Thursday, July 4, 2024

Project Waterloo: Hanoverians... and (free) flags from Mal's Small World.


This project required 3 units of Hanoverian infantry. Perry makes a nice range of these troops, but I didn't really want to incur the expense of buying them (and the necessary time to paint them!). 

Roughly 25 years ago I bought roughly 100 very neatly painted Minifigs British from Jamie, who had brough them to Historicon in the hopes that I might want to purchase them. 

I had no British Napoleonics at the time, nor had I any plans to start a British Napoleonic army at the time, either. 

If I recall, he offered them at $1 per figure. At that price and with the very fine paint jobs, I couldn't resist... could I? Of course not. 

The troops were more than enough to make up 3 units of infantry in my scheme, but not enough for 4. The regulation Hanoverian Line infantry uniform was all but indistinguishable form that of standard British troop.  I realized that I could use the spare figures (and a few spare Old Glory command figures) to just add Hanoverian Command stands (just the flags, really). Then the three units could be used as either British or Haoverian just by changing one stand per unit. 


Jamie's original troops formed one unit of 30 in light yellow facings, and one in medium green facings. While I was at it, I changed the facing colors of the requisite figures  so that there is now a black faced unit, that once again can be used as British or Hanoverian. These wonderful flags are from Mal's Small World blog: https://mal4955.blogspot.com/p/mals-small-world-guide-to-flags-and.html

Among the gems there are numerous flags for the British Yeomanry units of the Napoleonic Wars, Foreign units in British service, ALL of the British Infantry units of the Napoleonic Wars (one of the pedants on TMP sniffed that devices are too large; he's correct, but really for our purposes the flags look much better and are more easily recognizable with  the exaggerated devices. In any event, if you don't like them, I'm sure your money will be cheerfully refunded (my standard answer to those who complain about aspects of thigs they didn't pay anything for!). 

Anyway, there are  flags for all three battalions of the Hanoverian regiments of 1815; it's likely the regimental (not the sovereign's) flags had fields in the facing color (and perhaps white for black faced regiments). Anyway, the flags I used, left to right, were for the Luneburg, Calenberg, and Verden regiments. 

But wait, there's still more vexillogic goodness on Mal's blog: Flags for all the Danish Napoleonic infantry regiments, eight sheets for flags for the Swedish Napoleonic infantry and cavalry regiments, flags for the Russian Cossacks and Opolochenie, far more than 100 flags for the Austrian Landwehr of 1809, the Erzherzog Karl Legion, and the infantry and cavalry of the Hungarian Insurrectio. Not satisfied? There a few dozen flags for the Tyrolean uprising, too! 

Still not impressed? How about flags for the Napoleonic Army of Mysore, the Sikhs, Rajput, Mehwari, Muhgals. There are flags as described by Kipling for  Jaipur, Lahore, Bikanir, Udaipur, and others. Still more sheets of flags are on the site for the Mahratta, an illustration of the flags of the French Corps of Hyderbad, flags of the Honorable East India Company,  the Bombay Native Infantry, Bengal infantry and cavalry in British service, and the same for Madras. There arter probably well over 1,00 flags on this site, and all are free!  Check it out; yopu will be blown away!

 

16 comments:

  1. Those Hanoverians look grand, nice units and the flags are really very nice indeed and work well, great site for flags too!

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  2. Thats really oldschool (in the best sense) and reminds me of that time when I startd the hobby with Minifigs too - some 35 years ago :-D

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    1. I still have quite a number of Minifigs serving in the ranks - Danes, Swedes, Kingdom of Italy, Westphalians, older Wurttembergers, Saxons, some Prussians, many Russians, and many Ancient armies!

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  3. Minifigs still have a certain charm and look great en masse. The paint jobs on these is very good as well ,as you say.

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    1. Thanks, Lawrence; en masse is how they are meant to be used; they are *wargames* figures, after all!

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  4. Nice that these figures can be brought to use. Good find on the flags.

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    1. Thank you, Richard. The flags are amazing!

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  5. Great looking figures, grand flags as well. You have the Hanoverian troops I don't muster. They look swell.

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    1. Thanks, Joe. This way 85% of the figures can be used as either British Line or Hanoverians.

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  6. Great resource for flags at Mal's site. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. As he says, he mostly does the flags that other's do NOT do!

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  7. A good way yo use hhe extra figures and maximize the usability of your three units Peter....must check out that blog, too!

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    1. I'm sure most of us do things like this from time to time!

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  8. Minifigs have a definite 'toy solider' appeal and come with a lot of nostalgia, the super paint job does them justice.

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    1. Thanks, Gary. I still like the look of the classic Minifigs, and am happy to have them on my table.

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