Fresh Crimean Paint

My summer holiday painting project was the first batch of Crimean War French. 

I have chosen to build Général de division Mayran's First Division from 2nd Corps at the Battle of Tchernaya.  This first batch of figures makes up Général de brigade de Peueux de Lavarande's First brigade, consisting of the 19th Chasseur à Pied Battalion and the 2nd Zouave Regiment.

For the zouaves I chose to use the Perry plastic ACW zouaves. The figures are not quite correct: The water bottle was different, the bayonet should be a sword bayonet rather than a triangular one, the drum should be of the African type (although some sketches show a standard drum) and there is no eagle on the standard pole. These few things I am happy to accept. So I bought one box plus six additional command frames. This gave me enough figures for all three battalions of the regiment. There were even two figures left over to make up the brigade command group.

The entire regiment

Brigade command

I wanted all of the figures to be advancing at slope arms and about one third would have fez, while the remainder had turban.

The First Battalion, 2nd Zouaves

The Chasseur à Pied were from the Great War range.

The 19th Chasseur à Pied battalion

With the same order from Great War I ordered Lord Raglan and his staff, together with Baron Osten-Sacken and his staff.

The Crimean War will take a back seat for a month or two, but when I start again, probably in May, I will split purchases between Russian and French.