Back on track, and babbling on

After a two week hiatus, I got back to painting. On the go at the moment are 4 units of Reichsarmee infantry. (A unit is made of 50ish figures over two bases, and in game terms represents a brigade of approximately 2500). These are a 50:50 split of whitecoats and bluecoats. Choice of units was determined by seeing which ones were at both Rossbach in 1757 and at Freiburg 5 years later, plus a few that were at only one or the other. I have just the white cross belts, and the flags to do. Some of the contingents have rather different flags for the period, so I'm looking forward to that.

Then I'll do the cavalry contingent, which will amount to two brigades (each of 2 bases of 10 figures), and some more combined grenadier units. I have some grenadiers I finished several months ago. The fun with the grenadiers is being able to mix different coloured coats AND different types of cap. Some wore bearskins and some wore Prussian style mitres. A surprise to me was finding that some of the blue-coated regiments had grenadiers in bearskins. As ever, I'm relying on Kronoskaf for the uniforms.

Here are the units I am doing:

Regiment	Rossbach/Freiberg/Both	Arm	Qty	Coat
Hohenzollern_Cuirassiers	B	Cav	4	White
Brandenburg-Bayreuth Cuirassiers	B	Cav	5	White
Kurpfalz Leib-Dragoner	F	Cav	5	Red
Württemberg Dragoons	R	Cav	2	Light Blue
Kurpfalz von Hatzfeld Carabiniers	R	Cav	3	White
Brandenburg-Ansbach Dragoons	R	Cav	5	White
Hessen-Darmstadt	B	Inf	1	Dark blue
Varell	B	Inf	2	Dark blue
Fermtheil/Hohenloe	B	Inf	2	Dark blue
Kurtrier	B	Inf	2	White
Kurbayern	F	Inf	3	Blue
KurMainz	F	Inf	4	White
Cronegk	R	Inf	2	Dark blue
Blau Würzburg	R	Inf	2	White

Quantity refers to the number of battalions or squadrons.

Once I've completed the Reichsarmee, I have lots of undercoated figures left to paint. These will perhaps go to form the Würtemburg or Palatinate auxiliary corps. These were German states who hired out troops to foreign powers, in addition to the contingents they were bound to raise for the Reichsarmee. They were the direct counterparts to the Hessians who were hired by the British. In this case, the French paid for them. The Würtemburgers mostly served with the Austrians, partly due to their Protestant antipathy to the French - at least the Austrians were fellow Imperialists.

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In other news the Margravina and I had a week catching a surprising amount of Sun for November, and very tolerable temperatures. Your correspondent was able to spend the week in shorts and short-sleeved shirts (except indoors!) and was even able to bathe in the sea. Our base for the week was in the town of Oliva in Valencia Province in Spain.  Here are some pics.

The ruined castle on top of the dominating hill above the town. The early artillery fortification style can be clearly seen.

Old town to the left, new to the right.

View from the castle towards the coast. The pointy hill in the distance is by Denia (gateway to the Balearics).

The modern town and in the distance the 'playa' development. Or in the local lingo 'platja' (which is pronounced with more of an 'English' style J or like 'plage' with an 'a' sound tagged on.

Looking south down the coast

Looking north up the coast

Most of the roads in the old town are not this narrow, so it's not representative. 

Same street but looking up. It bends round and down to the right at the top, which is probably why it's called Sickle Street.

Another surprise to me was how prominent the local language (Valencian) was on signs and street name plates. Usually above (and sometimes instead of) Spanish. Valencian is very close to Catalan apparently (according to my Valencian informant). Google translate's Catalan erm.... 'thing' translated whatever I entered, so must be correct. To my untrained eye, it looks more of a distinct language than a dialect of Spanish. Sort of a partway between French and Spanish. A lot of the words seem more like their French equivalents than the Spanish ones (at least that's how I was able to read some stuff. Catalan, I understand, spread into what is now the French side of the border.  Perhaps it's because communications around the Mediterranean littoral were easier than between the coast and inland in early modern days - there's certainly a lot of mountains between the coast and the heartlands of the modern nation states. Here's an old poem from a sign near the beach which I think illustrates the point:

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More recently, I met up with David-in-Suffolk, of the Ragged Soldier blog fame, for another of the free lunchtime talks at the National Army Museum. The subject this time was the Jewish Brigade Group in WWII.  Lots of strands to that one! Great talk and great to catch up with the D-Man again.