2nd Nassau Regiment

I managed to lay my hands on HaT’s excellently sculpted Nassau infantry earlier this year and was eager to paint them up as one of my growing number of foreign ally units serving with the French in Spain. These were painted mostly straight out of the box, with a good variety of command, musician, fusilier, grenadier and voltigeur figures. The only exception was a simple conversion of the grenadier command figure to create the necessary standard bearer.
In 1808 the uniform went through some major changes, dispensing with distinctive facing colours for each battalion, and it is this later uniform that is depicted on these figures. For this unit I chose to base it on the uniform of 1808 and later (although the grenadiers’ colpaks probably didn’t appear until 1810, after the battles in Spain that these toy soldiers are destined to be fighting) opting for the earlier white waist coats and grey trousers with stripes.
Here are a few photos of my results.

The full battalion with voltigeurs off their magnetic base and deployed in front.

The command stand - sashes appear red here but are actually orange. The flag bearer was the only necessary conversion, a simple head swap with the grenadier captain seen below.

Grenadiers with colpaks. This headgear probably appeared in the ranks around 1810.

Voltigeurs

A Bit of History

Box art from the HaT Nassau Infantry set.

When the houses of Nassau joined Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine Friedrich August, Duke of Nassau, became responsible for the raising and organizing of the military establishments of these small united states.
In July, 1808, two Nassau infantry regiments of two battalions each were created, these composed of one grenadier and voltigeur and four fusilier companies each. On August 20, 1808 the 2nd Regiment, along with one squadron of the Nassau ‘Chausseurs à Cheval’ left for Spain, where it remained until the upsurge of German nationalism in 1813. This culminated in the 1st Regiment (also sent to Spain in 1810) being disarmed and interned by the French while the 2nd went over to the British and was repatriated to Nassau.
The 2nd Regiment fought in General Laval’s so-called "German Division" (2nd Division) where its battle honours included Mesa de Ibor (17 March, 1809), Medellin (27 March, 1809), and Talavera (27-28 July 1809).
In March of 1810 the 1st Regiment was sent to Catalonia where it became part of the garrison of Barcelona. It saw the remainder of the war in garrison duty of this city punctuated by brief forays into the Catalonian hills in pursuit of the elusive Spanish guerrilla army.