Crimean French Line Infantry Battalion progress

One of my projects I’ve been working on for the last few years is building up some forces for the Crimean War in 28mm. It hasn’t been fast, but it’s been fun. As you may have seen in my recent posts I’ve started working on some French and British to pit against the Russians I have collected so far. At the moment I’m working on my first French line infantry battalion. 

It has been an interesting process looking into the uniform details of the French uniforms. These went under a number of changes during the 1850s and 1860s. The result of this research is that in the three major wars in 1854-56, 1859, and 1870-71, French uniforms had undergone changes for each conflict. One area of uncertainty was the colour of the Capote (Greatcoat/overcoat), which often in artwork is depleted as quite blue, but often described as iron grey or bluish iron grey. By the 1860s the Capote was definitely more blue, but still lighter than the blue of the tunic or veste (shell jacket). But the greatcoats from the 1830s and 1840s seem to be depicted in grey. In the end I decided to go with a bluish Iron Grey. I used the following colours:

• Base: Vallejo model color 816 German WW2 Luftwaffe Blue
• Highlight 1 Vallejo Model Color 903 Intermediate Blue
• Highlight 2 Vallejo Model color 900 French Mirage Blue 

These are Great War Miniatures. I still have a bit left to do on them to get them finished.

A good source for this information, apart from image searches on the internet, is French Infantry of the Crimean War by Anthony L. Dawson.

Another factor in the Crimean War was the French shipped additional overcoats to the theatre which became known as the Crimẻennes. These were double breasted with a shoulder cape and hood and could be Iron Grey, Brown, Dark Grey-blue and Green.

I’ve actually brought some Perry ACW union troops in caped overcoats and shakos, which I’m going to convert to French.

Here are some photos of my Russians.

I’m also working on some of the Warlord plastic Russians at the moment. More on them soon. When I get a chance I will get a bunch of photos of all my completed Russians.