Review: Duchy of Warsaw Infantry Battalion 1807-1814

 

Heyhey, long time in the making, here it is now: my review of Perry Miniatures' plastic Duchy of Warsaw infantry!

Yup, this box is out since early 2024. I actually got it just a few weeks after release, and then things happened and somehow I never got the review done despite the fact that this was a product I've been looking forward to. Even more so than to most figure releases, because the army of the Duchy of Warsaw might be my favourite Napoleonics army.

Some of the very first Napoleonic figures I got to paint were Polish guard lancers (and following that a large chunk of the Polish corps for the 1812 campaign), all Minifigs. Boy, did I learn things there.

Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome, but eversince then, the Duchy of Warsaw's army between 1807 and 1814 has always been a special interest of mine.

Historical Bits

The Duchy of Warsaw was a state of Napoleon’s making. A quasi-reincarnation of Poland (albeit much smaller than the Poles had hoped) to act as a buffer state between Russia, Prussia and the German states. During the late 17th and over the 18th century Poland lost more and more of its status as a European powerhouse and eventually its independence. Finally, in 1795 the Polish state ceased to be and was split up between Austria, Russia and Prussia. Ever since then Polish-born nobles and common folk flocked to the French army as emigrée soldiers and distinguished themselves alongside the French or on their own under French banners in Haiti, Italy, Egypt, Germany and Spain. Technically the constitution forbid for foreign soldiers to fight for France, which was circumvented by the institution of the Legions. Revolutionary France was a very attractive ally for the cause of Polish independence,and Polish soldiers, motivated by the promise of getting their country back, were welcomed by Napoleon.

In 1807 the Duchy of Warsaw (in personal union with the kingdom of Saxony under Friedrich August I., Napoleon’s ally) was founded. Originally Napoleon had promised a free, independent kingdom of Poland, but to appease the Russians he put the Duchy of Warsaw under Friedrich August’s rule, thus making it part of the Confederation of the Rhine. This was to strengthen Saxony and further tie it to France. Friedrich August was popular in the Duchy of Warsaw, as he was an honourable chap, spoke Polish and cared about the duchy, but he was no strong ruler. The Duchy of Warsaw got their own government (with Prince Josef Poniatowski as minister of war), got a bunch of reforms going and set up a new army along the lines of the French army, but with a few unique characteristics. Mostly very little money, heaps of national fervor and recognizable hats.

Marshal Josef Poniatowski (chill)
 on a mad looking horse, by Julius Kossak

Polish troops fought alongside Napoleon all the way back to Paris. When he was exiled, the emperor of France was accompanied by 150 Polish lancers of the Imperial Guard. Which happen to be available in plastic from Victrix since a bunch of years. For roughly the same amount of time, I've had a bag of them sitting in some cupboard. 

Anyway, on to today's topic!

The Box

Very much the usual fare. Lovely illustration by David Gallagher displaying troops of the 8th regiment I believe. As with the French infantry box prior to this release, there’s an accompanying box to this one, containing more Elites company figures than fusilier company ones and single round bases rather than unit bases.

The back of the box gives us some more info on the contents, a picture of one of the figures and a little uniforms preview.

44 figures, bases and a full painting guide. They aren’t joking about that, as we’ll see in a bit.

Contents

The box contains a whopping 9 sprues.

Six infantry sprues, looking as such:

This probably is the only time I'll use that
charming green background for sprue pictures,
so let's enjoy this interesting anomaly

Each one of those holds 5 figures. Bodies are all one part, arms, heads and backpacks are separate. They’re in an advancing pose, there’s enough arms to model them all with muskets shouldered or with muskets at high(ish) porte.

What I find interesting is the high number of arms with epaulettes, which go on elite companies (grenadiers and voltigeurs). So of the shouldered muskets and muskets at porte there’s three pairs of arms sans epaulettes on each sprue. Meaning that you can build 18 figures without epaulettes, all with muskets shouldered or all with muskets at porte. More on that in a bit.

In addition to that you get two more sprues specifically for elite companies (grenadiers and voltigeurs) with different poses and additional heads.

Speaking of heads (or hats) – this box is brimming with them! Apart from various versions of the lovely trademark four-cornered czapka (which just means hat apparently! It’s a „panzer tank“ or „messer knife“ situation) with pompoms, covers or  plumes and strings for elite companies. But that’s not all. We get plenty of heads with French-style bearskin hats (with visors and without), as the grenadiers tended to wear them from 1810 on. Then there’s also covered French-style shakos! Some of the regiments, namely the 4th, 7th and 9th, as they served in Spain and got a bunch of French replacement equipment, and some of the higher-numbered regiments (often Lithuanian ones) wore those.

For the command figures we get a multitude of bicornes, officer czapkas, bearskins and even a czapka with a drooping plume. By the way, here’s a picture of the manificent command sprue:

This one features everything you’d want: Officer in the longer coat, colour sergeant, NCOs with the little company flag or carbine, an arm for a bugler for the Voltigeurs, a drummer and a sapper, all with some bits for variations, a multitude of headgear, arms waving swords, even three different arm variants for the sapper, including a nasty looking spiked club!

The Duchy of Warsaw used the same battalion organization as the French did at the time. Six companies: Four fusilier companies, one company of grenadiers, one company of Voltigeurs.

The idea behind the box is that you can build a battalion of 36 figures from the infantry sprue and the command sprue in line, plus 8 figures from the Elites sprue, depicting skirmishers. So from the six regular sprues you build three companies of six Fizylierzy (fusiliers) and two companies each of six Greadierzy (grenadiers) and Woltyzerowie (Voltigeurs). One more base of six command figures completes the six companies for a full battalion. Then there’s 8 extra elite comopanies figures to depict skirmishers. So this is why technically you only need arms for 18 fusiliers (also: on top of that some of the Duchy of Warsaw’s infantry regiments apparently switched to white epaulettes on fusiliers after 1810 or 1812. First time I heard of that, but it might well be.)

Mr. Alan Perry kindly painted all figures you can build from the box and took a picture. I added little colourful lines to point out the different companies. Blue line = fusiliers companies, grey = command, green = Voltigeurs, red = Grenadiers. The figures in the left are the aforementioned additional figures in skirmish poses.

So apart from the sprues and bases (the usual ones we all know and love), we get the usual little uniform plate leaflet thingy.

Always a highlight with Perrys boxes, but this one goes a step beyond.

...because it’s folded twice! Yes. We get an A3 sized, double-sided, full colour overview of every single regiment’s uniforms including officers/drummers/sappers/NCOs and variants. It is a full painting guide, and a tremdendous resource.

Also, a little overview of the different poses included in the Elites sprue, depicting musketry drill.

My usual go-to source for quick and reliable info is Rawkins’ ‚The Army of the Duchy of Warsaw 1807-1814‘.

Surely not perfect, but I found it to be mostly reliable, and a wealth of information on the army of the DoW. While the uniform guide included in this box isn’t a replacement, it’s invaluable for quick reference. Great stuff; some may pay the price of the box for those uniform plates alone. But we also get a bunch of plastic figures on top, so let’s have a closer look at how they go together and whatnot.

Assembly & Painting

No surprises there: Good casting, go together well, really nice poses. What stands out about this set especially is the excellent faces. If I remember correctly they’re based on Polish friends and fans of the Perrys.

So I built and painted 16 grenadiers, as well as an NCO, an officer, a sapper and four voltigeurs from the box. Mostly because I already painted quite a lot of line fusiliers (all from Murawski Miniatures, now sold by Skytrex). Why didn’t I get the Elite companies box then? It's the little inconsistencies that make us human. :-P

All very neat I’d say. There is some minor variety between the bodies, apart from poses; 50/50 they come with tin canteens or these lovely bulbous ones made from gourds (as far as I know). I went with czapkas, as these are supposed to depict grenadiers for the Austro-Polish War 1809, bearskins for greadiers were only introduced from 1810 on. The Voltigeus mainly serve the purpose of showing off some of the arm poses included in the Elite infantry sprues. (loading, aiming and biting cartridge) and some bits off of the command sprue (carbine and bugle).

Size-wise the figures are 28mm foot to eye, more on the taller side. They all also stand very upright. They kinda tower over the lovely Paul Hicks sculpts sold under the Murawski Miniatures banner. I'm rather sure that this is in part also due to the thicker plastic bases they're cast to as opposed to other manufacturers. Looking at them not on eye level, but from slightly above makes me think that I'd be okay with mixing the Perry plastics with Murawski figures in the same line. In terms of sculpting style they fit perfectly, even though the top of the czapkas are different. Perry plastics are perfectly flat, Murawski (and Front Rank) have the leather cross and trims sculpted on. No biggie though. The important thing is that the czapka tops are the same size, and so are the muskets.

He command figures show pretty much the same:

Murawski sculpts slightly smaller, but within reason. Eagle Figures are quite a bit smaller then the rest (nice miniatures though; the photos on the website don't do them justice). Front Rank are wider in every respect. Height-wise they fit as well.

Here's the Voltigeurs:

Verdict

I never thought I'd ever see Duchy of Warsaw troops in plastic. I mean it's not like we didn't already have magnificent ranges of figures by Murawski Miniatures, Front Rank, Eagle Miniatures, recently I lerbut these here make it much more affordable to field battalions of them. And with such a wonderful variety of headgear too. I'm sure that this box will form the core of a many Duchy of Warsaw tabletop armies, and rightly so. It's superb.

As with Perry plastics boxes, this one is widely available and cost around EUR 28,00 / GBP 24.00.

Right, I hope you enjoyed the review and found it interesting. If you have any questions, comments or indeed commission enquiries, feel free to let me know via the comments section, the Battle Brush Studios Facebook page, on Instagram or via e-mail.

I will take questions now. 

"Can I build Vistula Legion infantry from them?"
To my knowledge: no. Not even the later versions with czapkas and such. To my knowledge. Wrong cuffs, wrong breeches, wrong czapkas. Funnily enough, the coats to me are the least problematic bit, simply because they're all covered up by crossbelts, backpacks, arms and so on. For Vistula legion figures I'd use Murawski or Front Rank (not Warlord's box. The metal heads are ok for later, everything else is just not right. To my knowledge.) Which ever you prefer stylistically. You're on the safe side with those, they look great and correct. To my knowledge.

Thank you, that's all the questions we have time for today. See you soon!