Wellington and generic Peninsular generals, British and Portuguese

Anyone who collects 1/72 Napoleonic miniatures knows that British and Portuguese staff figures are hard to come by.
Eager to try my hand at creating a figure for Wellington, I committed the greatest heresy possible and decided to use a mounted Napoleon figure from the Italeri French command set as my starting point!

Napoleon, soon to be Wellington (Italeri) with a Portuguese captain from Hagen on the block to be made into a British aid.

The horse stayed mostly the same, with a bit of work on the pistol covers on the bow of the saddle. Mostly the conversion consisted of a bicorne swap, a nose and sideburns job and sculpting a great coat and sash.

Front view.

And here he is as Wellington painted up. I sculpted a shoulder cape to the great coat of the aid, pointed the finger of his sword hand and placed a map in the other hand.

Another view. I had the Wellington figure all done and then my partner helpfully commented on the fact that he looked a bit squat - no doubt as a result of my using Napoleon to begin with! So off with the head and I added a bit of neck to make him a smidge taller, although he's still probably diminutive for a Wellington figure. Ah well, he'll do.

Now on a roll, I turned my eye to some Portuguese commanders I had. In my order of a Portuguese army with Hagen Miniatures back in February I included the staff command set, and then afterwards had to ask myself, "Why?!" I mean, it's a nice-looking set but as I well knew, the Portuguese fighting in Wellington's army (where these were destined) fought under English divisional generals almost exclusively. The only exception was the Portuguese general Lecor who served as acting commander of the 7th Division at the battle of Nivelle, going on to command the Portuguese Division to the end of the war.

The original Hagen figures (picture from their web site), two of which are on their way to becoming British and no doubt inspired by the image below (whose providence I'm unsure of)!

To that end I went to work on two of the figures in that set to see if they would convert to British. The results can be seen below and you can judge for yourself, but at least my Anglo-Portuguese brigades will now have some divisional commanders.

For this figure I gave it a head swap (Valiant head), a new bicorne placed front to back, added braid and a second set of buttons, a different collar to the coat and again reworked the pistol covers and added a tapered saddle cloth.

Another view.

And the final, with the over-sized Viceroy head popped off at the end and replaced with something smaller. It's amazing how much a head scales a figure!! This Hagen figure was on the large size to begin with and the Viceroy head made him look like a giant.

Another view.

The second figure got much the same treatment minus the braid, as did the horse, which I borrowed from my Italeri French command set.

The finished figure. Again, I popped off the Valiant head and replaced it with this one at the very end, after painting! I'm fairly certain the horse is helping decipher the map...

Another view.

Which left me with these two pompous-looking fellows, who I painted up as the Portuguese officers they were meant to be!

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