strong) standard sized. The French dragoons often fought on foot. Therefore I would recommend to paint some figures on foot too.

    It's a fine decission to have them in standing poses as the dragoons often were not used at all (at Laffeldt for example). Maybe de Saxe & Co didn't wanted to rely on them.

    Best Regards!

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  5. A great looking unit, Jim, and the speculative colours on the musician and the guidon bearer look great and are very acceptable in the absence of any detail in this area. Cheers, Rohan.

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