The First Schleswig War 1848-1850

The first uniform book I ever owned was given to me by my father. It was the Blandford Military Uniforms of the World by Preben Kannik. I was given it because of the section on the Napoleonic Wars but was also fascinated by the illustrations of troops from a whole host of nineteenth century conflicts I had never heard of. Later on I always wondered if anyone would ever make figures for these obscure wars. The period between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the beginning of the Crimean War seemed particularly colourful. The Latin-American Wars of Independence, the Belgian and Polish uprisings, the Spanish Carlist uprising, the Mexican War and the First Schleswig War were all featured in the book. The Perries have now dealt with the Carlist Wars, amazingly, but still no-one has made a good range for the Mexican-American War. Artizan started but stopped, sadly.

Kannik was Danish and so, understandably gave greater emphasis to conflicts that featured Denmark, such as the Schleswig War. Now, however, Matt, author of the excellent Waterloo to Mons blog http://matratmatt.blogspot.com/ has started to produce figures for this war, so I hope he won't mind me showing a picture of some of them. You can pre-order tham via his blog and I will certainly be getting some of these as I spend a fair amount of time in Denmark and I feel a certain affinity for the Danes (or maybe that's just my friend Mette) and, in particular, the Danish Countryside.

If I ever get any time on any of my numerous business trips I try to visit the local National Gallery. The one in Copenhagen is particularly good and I was very taken with the landscape paintings of LA Ring. Laurits Andersen was born in the village of Ring in 1854 and his paintings of the late Nineteenth Century/early Twentieth Century Danish Landscape are very evocative

Melby (1901) by LA Ring