Swedish Napoleonic Army - the most obscure you can get?

 My fascination with the Swedish Napoleonic army goes back to the early 80's with the publication of WJ Rawkin's book on the subject.

At the time I thought it was the most obscure thing I had ever come across, but I was also fascinated by how different the illustrations looked from the other uniforms of the time, and I soon determined that eventually I would have a wargames army to represent this proud group of men. I also got the Rawkins book on the Neapolitan army, but although that was also pretty fascinating, they were pretty much chocolate box soldiers and a Prince's plaything, whilst the Swedes has actually fought an entire war against the Russians during this period that I'd also never heard of. 

The Swedish - Russian War 1808-9

Actually this is only really obscure to those of us who have been brought up in the English education system, which continues to pretty much ignore the rest of the world, unless we were invading or colonising it. I suppose this is true of all education systems, there is inevitably an element of history being written by the winners, so our views of the Napoleonic period are pretty much focussed on Trafalgar, the Peninsular War, and inevitably Waterloo. And although he does acknowledge this, Bernard Cornwell's series of Sharpe novels serves only to bolster this, being unashamedly told from the viewpoint of a relatively uneducated English soldier. Scandinavian students will know of this war as part of the series of wars that formed the modern Scandinavian states, settling the status of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, the latter being still part of Sweden during this particular period. I had also been fascinated to find out at an early stage the one of Napoleon's Marshalls, Bernadotte had been offered, and accepted the throne of Sweden, and that the Swedish army, suitably modernised, had been part of the coalition that eventually fought against Napoleon at Leipzig. Bernadotte hedged his bets a little, and made sure the Swedes kept away from the serious fighting as much as possible!

And that's where it ended, for a very long while, mostly because no-one made Swedish figures at that point. I did talk to the Perrys, even at this very early stage, probably sometime in the early 90s, and ask them when they were going to make some Swedes. As with all ranges they were pretty non committal as to what their future plans were, but the wry grin on their faces suggested to me that it wasn't high on their list. I reminded them every few years, and it became a bit of a running joke, and with my butterfly mind I moved on to my many other interests. 

As it happens, somewhere along the line both Bicorne and Elite Miniatures started making ranges, but somehow I never really noticed this, an error which is particularly heinous as Elite regularly attend Partizan! So imagine my surprise when the Perrys announced they were going to start a new range! Naturally I was pleased, being a big fan of Alan and Michael's work, but then I realised I was going to actually have to buy some and do this thing. But this is probably my only wargames project where the schedule of releases has meant that I can (nearly) keep up with them...

Building the army

Naturally infantry come first, and there are (currently) two line options, marching and standing, with command packs that confusingly have two standard bearers, but only one drummer, making it difficult to split over two regiments, and leaving you with more standard bearers than you need for a single flagged battalion (which is all of them). Initially I have painted them as is, but I may split the spare ones out for general's bases, jumping off point bases etc.

1808 was just after a uniform change as well, so the regulations state that after 1807 grey is the main coat colour, but before that blue was still the most common. Some regiments hadn't made the swap by the beginning of the hostilities, so I felt OK to do one regiment in blue and one in grey.

I also acquired one of the horse regiments, there are currently two to choose from, but I went for the ones in splendid bicornes, because they were different to anything I had painted for a while, and these were painted during the Painting Challenge of November 2018, so featured regularly on my Facebook page!

And more recently I have managed to do a few skirmishers, the Savolax Jagers, only 12 of these, which will still be more than enough for the smaller actions fought during this particular war.

Currently waiting patiently for painting I also have the two guns that were released this year, and another regiment of infantry, who will also be in grey. None have flags yet, I'm working on that, and it looks like I'm going to need another RUB for these...

After which I'll need to do some Russians so I can actually start gaming with them, probably Sharpe Practice to begin with.

Laurence