Category: Napoleonic Wars

After taking a short break following my Pavia project at Historicon 2025, I am now starting work on my next big project, the 1813 Autumn Campaign. The actual campaign builds towards the battles of Dresden and Leipzig which are too much of an undertaking for me to commit to at this stage. I am planning to tackle a smaller part of this campaign, the battles for Berlin. In this post I want to give an overview of my project goals and the direction I will be taking.

Rules and units

I like the structure of the General de Armee 2 rules and at least initially, these are the rules I will be using for the project. The rules really need at least a division per side (about ten battalions) to play a basic game. However, they can also be used for larger games of one or two Corps.

As for size of units, I really like the look of large units. As you can see from my previous projects, the visual impact of the game is very important to me. With battalion sizes of 600 to 800 men, I have decided to select a 20:1 figure ratio. This will give battalions in the range of 32, 36 or even 40 figures. A 40 figure battalion really gives the look that I am trying to achieve.

I will base each battalion on company bases. A company base will contain 8-10 figures in two ranks. Depending on the unit, the battalion will probably consist of 4 company bases. Having four to six bases makes the battalion easy to move, it also allows me to represent lines, columns and squares.

Project scope

The Autumn campaign is huge and creating all of the battles is initially beyond the scope of what I am trying to achieve. However, some of the French Army did push north to try to take the city of Berlin. This section of the Army consisted of four Corps. The VII Corps under Reynier, the IV Corps under Bertrand, the XII Corps under Oudinot, and the III Cavalry Corps under Arrighi.

This force was met by the Prussians consisting mainly of the 3rd Corps under Bulow, and the 4th Corps under Tauentzien.

In the quest to take Berlin there were two main battles, Gross-Beeren and Dennewitz. In the Battle of Gross-Beeren, the battle was essentially two smaller battles, separated by marshes. On the left flank at GrossBeern, the French VII Corps fought the Prussian 3rd Corps. On the right flank at Blankenfelde, the French IV Corps fought the Prussian 4th Corps. Only a few units of the French XII Corps and III Cavalry Corps got into the fight.

At the Battle of Dennewitz most of the fighting took place initially between the French VII and IV Corps, and the 3rd and 4th Prussian Corps. Again only limited units of the French XII Corps and III Cavalry Corps took part in the battle and even then, only in the later stages.

From the above information, it appears that I can refight most of the battles around Berlin with the same two French Corps (IV and VII) and the same two Prussian Corps (3d and 4th). I may need to supplement these with a few other units , but this is essentially the scope for my project.

The advantage of these units is that the French Corps include a number of interesting nationalities including Saxons, Wurzburg, Wurtenburg and Italians. The Prussians also have a lot of interesting units including Regular infantry, Reserve units and Landwehr.

1813 Autumn Campaign Project Plan

Each of these Corps probably has around 40 Battalions or other units. With 40 figures per unit, plus additional command bases and artillery, I am figuring that a Corps will have about 1750 figures. With the four Corps in total, I am probably looking for a project total of 7000-7500 to play the both battles in their entirety.

Painting 7000 figures is going to take me a while, so I wanted to have some intermediate steps to satisfy the need for gaming. Here is how a see the project processing.

Stage 1 (400 – 500 figures)

The first stage is to paint enough figures to allow me to play a game of GdeA2 and get to know the rules. To do this I need about a division a side or ten units per side. My units will have 40 figures on four bases. However, for initial gaming I can split the battalions in half and have 20 figures on two bases for a battalion. Two bases will allow me to represent both line and column.

This means that for ten battalions a side I will need 200-250 figures per side, or a total of 400-500 figures. I plan to have this completed within about six months.

Stage 2 (800-1000 figures)

The second stage will be to bring the ten battalions on each side up to their full strength of 40 figures, to get the visual appearance that I am looking for. This will require doubling the collection to 800-1000 figures.

Stage 3 (3500 figures)

The third stage will be to complete the French VII Corps and the Prussian 3rd Corps. This will allow me to play the action on the left flank at the Battle of GrossBeeren. This will be a good initial size for a moderately sized convention game. To complete this stage I will need about 3500 figures. The village of GrossBeeren also has a number of interesting buildings, including a windmill and church, which I will scratch build.

Stage 4 (7000 figures)

Completing all 7000-7500 figures should allow me to play a game for the entire battle of GrossBeeren or Dennewitz. It is probably going to take me a number of years to complete the entire 1813 Autumn campaign project.

The Lost Battles

The Operational Studies Group have a board game called the Lost Battles. This set includes the battles of GrossBeeren and Dennewitz of the 1813 Autumn Campaign. It allows all of the pre-game movement and positioning to be carried out. I plan to use this game to set the scene for my battles.

Summary of the 1813 Autumn Campaign project

I am at the very start of my project and it will be a long journey. At this stage there aren’t many photos to show as I only have two Saxon battalions and one Saxon cavalry regiment painted. Over the coming months and years, this project will start coming together and I will post lots of photos.
I will also monitor the progress of the project by the number of figures painted. For Stage 1 I need 500 figures and currently I have 112 completed, so I am 22% of the way to completing Stage 1 of the 1813 Autumn campaign project.

If you would like to follow my 1813 Autumn campaign journey, subscribe below. You will then receive a notification when I publish a new post.

I bought 40 figures for my 1813 Saxon Chevau-legers from Black Hussar Miniatures a number of years ago and they have been sitting on my paint desk for a while. Having finished my preparations for Historicon about 3 weeks ago, I had some spare time in my hobby schedule before I fully commit to Pavia 1525 after Historicon is over. It was time for those 1813 Saxon Chevau-legers in 28mm to finally get painted.

The figures were a real pleasure to paint as the sculpts seem to fit my painting style. The figures also work well with my Calpe Saxon infantry.

The unit represents the Prinz Clemens Regiment as it appeared in 1813. The regiment consisted of five squadrons for a total of 758 men and 26 officers. This gave 784 total. At a ratio of 1:20 this was close enough to 5 squadrons each of 8 figures.

I had quite a lot of discussion on TMP with some very knowledgable people on how to represent the unit. In 1813 the first two squadrons had lances.. Also the first 4 squadrons had standards with no standard for the 5th squadron. The first squadron standard was the white Leibestandarte and the second to fourth squadrons had the red Ordinarestandarten.

I also decided to put an officer and trumpeter in each squadron. For the first squadron I decided to mount them on black horses in the French manner, even though I have no solid evidence that the Saxons copied this practice. I also put all the trumpeters on grey horses (except for the second squadron where I decided to mix it up a bit to represent a shortage of horses). Again I do not have any historical evidence for this decision.

The ribbons on the standards were white for the first squadron, red for the second, yellow for the third and blue for the fourth.

Overall it took me between three and four weeks to paint the 1813 Saxon Chevau-leger regiment.

Now I see the photos I can of course detect areas of my painting that can be touched up, but overall I am happy with how the figures turned out. We can all point to better painted figures that we have seem, but I would not be embarrassed to put these on the table. I do like the red and lime green of the 1813 Saxon Chevau-legers.

It is now back to Pavia, although I do have some Prussian Landwehr Cavalry and National Cavalry regiments that I have just started.

When I first got back in to the hobby in 2017, I purchased figures from Calpe Miniatures to form a Napoleonic Division. Their Saxon figures were excellent and I chose to build the 24th Division (1st Saxon) of Reyneir’s VII Corps. Unfortunately the white uniforms with yellow trim were a little beyond my painting skills for a first project. So I put the figures aside for a while so I could paint other periods.

This December I decided to revisit the project. I set a target of painting the entire division plus supports by the end of the year. While no-where near perfect, my painting skills have improved enough that I am able to achieve reasonable units. Nevertheless, the white uniforms and yellow trim have still tested me at times.

The first units that I decided to paint were the Saxon Prinz Maximillion and von Rechten Battalions. Both have yellow trim. The former has yellow metal buttons and the later has silver metal buttons.

Basing the units

I plan to use General de Brigade and/or General de Armee rules. Each Battalion has four companies each represented by an eight figure base. Each base has an officer on the front right and an NCO at the back left. One base has a flag figure (the flags will arrive in the New Year). I plan to have a command base for each battalion with a Chef de Battalion and a drummer. Each Battalion will also have two bases each of two skirmishers. The company bases are 80mm x 40mm. The skirmish bases are 40mm x 60mm and the command bases will be 40mm x 40mm.

The project scope

The first Brigade of the 24th Division will have two light, a guard, and the two Musketeer Battalions shown. It will also have 6 Jagers.

The second Brigade of the 24th Division will have 4 Musketeer Battalions and a Grenadier Battalion.

The Division will also have two foot artillery Batteries.

Supporting the Division I plan to have Saxon Hussars and Uhlans.

The next units that I plan to paint are the two Battalions of the Prinz Freidrich August regiment. These will have white uniforms with a green trim. I hope to have these two Battalions complete by mid February. However, I have another project to complete for Cold Wars 2023 in March, so timing may need to be flexible.

Black Hussar make three different packs of Saxon Artillery Crew each with four figures in.  Each package costs 7.00 Euro.  I decided to purchase a total of four packs (two of SA011 and two of SA016).  I did not purchase any of the packs with forage caps.  The four packs gave a total of sixteen figures which was enough to crew my battery of Saxon guns from Calpe.

In the pictures shown there are three figure from pack SA011 and one figure from pack SA016.  All of the figures arrived with minimal flash and needed very little tidying up.  There is also a lot of detail on the figures which makes painting easy compared with some figures from other manufacturers.  Although Black Hussar do make the Saxon Artillery pieces, I had already purchased three 6 pdrs and one howitzer from Calpe, which I am very pleased with; so I cannot give a review of the Black Hussar artillery equipment.

I particularly liked some of the detail on the trousers with the piping on the front of some figures being easy to see and paint.  I also like the fact that some figures had overalls rather than the piped trousers, which gave some variation in the unit.  I painted one of the figures with white overalls and one with grey overalls.

The only real issue I have is the figure carrying his shako; it seems to me like a pose that you cannot use multiple times in the same battery as it is not a neutral type pose; but this comment just reflects personal preference.

Painting

For painting I mainly used Vallejo Model Color paints. I will give the paint numbers below alongside the color description. I did use a few Vallejo Game Color paints, these are indicated with a *

For the jackets I used three greens: 980 Black Green for the base, 970 Deep Green for the main color and 967 Olive Green for the highlights

For the red trim I used three colors: 859 Black Red for the base, 908 Carmine Red for the main color and 957 Flat Red for the highlights

For the white trousers I used: 990 Light Grey followed by a number of thin layers of 72.101* Off White

For the grey trousers I used: 992 Neutral Grey for the base, 991 Dark Grey for the main color and 990 Light Grey for the highlights

For the sashes I used: 875 Beige Brown with 847 Dark Sand on top

The gold was: 72.055* Polished Gold

The face and hands were: 955 Flat Flesh with a very light wash of 73.204* Flesh Wash

Basing

For the basing I put each of the figures on a LITKO 20mm x 20mm base.  The gun rests on a LITKO 60mm x 60mm base and can be put onto the limber base when required.  The bases are then put onto a 60mm x 100mm LITKO magnetic formation tray with a couple of extra 20mm x 20mm bases to fill in the spaces.  The formation tray allows removal of figures for casualties.  As you will notice from the pictures I still need to finish the formation tray edges.

There is always a lot of discussion on the painting of Saxon Artillery pieces, with the temptation to paint them bright yellow and black.  I wanted to avoid what I have heard referred to as “Bumble Bee” artillery.  I therefore used a yellow ochre color which was then heavily painted with a sepia wash to tone the brightness down and highlight details.  The barrel was then painted a bronze color with a black wash do highlight the depth and also tone it down.   The black is always difficult to paint to achieve depth without making it look grey.  I have tried a couple of techniques which work well enough, but I am still looking for a better solution on the next gun.

Summary

These figures from Black Hussar work very well with the Calpe guns and I will be looking to purchase some more when I get around to my second Saxon artillery battery.