St Petersburg Grenadier Regiment

Oh dear…another expansion project…

After completing the Russian cavalry it occurred to me that I have more regiments of cavalry than I have battalions of infantry. Now I know that I did the cavalry expansion simply to give variety, but I figured there was a need to correct the imbalance a little.

One of the features of the Russian army, and the Austrian army for that matter, was their use of grenadier and combined grenadier divisions. In general terms grenadier divisions were formed from the grenadier regiments, but the structure of the combined grenadiers is always confused me. A quick search on the internet turned up an explanation from by von Peter Himself, whose research I accept without question, that they were formed by combining the grenadier and carabinier companies from the depot (second) battalions of the musketeer and jäger regiments (only the first and third battalions served in the field) - if this is proved wrong it’s all Peter’s fault. 

When a local retailer had the Perry plastics on sale I snapped up a couple of boxes and decided to make up some grenadier regiments. With the purchase of a couple of extra plastic command sets and an eight metal figures, I can build four battalions from those two boxes. I will add a couple of metal grenadier battalions to make this force six battalions strong.

The creation of the plastic grenadiers did cause some problems in that the boxed set does not provide enough grenadier heads, only one third of the number needed. Fortunately I had the foresight to keep the spare heads of the horse jägers when I was working on the Russian cavalry and with a bit of work with the scalpel and plastic cement was able to cut the plume from the cavalry head and affix it to the Kiwer…et voila a grenadier head…and I had just enough (with two to spare) of the horse jäger plumes to do the whole two boxes and the commands.

This is the first regiment of that expansion…although the command stands are not quite finished…there are still two metal figures to add to each battalion that are still enroute from Nottingham.