Peninsular War: A Tale of Monks Habits, Chickens and Oranges...

I concluded on Monday night my hobby was getting weirder than normal (and most people think it is weird anyway). We can all get fixated checking uniform details and fretting over contradictory sources but since when does that extend to chickens?!!

Needing a proper Deployment Point for my Sharp Practice Italians I decided on a small rural vignette using some of the excellent civilian figures from Eureka Miniatures excellent Wars of the French Revolution range. What took a longer than anticipated time was checking what specific breeds of chicken they had in Spain. In the end I went with the Gallina Castellana Negra as one of the oldest breeds with historical evidence of them going back to the 15th century (now you too know something about chickens!)

Similarly Saturday saw an inordinate amount of time spent researching Monks habits (what they wear not what they get up to!) having decided I needed a Holy Man who can move mysteriously around the battlefield and remove shock in Sharp Practice. As my army is Italians my Holy Man had to be from an Italian Order and for me that meant the Franciscans! Oh what fun researching the colour of their habits was! More different shades of brown, grey-brown or grey than their are feldgrau!!! In the end this old Greandier(?) figure was painted up in some home mixed grey-brown which I think looks nice.

I also painted an old Citadel Fruit Seller who was sat in the same box of medieval shame as the monk. Fortunately that did not require anything in the way of research and I just painted her up in what I thought looked right!