Sikh Wars Workbench

With my view still on this project I have been able to turn out quite a few figures. I am feding the buterfly to some extent by flicking from unit to colourful unit but then focusing on anythign that starts to look vaguely finished.

Two more Bengal lights cavalry these are the fantastic Iron Duke Miniatyres, added to the 4 already complete this first unit of 10 is well on track.

Two more Sikh regulars, very early stages for these two battalions. Bizarely the Old Glory figure here looks nicer than the Studio miniatures one. This will be a regiment of two battalions in the same gear, one of Studio figures and one of Old Glory figures. Flickng through the lead pile I already have enough for 6 more battalions of Sikh regulars.

4 More Bengal Sepoys, the standard bearers are Iron Duke and again really lovely. The casalty is actually a Perrys plastic peninsular Brit.

More on these guys in another post really, the bareheaded chap is for the light companu in my Bengal Sepoy battalion, the other chap is a tes figure for the Gurkha battalion I want to do, taking a bengal sepoy and adding a peak to the shako and a Kukri on his hip. Undecided with this one, I also want to consider a covered shako to ad some contrast.

A third Sikh Horse artillery crew and their first gun. The other two are over in York with the basing department so once they all come back thats a three gun battery. To represent the Sikh superiority in artillery I will make soem of the Sikh batteries three gun whilst all the British ones will be  two gun. I ahve had to use the same figures a lot with these but I think they will look OK.

This massive gun is the last of three so another 3 gun battery, these two guys are the first of the 12 crew figures I will need. Three of these will look pretty impressive I think.

Here they are together, I will now have a few days to catch my breath beofre doing a few more.

Adding the Sepoys to those already painted, I now need just 2 more light company sepoys and have a second finished battalion. these guys are winging their way to the basing department whilst I focus on a couple more figures to finish them off.

Currently reading the Second Angol-Sikh War by Amarpal Singh, being written from a non-British perspective this give some intersting information I wasnt really aware of. The first few skirmishes and battles of the war did not involve any British or East India Company regular Sepoys at all. Two battles before the seige of Multan pitting Sikh regulars but mainly irregulars against Muslim and Hindu irregulars and troops of the Nawab of Bhawilpore. These battles involving over 20,000 men in each case and having just 2 European officers present are quite interesting. Skirmishes in the North were also Sikh regulars against Muslim tribesmen with a British political officer leading them.

With this in mind I want to focus on getting some more irregulars painted in the immediate future. Looking at the first siege of Multan and the all the fighting around the outskirts there were tens of thousands of troops involved, initially Sikh regulars on both sides and well over half of both armies made up of irregulars, mainly muslim tribesmen fighting for pay and booty. This could generate some fairly interesting scenarios I feel.