Day 2 - Siege of Sevastopol - The French Assault

Having conferred during the night Lord Raglan and French commander General Pelissier agreed that the French should have a go at assaulting the Mamelon. Accordingly all supplies and action points would be allocated to this attack. 

At 9am four French regiments rise out of the forward trenches and advanced towards the Russian position.  

Immediately the light infantry on the left come under fire from the 32 pdrs up on the Mamelon. They waver under the hail of shot and pull back to the safety of the trenches. However, the Zouaves, Algerians and a French line regiment continue on, but soon another French unit is forced back.

The Zouaves reach the wall and begin to break in causing some Russian casualties.  Then the Russians counter attack. The Zouaves are all but wiped out and in the next turn all of the French pull back towards the safety of their own lines. 

The French are severely bruised, but they have destroyed one Russian regiment and damaged another.

The French artillery begins to bombard the Mamelon, this time aiming for the Russian infantry, causing more casualties. A second French assault is also unsuccessful and two of the French units are destroyed.

French reserves move, including a Guard Regiment and reorganise themselves for another assault.

  The Russian take advantage of the lull and move up more infantry into the Mamelon, just in time to receive the second French assault.  This time the French have a little more success, although one of the French line regiments is destroyed by a mix of artillery and musket fire.

The French guard and a line regiment reach the defences and storm into the Mamelon, sending a Russian regiment to destruction:

  however the other French units are not so successful and are forced back.  The Guards are now on their own inside the Mamelon.

The Russians immediately counter attack and the French Guard are overwhelmed and destroyed.  The Mamelon is now back in Russian hands.

The two remaining French regiments, which includes the battered Algerians, rally and once more charge up against the defences. 

They are met with a hail of musket balls and canister from the guns up on the Malakoff. The French attack fails and the remnants of six battalions limp back to the French lines:

As night falls the allied commanders confer and decide to try again in the morning. Once again the allies throw a strong 9 for resupply. During darkness they will bring up fresh troops for the morning assault and have sufficient to replenish the guns. The Russians again are not so lucky, throwing just two. They decide to use all their points to resupply the guns on the Mamelon and Malakoff defences.

Algerian Tirailleurs

Here we have another batch of Douglas Miniatures F1 Zouave figures, but this time painted as Algerian Tirailleurs, in French service. I was attracted to the sky blue uniform, with white, red and yellow tasseled turban. The officer, drummer and standard bearer are by Wodensfeld. All the figures are available from John Cunningham's  ranges.

I have almost finished a batch of Minifigs S Range Turks, which will join the collection shortly.

Zouave Command

The residual project from before Christmas was the command group for the French Zouaves. These are Wodensfeld figures and now that they are painted they fit in quite well with the Douglas Miniatures infantrymen. The pictures are a bit grainy due to light issues. I may take some more at the weekend. The standard is downloaded from a picture on the internet and touched up with gold paint and set with pva glue.

 

Zouave Command Group  

In an earlier post I commented on the lack of figures in the Douglas Miniatures Crimean Range for French forces, with them being represented by just the single advancing Zouave figure. It was suggested that Wodensfeld ACW figures might be the solution, so a quick email to John Cunningham saw some samples arriving rapidly in the post. There is quite a variety of figures in the Wodensfeld range, which are also of varying sizes. I settled for these:

The uniform and headdress is very close to the DM figures, and these were the tallest of the Wodensfeld samples. Here they are next to the DM Zouaves:

I think they will work well. It might be a while before I paint them as they are in the stash of projects right now!

French Infantry - Zouaves    

Douglas Miniatures has but one French figure in the Crimean war range, and that is F1, French Zouave. The figure is shown unpainted in an earlier thread, but here is a full unit painted:

They were great fun to paint, although the detail on the casting is quite vague. The next unit to be painted will be another British heavy cavalry unit, the Scots Greys.

The French 

Sadly the Douglas range did not include very much to represent the French effort in the Crimea, with just one figure: F1 French Zouave.

This figure is in the pose more commonly found in the Napoleonic and Marlburian range, with the figure standing side on and weapon held across the hips, whereas most of the Crimean range are depicted advancing: