Having recently acquired a selection of reinforcements for my 6mm Risorgimento 1859 armies (from Commission Figurines), it's time to make a start on organising and painting. Let's start with the organisation; up to now I have simply painted enough figures to make a minimal representative 'army' from the lists provided in Neil Thomas' excellent book Wargaming 19th Century Europe , basing them according to the rules in the same book. Now, I want to expand the forces and put them into reasonably realistic orders of battle. A very good source of information turned out to be the Osprey Campaign series book no. 207 Solferino 1859 , which gives sufficiently detailed orders of battle for the Austrian, French and Piedmontese forces in that campaign.
Neil Thomas is careful not to specify exactly what a 'unit' in his rules is representing; I think this is to allow the depiction of different-sized engagements with the same rules, so an infantry 'unit' might perhaps represent a battalion, a regiment or even a brigade on the tabletop. Having looked at the OOBs, I decided to treat one Neil Thomas Infantry unit as (roughly) a Battalion, one Artillery unit as a Battery and one Cavalry unit as a Regiment. Using those parameters, I am aiming to represent one division each of French and Piedmontese troops and two divisions of Austrians. Hence roughly equal but somewhat differently-organised forces, given that each nation's organistion of regiments/brigades/divsions differed slightly. I thought I would take actual Division organisations from the OOBs and represent them, with the real names of commanders, brigades and regiments - at the very least that would save having to invent names!
So without further ado, here is a summary of the OOBs I am aiming at :
Austrian : these will be (more or less) two divisions of the VIII Korps, commanded by Graf von Benedek :
1st Division - commander FML Berger
Brigade Watervliet
- Kaiserjager Battalion nr. 2 (1 battalion skirmishers)
- Line Infantry IR7 Baron Prohaska (4 battalions)
- 1 Battery Field Artillery
Brigade Kuhn
- Grenz IR4 Szluiner, battalion nr. 2 (1 battalion skirmishers)
- Line Infantry IR11 Kronprinz Albert von Sachsen (4 battalions)
- 1 Battery Field Artillery
2nd Division (part) - commander FML Lang
Brigade Phillipovic
- Kaiserjager Battalion nr. 5 (1 battalion skirmishers)
- Line Infantry IR17 Prinz Hohenloe-Langenburg ( 4 battalions )
- 1 Battery Field Artillery
Brigade Dauber
- Jager battalion nr. 3 (1 battalion skirmishers)
- Line Infantry IR39 Dom Miguel ( 4 battalions )
- 1 Battery Field Artillery
I have not included the complete 2nd Division, which seems to have had an extra brigade in its original organisation, plus yet another brigade which had been attached from another corps a few days before the battle - I didn't want to make the Austrians much stronger than their opponents. You'll notice there there is no cavalry mentioned, this is simply becuase there was no cavalry in the Divisions listed above. There was a regiment of cavalry (4 squadrons ) attached to VIII Korps, so I think I will add one Neil Thomas 'unit' of cavalry to represent them. It's clear from the OOBs in the book that infantry vastly outnumbered cavalry in the actual campaign. I chose these formations mainly because of their commander - Graf Von Benedek seems to have been about the only senior Austrian commander who really knew what he was doing and acquitted himself well at the battle!
Piedmontese : 3rd Divison, commander. Lieut-Gen. Mollard
Brigato Cuneo: commander Maj-Gen Arnaldi
- 10th Battalion Bersaglieri (skirmishers)
- 7th Regiment di Fanteria (3 battalions Line Infantry)
- 8th Regiment di Fanteria (3 battalions)
Brigato Pinerolo : commander Maj-Gen Morozzo della Rocca
- 2nd Battalion Bersaglieri (skirmishers)
- 13th Regiment di Fanteria (3 battalions)
- 14th Regiment di Fanteria (3 battalions)
Divisional Cavalry : Regiment Cavallegri de Montferrato
Divisional Artillery: 3 batteries Field Artillery
The Piedmont/Sardinian 3rd Division was involved in assaulting the hill of San Martino which Benedek's troops were holding, so these seem appropriate opponents for the Austrians.
French : (from 1st Corps) 1sr Division : General de Division Forey
Brigade Dieu
- 17e Chasseurs a Pied (1 battalion skirmishers)
- 74e Ligne (2 battalions Line Infantry)
- 84e Ligne (2 battalions)
Brigade D'Alton
- 91e Ligne (3 battalions)
- 98e Ligne (2 battalions)
Artillery : 2 batteries Field Artillery
This was a division from Marechal Baraguey d'Hilliers 1st Corps, which seems to have done well enough in the battle, having 'pushed the Austrian outposts back from one crest to another, until they reached the ridges before Solferino' , then being involved in fierce fighting in the assault on the Monte di Cipressi - Forey himself being wounded. The division also has a fairly 'bog-standard' composition, with no units of Zouaves, for example - I haven't got any figures for those yet!
If you also have the book I'm using, you may notice that the numbers of infantry battalions don't always tally - I have made some adjustments to allow for the different sizes of battalions in the three armies. French and Piedmontese infantry battalions were about 600-strong, but Austrian battalions seemed to be larger, with almost 800 men each. I pondered how to reflect this - should I simply ignore the differences and treat all battalions as equal in power? This would seem to treat the Austrians a little harshly, even if their army was hardly a model of efficiency at the time! Should I make the Austrian battalions stronger, perhaps having 5 bases to the other nation's 4? But this might cause issues with the game rules, and of course would involve buying/painting 25% more figures for the Austrians! In the end I have (roughly) treated an infantry unit in the game as about 800 men, so that Austrian units remain battalions, but French and Piedmontese need fewer units to make a brigade than the real-life number of battalions ( the French 1st Division actually had 12 battalions of Line Infantry, I have 9 units). Hopefully that piece of wargamer's license won't cause any problems.
As a result, the overall strengths of the three forces should be as follows:
Piedmont 12 units Line Infantry, 2 units skirmishers, 3 batteries artillery, 1 unit cavalry.
France 9 units Line Infantry, 1 unit Skirmishers, 2 batteries artillery
Austria: 16 units Line Infantry, 4 units Skirmishers, 4 batteries artillery, 1 unit cavalry
I think these should give plenty of scope for games large and small, with over 50 available units in total, even at 6mm scale they should fill a table!
So, that's the proposed organisation, now I need to get them painted. To keep things organised, I have used cardboard 'templates' to lay out the formations, starting with the units I have already painted - as units are completed they can be temporarily mounted on the cards using blu-tak. For example, here is the incomplete '1st' brigade (Brigato Cuneo) of the Piedmont Division, which is only missing one of its 6 line infantry units, and the Divisional Artillery ( 3 batteries ) and Cavalry regiment. ( I need to change '1st' Division to '3rd' on the cards - oops!)
and here, the Austrian 1st Division, 1st Brigade (Watervliet) which is already complete, from the units I have previously painted.
That all looks good, but the rest of the formations are still in this state:
So there is a way to go! I'd better get started with the priming, at least... I don't think this will be 'all over by Christmas'. But at least I have a plan, and it's eminently do-able if I just get on with it!
Now the 'festive season' is upon us, there are cards to write and send, gifts to buy and wrap, etc, so there may not be quite so much hobby time available, but I'll try to press on with this, and we'll see how it goes. Next time, perhaps a progress report? Until then, keep well everyone.
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