19th (Oldenburg) Dragoon Regiment

Absorbed into the Prussian army in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War, the Oldenburg Dragoons, along with the Westphalian Cuirassiers, No 4 and the 1st Hanoverian Uhlans, No 13, formed Major General Adalbert Roderich Levin von Barby’s 11th Cavalry Brigade, 5th Cavalry Division on mobilisation in 1870.

The regiment was involved in action almost from mobilisation as the 5th and 6th Divisions were thrown out across full breadth of the western frontier from Luxembourg as far as Kaiserslautern to cover from front of First and Second Armies. On 6 August they led the reconnaissance around the left of the French 2nd Corps and their colonel, along with other forward patrols, falsely reported that the French were in retreat leading to the Prussians blundering head on into the Battle of Spicheren. Ten days later, at Mars-la-Tour, the regiment was heavily engaged at the last great all cavalry battle on the planet in the open fields near Ville-sur-Yron where they suffered 125 casualties. The rest of the war was relatively uneventful for them, with only a few skirmish engagements.

In 1914 the regiment served with the II Cavalry Corps on the Western Front, transferring to the Russian Front in November of the same year. Dismounted in 1916, it was disbanded in March 1928.

I have to say, as I did when I completed the dragoons for von Bredow’s Brigade,  that I was disappointed with these figures. They aren’t up to the usual quality expected from the Perrys and they look as though their design was rushed. The poses are a little odd and lack the animation that I think has always been the signature of Perry figures. Worst still is that the sabres are very  thin and we’re so badly twisted that it was difficult to straighten them, indeed some were impossible to straighten. I don’t know how well the sabres will stand up to the rigours of the table…I can see a number of these being replaced by flattened steel pins at some point in the future.