Further Sardinian and Spanish Update

This weekend I reckon I put in about 7 hours painting the recent arrivals. This is not counting the prep time earlier in the week and black undercoating spraying on Friday morning. 2 hours alone on clipping and filing the bases and getting the little chaps organised in units. All told about 10 hours. Quite a lot but I've completed 4 brigades of infantry and got another 4 brigades 50% done. A surprising amount of the time was taken on deciding which units to paint.

The original plan when I put in the order to Heroics and Ros was to do 6 brigades of Spanish infantry and 2 of Sardinian. Even with my plan to double up using Austrians as proxies, on further reading, this was not going to be enough Sardinian. So I decided to do 4 Sardinian brigades (I keep wanting to write Piedmontese*) and obviously only 4 Spanish brigades.

*the state led by the Dukes of Savoy included the Italian province of Piedmont, as well as Savoy, gained the Kingdom of Sardinia in the period after the WSS. So it was a bit like the Electors of Brandenburg gaining their royal title from a remote territory (i.e. Prussia). The French speaking region of Savoy (on the 'French' side of the Alpine watershed) ended up as part of France as a result of the wars of the 19th century. The French speaking Aosta valley and what I guess were also French speaking areas (Sestrierre, Oulx), on the Italian side of the divide, are part of the modern state of Italy. Whilst Italian seems to be the main spoken language in the other areas, locals in Aosta still mainly speak a French patois which has a protected status. Sorry, disappeared down a rabbit hole there.

First up are the following regiments: Guardie (blue coats), Roy (Swiss also in blue), Marina (red with green) and Reydt (Swiss in red with blue). Flags are attempts at replicating the real unit colours - very tricky with the Swiss particularly!

Next are 2 regiments of the National Ordinance - Savoia (white with blue) & Piemonte (white with red); and 2 of Provincial regiments - Aosta (white with red) and Torino (white with blue)**. The Provincials were like part-time units, trained but only called up fully during war. A bit like the contemporary Prussian cartoonists, but not integrated into full-time regiments. Again, flags are based on the real ones - these pretty much simple affairs of white crosses on red backgrounds - they are meant to be more square, but these are folded on flags that I didn't feel confident in cutting down. As a result they have a Danish look to them. The Provincial flags are the simplest of all.

** I picked Aosta and Savoia because one of the appealing things to me of this period is the dearth of linguistic nationalism. Piemonte are in, because the French also have an old regiment named for that region. And Torino for no better reason than the most skilful player I've ever seen turn out for Grimsby used to play for Torino.

At this stage they all look rather dull because of the black paint on the bases, a result of the undercoating spray. The figures are also more spread out than they will be when properly based - each regiment will be on a separate 60x30mm base, with 2 regiments making a brigade.

Just for balance, so the Bourbonistas out there don't feel put out, here is the Spanish. All that's remaining are the regimentals (turn backs, cuffs, hat lace etc). Units have been selected - predominantly white-coated non-foreign regiments. I'm keeping the flags simple this time by doing the Ordinance colours - the red Burgundian cross.

Once that lot is done, I'll do the Sardinian cavalry, and a base each of Spanish and Sardinian grenadiers. I also have 2 bases worth of horse grenadiers which I'm considering converting to dragoons by chopping their bearskins down. Hmmm!

Oh, and a final word on source for the Sardinian uniforms and colours: Jonathan Freitag sent me the following, which also includes information on the earlier 18th century too:

http://www.bandieresabaude.it/Bandiere031.html