1813-15 battles in 20mm for AoE and V&F - (part 30) 1st and 2nd Light Brigades of the Netherlands Cavalry Division

 

These two brigades - Ghigny and van Merlen - finishes the Netherlands Cavalry Division after Trip´s Heavy Brigade done some time ago. 

In TC´s exchange I got some 30 nice painted Peninsular British Dragoons with the Tarleton helmet.  Initially, it looked like there were several boxes of painted Hat industry figures but on a closer look I noticed there was only one with the other being conversions from the Airfix British RHA. And they were so well done! My job was to use these as  the 8th Belgian Hussars and 6th Dutch Light Dragoons after repaint, taking the advantage of the Hussar coat of all figures. The shakoes came from the dead Zvezda light infantry you can see lying all over... what a plassacre! 

Here you can see some of the Airfix bodies used by TC to make cavalrymen. The legs are Esci, something I also just did in the previous post. 

The only the shakoes were taken from the Zvezda figures, a risky operation that has to be done carefully with a new blade. Here I behaved like the Cumberland Hussars and got scared of using some Milliput to make the typical bedrolls around the torso which was typical in the Dutch-Belgian cavalry even if not universal. In order to find an excuse for myself I thought about the heavy rain that fell on the previous day of Waterloo and the possobility of the bedrolls being soaking wet and left at the rear position. Even asked AI what was their opinion but nope, the bedrolls were most probably used as they provided some protection at combat. 

The rear pointy shabraque was simply painted on the Hat and Esci horses.

One last conversion was on the 8th Belgian Hussar cornet which got a Hat Colpack as it should. MSJ website shows the colpack without cords or sac but it looks better with both.

Next: the 36th Belgian Jaeger (Detmers brigade)