It's a rainy bank holiday so I find myself tootling through amazon browsing for reading inspiration. It turns out that these are five most expensive books you can buy on the subject of the Napoleonic wars - should they be?

Counting down they are....

5 Napoleon's Last Grande Armee: Portraits from the 1813 Campaign - leather bound and illustrated, Alfred Umhey This one is new to me - but here is a copy listed at £459.97.

4 L'armée de Napoléon : Uniformes du Ier Empire, 1792-1815 - by the same author as above.... Alfred Umhey and Jacques Domange, Another new one on me but looks fab and a snip at £686.93 !

3 Napoleonic Uniforms by Elting and Knotel - volumes 1 and 2. Wonderful set of two volunes (you buy them together when new so all the same book) varied from an almost sensibleish £250 for used copies to £1758.64 for supposedly new copies.

2 Napoleon's Army - hardback by Lucien Rousselot - priced somewhere between £160 and a truly gobsmacking £1065.8

I adore his plates - maybe £160 is not insane - but the rest!

1 Napoleonic Uniforms: Volumes 3 and 4 Vassals and Enemies by Elting and Knotel.

Love these books and lucky enough to have bought them when first published - Thinner volumes than the first two but browsing through them is inspirational. However certainly wouldn't want to shell out up to £1,898.34 for this pair! The lowest price is around £1200.00!

So what do they have in common?

Pictures - lots of lovely pictures and who doesn;t love lots of uniform pics
The subject is mainly the French army
Mad bookshops with unrealistic expectations

Would I sell the ones of these I own at these prices - hell yes! Then spend the money on traveling round 2nd handbook shops to buy them back at a lower price. It would be a joy!

Milan Guard 1813 - 28mm Wargames Foundry Napoleonic Infantry

This is a unit I painted many moons ago as part of a slightly mad plan to create Bertrand's 1813 IV Corps in it's entirety in 28mm. I was tempted by the variety - it includes an Italian Division and Wurttemberg Division. Needless to say I only managed to do part of the division. I'll try and dig out some more of the Italians and a bizarre experiment with painting Wurttemberg flats, for speed!

I got the inspiration from a couple of books: Petrie's volume on the 1813 campaign and "Napoleon's Grand Armee of 1813 by Scott Bowden".

The last book has a series of unit lists for the army at various points in the campaign. The Milan Guard was in Moroni's 3rd Brigade of the 15th Division - commanded by Fontanelli. They fought alongside three battalions of the 7th Italian Line Regiment at Gross-Beeren, Dennewitz, Wartenburg, Leipzig & Hanau. The battalion had six line companies - no "elite" companies.

The figures are metal 28mm Wargames Foundry French Infantry (I think mainly FN 080 - marching in campaign dress) - one of the last lots sculpted by the Perry's I think. They are beautiful figures and a pleasure to paint. The flag is hand painted and pretty much to size - but feels a little too small.

Milan Guard 1813 - 28mm Wargames Foundry Napoleonic Infantry

I need to work on my photography - any tips on how to get better depth of field would be greatly appreciated.