MY FRENCH ARMY

Angus Konstam's Edinburgh Wargames

My Seven Years War French Army

Organised for Die Kreigskunst or Black Powder

I never really planned to land up with a French army. |It just sort of happened. It began when I swapped a box of Foundry Romans for Front Rank SYW French, and after painting them up I bought a few more - then a few more again. Now I've got an army of more than 350 figures painted up - and a storage problem.

In the process I fell in love with this slightly odd army. I say odd in that like other 18th century French armies they got a lot of non-French troops to do their fighting for them - Germans, Italians, Swiss, Irish etc. I have some of them in my force, and I use Dillon's Irish Rgt. as a one battalion forlorn hope, sent into the thickest of the fighting. That began because - being Irish - I rated them as expendable troops. I soon discovered the performed well -a lucky unit. Every army has them.

In reality, the French needed al the luck they could get. Their catalogue of Seven Years battles is a list of one defeat after another. Why then could someone love them? Well, for a start they're colourful. One pro-Prussian player expressed his disgust at their gaudy flags and differing uniforms. It wasn't regimented enough for his tastes. To me though, that's one of the attractions - an army with red, grey and blue coated troops fighting alongside each other.

I began building it for Die Kriegskunst (DKK), the Seven Years War version of General de Brigade we developed. They use a 1:40 figure ratio, which makes most of our French battalions around 16 figures strong. A few of the Reichsarmee units are larger, but generally the French units are smaller than their Prussian or Hanovarian counterparts. It gets even worse with cavalry. Most French cavalry regiments consisted of just two squadrons - 8 figures in our rules. the Prussians had 5 squadrons, or 20 figures. The only way to cope is to double up the regiments - with the exception of the colourful Bercheny Hussars - another pet unit - who are 6 squadrons strong.

Those first figures I swapped for Romans were all Front Rank, and while my Russians are Foundry (well, most of them are), I stuck with Front rank for the French and their Reichsarmee allies. The exception is two 16-man units of cavalry - a present - which are Foundry. The other exception is my guns. While I like Front Rank figures, I don't like their guns - great oversized things, with carthorse wheels. I prefer the ones from Elite, which are - after all - modelled on proper French Valliere System guns.

I mentioned the Reichsarmee, which of course is another reason to love a French army. You can field colourful allies. I have a Reichsarmee brigade, with units selected more because I liked the uniforms, flags and names than for any more practical reason! I therefore have Hesse-Darmstadt and Bishopric of Cologne contingents, and I'm about to paint up two more Reichsarmee units, although I haven't decided which ones yet.

While this ragtag army loses more times than it wins, it has seen off the Prussians and/or the Hanovarians a few times, which I suppose makes it a little better than its historical counterpart. We've recently been using Black Powder in the Edinburgh club, and early on we made the decision to use the same unit sizes as DKK. that way we have a detailed set when we need them, and a fast-play set when we have more units, less time or want a simpler game.