A tale of 35 armies - Introduction

Plans are afoot to collect, build and paint no less than 35 wargame armies for the French Revolution & Napoleonic period (covering the dates 1789-1815), all in 1:72 plastic!!!!
In fact, the project has been started for some time now with multiple armies already completed and just waiting to be photographed.

A note for the purists - these armies are primarily intended for wargaming using the rules for Et Sans Resultat! (ESR), which is a grand tactical gaming system. Battalions are represented but the main focus is on maneuvering at divisional level, with the intention that large battles of the period such as Austerlitz and Jena can be re-fought. I therefore decided to make 16 figure battalions that are somewhat abstracted and typically portray only the most common uniform type in that battalion. So please don't expect to see large 40+ figure battalions with historical ratios of Grenadiers, Voltiguers etc, etc. The aim is to create units & armies that could be suitable for as wide a time period as possible, rather than a specific campaign.

I've used a large range of manufacturers to build my collection, from Airfix to Zvezda, with large numbers provided by Hat, Strelets and Italeri. A Call to Arms, Emhar, Esci, IMEX, Mars, Odemars, Orion, Redbox and Waterloo 1815 also provided many recruits.

The size of the 35 armies will range from the very small to the very large, depending on their historical significance and the number of campaigns that they were involved in.

The full list of armies will hopefully be as follows, with an asterisk denoting whether the army is more or less complete (as you may know a wargames army is never completely complete!);

1) France (revolution period)*
2) France (empire period)*
3) G Britain (revolution period)
4) G Britain (empire period)*
5) Austria (revolution period)*
6) Austria (empire period)
7) Prussia & Saxon allies (from Valmy to Jena)*
8) Prussia (1813-1815)*
9) Russia (1799-1815)
10) Spain
11) Portugal
12) Sweden (inc Finnish troops)*
13) Denmark
14) Saxony (empire period)
15) Poland
16) Kingdom of Italy*
17) Kingdom of Naples*
18) Bavaria
19) Wurttemberg*
20) Westphalia
21) Piedmont (1st Italian campaign)*
22) Brunswick*
23) Switzerland
24) Dutch-Belgians (1813-1815)*
25) Hanover (1813-1815)*
26) United States (war of 1812)
27) Native American forces (war of 1812)
28) Haitian revolutionaries
29) Ottoman Empire & Mamelukes
30) Maratha Empire
31) Hesse-Darmstadt
32) Berg*
33) Baden*
34) Tyrol (1809)
35) Vendean/Chouan rebels (revolution period)

As a little taster here are a few pictures from a Waterloo game. Pretty much every model has been re-based since this game.

The French army arrayed for battle (almost my entire French collection).

The Anglo-Allied army on the Mont-St-Jean ridge.

Hougoumont, with the British guard units almost surrounded by the advancing French.

After an extremely close and hard-fought battle, the Anglo-Allied army retreating from the field in good order, with the exhausted French attempting to organise a pursuit.