My latest unit completed this week. More Old Glory. Old Glory figures come in bags of thirty figures. It is quite easy to end up with a lot of extra figures, depending on the size of the units you are making. More than ten years ago I brought one bag of British 1809 Elite Company Defending to provide the flank companies for units I was building at the time. This photo from Old Glory Miniatures shows the raw metal. There are two poses in the pack with head variants that have a lot of character.

When I said ‘at the time’ it is not as if I got anything done with them back then. I brought the metal but it is only now that paint is being applied. Anyway, I ended up with a lot of flank company figures left. So I decided to make yet another Light Infantry battalion (already have the 52nd and the 43rd). This time it is the 85th Regiment. The command figures come from the British 1809 Command and NCO bag.  The metal flagpoles in the hands of the ensigns are quite soft so I cut off them off, drilled out hands and used wire to make new ones.  The flags are not correct for this unit.  I tried to model them flapping enough to obscure the regimental number. I suppose that technically, being a light infantry regiment they didn’t carry their colours into battle but what fun would that be.

The 85th was raised in 1793 by George Nugent, their colonel, in Buckinghamshire for service during the French Revolutionary Wars. They first saw action in the Netherlands, before moving to the West Indies. In 1806 they returned to Britain and converted to a Light Infantry role, renaming as the 85th (Bucks Volunteers) Light Infantry. Two years later they were serving under Wellington in the Peninsular campaign and fought at Fuentes de Onoro and Badajoz. In 1814 they were dispatched to America and saw action in the last phase of the War of 1812.[from Wikipedia].