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.