ESCI – 227 – Napoleonic Wars Waterloo 1815 French Line Infantry

Description:

ESCI devoted a lot of their effort for the 1/72 scale plastic figures to the Napoleonic period, and obviously within it, to the French army as couldn’t be in a different way.

When ESCI tooled this Line Infantry set, they already had Guards Infantry, Artillery and Polish Lancers in service for the French army and this set was very expected to cover the real backbone of the French Army, the Line Infantry and replace the old and poor Airfix set for the same subject.

Detail, sculpture and cast are top class as were in all the ESCI range, and the endemic problem they had with some dull poses is present here too. Napoleonic subject is a quite complex subject, with many subtle differences between the different troops, and several cut-off dates for changes in the uniforms in all the armies who took part in the conflict, no exception for the French Line Infantry. ESCI subtitled all their Napoleonic range as Waterloo 1815, which often was a mistake to what really the figures were depicting (See ESCI – 226 – Napoleonic Prussian and Austrian Infantry for example) and the same happens for these figures, their uniform are a terrible mess between pre-1812 and later features, and also a mess between different French infantry types such Voltigeurs, Young Guard or Grenadiers, failing to depict properly any of them or the supposed to be Line Infantry. This is a matter just for some of the collectors/fans of the 1/72 scale, but when compared to other makers work years later these problems becomes more obvious.

In terms of size the set is compatible with Italeri – 6002 – Napoleonic French Infantry, which looks like a copy of this set, but it’s not, though share many of the same mistakes, and reproduce the poses of this set in a very similar way. The set is more or less compatible also with some of the HäT sets. If you are looking for a Waterloo 1815 French Line Infantry set, Italeri – 6066 – Napoleonic French Infantry is one of the best options you can find, together with some Waterloo 1815 sets, some HäT set or the nice Zvezda Voltigeurs set, though some compatibility problem may happen when mixing them all.

The only reason we can think of for Italeri not reissuing these figures and instead tooling Italeri – 6002 – Napoleonic French Infantry in 1995 is that something happened to the mold of this set.