A Foray into Napoleonic Wargaming

During the Napoleonic wars, there were a number of different nationalities that fought alongside the French, some willing, others bound by treaty. Amongst the different satrapies, client kingdoms, allies and foreign regiments that fought under French colours, the Poles formed a substantial component of the Grand Armee. With Poland wholly partitioned between Prussia, Russia and Austria in 1793, Napoleon positioned himself as the only man capable of restoring Polish sovereignty. In 1807 the Duchy of Warsaw was formed after the Treaty of Tilsit, creating a Polish client state of the French Empire. A lot of Polish soldiers in French service were reformed under the army of the Duchy, but there still remained some Poles that served under French colours. The Vistula Legion was one of these, formed in 1808 after re-organisation of the Polish-Italian Legions. The Vistula Legion was comprised of both infantry and cavalry regiments, but during its formation second staff section as added, allowing the cavalry and infantry to operate independently. Indeed, despite both the Vistula infantry and cavalry being deployed to the Peninsula, they never served together on the same battlefield throughout their service.

The cavalry component of the Vistula Legion was comprised of two lancer regiments. They spent four years fighting in the Spanish Peninsula, and by and large, were extremely successful in the majority of their confrontations against the Spanish, British and Portuguese. Their most famous engagement was the at Albuera in 1811, were the 1^st Vistula Lancers formed part of Soult army as they clashed with a Spanish and Anglo-Portuguese force lead by Beresford. Supported by the 6^th Hussars, the Vistula lancers initially spearheaded a feint against the allies around the village of Albuera, before galloping across the front of French army to join the real French attack on the allied lines, a sweep around Beresford’s right flank. As the allies shifted to meet the advancing French columns, Colborne’s Brigade were exposed with an unsupported flank, which the Vistula lancers ruthlessly exploited. Helped by an initial misidentification as Spanish cavalry, the lancers were able to ride over three British battalions (1/3^rd, 2^nd/66^th and 2/48^th) caught out of square formation, inflicting huge casualties and capturing 4 or 5 colours, and 5 cannon from a supporting KGL artillery battery. The 31^st regiment were able to form square and thus save themselves. Although Albuera was an eventual French defeat, it was one of the bloodiest battles of the Peninsula campaign.

After Albuera, Napoleon made a decision to transform six of his dragon regiments into light horse lancers, no doubt in part due to the success of the Vistula Lancers. As part of that decree, Napoleon also transformed the 1^st and 2^nd Vistula Lancers to regular troops of the French army, becoming the 7^th and 8^th Light Horse Lancer Regiments. The 1^st/7^th Lancers left the Peninsula in 1812 to participate in the ill-fated invasion of Russia.

The models are all from AB Miniatures. They are modelled with covers on their czapka, so there’s no yellow colour on the top. They also have plain saddlecloths as opposed to white sheepskins with yellow dog’s teeth patterning. I found about a 50/50 mix between sources having the lance pennons red over white vs white over red, and one picture had both at the same time.