A Turkish napoleonic army

You know I am always of the more obscure subjects in history. While we have a lot of figures covering the Napoleonic wars most manufactors oversaw so far the Ottoman Empire.

Here a list of all the war the Ottoman Empire fought in the Napoleonic period:

1787-1792 - War against Austria and Russia
1793-1795 - Tripolitanian civil war
1798-1801 - Against France in Egypt and Syria
1801-1805 - First Barabry war (against the US)
1803          - Souliote war (against Ali Pasha of Janina = Greeks)
1803-1807 - Turks vs Mamelukes
1804-1813 - First Serbian Uprising
1806-1812 - Russo-Turkish war
1807-1809 - Anglo-Turkish war
1811-1818 - Ottoman-Saudi war
1815-1817 - Second Serbian uprising
1816          - Bombadment of Algiers
1821-1823 - Ottoman-Persian war

You see there is a lot of potential, especially in Egypt 1798/99, 1806-12 against the Russians with a lot of battles and mixing up the British in 1807.

So I decided I want to have a complete Ottoman/Turkish army for my collection. I asked my friend Ingo to sculpt me this army and gave him an order for over 60 different figures to make. The first third of this order is already done.


So far just two manufactors I know took on the subject. In the late 60ies Minifigs produces three different figures in their S-Range. While the regular infantry of the early 1800 (the Nizams) are ok, the Arabs and Syrians have just a fancy uniform. See here a photo of this figures which I took from the side of ghe Lone S-Ranger.

If these figures are interesting from you my friend John Cunningham can provide you with them.

The other manufactor who took on the subject is Newline designs

But I am sorry to say Sean that most of the figures are historically not correct. See here some samples. Still very useful figures in the range, but the Jannisarries went into my Turkish army of the 16th century

Also Tom Winterkamp once produced a set of Anatolian Spahis, but sadly I haven't got any of them for my collection. But I heard they were produced.

You can find Tom's own blog here

And here now what I have in mind for an Ottoman army. All in all  11 different sets of figures. Infantry 7-8 poses, cavalry set 2-3 figures.

I show you just the sets the masters are already done in this post.

1. Nizam I Cedit  infantry 1806 onwards

And the masters from Ingo

2. Nizam I Cedit in the early uniform of the 1790ies

3. Haleb Delhis

4. Kapikhulu Spahis

5. Artillery

I lost the photo of the masters, so here just the uniformplates.

The other sets to complete the range will be

Janissaries
Regular infantry (Sekbahns)
Albanians (light infantry)
Anatolian Spahis (foot)
Spahis
Delhis

In the end enough for a colorful Napoleonic army and after Wellington in India another of my dreams comming true.

Maybe next a Persian army to fight the Russians from 1804 to 1813? And the Ottomans 10 years later of course:-)