Lace Wars Cavalry

I have greatly enjoyed painting Strelets new War of the Spanish Succession-era British cavalry. In fact, I think this is one of the best sets I’ve painted of theirs for a while.

The sculpting of Strelets has gone through some changes over the years. Initially, their figures were considered a little ‘ugly’ by some but were infused with lots of character. More recent sculpting has seen their figures become much more anatomically and proportionally accurate but at the loss of some of that personality. This latest set happily seems to combine a little of both.

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My regiment of horse has black facings and white hat lace around the tricornes (except the officers who have gold).

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Having painted much Saxon infantry recently, I declared in a recent post that I’d paint them as Saxon cavalry – Beust’s regiment. This move was also inspired by my misplacing a key War of the Spanish Succession source book. I’ve now recovered it and have discovered that my figures could also possibly pass for the Schomberg’s Regiment of Horse (later in the century becoming known as the 7th Dragoon Guards).

There are four command figures, including two officers, a trumpeter and a standard bearer.

The two officers:

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For the standard bearer below I’ve provided a guidon freely downloaded from the Tacitus website. I’ve changed the colour to a black to match their facings. Lit by lamps and photographed, it appears a little grey in images. The flag bears a very good resemblance to the regiment’s black damask flag from 1788.

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The trumpeter:

Schomberg’s Horse had the origins of its lineage going back to December 1688 as one of a number of regiments of horse raised for William of Orange after he took the throne to replace James II. The regiment was present at all of the Duke of Marlborough’s major battles of the War of the Spanish Succession – Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet.

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Troopers at the trot or canter:

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Troopers at the charge!

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All in all, a fine addition to my Lace Wars project. I’ve a couple more boxes of cavalry to paint from Strelets for this era, so happily there are more to come!