BATTLE OF TURIN 7th September 1706 - THE FIGHTING AROUND THE CASTLE OF LUCENTO 2nd part

Finally, I was able to remake (with paper) the Castle of Lucento. I still have to add the farms that were around and the church, but still it gives the idea of what it was.

Top: on the left the Castle. The other (big) building was a system of Castle and farm. In front of it a little farm. In the center I put 2 companies of the Regiment Monferrato.

Top: the view inside the Castle

Two companies at 1:1 Ratio with the Ordonnance Colours of the Monferrato Regiment. The scale is 70 cm = 100 m, so 700 cm (or 7 meters) = 1 Km

BATTLE OF TURIN 7th September 1706 - THE FIGHTING AROUND THE CASTLE OF LUCENTO

My dream - well one of my dreams - has always been to recreate the Battle and Siege of Turin in 1706, during the Spanish Succession War. It was actually an epic event that still is remembered in my town (i.e. Turin) and that still has a lot of details to be pointed out.

One of these is the fighting around the castle of Lucento (now inside the town itself) that represented the maximum effort the Allied forces under Prince Eugene von Savoye had to fulfill.

The Caste still exsistes even though totally remade; I had therefore to find old maps of this part of the town, put together with the historical reports of the battle and re-build the field and units that were involved in that event.

After long researches I was able at the end to prepare a map of the fields around the Castle of Lucento. But firstly I would like to point out where this Castle was located with respect of the battlefield.

So here the irst map of the Battle of Turin with in evidence the zone of the Castle of Lucento.

The French troops were around the Town, providing the siege (in the map on the top); while the Allied arrived from the west, here from the bottom.

1 Castle of Lucento
2 Farm
3 Big Farms and fields
4) Church
5) Spinning wheel building
6) Farm "La Tana"
7) French Defence
8)&9) Terrain Ramparts
10) Bridges on the River Dora
11) Countevallation against the Town of Turin
​12) Circumvallation 

AUSTERLITZ MALAROSSIJA REGIMENT 2nd FUSILIER BATTALLION - 1st COMPANY

The first Company of the Fusiliers Battallion of the Malarossija Grenadier Regiment is marching through the narrow streets of the village of Pratze. The first Company already got the shako, while the second company, on the background still wears the "Hessian" Mitre. 

The houses of the village are all in paper as the papersoldiers. The trees are simple branches of a plant in my office. 

AUSTERLITZ 1805 THE MALAROSSIJA REGIMENT - 2nd FUSILIER BATTALION

One of the manin problem with Russian uniforms of the battle of Austerlitz is to understand if the Grenadiers Regiment wore the miter or not; I discussed this topic in the Miniature Page a lot of times; now I am facing another big issue: did the Fusilier Battalions of the Grenadiers Regiment wear the "Hessian" mitre (i.e. shorter) or not?

I was painting the Malarossija Regiment papersoldiers; at the very beginning I was quite distracted and I considered it a normal infantry unit, instead of a Grenadier Regiment. Therefore I started to paint and trim papersoldiers with normal shako.

When I realised it was a Grenadier Regiment I decided to remake the papersoldier with the "Hssian" mitre; I will consider that one (out of 2) Fusilier Battalions of this Regiment alreadt started to switch their cap from Hessian mitre to shako, so making a mixture of both headwears in the same unit (I could not thorw away all the work I already did.

In the above picture you can see the mixing of the 2 headwears.

The Malarossija unit is entering the village of Pratze in the morning of the battle

Here picture above the vision with the light

Here above you can distinguish them quite clearly.

1848 MIKLOS HUSZAR REGIMENT

Since ever I wanted to draw and trim some units of the Szabadsagharc (litteraly the "Fight for Freedom") as the Hungarians call their struggle against the Habsburgic Impire in 1848 - 1849.

I decided to make my fisrt try with the Miklos Huszar Regiment, because I found their uniforms very shiny and beautiful. Here an example:

In this case, in the front rank a NCO is leading the unit inside the main road of a "falu" (i.e. "village" in Hungarian)

ATTACK ON BLENHEIM'S VILLAGE PROJECT 1:1 Second Part

I come back to an old dream of mine: the assault of the Cutt's coloumn at the Battle of Blenheim, reducing the measure from 28 mm to 15 mm.

The precision of the trimming of the papersoldiers is not as precise as in the other scale (i.e. 28 mm), but the total vision of the array is quite amazing, considering that the width remains the same.

I started than with the Hessian - Kassel Brigade (second line) called the Wilke's Brigad, on 5 battallions. The usual order of battle for this brigade quotes every battalion to a 400 men force each. Obviously this was not the concrete case.

I decided than to increase or decrease the numbers. For instance the Leibgarde Hessen Garde is increased to a  total amount of over 500 men.

Top: 3 battallions one after the other: Erbprinz von Hessen-Kassel, Leibgarde and Hessen Grenadiere Regiment. Around 1.500 papersoldiers.

This scale is quite convinient considering that I can keep a rate of 140 papersoldiers/hour; this means that in a good raining day it's possible to create a 500 men battalion in one boring afternoon. Soon new battalions will be published.

The idea is to recreate the entire brigade as a first step.

This particular way of basing the papersoldiers allows to deploy a battallion in a quite short time (around some 40 seconds); then using the unique big green base it is possible ot move the battallion in one movement, but having the possibility (impossible with the other normal figures on the market) to split the battalion itself, for example for entering a village in a house-by-house fighting, or detaching a single unit for scouting or - for this period - grouping grenadiers to fight together.

As a wargame system I will use my diceless rules, where every stand has its particular 

- capcity of fighting

- level of morale

- capacity of cohesion

Every category (Elite 1 and 2; Veterans 1 and 2; regular 1 and 2; militia) has its particular attitudes; for example the Hessian Leibgarde is quoted as "Elite 2"; it has then a morale  between values of 0,90 and 0,80; considering that is has 12 stands, there will be:

1st  stand - morale 0,90

2nd stand . morale 0,89

3rd stand - morale 0,88

2 stands will have the same as other, usually the center ones (o,85), etcetera.

In this way also inside a battalion there will be a part higher morale and cohesion and a part with less, always insider a category (Elite 2). 

 

ATTACK ON BLENHEIM'S VILLAGE PROJECT 1:1

Hi guys,

today it's a day of changing... We actually it is! My team Juventus just bought Cristiano Ronaldo and the entire town got crazy with that!!!

So spaeking of changing I also changed from the 25 cm papersoldiers, cut 1 by 1 to a easier way to represent a battalion with  a 15 mm papersoldiers;

I also changed the way to glue them. Every base has 8 or 9 rows for 4 men each, i.e. 36 papersoldiers/base. They are quite little as you can see in this picture:

In the front a 50 cents coins to give you the idea how little they are.

I decided to dedicate this scale to the Cutt's Division that attacked the Village of Blenheim.

Here I represented the Infantry Battallion of Hessen-Kassel "Erbprinz von Hassen Kassel"; it is said this unit fought with around 400 men. Actually a full strengh Hessen - Kassel Battalion of the epoch had around 650 men. I also decided for this unit to keep the old style 4 ranks deployement of the battalion. As you can see in the foreground there is half-company of Grenadiers, while the second half is at the end of the battalion.

Above: I decided to deploy this proud battalion on the table, without the green fields. I know the 25 mm scale is better cut but they give quite an impression even in this way and very easy to move and to play with

Bottom: a better view how they are glued.

Finally - bottom - you can see how light they are and easy to deploy. The green base - around 55 cm wide is self standing and will be very usufull to move with one finger around 420 men, like a real Commander of the epoch.

To be continued....