French Elite Dragoons

 I went down a very deep rabbit hole over the past month or more, trying to bump my four regiments of French Dragoons up to the requisite six that I will need for a future Talavera scenario. Unfortunately my need for two new regiments coincided with Italeri's decision to suspend manufacturing their 1/72 scale figures (at least this is what i have been told) and their excellent set of French Dragoons was no longer available anywhere! 

But necessity is the mother of invention, so I took a hard look a what I had in the spares drawer. I was going to need 24 mounted figures (12 per regiment) and had six still of the Italeri dragoons. My local toy soldier store had two sets of the hard plastic Zvezda Dragoons (three per box), albeit in the later short jacket. However I had converted some of these before so I picked them up, bringing my total up to twelve. More on those conversions and the final results in my next post.

But I was still twelve figures short. I seemed to remember that I had seen pictures of elite Dragoons in bearskins, so a bit of searching on the internet produced the following images. I had some Italeri French Light Cavalry (chasseurs à cheval, really) that had some elite figures that I thought I might be able to convert. The lapels were the right configuration and I talked myself into believing the coat tails were long enough. They were wearing overalls, but my research had shown French Dragoons in overalls while on campaign, so I thought that should do. Their horses, lacking the green saddle blanket, would need some conversion as well, but these yielded six more potentials.

An elite trooper of the 1st Dragoons, with red epaulettes and tall bearskin.

An illustration of an elite dragoon of the 15th with bearskin and grey overalls. other reference shows the stripe as red.

At this point I realized that my HaT French Horse Grenadiers would serve very well as elite Dragoons. Long coat tails, check, bearskins, check, right configuration for lapels. The only mark against them was the wrong pockets on the back of the coat, but that was easily fixable. 

This set was one of the first Napoleonic sets I had picked up, at a sale years ago, and as they didn't serve in the Peninsula I have, at times, cannabilized them to make various figures, mostly French aides de campes. The horses in the set are diminutive and uninspired but the figures are very good. As a bonus, I realized I had extra heads saved from my cannabilization projects, which was perfect as, on looking more closely, I had s=decided that the chasseurs à cheval's bearskins were too small. As you can see in the reference the dragoon bearskins were quite tall, closer to those of the horse grenadiers.

So with my ducks all in a row I began working on the conversions. Conversions to the riders here involved bending the arms on the Italeri figures (6) as they were all identical, changing the coat tail pockets, adding epaulettes to the right shoulders of the horse grenadiers and bumping up their moustaches to make them more imposing. Finally, I pinned on the extra Horse Grenadier heads I had to all of the Italeri figures.

The horses all had sheepskins, but most lacked the blanket and the proper square portmanteau with folded cloak on top. So I sculpted these and was finally ready to go!

I had already begun painting when I decided that the Italeri coat tails just weren't long enough! Using a Dremel cutter (not the right tool but I was in a hurry!!) I sliced all of these off, doing some damage to some of the horse's tails in the process (haste makes waste) then sculpted longer coat tails as well as repairing the damage I had done to the horses' tails. The whole Dragoon project had now extended to over a month!!

I forgot to take WIP's up to this point but here, after starting to paint, is the last minute conversion of the Italeri coat tails to have them more in keeping with the other figures.

New tails for both rider and horse, after I sawed off part of the horse's tail by accident!

Finally, with the figures and horses all painted, I realized that the two elite dragoons mounted on the HaT horses just looked silly, so I scrounged a couple more horses that worked better, sculpted sheepskins (with dragon teeth - sort of) portmanteaus and folded cloaks for those two horses.

I think we can all agree that these horses just look silly, especially for elites!

Two new horses. These required the full conversion, sheep skin, blanket and port manteau. I was especially pleased to get an approximation of wolves' teeth around the sheepskin!

New horses painted and ready to receive their riders.

As a final footnote seven sets of the Italeri French Dragoons came up for sale in an estate sale the day I finished my conversions, at a crazy low price. Ah well...

Regardless, here is the final result...

Six completed stands, one for each Dragoon regiment.

14th Dragoons (elite). These are both converted Italeri Light Cavalry figures.

Conversions, showing new coat tails, sculpted blankets and new portmanteaus and folded cloaks behind the saddle. I also gave them gauntlets.

Two of the converted HaT Horse Grenadier figures, now 4th Dragoon elites. The horses are from a different set.

All these two required were new coat tail pockets and a second epaulette.

A mix of one each for the 1st Dragoons.