Villages for the Franco-Prussian War - Part 1: Planning

With the end of the Austrian expansion in sight and with the thought of a Franco-Prussian War campaign in mind, I decided that I needed some buildings for this era and location.

The idea is to make two sets: one to represent the towns and villages in Lorraine, more specifically around Metz, and another to represent those of northeastern Lorraine and Alsace which have a more Germanic feel.

Research is key to a project like this so the first thing I did was go online and look up images from that area in that period. The Alsacian villages proved relatively easy to research for two reasons: first because the region has not undergone heavy development, and second, because the villages and towns near or on the battlefield were largely left undamaged in 1870 and by the World Wars. The main battle in Alsace was Froschweiler, or Wörth as the Germans knew it, and several good contemporary images of Froschweiler exist, although the last three images below contradict my mention of a lack of battle damage.

Morsbronn, a few kilometres to the south is captured in the famous painting of the charge of the 8th and 9th Cuirassiers.

Much of the town today has that same chocolate box look that it had in 1870.

The towns of Wörth and Wissembourg today also have that chocolate box look. These Alsacian buildings are going to be a pleasure to make.

The villages near Metz were a little more difficult to get detail on. There are only a few contemporary images available and some villages were severely damaged in the battles of August 16 and 18 and have been rebuilt in different styles. There are, however some images taken in the early 1900s that give insight.

Mars la Tour - (images three and four below were clearly taken during WWI).

Rezonville -

Knutsnge - a little further north of Metz, but this café will make an interesting addition.

St Privat -

 

Some modern day images of Rezonville and Vionville also provide some ideas.

However, the best inspiration for the Lorraine buildings is found on John Boadle's  Hand-Built History blog (link, link, link). I shall be drawing much inspiration from John's models.

Armed with imagery to spark my imagination I began to think how to create the villages. I want these to be modular with ability to create streets. My first thought was to create perhaps ten or so buildings on bases rather like the ruins I made earlier this year that would enable me to create the building and its back yard like the properties shown in this image of Mars la Tour (taken from the bell tower of the village church).

The problem with this idea was that it meant that a village with a double sided street would have a depth of over 500mm and that would take up a lot of space on a table. Then, when looking for more images, I found this map of the village of St Privat at the time of the battle.

I liked the way that the streets and narrow alleyways ran off at odd angles, but village of that size to scale would extend across an entire table. What if I made a part of it? So I drew a box around around the best known part of the village - around the old cemetery and the chapel. 

Then I blocked out the buildings and after a little bit of adjustment I had a workable village layout that could be built in modules that could be put together in various forms. 

It was then scaled so that the building sizes would vary between a 60mm-80mm frontage, with a 70mm-110mm depth. All bases would have a standard depth of 125mm. Back yards would be created later as separate pieces.

So there is the basic concept for the Lorraine village. The next phase will be to create a couple of forms, probably for the cemetery and chapel first, and then work out how to make the modules mix and match. This will not be a quick project.

Memories...

The other week a friend and I were waxing on about our wargames beginnings. He said his earliest memories were fighting battles with his brothers using green army men. I have discussed my own wargaming genesis here a number of times - 54mm Britains, obsessions with the American West and the Civil War, etc, but what this discussion reminded me was that in support of my Western obsession my dad made me a model fort. My memory is pretty hazy about it, but it might have been a birthday or Christmas present. It would have measured 3 feet by 2 feet, maybe bigger, and was made of 6mm plywood. 

Now my dad was a scientist and not a craftsman, but he had grown up on a farm so was handy on the tools and he had made a beautiful job of it, all made by hand tools. It had walls that stood maybe four inches high, with firing platforms, a couple of sentry towers, gates that were hinged and had a locking bar on the inside. I filled it with buildings made from the cardboard of cereal packets (my God, I was making model buildings even back then - at the age of 10) and had hours and hours of fun with it. I have no idea what happened to this model. I guess it was disposed of eventually.

Jump forward some 20 years to the late 1980s, when we our Military Miniatures shop was in Parnell and we carried a small stock of 54mm figures, because one of our partners was himself a 54mm collector. Among that selection were a number of beautifully designed figures from the Phoenix Follies range. These bawdy figures were perhaps the most admired, but probably the slowest sellers, in the shop.

I remember that the first couple of these figures were sold to a rather quiet, well dressed man, with what sounded like a northern European accent. He came in a couple more times and bought a few more figures, enough for us to decide to import a few more, then I didn't see him for the better part of a year. On his return we got talking and it turned out that the reason I hadn't seen him for so long was because he had been in Sweden. He had business interests both there and in New Zealand. He would spend around six months in each country, a sort of never ending summer.

As we talked more he told me that he had a significant collection in Sweden and how his father had indulged his hobby by building a scaled fortress in the backyard. He described how it wasn't just a small thing, but an actual replica of a Vauban fortress with walls, bastions, ravelins, etc, all crafted in concrete measuring something like twenty feet square.

He went on say that the model had deteriorated badly because over successive winters water had frozen in the concrete and caused it to crack and split. Over that last northern summer he and his sister had decided to restore it and he had spent a lot of time repairing it. He has even gone so far as to build a structure around the model to protect it from the elements. He said the had photographs and would show me. I never saw him after that and never got to see that model.

Until that casual discussion last week the parallel of fathers half a world apart supporting their child's hobbies in a similar way hadn't occurred to me. 

Half-Year Wrap Up and a New Book

Well it is that time again, time to look back on the year and review what has been achieved.

It has been a busy six months for me. Using the Analog Painting Challenge method of allocating points for each piece completed (5 for a foot figure, 10 for a mounted figure or piece of equipment and then adding my own factor of 10 for every hour spent scratch building) my points count for the six months stands at 10,700, my fifth biggest year since I started keeping records in 2014 - and the year is only half finished.

The lion's share of the work has been in scratch building where a total of 78 pieces have been completed - some small, some large, some very large. Three other projects have been undertaken - Austrian and Duchy of Warsaw Napoleonics, and the French Franco-Prussian War cavalry and generals. Two projects are waiting to be started - the Bavarian Franco-Prussian artillery (on order) and cavalry, and the French Revolutionary War plastic infantry that are waiting release form the Perrys.  

The weight that the scratch building component has on the statistics can be clearly seen below.

The game count is a little down on last year, largely because we haven't been able to make our weekday games work too well this year and I haven't been able to make any time for solo gaming either. The frequency of games is something to be corrected in the next six months.

What is next? Obviously the Bavarian FPW sinceartilkery  the order has already been placed, along with a few Duchy of Warsaw bits and six FPW lancers that are also enroute. The Revolutionary French will probably be released by year's end so they may make it into this annual count. I do have some plans for some more scratch building. While plans for these haven't quite settled yet, they are leaning strongly toward some structures suitable for the Franco-Prussian War which would be useful in a Franco-Prussian War campaign that I have an idea for. I also have a significant scenics painting project for a friend.

Will I beat my all time record of 13,060 points? Maybe, but I not making it a target, I would much rather beat my number of games played record.

Received today was the newly published 1866: At the End was the Battle of Königgrätz, Battle Tactics of the Austro-Prussian War, published by Zeughaus Verlag (available in both German and English editions).

Well researched and presented, it is a fabulous 220+ page book in a glossy A4 format, with many black & white and colour images. It is a scholarly work that covers in good detail the Army structures, the campaign, battles, battlefields, uniforms and detailed descriptions of the tactics and the way they contributed to the successes and failures of the war. The following are screenshots from the publisher.

A

It is rare to find a study on this conflict that actually considers that the Austrian defeat was not solely attributable to the Prussian use of breach loading weapons, so for anyone with an interest in this era, this book is a must have. 

First Battalion, Regiment Number 16 Marquis Lusignan

And so to the next unit in the Austrian expansion, the first battalion of Regiment Number 16, Marquis Lusignan, with its pale yellow facings. Astute readers might have realised that the grenadiers from this regiment formed a part of the combined Grenadier Battalion Welsberg that was presented last week.

The regiment was raised in Styria in 1766. Between 1778 and 1799 it was known as Freiherr Terzi after Feldmarschalleutnent Ludwig Terzi. Renamed Erzherzog Rudolph in 1802 and then Marquis Lusignan in 1806, it was engaged at Raab then spent the rest of the Napoleonic wars in Italy. It was disbanded in 1832.

Something a Little Different...

I have been playing wargames with my friend Barry for 51 years and for the past twenty years his basement has been the defacto home for our group. Not only does he supply the space, but provides tea and coffee and heats the space in winter. So when he asked me to make some pieces for use in his adaption of Wings of War it was a pleasure to do so, and even more of a pleasure will be to present them to him tomorrow (Sunday) on his 89th birthday.

The first item is a bridge, that he wants to use as an objective in his game. It is made to fit in with his existing rivers. The intact bridge is placed over top of the destroyed version - when it is destroyed just lift it off...

Intact...

...destroyed!

Then there are two home airfields - a grass landing strip, a few tents and a place to park aircraft.

Finally there are eight anti-aircraft gun positions scratch built from various left over plastic parts and placed within sandbags, earthworks and similar.

They were all a bit of fun to make.

Grenadier Battalion Welsberg

Today sees the completion of the fourth battalion in my Austrian expansion - Battalion Welsberg. - made from Victrix miniatures

The battalion was made up of two companies each of Regiment Number 16 Erzherzog Rudolf (pale yellow facings), Regiment Number 26 Hohenlohe-Bartenstein (green facings) and Regiment Number 27 Chasteler (yellow facings).

It will be brigaded with my two other grenadier battalions.