Suworows campaign in Switzerland 1799 - our anual hobbytour

This year I got an invitation from my friend Pierre who moved to Switzerland several years ago.
Well he told me there are a lot of museums and battlefields and we can visit some interesting historical places.

Well, what need I more to be happy:-) So I asked Alfred and Schmitty and of course both joined us in the tour. So we had four great days ins Switzerland. A lot of museums, the battlefields of Moorgarten, Murten and above all Suworows campaign.

The campaign of 1799 is one of the most interesting in napoleonic warfare with the Russians pushing the French out of Italy, the French advancing along lake Constance, the British and Russians trying a diversion in Holland etc. etc.

We followed Suworows campaign from the Devilsbridge on. The Devilsbridge is a kind of myth as this popular painting shows not really the real thing.

It suggest the Russians charged over the river while in reality it was different. Here are some photos from the location.

At the map here your see the orange lines. Point 3 to Point 4 is the old bridge which is shown in most paintings - but was buildt after the battle. Line number 5 was the real way of attack. There is a tunnel from the 13th century (when I have it right) in the mountain, comming out at point 4.

The going down the picture you have the way on which they fought. Here the French destroyed the bridge. The Russians were checked at the entrance of the tunnel, but they sent troops over the mountains and even some Russians came through the river (impossible when seeing he photos) and charged the French from behind. So with their flanks turn the French had to retreat,

But even not with the heroic charge over a destroyed bridge it was a suicidal attack by the Russians whose dead nearly blocked the tunnel. And they had to put planks, trees etc. over the gap in the way/bridge on the mountainside. And to go over the mountains is a great feat of arms in my eyes.

Over these mountains they turned the flank

This is the way the French retreted from the bridge

The way down and the place from which the Russians came

Some Russians fell into the water, survived and went throug the river....

After this side we followed the way of Suworow and had to take on a pass of 1600 meters. We took the one beside the Russian way as the one the Russians took still has no real road over it. Well, talking about the road I lossed all the adrinalin I had in my body when driving upwards the mountain with no security on the right of your car and looking over thousand meters down. And every minute a car came from the front and needed space too...

Later we found the Suworow museum and had the chance to visit it while the curator still worked on the exhebition. A pity the 1798 campaign of Switzerland exhebition was not finised this time.

See here some of the paintings that were on show.

And as this is a blog about 1/72 figures of course we must come to this subject too:-)
Seeing the last of the three pictures you may recognize the similarity to SYW Prussians. So what did I ? Checking which existing figures I can use for a Russian army of 1799. It wasn't too difficult to get some ideas...

This little diorama here was in the museums. Russians in 1805 uniform with 1808 knapsacks fighting blue painted Prussian Jägers from 1806:-)

But take a look at the uniform. This here is clearly a SYW Zvezda (or even better Revell because of the missing details) Prussian infantryman.

I started painting the Russian Hussars from Esci British Napoleonic Hussars with the horse of the Polish lancers also by Esci.

As for the French simply use HAT or Italeri French 1805 infantry or the metals from the ranges of Schilling or from our own range.

The French also brought the newly created Helvetian legion into combat. Nice painting conversions of Italeri French AWI troops or if you don' care the wrong colar also AWI British.

So a lot of possibilities to create these armies - and for sure not the last post about this subject here:-)