"Firing into the Brown" #55 - Souastre foo-bar, Wesencraft and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..

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Another in the occasional "regiments of renown" series featuring the histories (such as they are in some cases, and notably in this one) of various regiments painted in haste at the beginning of a project but not documented here for posterity.. so we come to French cavalry regiment "Souastre" part of my War of the Spanish Succession collection..

Probably already known to the aficionados (which covers my reader for sure😏), but unknown to perhaps the majority, but in 1671, a royal order instructed that the French cavalry were to have buff leather coats, cloaks and good boots, and be "dressed in good grey cloth lined in the same colour" (except for the royal units, these were to "be dressed in dark blue..."). 

This order was followed well into the 18th century, but with the buff coat becoming a waistcoat by the time of the War of Spanish Succession. The vast majority of these "grey regiments" then adopted red as the facing colour (coat cuffs mostly) but a few regiments were distinctive as they used the livery of their colonel as the facing colour, and the colour for the saddle cloth and housings (ie. the cloth pistol covers on the saddle) and this regiment was chosen purely because of this, as I wanted a change from all the grey and red hordes, and they had the blue facings you see here..  

..and the foo-bar? Well this regiment never served in the War of the Spanish Succession - they were one of a few 'seven year wonder' regiments that Louis raised in 1691 for the Nine Years War (very much the appetiser for the later war), and the regiment was then disbanded at the end of the war (actually, a year later.. 1698) but was never reconstituted when the War of the Spanish Succession opened a mere three years later...  ah, well..  never mind...  😀

I know nothing about the service of the regiment during the war - orders of battle for the Nine Years War are very few and far between - but my assumption is that they would have been raised near the town of the same name in the Pas de Calais area (north east France - so think Calais/Channel ports) and therefore I'm guessing they would have served in the campaigns in Flanders - might have been at Steenkirk?? maybe??

I did manage to find this however, which provided a delightful rabbit hole to disappear down for a few hours...

Actual commission of company captain of the Souastre cavalry regiment for Jean-Guillaume Fruict, awarded at Versailles on 16 December 1691. Fruict had previously been a captain in Guines regiment; thanks to this promotion he became captain of the Souastre regiment.

So what do we know of Msr. Fruict? Not so much, just a few snippets... 

He was baptized February 23, 1653 in St-Étienne (Lille), so would have been about 38 or 39 when he got the commission, which would have put him in command of a company of troops counting somewhere between 40 and 60 men; three companies would then make a squadron, and most cavalry regiments would have had about 6 companies, so 2 squadrons so ~260-340 men in total. By 1698 when the regiment was disbanded he'd be late 40's and I would have thought that was getting old for such a demanding role, and it may account for their being no further mention of  him in any military sense..  he simply retired/disappeared..

He died at at the age of 64, on April 1, 1717. Sounds like an enterprising gentlemen as he married late, in 1711, to a lady called  Marie Joseph Butin, who was 26 years younger than him..  they had two daughters born in 1707 and 1709, so both were legitimised by the marriage!😁

I think the regiment was under the overall command of a Mestre de Camp (Colonel) Wallon (NB. not Walloon) and have found reference to him being the oldest Colonel in the army at the time the regiment was disbanded..  he was not without influence, as he was married to one of the daughters (name unknown) of the immensely rich and powerful Étienne Chérade, Comte de Montbron, but I know nothing more about him than that..

Regiment painted some time in 2007 (pre-Blog!) and comprising 15mm Dixon Miniatures..

Sources:

• Sapherson - "The French Cavalry 1688-1715"

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..just finished reading (again) this Charles Wesencraft book I managed to get on eBay "With Pike and Musket: Wargaming the 16th and 17th Centuries" and decided to put up a review...

Book is 185 pages long plus 2 or 3 pages summarizing the rules described in the book.

The actual rules section of the book comprises approx. 50 pages, the rest of the book is about army organization (he uses a few sample armies of the period focusing purely on Elizabethan, Elizabethan Irish, English Civil War, and the New Model), and typical weapons of the period. The two chapters are interesting (I hadn't realized the importance of the halberd in the earlier par of the period) but pretty basic - no in depth analysis as you would expect in what is primarily a wargaming book - he does have a good and extensive bibliography for more detail on these aspects.

The rules are interesting - considering that they were written in the mid-70's, there are a number of concepts that are not unheard of in some of the more modern rules.

In summary:

• Figures are single mounted
• Movement is pretty normal and as you would expect
• He deals with weather in some detail as given the armaments of the time it was important - matchlocks are particularly susceptible to wet… to track weather in the game he postulates a weather gauge. Throw a dice at the beginning of the game to decide the opening weather and then a dice throw each move will either move a counter up or down the gauge, or not - making the weather better or worse depending on where the starting position on the gauge is…
• Movement is alternative - Mr Wesencraft explains in detail why he thinks it is the better approach and I don't disagree with him! Each move comprises:

• Side A move
• Both sides fire
• Side B move
• Both sides fire

• Then we have a chapter on an element of gaming not touched on much at this time - Charles describes how each unit has an efficiency rating that effects how it will perform in the various actions it will take in the game (firing, melee, morale checks, etc.) The efficiency rating is diced for and kept secret from the enemy, and from that point is reduced as the game continues reflecting the decrease in efficiency of the unit. It can temporarily improve (eg. as a result of a staff officer joining the unit, being under cover etc.) but can also temporarily decrease (eg, by attack in flank or rear) or get permanently reduced as a result of casualties or running away from a melee… much food for thought in this chapter!
• Then he explains the role of the staff officer (primarily efficiency improvement) and the standard bearer (also efficiency improvement - something for the enemy to try and capture as taking it away will result in an automatic deduction in efficiency!)
  
• For infantry firing he uses a casualty table explaining why he doesn't throw a dice per man, or a dice per number of men - well explained… artillery strength is decided by number of crew (typically 3 crew men when full strength representing a battery of three guns) artillery throw one dice per crewman/gun - using the same table..
  
• For melee he has a pre-melee reaction test for both sides - and when melee is enjoined he has a mechanism based on the efficiency of the unit, their weapon, and the number of figures, which then re-uses the firing table… very effective…
  
• He finishes off with a section on how to work out which figures are removed as a result of a unit taking casualties, and a final chapter in the unit record sheet - which he then uses to maintain records for each of his units describing how they fought, what battle honours they won, etc. Really nice idea..

The rest of the book - 100+ pages - is general descriptions of battles in the period, but described in terms of his rules, figure scales, etc. Irrespective of their historical context, there are some excellent sources of scenario's here..

... on the whole I would say this was well worth the money, and at the time must have been quite cutting edge in terms of some of the concepts he describes. It was a good read and I would still wholeheartedly recommend it..

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Laters, as the young people are want to say...