The Opolchenie was raised during the Napoleonic wars and consisted of militia taken from servitude under control of line officers. Naturally they were ill equipped both in uniforms and weapons, but usually having a long grey coat (or in several shades of brown), some would have a musket and many other would have several types of pikes, including one with the shape of a musket but really nothing more than a pike. In fact they should be arranged in their Druzhin (regiment) per type of weapon but I placed muskets in the first two ranks and pikes in the third. The headgear should be mostly fur hats for these ones recruited in the Moskow region but as the Opolchenie were quite irregular in uniform I also bunched them all together.
The figures came from six Hat sprues of Opolchenie I found in Aliexpress as I couldn´t get the original boxes anywhere in UE area. Also in this lot were used some 10 Landwehr from a sole Italeri Prussian box I had around. They fit well with the Hat figures as they are similar in size. In fact the Russian Opolchenie influenced heavily the Prussian Landwehr uniforms (in fact if you have the old Airfix Landwehr, don´t bother and use them as Saint Petersburg Opolchenie). The same thing happened with all the Prussian army from 1812 to 1815 which had in the Tzar uniforms their main influence.
The figure firing in the photo is an Italeri Line Prussian. Has it had a coat its shako was placed on fire and squashed until it got the form of a cap.
Two of the Druzhin got red markings and one got blue. Finding information on the Opolchenie is not very easy - probably you can find plenty in Russian - and the best reference in English looks to be "The Brazen cross of courage" by Stephen Summerfield which unfortunately I don't have. There are some great reenactment Russian groups you can find on the web which will provide some very nice inspiration.
The few conversions made were on the figure yielding an axe, something that doesn't go very well with the rest of the figures which are in calmer positions. One of them became an horse holder for Count Markov and five other became standard bearers. Probably this 8th post on the Russian army at Borodino will be the last for some time in this series as I've covered all types of 1812 Russian soldiers, less the Dragoons that I couldn´t find.
Next: rebasing Aztecs for Impetus.
