Neapolitan 2nd Line Regiment Regina

Continuing the painting of Neapolitan foot regiments serving the French in the Peninsular I have painted the second Neapolitan regiment. This regiment was raised on the 13th June 1806 as was the 1sr regiment Re. Eventually 12 line and 4 light infantry regiments wold be either raised or integrated from either the French or Italian army. Only five served in Spain and I do not have the information on exactly which did other than the 1st and 2nd Regiments that have been painted. As such I am painting up the 3rd through 5th. These three regiments were raised in 1809 so it is fair to assume they were raised to join the other two regiments that had been in Spain since 1808. Whilst I am planning on basing my army for the 1811 period I have an excellent order of battle for 1808 so will use this as a basis for building my army.

 

The drummers have their coats in full reverse of the facings and the yellow of the epaulets on all the troops clashes nicely with the green. These are quite a colourful bunch and I am looking forward to finishing off the other three regiments for a group shot.

 

You can see from this picture a little better how colourful they are. Neither regiment took too long to paint but somewhat longer than a French regiment (especially the lights). I have been working on the other three regiments at the same time so have picked up the speed a fair amount. If not for the hospital visit today, the VASL game tonight and the weekend at the Holiday centre I would have them painted, based and on here by Saturday at the latest. It did not help that between doing these and the last three I also painted up some lancers and started the work on the horses for the limbers of 4 guns. Such is the distractions of the wargamer!

 

Talking of which for those who are not into 6mm as soon as these guys are finished I will start on the pike phalanx allowing my Macedonian armies the option of two large blocks and more than the base minimum of 4 blocks. Once finished I will be able to field three small and two large blocks or six small blocks. Even after this though I will have another 60-100 pike figures to paint up at some point!

 

I also need to get cracking with the special sniper reminders, still waiting for one of the figures to arrive which should be any day but I have a firm idea of how the bases will look. I plan to cut the figures off their bases and pin them in place but need to get to the hobby store in town to pick up some ballsier wood that I can cut into floorboards. I could do with watching Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers for a look at French wallpaper ;-)

 

Talking of the mini series, just starting to watch the Pacific again and if that's not enough PTO Cath has had Tenko for her birthday and we started to watch that as well. Surprising the historical accuracy they achieved given the date of production. Maybe the producers of the BBC Robin Hood series should have hired the same guys.

 

Neapolitan, do you think of ice cream?

Me I think of little brick like chocolates but then being a chocoholic I would I guess. I also guess that only the most Napoleonic nut types would think of the much mocked French ally/vassal state's troops.  have to admit that my first real interest come knowledge of said troops was in issue 298 of Wargames Illustrated article A Peninsular War Primer by Barry Hilton. His comment "Theirs appears to be a tale of desertion, un-soldiery conduct and thieving" caught my interest. He also goes on to state that they had pretty interesting uniforms. Well the whole article managed to change round my focus of my French Napoleonic army from Russia to Spain (helped by the fact that I can (and am) still go down the route of Russia at the same time.

 

Indeed the Neapolitan foot regiments do have interesting uniforms, the one shown above is the 1st Regiment and in many ways has the least interesting of them all as it lacks epaulets. I have five regiments to paint in all and no two regiments have the same uniform colour other than the base colour of white for the uniform. Indeed the 2nd Regiment has green as the main second colour but yellow epaulets!

 

The cut of the uniform is French so I could use some of the Baccus infantry I already own (20 or so Regiments). This will also be the case for many of the other National troops I will be doing for the Peninsular project and indeed the Russian one too.

 

I love the detail on the flag (from Baccus), French style with the emblem of Naples in the centre. Other flags designs are also available which I may use on one or two of the regiments but I will probably just stick to this design. All the regiments will be based in column as they had such a bad reputation I felt line might be a bit tricky and they probably went into combat in column to help keep order.

 

I have read though that the bad reputation was more down to a couple of bad experiences and whilst they did well in other engagements a smear campaign has left them with a undeserved reputation. However under my rules I plan to give them characteristics very similar to the Spanish. This will allow them to have a chance of glory but a higher chance of not performing. To do this they will have low cohesion and morale but have average combat strength. I can see these being the reserve or defencive troops. They will look nice on the table tough set against the blue of the French.