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Liam kindly painted a battery of Foot Artillery of the Old Guard a few months ago. The battery consisted of the usual eight pieces but did not have its caissons.
The sad demise of Westfalia Miniatures means that, along with Schilling, these wonderful figures will no longer be available. Taking advantage of the huge generosity of Thomas Mischak who bought up most of the remaining stock, Liam has painted eight An XI caissons and ancillary vehicles to give this Guard battery the ammunition and spares it needs.
Space is short at La Belle Alliance so the caisson convoy is sitting further back, a little north of Rossomme and south of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 1st Grenadiers shown in my last post.
The pictures show just how much space Napoleonic artillery needed to deploy. Napoleon had 254 guns at Waterloo and this shows the caissons needed to serve just eight of them.
This right here is one of the best examples of why dioramas can be so important in helping visualize history. I’ve read some of those stats before about how many cassions were needed to serve a gun, but actually seeing how much space this sort of stuff took up is crazy. No wonder why good roads were such a crucial part of logistics.
Thank you Asher, it's often assumed that Napoleon made a choice not to start Waterloo until nearly midday. The truth is that it took until then to get troops up the single road. While it was paved, the secondary tracks were not and the fields were waterlogged.
I went to the (admittedly altered) battlefield at Waterloo a few years ago and it was a really fascinating experience. For me the most interesting part was when you walked from where Napoleon/etc. were viewing the grounds over to the Allies, it was VERY deceiving. It looks more or less flat, but as soon as you start walking it the ground is rolling so much that you lose line of sight on both the Allied and French starting positions on numerous occasions. That combined with other things such as the aforementioned roads here really gives some insights into why things went the way they did. The Duke was a very clever man when at his best.