Sunday 4 December 2011

Austrian IR 49 - Wagram 1809

Regiment of the Day

Today we look at the unstoppable Austrian Infantrie Regiment Nr 49, who fought as part of Nordman's Advanced Guard Division at Wagram, 1809.

This unit is brigaded together with IR 4 Hockmeister, to form Brigade Meyer.






4 bases of line infantry, figures by warrior miniatures. Facing colours for this regiment are dark grey. I have used a simply mix of black and white to achieve a neutral grey here .. in reality it may have been a different shade of grey.

Dont know, but this will do for 15mm figures I reckon.. I have placed 1 stand of grenadiers in bearskins in the mix with this regiment, mainly because I have a surplus of those figures, but also to denote that this regiment is of a regular troop grade with some battlefield experience.

Another 'German' regiment .. in fact all of the regiments in the Advanced Guard are German speaking Austrians, which gives them white trousers.

Many of the German regiments were first to start adopting the shako around this period, however many can be found still equipped with the much more fashionable helmet.

Not sure why, because the Austrian helmets are brilliant .. I assume it was a cost and logistics decision to go the shako perhaps
Here the IR 49 is shown in combat formation, sharing a movement sabot base with IR 4.


Earlier version of the underside of the Austrian bases ... starting to develop a scheme here. The later versions of the base undersides are far more ornate, and mini 'works of art' on their own :)

1 comment:

  1. Look good, Steve! I believe it is usually stated that the Hungarian regiments were, as a general rule, the earlier ones to adopt the shako, and the Germans later. I doubt it was uniform in any event! In agree with you in prefering the look of the helmets. I believe the change over was made chiefly for economic reasons (the helmets weren't lasting nearly as long as they were supposed to), and because they also seemed to offer less protection than had been hoped for as well.

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