Prussian Army, Part 2 - Cavalry & Artillery

Time to turn my attention to the remainder of the ‘Prussian’ forces, of the infantry and cavalry. I’m keen to get a bit of specific ImagiNation details onto the blog, but that’ll have to wait. However, you may be interested to know that there is one particular I can reveal here: the horses on these two countries are almost exclusively brown. I promise, it’s a rare genetic condition, and nothing at all to do with the last post confession that I can be lazy at painting.

Due to a complete collapse in imagination and/or willpower when painting, virtually all cavalrymen wound up with a brown horse. Only the occasional rare figure, such as a general, gets a white, grey or black horse. I think multicoloured horses just throw the eye in a single regiment, and one of the things I like about the 18th Century is the uniformed appearance – no way I was letting some nag bring down the show!

Anyway, when I tried out the four-base arrangement with my cavalry squadrons, and it doesn’t work. Thanks to the model horses, the depth of the regiment comes out as 50% greater than an infantry one, and is nearly as deep as it is wide. Two regiments colliding head-on looks like a big column of horsemen! As a result, and also to help numbers go further, I’m going for each cavalry regiment being two bases, a total of six figures. Here’s a pic I managed to get of some Cuirassiers:


‘Prussian’ Cuirassiers – Plus a general

The cavalry regiments now have a tabletop ‘footprint’ that’s similar to the infantry. Each have a frontage of 80mm and a depth of about 40-60mm, depending on the horsey content. In total, I can now field two Cuirassier regiments and two Dragoon regiments, with a potential Hussar regiment if I get about half of it painted.

Although it demeans the aristocracy to consider such dull technical ploddery as a ‘trade’ like gunnery, there are always plenty of low-born but solid types who think of good hearing as optional, and seek to learn the practice of artillery. After all, as Frederick the Great said, “The Mission of the Artillery is to give some class to what would otherwise be merely a vulgar brawl.”

With such a royal approval, I have a quite lavish provision of four guns. By basing them as two models per battery, I can get my standard unit frontage (handy for close combat) and get a total of two batteries. Individually, they would have given an army of five infantry regiments had four batteries, virtually allowing them to be paired off! Having five infantry regiments and two batteries can at least tone things down to a more reasonable proportion.

'Prussian' Artillery battery

So, that’s the full military potential on one side of the border. The full force is pictured below, also including the unpainted figures remaining, so all regiments can be displayed. Completing the picture are four mounted generals, one of which is accompanied by an aide-de-camp and therefore will represent the commanding general.

Full army on parade

Bird's eye view of the army, with units more visible.