Saxons and Poles

Although never intending to do all the forces for both sides I had always intended to do the Swedes as my main focus and then have a second smaller army to face them. Something to fight alongside other peoples armies.


I had the Danes, Saxons, Prussians and Russians to choose from essentially. Most people go for the Russians, a very large army, won the biggest engagement of the war at Poltava and arguably was the main instigator in defeating the Swedes in the end and starting the War in the beginning, but I wanted something else.


I was looking for a cheap army where I could use basic Spanish Succession type troops, ideally troops that fought alongside other nations so I could use them in conjunction with other players.

The Saxons suit this very well indeed, fairly standard uniforms, for the period they fought alongside both the Danish and Russians armies and probably in more engagements than any of the other enemies of Sweden.

The Saxons were all dressed in red so a nice bright army both horse and foot, also the Saxons had hired out a number of battalions to the Anglo Dutch, which fought in the War of the Spanish Succession, so this army can fight in both wars at the same time, but the other thing to recommend them is the Polish.

At this time Augustus the strong, Elector of Saxony was also king of Poland. Inevitably this meant that the Poles were sucked into the War too. There is not much information on Polish uniforms, it seems their army was almost all cavalry in the tradition of the earlier commonwealth, with Armoured Polish Hussars, Cossacks and dragoons. so the opportunity to field bright Polish lancers with colourful pennants and irregular Cossacks, hardly something to be missed.

So my plan now was for 2 brigades of Saxon foot. One small brigade of horse and a brigade of Polish horse. The Poles would consist of one unit of Hussars, one of Uniformed light Cavalry and one of irregular Cossacks. Below is something like the uniformed "Valaks" I intend to paint.

The Poles fought both for and against both Saxons and Swedes at different times of this war, unusually for Poles they tended not to fight very well, I assume because they were fighting for a foreign power. Charles of Sweden even took a unit of Polish light Horse with him on his invasion of Russia. So again really useful as well as colourful troops.

I have painted my first couple of Saxons.



I will be using plastic Wargames Factory WSS troops as the line foot, I picked a couple of boxes up cheap so these are working out at £0.30 per figure, that's the first one on the left, look quite nice. I am then adding metal Command figures from Ebor, my favourites for this period, (On the right) which I think will make the unit a lot nicer. I will also be using Wargames Factory Plastics for the Saxon Cavalry.

A nice basic figure, I look forward to seeing what these look like in larger units.

So the Saxons and Poles are started, the Swedes are taking shape, I hear that Ebor's Swedish Kickstarter is nearly complete so it feels like things are coming together a bit.

I think I will lay out next time the size of forces I intend to get and how this balances with formation sizes for actual battles of the period.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions and as usual thanks for reading.