Voluntarios de Sevilla

I recently picked up a set of HaT Austrian Landwehr, thinking that their top hats and uniforms would adapt well as Spanish militia. As anyone who has built a Spanish army in 1/72 knows, options are few for these and up until now I have used the HaT Guerrilla set for my top-hatted regiments. 

Along with bell top shakos, top hats were ubiquitous in the uniforms of the new regiments raised throughout Spain in 1808. I found the Landwehr uniform was a good match for the Voluntarios de Sevilla and therefore based them on these. The only conversion required was to make one of the fusiliers into a standard bearer.

A bit of history

In May 1808 the city of Sevilla raised five battalions of infantry, the Voluntarios de Sevilla. Each of these battalions numbered 1000 men, with one company each of grenadiers and light infantry and six companies of fusiliers. These were part of the massive mobilization that occurred in Spain following the defeat of the French at Bailen and the rising up of Spain against her occupiers. A sixth battalion was raised later that year.

Bueno's image below shows a sergeant (indicated by the sword and shoulder epaulettes) of the sixth battalion and illustrated with green cuffs, collars and lapels. The colours were added later by Bueno, based on Bueno’s observation that the colour for sixth battalions and companies was green. This seems a bit suspect, as I haven’t encountered any colouring system denoting companies, so I have gone with red, the typical cuff, collar and facing colour appearing in most militias at this time. I have heard that the first battalion of the Voluntarios de Sevilla wore Tarleton helmets, so maybe I will tackle them some day.

Voluntarios de Sevilla, centre, with Bueno choosing to show them with green cuffs and facings.

And here are a few photos of the results. They are looking almost too uniform for Spanish militia - I still have some more figures that I might do some head swaps on in the future just to mix them up a bit!

Command stand. The standard bearer was my only conversion.

And one of the fusilier stands.