Die Schlacht von Ligny 16th Juni 1815

[C M Dodson]

Der Schlacht von Ligny 16th Juni 1815

Thank you to everyone for their kind comments. The action is intensifying as the forces get to grips with each other.

Timeline 3.30PM

7th Infantry Division , Lieutenant -general Baron Jean-Baptiste Girard closes on St, Amand La Haie and the Ferme La Haie.







11th French Infantry Division, Lieutenant-general Baron Pierre Berthezene, begin to outflank St. Amand .



2nd Prussian Brigade, Generalmajor Otto Karl von Pirch 11 is ordered to support the Prussian forces engaged at St. Amand and St. Amand la Haie.



Fighting intensifies at St. Amand with street and house to house combat.





12th French Division, Lieutenant-general Baron Louis Marc-Nicholas Percheux storms the barricades at the Ferme d’en Haut in Ligny.



8th Prussian Brigade, Generalmajor Karl August von Bose moves to reinforce Ligny village along with elements of 3rd Prussian Brigade, Generalmajor Freidrich Wilhelm von Jagow.





Vorwarts meine kinder!

[Ochoin]

Truly, one of the best series on the net.

Thanks (looking forward to more of your work).

donald

[Zed1]

Keep up the good work!

If you wanted to express the 'feeling of it', you're on the right track. Pretty lively and close to the real McCoy - not just 'figures standing there' as we see all too often.

[Luke05]

I like your diorama

[C M Dodson]

Thank you once again to everyone for their kind comments. The project is a re-fight not a diorama as the scenery and time frames are dynamic. The photographic record of the action acts as the narrative, as events play out.

The re-fight continues apace and I will soon have completed the 3.40PM phase.

However, I am interested in getting different perspectives and have enclosed ' The Butcher's bill' as an example.

Many thanks to Thomas Mischak for the pots and pans.




Chris

[C M Dodson]

Die Schlacht von Ligny 16th Juni 1815

Apologies for posting two ‘round shot’ photographs. I could not make up my mind which was the better of the two. Chris.

Timeline 3.50PM

Street fighting intensifies around the church in St. Amand .





Prussian troops from 8th Brigade, Generalmajor Karl August von Bose begin to deploy in support, at the rear of the Chateau de Looz, near the quarry.



The French 13th Infantry division, Lieutenant-General Baron Louis-Joseph Vichery, continues it’s assault on the Chateau de Looz. Sappers attempt to smash the portcullis.





2nd Prussian Brigade, Generalmajor Otto Karl von Pirch 11 and elements of 1st Brigade, Generalmajor Karl Frederich von Steinmetz, move to support the defence of St. Amand and St. Amand la Haie . French artillery begins to engage these formations with deadly effect.







The 9th Cavalry Division, Lieutenant-general Baron Jean-Baptiste Strolz advances to cover the flank of the French 14th Infantry Division, Marechal-de-camp Baron Etienne Hulot as it supports the attack on Ligny.





A general view of the action as seen from Mont Potriaux. Ligny village on the left, with St. Amand church visible in the centre distance.

[Thomas Mischak]

Hi Chris,

thank you for the pictures.
Another part of your big diorama!
Good work - a lot of conversions and the nice landscape!

Greetings
Thomas

[Mário]

We can even smell the powder and hear the cries of the wounded... Fantastic scenes. Thank you.

[Zed1]

*ahem* No flags for Prussian fusiliers, please...

[DickerThomas]

Great .. Fantastic

History told in pictures in 1/72 ...

[Eugenij]

This is fantastic, exciting work! Respect!
How much time did you spend for this work?

[KenzoSato]

No word, fantastic dio

[C M Dodson]

Thank you once again for the kind comments.

With respect to Eugenij's question the project first started when I read the League of Gentlemen's visually fantastic Ligny wargame article in 2008.

I began Waterloo as a re fight in 2012, but started all over again after seeing Wolgang Meyer's superb Croeburn diorama. During that re fight I started researching and making the buildings, troops etc for Ligny using the experience gained from Waterloo.

The sand table was demolished and rebuilt from scratch last February and the first photographs were taken in March. As I am retired I can 'visit' Belgium whenever I like and this of course helps.

I am very grateful to Wolfgang for supplying various items and his Mockern dvd which again is inspirational. Many thanks also to Thomas Mischak for his suggestions and support and of course my wonderful wife, Der Feldmarschall.

Chris

[sansovino]

I like it or better I adore it - only the church seems to be a little bit to small, but I guess it was a question of scale for the diorama. You have captured really all actions in impressive scenes.

[Peter]

Fantastic work again!

[Kostis Ornerakis]

Amazing work!

[Susofrick]

Can only say: Wow! And a question: From where are the figures?

[C M Dodson]

Thank you again for the kind comments. In answer to your question the figures are mainly Hat, Art Miniaturian, Schilling, Stretlets, Zeveda, Hagen, Italieri, Revell, Waterloo 1815 and Newline.

I also have some nice figures from Thomas Mischak, including wounded men and horses. There are also some speciality chaps from Marc Claus including the Emperor who will be trotting in to check things out a little more closely later in the day.

A lot of the figures are conversions in order to get the 'feel' of action in some of the scenes. I use a lot of Airfix WW1 Americans as they make great 'dollies' because of the lack of equipment on them in their original form.

Also swopping around works well. ie. I have re horsed the Hat Ulhans, with new Hat Prussian command heads,on Prussian Hat Hussar horses and the end result looks quite pleasing.

The re fight continues with the fighting escalating and the action embracing Wagnelee.

[Mr. Cryns]

Mister Dodson,

You accomplished an impressive piece of work here.
First of all I appreciate the choice of your subject: a battle almost as big as Waterloo itself that gets no attention at all in this hobby because there were no English involved. You make the difference! I am getting tired of seeing another La Haye Sainte and another La Haye Sainte and another one. And here you come up with something very similar but completely different at the same time.

Some pictures are really impressive, showing a wide landscape with forests, different villages like they were spread out around Ligny and different army corpses.
Trees, fields and groundwork are pretty good too: altogether they make a great total.

The basic painting of your figures is very good: historical correct and realistic colors. This basic, somewhat flat painting makes your figures less interesting for close up shots. But as we all know, thats the consequence of large numbers: your life is too short to paint dark linings, shades, washes and highlights on so many figures.
And anyhow, I wish my Napoleonics looked as good as yours since many of mine are much more primitive.

My problem is with many of your houses though.
You are facing a problem that is not easily solved: to compress the entire landscape, you compressed the ground-size of the houses. This makes all of them too slim and so the houses are looking too high though most of them are in fact too low and too small. From the perspective of a war gamer I could understand this. But you are giving a realistic account of a battle. And now these houses make all of your hard work look odd.
It looks odd in the total shots since out of shape, eye-catching white houses pop up everywhere. It looks odd in close ups since we have trees, plants, men and horses in realistic proportions but this quality level is destroyed by houses looking like toys from another collection and another universe than the rest of your scene..

Apart from the odd proportions, I have two more things I like to say about these houses:
The details and finishing is very poor here and there. This is a problem in the close up shots.
And your choice of walls: This part of Belgium knows two kinds of building walls: brickwork (painted white or plane red brown) and half-timber or Frachwerk houses (painted or plain). For upperclass houses and churches there is a third option of natural stone.
Now you come up with something not like any of this: very crude plastered walls. Much of it looks like you tried to make some kind of brick structure in it. Wich does not work to well since it is done too crude. It does not look like brick and not like half-timber. Some of it looks like rough interior plasterwork of a living room but in scale 1:1. The bright white coloring does not help.
Keeping your walls smooth and painting them less white would have helped.
Painting horizontal lining suggests brick walls better than these crude plaster dots.
Using pre-fab brick wall, wether it is paper or plastic or foam, would have been even better. But I know, its a lot of work. But that work would have been worth it, compared to the hours and days you are spending making new compositions and pictures with them. Painting green moss, dirt and washed away chalk walls with the red brick color getting visible again, would have helped a lot.
But with the incisions you made into the plaster to suggest bricks, it will be impossible to give it a wash or highlight since the detailing is too messy.

Your white houses just make out a far too important part of your scenery to having been paid so little attention to.

I hope I did not dis-encourage you with these words. It is never too late to improve some houses that are in the middle of a picture. I hope it will help you with a next project.

Good luck with continuation of your project.

[C M Dodson]

Thank you Mr Cyrns for your thoughts and reflections.

With respect to the figure painting I do not have the ability to complete them to some of the staggering standards displayed on the forum. However you are right that with some six thousand troops it is also impractical.

You are also correct in summarising that the ground scale can cause problems with the buildings. The scale is 1mm equals 1 metre approximately. To conduct this exercise in true 1/72 completely would require an army drill hall. I only have a garage.

Therefore a decision was taken to use the urban 'footprint' and then build up the buildings within it. A lot of the buildings are based on their originals as far as possible sourced from records or if still standing Google Earth. This compromise means that they are smaller than a true scale.

However as stated before I am looking for the 'feel' of the thing. I wanted the primary buildings to be supplemented with others to create the look of a village, not just a few houses as a representation that war gamers normally have to opt for.

This is of course being a re fight, is primary a war game, but one with a visual difference.

I am not too sure about 'buildings from another universe' as, as stated before I have sourced the designs from the still standing structures on the battlefield as far as possible. I spent many hours 'driving' around the area and I would like to think that St. Amand church for example, would look familiar to a local.

You are correct about the close up shots showing deficiencies in brickwork. Again the idea was to generate the 'feel' and some are better than others. However with over seventy structures, plus bridges, walls etc there was a lot to do.

The project is not, as stated many times a diorama. At the end of the re fight it will go the way of Waterloo previously, the table will be cleared and I will start again.

However, as with Waterloo, the whole process is a massive learning curve and hopefully each lesson will raise the bar for the future.

Best wishes,

Chris