1st and 4th French Dragoons

My six Dragoon regiments at the charge.

 As I mentioned in my previous post, my purpose in converting figures to elite French Dragoons was in order to make up for a shortfall of figures in creating two new regiments, the 1st and 4th. Together with the 2nd, 9th, 14th and 26th these would allow me to have the six regiments needed for the Talavera scenario!

With the helmeted Dragoons of these two new regiments, I had to alter the lapels and coattails of the Zvezda figures (purchased because I couldn't source any Italeri) to be pre-Bardin. I realized that the Zvezda stationary figure, firing a musket from his horse, although a very fine figure, would look out of place with 70 other figures in full charge. So with a fair bit of hacking and cutting and stealing a trumpet arm from my HaT Light Dragoons, I decided to configure this pair as my new trumpeters. The two trumpeters also needed a charging horse and, as an expediency, I went with two of my spare HaT Horse Grenadier horses because they had sheepskins. In retrospect I wish I hadn't as I find these a bit stiff and smallish, but they will do. 

I pillaged four stands of figures from each of my existing regiments, re-painted their turnbacks and lapels, and replaced those with my newly minted stands of elite Dragoons. All this fandangling gave me two new Dragoon regiments. 

1st Dragoons with their elite company on left of picture.

Command stand with trumpeter converted from a Zvezda figure firing his musket.

I wouldn't say it was my best conversion, a bit lumpy, for sure, especially around the coat tails and trumpet arm!

4th Dragoons. Somewhere along the line I ended up with an extra stand of figures!

The 4th's trumpeter, again converted from a Zvezda figure, with a Zvezda figure converted to a commander by carving off the cartridge belt. 

The commander is also a Zvezda conversion, opening the lapels and adding long coat tails, pockets and epaulettes.

The flag bearer and officer of the 4th are both Zvezda figures with conversions, mostly on the coat tails and lapels.

Troopers of the 4th, the left one Italeri and  the other Zvezda. Other than the uniform variations these two sets go very well together.

And finally, I just couldn't resist showing again all six regiments, (74 figures) at the charge!