Esterhazy Hussars

Lately, it feels like I've been painting nothing but infantry and other foot sloggers. Fortunately, I have several units of cavalry in the lead pile to help break things up. It has been weeks since I painted a horse, so I decided to do a unit of Austrian hussars. This unit represents HR 24 Paul Anton Esterhazy - and it is a very colourful unit.

 Figures are by Front Rank. They have been painted in enamels.

I used three painting guides to do them: Kronoskaf, of course; Greenwood and Ball; Osprey. 

The Osprey shows a figure without lace on the thigh of the breeches, so to save some time I've gone with that. 

Kronoskaf's written info on the shabraque and the sabretache is muddled. They are the wrong way around. The shabraque is blue and the sabretache is red as shown in the diagram.

Kronoskaf describes their Regimentsstandarte as a swallow tailed light blue  flag with a golden central device. It does not indicate what this device is. I have so many white cavalry flags (liebstandarte) that I decided to go for it and guess that the central device might be the Esterhazy heraldic symbol - a gold griffin (?) rampant standing on a crown holding a posy of three red flowers in one claw and a sword in the other. It is probably wrong, but at least it is different and quite pretty!

Lastly, for those new to this blog, I will explain why my cavalry are only eight figures strong rather than twelve figures strong.

I game counting one twenty four man unit of infantry as a two battalion regiment. This means that a cavalry regiment of five squadrons should have twelve figures. However, at this unit scale a regiment of cavalry and a regiment of infantry should cover about the same frontage and I can't fit twelve cavalry on a frontage of 180mm, so I've gone with units of eight. My rules don't count heads, and I don't do casualty removal, so it works for me to have artificially small cavalry units on the same frontage as infantry units. What a palaver!

Next up will be Austrian Infantry Regiment 42 Gaisruck in violet facings. It will be followed by a unit of combined Hungarian Grenadiers and a two gun battery of Austrian artillery. After that I will do a mass basing - I'll have a game-able army 34 units of Austrians to do.