Hussars of Conflans - Tail, rather than teeth.

A HAT portable forge, modified by a headswap with a Zvesda hussar

Cavalry units have unsurprisingly enough a lot of horses and they place concomitant demands on supplies of horse shoes. While hussars are off dashing about sabring Austrians and bothering the local womenfolk, someone has to make sure that the beau sabreur's steed was capable of walking afterwards. I have a regiment of the Hussars de Conflans in my Napoleonic French army, organised on the Charge! model.

I have something a love affair with the tail units in my armies; I have a plethora of baggage animals, wagons, camp followers and the like. That they serve no earthly use in a wargaming context is largely irrelevant, though I should really settle down and work out some means of using them in CCN.

For those of you reaching for your copies of Digby Smiths Napoleon's Regiments you won't find them there. The Hussars of Conflans are from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories. Though on rereading the stories recently, apparently the Third Hussars are the Hussars of Conflans. Now as Molesworth would say, "...as ane foole no.." the Third Hussars were the Hussars De Esterhazy , but I think I prefer the historical Third Hussars uniforms which are rather fetching grey and red number.

This means of course, that my Hussars of Conflans with their invented uniform (assisted by that clever fellow that runs Not by Appointment) may have to transfer to my Ruritanian forces and that I will have to get a new regiment of hussars.

The crosses I bear.