Vendee Project - part 4 Royal Catholic Armee Chouan Chevalier Cavalry

 Royal Catholic Armee Chouan Chevalier Cavalry

As parts of Maine were liberated by the Vendee army during 1793 a cavalry squadron was formed around North Maine and lower Normandy predominantly nobles. The unit was small around 180 mounted men and around 40 dismounted owing to a horse shortage. They carried a holy banner with Mary from the monastery church at Avesnières. This banner was captured at Le Mans in December 1793.

 

Many of the men who survived the disaster at Le Mans fled to Normandy and Mayenne and then onto England via Jersey, those who did not joined General la Frotte and his Chouan army in lower Normandy and North Maine, some fighting until 1815. 

Some members also seemed to have served in the Les chevaliers de la couronne, as Jean-François -Simon de Hercé former deputy to the estates general, and company commander, a Hercé family member of the house we live in today attests to having fought in the battles in Flanders in 1792 then returned to Maine during the uprising, then fled to Bath in England, where he died in 1796.

The miniatures are 28mm from the Revolutionary Armies Range now sold by Skytrex and the horses are from foundry and crusader. The banner is from LBM Byzantine transfer cut down to size. I gave based them on single bases so they can be used for skirmish gaming. 

I have another squadron to complete for my Royal Catholic Armee but it will be in mixed uniforms of the Grenadiers and Bretons from the lower Vendee. 

Cheers

Matt   

Vendee / Chouannerie - French Revolution Project

 Vendee/Chouannerie Project 

This year as one of my major projects I want to complete my French Revolution Project and associated Royal Catholic Armee and French Revolution army. I have also been working on a ruleset at 1/10 figure scale over the last 5 years and hopefully will get it published later this year. 

I really want to fight five of  the battles from the great Galerne that are within 20 to 80klm of my French house and involved a number of our neighbors families and the Hercé family that lived in our house. Both the French and the Royal Catholic armies are quite small so it suits to reduce the representation factor of units and makes leaders for troop inspiration more important. 

Eventually by the end of the year I want to have a big enough army to replay a few of the local smaller battles and within two years the larger ones like Le Mans, Entrammes, Chateau Gontier,  and Dole Bretagne.  

My first units will be a few Revolution French and some of the royalist additions to Chouan collection.

Cheers

Matt

28mm Royal Catholic Armee Vendee/Chouans part two

Second small skirmish screen of Vendee/Chouan troops added to the collection. I am waiting for the Revolutionary Armies Vendee troops to arrive to start my formed units. Off to another Chouan chateau and museum on Tuesday, I will post some pictures later in the week.

Cheers
Matt

28mm Royal Catholic Army Chouan skirmishers

While I wait for the Revolutionary Armies Vendee range to release I dived into my figure stash and pulled some Perry AWI skirmishing southern militia figures, sculpted feathers and cockades and the odd Vendee heart badge. Then painted them in two batchs, and based them. I have completed the first 12 with a further 12 on the table at the moment. These will act as a stand alone skirmish line  for British Grenadier rules until I complete mine.

The Mayenne (old Maine) Department of Pays de la Loire was the hotbed of the Chouan revolt against the Revolutionary government. We have 63 skirmishes and battles within a hour of the Maison. After the defeat of the Vendee the Chouan kept up the fight against the revolutionary government and then Napoleon tying down several divisions in western France.

We conduct tours of a number of the battlefield sites and visit the museums and a private collection as part of our "walk the battlefield in the morning and wargame it in the afternoon"© our French tour and wargame holiday packages.

28mm Royal Catholic Armee Vendee rebellion

Another current project is to increase the size of my Royal Catholic Armee for the French Revolution.  My current Vendee/Chouan collection is quite small, mostly because of the lack of suitable figures, I have all of the Foundry sculpts but they are quite limited and small true 25mm compared to current 28mm miniatures. I have been helping the guys at Revolutionary Armies range to complete a better and wider range of miniatures for the Vendee war. Excited to say that the initial sculpts are completed and at Griffin moulds being mastered at the moment a total of 72 individual miniatures, armed with muskets, swords, assorted pikes and farm implements will be produced for the Revolutionary mob and the Royal Catholic Army.

The 28mm Revolutionary Armies range is now available from the Skytrex and includes a wide and complete range of armies from early Revolution through to 1806.

Firing line