More work on my new Belle Époque army

Over the past few days I have been renovating and varnishing the infantry figures that I will use to form my Britannic Belle Époque army. Luckily, the figures were in quite good condition and needed only a minimal amount of work to prepare them for varnishing. Mostly I had to touch up a few places where the paintwork had been damaged during storage and to ensure that all the helmets were white. (A few had been painted with tan colour helmets which made the figures look a little odd and rather grubby.)

The next stage is to gloss varnish the figures, and once that is thoroughly dry (I like to leave it for at least two days), I can begin to base them.

I am also hoping to add a unit of armed sailors at some point so that I can field a Naval Brigade of Marines and Naval Infantry, possibly with a battery of naval artillery.

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In a comment made in reference to my previous blog post about the Army of the Commonwealth of Britannia, my old friend Arthur Harman (Arthur1815) stated, 'Bob, red coats and white helmets in the machine-gun age - that's a recipe for disaster! Unless the government of Britannia assumes its army will only be fighting natives who have no modern weapons...'

In reply, I lightheartedly cited in my defense that quite a few coloured, illustrated magazines and journals from the later nineteenth and early twentieth century showed British troops in action wearing red tunics and white helmets ... and here is one example that supposedly shows the early stages of the Battle of Omdurman in 1898:

A coloured drawing from a contemporary illustrated magazine showing the British and Egyptian  troops in action in the early stages of the Battle of Omdurman (1898).

A section of the above drawing clearly showing the British infantry wearing red tunics and white helmets.

Mind you, Arthur was right about the British troops not having to face a foe armed with modern weapons whilst they were still wearing red tunics and white helmets!