Tirailleurs Corses and du Po

Two Light Infantry units, Tirailleurs Corses (Corsican from Napoleon's home island of Corsica) and du Po (Piedmontese). These units were often brigaded together and earned a reputation as veteran troops.

I made these from extra elite company figures in the Perry set, together with a Victrix Officer and Drummer in each. The figures are not quite right, e.g. Corses apparently had their ammo pouch on the front rather than the rear - but close enough for my purposes. I've also used a few less figures and more active poses than in most units, which suits the fact that they will often be deployed in open order as befits their light infantry role.

Tirailleurs Corses.

Tirailleurs du Po.

One example of the various and diverse examples you can find on uniforms of these units! Both would be wearing Shakos in later periods, and the Corses likely had blue rather than brown uniforms for at least some of their history. However, the brown is one of the few uniforms of that colour and wargaming tradition for the Corses by now, so I wanted to paint them up in that colour :)

UPDATE 10.03.2024. Dave W on The Wargaming Forum has pointed out this interesting piece of history, indicating it's likely the Corses actually wore blue with green facings, specifically: "...brown uniforms are from the Army of Italy units of Corsican Legions, formed of National Guards taken to the mainland. There were 5 and all had different facing colours. The Tir.Corse, like du Po, were always dressed in French legere blue, but with the ‘green’ facings given from origin (1802) according to d’Ornanos request. The Tir. du Po wore chapeau at inception and did so thru 1808 at least."  

See this source as one account with some more details. Article in French but you can tight click and select translate to English in Chrome. More links to sources in this thread.

I also have a large and growing backlog of newly painted units I must add to this blog (twenty nine of them at current count!), so will try to add at least some of these in near future. :)