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.