Wargaming the Franco-Prussian War in 10mm-The French

My favorite period to read about, collect and paint miniatures for has been the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. You have the combination of very colorful uniforms, with emerging modern weaponry, combined in large scale battles. For uniforms full of character, you can't beat the French Army, yet the "helmeted" Prussian troops are always a big draw to collectors as well.

I have had an ongoing project of building a French and Prussian army in 10mm for the rule set Volley and Bayonet.

I am using Perrin Miniatures and basing them on a 3" x 3" stand for an Infantry regiment.

With 20 figures on a stand, it really gives you the feeling of a massed body of men coming at you.

The attached photos are 10mm miniatures I painted in 2006. At that time I went with a white primer and then blue ink or red ink for the coat and trousers.

Here's a closeup of one of my Regiments.
You can see some Chaussers up front on the smaller stands.

Looking back at it now, it's probably too much of a light blue for the French of 1870. But they do look good on the table top.

Here are two of the Mitrailleuse guns. They were similar to the Gatling gun and could put out a heavy stream of bullets.

Unfortunately for the French, they were not used correctly and they didn't have a wide arc of fire, so that steady stream of bullets was very narrowly focused.

Here's more of a ground level view of my Infantry Regiments.

Now since the Franco-Prussian War had very large battles, I am going to need a lot of regiments for both sides to play one scenario for Volley and Bayonet.

I'm building the forces that took part in the Battle of St. Privat.

In that battle; the Prussian 2nd Army attacked the French VI Corp, that was in defensive positions along a ridge.

Prussian Guard units and Saxon units worked all day to try and dislodge the french from St. Privat. It wasn't until the evening and after thousands of casulties that the Saxons and then the Prussians stormed St. Privat and the exhasuted French withdrew.

Now in the next picture on the right side of the page, you see my latest Regiment painted.

Notice the colors are different on them.

After looking through the Osprey books and posting on The Miniatures Page, I used different paints and colors, to get a closer match to the uniform colors of Napoleon IIIs troops.

These were primed in grey and then I used "Thunder Blue" and highlighted with a "Blue Haze"

I like the looks of these better.
I'll put some green flock on the base over the weekend.

General de Division Tixier leads his regiments and the 1st Division on to the field of battle.

I have many rule sets for the Franco Prussian War. All of them have been great sources of information as well as inspiration

Next post...The Prussians.

Good Gaming; Mr. Joe