Friday, 17 April 2020

Bob's Petrine Army


Bob has been busy during the lockdown and here is his blog on his Petrine Army.

This is my latest project, and is not yet complete. It is the Russian army of Peter the Great, not to fight the Swedes in the Great Northern War, but to take on my Ottoman Hordes. It is dated to as close to 1700 as I can make it, a time when although there were uniform regulations they were not met, and the Russian army is at its most colourful with green, red, blue, white and yellow uniforms.



The two senior regiments the "play mates battalions" formed from the child Peter's playmates on two estates are here. The Preopbrasjenski Guards, 



and the Semonovska Guards. A private in the Preopbrasjenski Guards was the equivalent of a lieutenant in any other regiment. Its C in C was always the Czar.



One of the original "soldat" regiments that survived into the new army - Sir Patrick Gordon's regt.  His flag is listed as a white cross on a red field - since he was a Scot I have given him the St. Andrew's Cross.



At the rear of the army is two regiments of Streltzi -yellow and red coated. It is often stated that the Streltzi were disbanded and they were, but Peter could not manage without their numbers and they were reconstituted.


Peter the Great instituted new cavalry regiments, mainly dragoons and although by the 1720s all were in green at this time they wore yellow, red, white, light and dark blue as well. But as with the infantry there were not enough of them so Horse and lance units were used. These included the local nobility, as well as irregulars such as Cossacks, Culmucks, lancers and hussars as well as reiters.

This is under construction and not all are shown but the noble cavalry has been painted.  All the noble cavalry including the command (but not the dog) are from Hinchcliffe. The Dog is from Irregular Miniatures..

The dragoons/Horse grenadiers are from Irregular and Lancashire games.
The first 5 regiments of infantry are from Ebor, others from Irregular Miniatures; Lancashire Games and Wargames Foundry. The Streltzi are from Old Glory.



The 2 mounted officer and the engineer section are from Reiver.  


The Orthodox priest is a resin figure from V&V Miniatures and appears with my Russian Napoleonics as well as supporting Peter the Great.



Still as work in progress - hope you enjoy them.

The large card building is a Russian kit of the cottage that Kutozov used as his HQ.



5 comments:

  1. I do hope they are set upon by your Ottoman hordes sooner rather than later - as that'll make quite an unusual battle. I assume (from Russia's Military Way to the West by Duffy) that he Russians will end up in a small number of large squares? What rules do you plan to use?

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  2. Rob
    thanks for posting
    We tend to use Pike&Shotte and Black Powder - they overlap at the end/beginning of the century. Although there is a lot of light cavalry most of it is irregular - Cossacks, Kalmucks, mercenaries, Reiters, Lancers and Hussars - and it is never certain how well they will perform and how effective they will be. They will certainly be outnumbered by my Ottomans -although the Turks suffer from a large number of irregular units.
    Under normal circumstances we would be looking to play a game with these in the immediate future but in the current circumstance I'm not certain when we will get them on the table.
    Bob

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  3. Very nice soldiers! I appreciate this as well as I am Russian myself! WHat is the scale of these nice miniatures?

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  4. Hi, thanks for taking the time to post. The figures are 28mm.

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  5. Read your post and then spotted this in YouTube which might interest you
    https://youtu.be/TPZ7AQuI8yw

    ReplyDelete