Walloon Guards 1743: Part One – Introduction

I am about to start the next phase in my project to build the Spanish army for the Battle of Campo Santo, 1743.

The battle was one of the few significant actions in the Spanish campaign in Italy in 1743. The attraction for me is that it is a relatively small battle for the period (c.14,000 troops on the Spanish/Neapolitan side). Using a representation of 1 wargame unit = 2 real life battalions then it is (possibly) vaguely achievable in my lifetime. And no, I am not painting the opposition.

There are small number of resources on the internet to research Campo Santo. The most useful order of battle is the Nafziger research that can be accessed here. I printed a historic battle map (here), and marked up each Spanish regiment in my order of battle using sticky notes. This wallchart is my constant reminder that I need to get on with it !

Some time ago I completed the first phase in my project, which was the Castille Brigade (Shown here on my gallery blog). The next stage is going to be the Walloon Guards, who were deployed to the left of the Castille Brigade on the day.

Historically there were six Walloon Guard regiments, which I will represent using three 35 figure units. I designed a basing approach that made an abstract representation of the placing of officers and musicians in addition to the line. Also Grenadiers are included in each battalion since it does not seem that they were detached during the main battles of this campaign.

This means a battalion composition of five bases, each with a slightly different layout. Part of my planning earlier this summer was to map out a typical battalion’s figure requirement in the trusty notebook.

The figures are all from the excellent Crann Tara range. They will require some small conversion tasks to make the Spanish infantry suitable as Guards (see forthcoming blog post).

Because this project will require a few different stages with some complexity and decisions to make, I spent some time on a train journey planning out the component tasks and marked them up in the notebook. Partly so that I can keep track and also because it was an excuse to start a new notebook which I always enjoy doing!

I intend to keep making blog updates as progress is made, so hopefully we will see some ticks in the boxes along the way !

So thats it for now. Ready to get started. First is to check out references for the flags and uniforms, which will be the subject of Part Two.