I bought 40 figures for my 1813 Saxon Chevau-legers from Black Hussar Miniatures a number of years ago and they have been sitting on my paint desk for a while. Having finished my preparations for Historicon about 3 weeks ago, I had some spare time in my hobby schedule before I fully commit to Pavia 1525 after Historicon is over. It was time for those 1813 Saxon Chevau-legers in 28mm to finally get painted.
The figures were a real pleasure to paint as the sculpts seem to fit my painting style. The figures also work well with my Calpe Saxon infantry.
The unit represents the Prinz Clemens Regiment as it appeared in 1813. The regiment consisted of five squadrons for a total of 758 men and 26 officers. This gave 784 total. At a ratio of 1:20 this was close enough to 5 squadrons each of 8 figures.
I had quite a lot of discussion on TMP with some very knowledgable people on how to represent the unit. In 1813 the first two squadrons had lances.. Also the first 4 squadrons had standards with no standard for the 5th squadron. The first squadron standard was the white Leibestandarte and the second to fourth squadrons had the red Ordinarestandarten.
I also decided to put an officer and trumpeter in each squadron. For the first squadron I decided to mount them on black horses in the French manner, even though I have no solid evidence that the Saxons copied this practice. I also put all the trumpeters on grey horses (except for the second squadron where I decided to mix it up a bit to represent a shortage of horses). Again I do not have any historical evidence for this decision.
The ribbons on the standards were white for the first squadron, red for the second, yellow for the third and blue for the fourth.
Overall it took me between three and four weeks to paint the 1813 Saxon Chevau-leger regiment.
Now I see the photos I can of course detect areas of my painting that can be touched up, but overall I am happy with how the figures turned out. We can all point to better painted figures that we have seem, but I would not be embarrassed to put these on the table. I do like the red and lime green of the 1813 Saxon Chevau-legers.
It is now back to Pavia, although I do have some Prussian Landwehr Cavalry and National Cavalry regiments that I have just started.
