The First of the Hessians

When I started the expansion of the British AWI collection I decided that I need to create a small Hessian force. I always intended to include a unit of Jägers and bought a pack each of the command and rank and file figures. But once I had the figures I changed my mind and decided to create two small company sized units instead of one half sized battalion. I also decided that one company would be in the initial uniform with straw coloured waistcoat and white or straw coloured pants (I particularly like the officer with the eyepatch):

And the other in the later all green uniform:

As I perused the Perry Miniatures AWI lists further I saw the code “Hessian Jägers with Amusettes”. I had no idea what an amusette was, but after a little bit of research discovered that they were just thumping great musket, sometimes with a bore of one and a half inches and sometimes rifled. They had a range reported as greater than 500 yards, but since they could weigh as much as 50 pounds, five times the weight of a regular musket, they were often mounted in brackets on the walls of fortresses, earning the time of wall or rampart guns. In the American theatre they proved valuable as a heavier weapon in terrain where artillery couldn’t go. They could be mounted on small carriages or on tripods as shown in the images below.

What an excellent idea to support the jäger companies. The Perry models come as a pair and are lovely little sets, supplied with wheeled mantlets, with one set firing and one loading.

I have given some thought about how to use these weapons on a game. It would be a simple thing to use them like light artillery pieces, but I fear that may be over rating the weapon. They would not have had the impact of artillery for the simple matter that their projectile would not have had the mass or energy  for bouncing shot and the weapons could not have delivered an effective scattered shot. But they could well have had a morale impact at extended ranges. Do why not just let them fire as muskets, but at double the range? And maybe they could be used to target enemy officers?