1866 Saxons

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

'Inherited' these a while ago from a friend who lost the urge to paint ten mm after loosing a finger.
Has been a lot of discussion about what they looked like, but here's the start of the Saxon 1866 force:


An infantry division and a few supporting assets.

Divisional General


1st Infantry Division.



I decided to base all four battalions together to keep in scale with my V&B Prussians. The flags are hand painted - a right pain!

Reiters in cap


They were great fans of the can-can!

Jagers



Foot Artillery

[nikharwood]

Those are lovely 

[mollinary]

Well done Lemmey!

Those look great, and you've made a splendid job of the flags. 

Mollinary

[Roy]

nice.

[Ben Waterhouse]

Very nice, I like the basing and layout of the units.

[cameronian]

Very nice; another reminder to repaint my saxon gunners; I had them done overseas (not Fernando, I hadn't discovered them then, some other outfit), anyhow they came back in a garish sort of apple green, horrible.

[Hertsblue]

Nice one, Lemmy. I agree totally about the flags. Yours are better than mine, though. 

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

More Saxons chaps...

2nd Saxon Division


Reiter Brigade


A few of the Saxon 'big cheeses'!


Artillery, suspect they're the wrong guns, but they'r ethe ones I 'inherited', good thing I have spares...


Guard and 1st Reiters.


More Saxons!


and this is how they dealt with deserters!


Leibguard Brigade.

CinC, 2 units of skirmishing Reiters and 7 batteries of artillery to do, and this lot will be complete!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Except I've done some further reading tonight, and I've got all the artillery pieces I have painted thus far wrong!
So, I'm now painting eighteen artillery pieces, fourteen sets of artillery crew and two reiter skirmish stands and the c-in-c next! Yay! 

[mollinary]

Hi Lem!

Another great job of painting and basing, as usual.  I am puzzled with your remarks about the artillery - I was under the impression that the Saxon Corps only had 10 batteries in 1866 - 6 of 12pdr shell guns (2 of which were horse arrillery) and 4 of 6pdr breech loaders, so why the 18 guns? It did have 18 batteries in 1870, if I recall correctly.  Also my eyes are not what they were, but the flags for your last brigade look different from the others - is this right?

Regards,

Mollinary

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

My bad explaination Mollinary: I have two guns per 'battery' on a base. Therefore, I have two painted that are correct, and another 9 batteries that need their artillery.
The ones with different flags are Liebguard battaions, which, according to my research and all the sites everone helpfully provided had a white standard rather than green (I hope, because they are pains to piant).

[mollinary]

Lemmey,

Interesting about the guns, I would never have thought of having two guns a battery for this scale (perhaps because for my 1870 armies I'd need about 400+ of them! I find it hard enough fitting them on the table with 1 gun per battery).   I'm afraid on the flags, I have some bad news.   We have both contributed to threads on this before, the famous "Saxons - Difference between 1866 and 1870" thread and the "1866 Austro-Prussian Battle" thread started by Bernie Ganley.  I have checked my posts on both, and although not exactly models of the clarity one would expect in English prose, they are all consistent - all 16 battalions in 1866 carried green flags.  The history of Saxon flags is complicated, and a number of wargame sources have got confused over the years, particularly with the Leibgrenadiergarde flag of 1815 ( the one  I think you've reproduced).  If you'll forgive the digression, the story goes something like this.  In 1815 the Saxons incorporated into the Prussian army mutinied, and the Prussians destroyed the Leibgrenadiergarde's flag as part of the punishment.  A new one was immediately made, a white Leibfahne of broadly traditional pattern.   In 1822, the Saxon army was re-organised, into a "Garde Division" and 4 regiments each of 3 battalions.  The Garde Division carried the 1815 LGG flag. The other regiments all got new flags, all the same , all green.  In the corners were the regimental numbers in Roman numerals for Regiments I, II and III, and a gold crown for the Leib Regiment.  In 1848 the "Garde Division" was disbanded, and the 1815 flag returned to the Arsenal for storage.  Later the four other regiments were re-organised as "Brigades" each of four independent battalions.  The existing flags and battalions became the first three battalions of the brigades, and each brigade raised a new fourth battalion. These battalions, numbers 4,8,12, 16 all received new flags of the 1822 green pattern, but with the initials "JR" in the shield.  The devices in the corner now represented the first, second, third, and Leib Brigades  - no guards.  When the army was reorganised on Prussian lines after 1866, it had eight three battalion regiments, so 24 battalions in all.  Flags were moved about so although the third battalions of all the regiments were newly raised, they got old green flags.  The first battalions got white Leibfahnen. The first two regiments were designated Grenadiers, and the first received the old 1815 LGG flag from the Arsenal, while all the other received newly designed white flags. So, in sum, in 1866 the army had 16 green flags, in 1870 it had 8 white and sixteen green flags.  Sorry to go on!

Mollinary

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

  No problems -  always glad to be corrected by someone with a wider knowledge of the period than I.
For a source I used page 42 of 'The Armies of 1866. A Guide to the Uniforms And Organisation of the Armies of The Seven Weeks War' by Pickelhaube Press, which states 'The infatry flags of the Leib Brigade were white etc etc...' I just used the next standards up on
http://www.historischer-bilderdienst.de/flaggen-fahnen-und-standarten/hottenroth-saechsische-fahnen-und-standarten.php from the green line standards, assuming they were the Leib Brigade!

Guess I'll repaint after this batch is done! 

[mollinary]

Easy to do, and I am afraid a number of Wargames sources on this period work off very little information.  The info is available, but largely in German. It was the lack of precision which led me to take a punt and e-mail the German Army Museum in Dresden to see if they had any info.  The rest, as they say, is history!  Dr Bauer, a historian working there, was incredibly helpful and that enabled me to see the originals and identify the main sources with the details.  The confusion all seems to stem from the service history of the 1815 LGG flag, and the assumption that if it was in service in 1815, and in 1870, it must have been in service in 1866!  Still we all know what they say assumption is the mother of!

Mollinary

[Hertsblue]

If it's any consolation, Lemmy, I fell for the same source. Only after being set right by Mollinary did I get it right - well, as right as one can be on a 10mm figure!