Dismounted French Dragoons

 

Along with a purchase I made of someone’s retired 1/72 unpainted Napoleonic collection a year or two ago I was also gifted a large number of Strelets dismounted French dragoons. Dismounted dragoons don’t have much opportunity to appear on my Peninsular War gaming tables, at least not at the scale of battles I play (better suited for skirmish games), but I always liked the idea of them and wanted to paint some up.

I was finally inspired to do so when we played a scenario based on  the action at Cacebelos during Moore’s retreat with the British army to Corunna (you can see that report here) in 1809. After the game I realized I would also like to have a few stands representing the horses being held by a few dragoons as markers for where they dismounted while the others skirmished.

These Strelets figures were almost certainly intended to represent those dragoons that did fight as dismounted units in other theatres of the wars, as their kit is a mixture with some aspects of regular units, like back packs, gaiters, etc. The figures I chose for this group therefore were limited to those that looked a bit more like they have just gotten off of a horse!

A bit of history

Although the French Dragoons often did fight dismounted on scouting and foraging expeditions in the

Peninsula, they rarely did so in a larger scale battle. Apparently a regiment did dismount and skirmish at Corunna as a result of bad terrain, and during Massena's retreat from Portugal in 1811 dismounted dragoons acted as part of a rear guard.

However there are records of them having fought as infantry elsewhere during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1805, when Austria invaded Bavaria, dismounted squadrons lacking horses were formed into a division of four provisional regiments and marched with their infantry equipment, leaving their saddles, sabres, boots, etc behind. They were assigned the mission to guard the artillery park and baggage train. The rest of the army dubbed them the 'wooden swords' which was kind compared to the other nicknames that came their way. However these dismounted dragoons did serve and fight as infantry.

By 1806 there still were not enough captured horses to mount the entire division and two dismounted regiments remained. These were eventually mounted from captured Prussian and Saxon horses and were equipped with cavalry accoutrements, saddlery, etc taken from the Prussians, Saxons, Hessians and prisoners of war, mounted and equipped at the Wittemberg depot.

In the 1809 Campaign in Europe again there were entire divisions of dismounted dragoons and in the 1812-15 Campaigns they fought as infantry from a lack of horses and were never mounted (in 1809 they actually abandoned boots in favour of infantry shoes and gaiters).

Here are a few photos of my dismounted dragoons with some figures employed as horse holders.

I can't remember where I pilfered the horses from, but clearly not dragoon horses as they lack the sheepskin shabraque with dragon teeth. I did try to sculpt the proper dragoon saddle cloth and portmanteau.