As a Dutchman living in Belgium I realized a had a lot of local history to choose from. Waterloo is only one hour's drive away, and of course Belgium is sadly riddled with battlefields from conflicts ranging from ancient times to the Second World War. However, I ended up choosing a different subject: the 2me cheveau-légers lanciers de la Garde Imperiale, the famous red lancers. In 6mm, no less.
In 1810, Napoleon finally had enough of his brother Louis playing the independent King of Holland. Louis Napoléon, or Lodewijk as he was called in Holland, had proven surprisingly popular with his new subjects, even trying to learn the language (not always successfully though; he has been recorded talking about himself as "uw Konijn", Your Rabbit, in stead of "uw Koning", your King) and trying to spare his people the burden constant French demands for more and more goods and troops put upon them, as well as turning a blind eye towards the blatant smuggling and trading with England that was the backbone of the Dutch economy. However, in 1810 Holland was formally annexed by France, and the Dutch army was integrated in the French. Napoleon was, however, sufficiently impressed by his brother's Royal Guard to incorporate some units into the Imperial Guard. Thus, the 2nd (Dutch) regiment of light lancers of the Guard was born.
Now of course, the regiment was recruited in The Netherlands, and famously fought its last battle at Waterloo, but I am also claiming the Local History bonus because I have a family connection with it. Two members of my family served in the regiment, both named Jacob Nicasie, cousins. According to the French military archives, both were killed during the campaign (tersely recorded as "resté en Russie"), although at least one of them actually may have returned after all.
I did put a little more effort into them than I would normally do in this scale, and I like how they came out. The regiment, almost 900 strong, formed its own brigade during the Russian campaign so I made a whole Blücher base out of them.
I also painted up one more French brigade of infantry for Blücher.
Finally, I painted up some real estate , mostly in 6mm scale. I think all buildings are either Leven Miniatures or Battlescale.
As a book recommendation, I will give you two titles as the first will not be of much use to most of you. However, Naar Moskou, naar Moskou! by Willem Oosterbeek is well worth reading.
These are the memoirs of a Dutch officer of the Russian Campaign, Jean Francois Dumonceau (I know, not a very Dutch name). He was a captain in the 2nd Lancers, and I suppose he must have been near my relatives pretty much all of the time. His memoirs were previously published in French, those might be worth looking up for those of you who don't read Dutch.
For all you exclusively Anglophones out there I have Alexander Mikaberidze's The Battle of Borodino. Napoleon against Kutuzov. A good, solid and clear account of the climactic battle on the road to Moscow, which is very much based on the Russian point of view.
I must say that I find Mikaberidze's style a bit of heavy going now and then, and not all of his arguments and numbers are entirely convincing, but he has a good command of his sources and makes full use of them. Perhaps a little too revisionist for my taste, but still a healthy counter to the almost exclusively French view on the battle most of us are familiar with, and I have no hesitation in recommending it..
That brings us to the map:
And scoring. Now the figures are easy, but the buildings less so. In proportion to the standard 6x6x6" cube they are practically worthless, but I hope that each building may be at least worth as much as a 6mm infantry figure, so 5 points for the nine perhaps? It's for our minion to decide, I'm happy with whatever I get.
So:
- 34x 6mm cavalry @ 1 = 34
- 56 6mm infantry @ 0.5 = 28
- 9x 6mm/ 10mm buildings = 20
- Local History Bonus = 20
Total of 87 points
TeemuL: Very nice entry and local history indeed is different depending where you are located. While I was in Northern Finland I had quick chat with a local and we discussed about buildings. He said, they don't have any old buildings, since Germans "cleaned" everything 70 years ago while retreating to Norway. And here in the South we have churches, castles and houses dating almost 800 years. And if you are from Belgium, you get Waterloo in your backyard.
While the 6mm forces look great and your extra effort shows, I still like your 6mm buildings a lot. The terrain cubes are not working on this scale and while Curt says "it is what we got" he also says "use your brain", so I'm giving full 20 points for them. And it is still less than a 6mm base. You have made great process on your Library map and you have already achieved your points target.
