Arquebusiers De Grassin

Five or six years ago I was looking for some unusual miniatures to use as a minor ally to my ImagiNation army, the Electorate of Lustigzollern-Großgesaß.  I stumbled upon the Eureka miniatures Arquebusier de Grassin line, and decided to use them.  When I began looking at painting them about a year ago, I looked up pictures of the actual French unit from the war of Austrian Succession. As per usual this lead my down a bit of a rabbit hole, as things often do.

First, I discovered that the Arquebusier de Grassin, a light French unit of  infantry and cavalry, were quite a colourful bunch.  I decided to use their historical colours.  My research lead me first to another WAS unit called the Fusiliers de Moliere.  the two units would be merged in 1749 into the Volontaires de Flandre. this unit served in the seven years war.   

when I started looking into SYW volunteer light infantry units I stumbled upon Cran Terra Miniatures Fantastic line of miniatures representing both the Fusiliers de Moliere and  a good number of these light units from the Seven Years War.  They have specific lines for the Volontaires Etrangers de Clairmont, Chasseurs de Fischer, as well as opposing light formations of Hanover, such as the Freytag Jagers, Scheithers Freikorps, and the Von Luckner Hussars.

At first I though creating an imagination army from these volunteer units combined with the fusiliers de Moliere and Arquebusiers de Grassin would be pretty cool.  but also, the more I researched these units, the more I thought it would also be cool to do a skirmish project of  SYW light infantry formations.

And as usual I also pieced together some Flags from these units.

Arquebusiers de Grassin Ordonnance Flag

Arquebusiers de Grassin Colonels Flag

Fusiliers de Moliere Ordonnance Flag

Fusiliers de Moliere Colonel's Flag

Volontaires Etrangers de Clairmont Prince 
Ordonnance Flag

Volontaires Etrangers de Clairmont Prince 
Colonel's Flag

Alas, I have finally painted up the Arquebusiers de Grassin miniatures I bought from EurekaUSA, which started this whole rabbit hole. there was very little cleanup on these and they were lovely to paint.

Both units of 12 Arquebusier de Grassin

First unit, loading and ready to fire poses

Second unit, all firing poses.

this isn't the final unit composition. I intend to get 3 units of 12. split up into Firing/At the Ready, Firing/Loading, and kneeling firing/Kneeling At the Ready, as pictured below. I'll also be buying 8 mounted figures from the same line, plus command.

the 3 sets of poses which I intend to make a unit of 12 of each.

It may be a while until I have the funds available to get the rest of the project moving, but it has very much piqued my interest of late.  I've never seen the Cran Tera miniatures in person, but they look lovely on hte website. I've ordered Fife and Drum miniatures from them before as shipping is cheaper from the UK to Canada then from the USA in general, so I know they are reasonable to deal with.