The Greek War of Independence

A while ago I saw a few clips on youtube from a Greek language film "Papaflessas"on the above.  Very enjoyable and tempting.  Boys in the know on Lead Adventure Forum pronounced uniform and costume details to be correct.  I poked about a bit to see if I could get a hold of a DVD of the whole thing-but no luck.  The seed of a project had been planted all the same.

Then Konstantinos over at the wargames website posted a link to "Exodos" another Greek film set in the period and this time with English subtitles.  Watching it proved to be a rewarding and unusually moving cinematic experience, not least because it’s a true story.  I’d go as far as to say if you don’t feel a lump in the throat and a tear in the eye when the woman messenger reveals her name, you’re either not human or you don’t speak Greek. 

I’d post a link to both these films but the original ones are now dead so I cannot oblige.

All to the good but what about the toys?

In 28mm you can pretty much get everything you might want.  I do 15mm, and there you have to do a bit of lateral thinking and perhaps some fairly gentle conversion work.  The good news first, for the Ottomans Minifigs will do you proud from their Napoleonic range.  You want the Egyptian figures and very nice they are too. 

The Greeks can come from the same range, and from the Greek Volunteers in the Crimean Russian range.  That said the long shirts of the suitable figures could do with some more distinct pleating.  I intend to accomplish this with Green Stuff, and scalpel and my newly acquired Magnivisor Deluxe. Most of Irregular Miniatures Caucasus range have high Greek conversion potential too.

Here is the lead pile, enough for both sides.

Anyhow, early days but a start has been made.  Here is a stand of Turkish troops, lovely little castings.

Here are some conversions of Irregular Caucasus figures into Greek Mounted Infantry/Light Cavalry -the lad in black is a priest. The two other lads are Klephts sometimes bandits sometimes heroic liberators.   

If you have ever enjoyed a dish of Kleftiko it’s named after these boys.  Some decades ago I ate it in the mountains, prepared and cooked in the old way in a hole in the ground with a fire on top.  Appropriately, I then had very long hair and  a droopy 'tache. Precisely the look favoured by every respectable Klepht back in Byron's day and by most young men in my youth.

The troops are based for Rebels and Patriots as you can see.

This project might be a bit of a slow burn as I’ve recently fallen under the spell of the Third Rome* and have a galloping Russian fever of the Napoleonic sort.  More of that in another post.

* "Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth.” So said the Russian Orthodox monk Philotheus of Pscov in 1510.  It's an interesting thought and I often muse on it.