French Empress Dragoon - from an eagle eyed friend!

To my surprise one afternoon I received an urgent email from an online friend - whom I shall call ' The Mysterious Goya', saying that a hoard of figures, that were almost certainly all Ros 25mm, had been spotted on a trade stand at a show. The figures were purchased on my behalf and turned up in the post a few days later. What a nice surprise when I opened the package. An excellent haul that included several cavalry figures and an artillery team that I had given up hope of ever finding. Indeed, I was not even sure that they had been manufactured.

I will post pictures as I examine them in more detail.

First up is an example from a group of four (they came in packs of four cavalry) French Empress Dragoons of the Guard. I am assuming that these are guard dragoons (as opposed to line dragoons) by the lanyards and cords depicted on the right shoulder and the chaperons doubles on the saddle. In fact this is a horse that I have not seen before either, which is marked N7, Ros 1976.

British Line Infantry Command

Within a mixed group of British infantry I found an almost complete set of British line infantry command.  Missing from the group is one officer figure, but the standard bearer and two drummers were present.  As far as I am aware this is the only BRitish line infantry comand group manufactured by Ros, despite having infantry with stovepipe shakos in the range.

As with my other line infantry officer the base is porrly cast, although this time his sword and scabbard are OK:

 On the base B7 can be seen, with B7/1 being the standard bearer, B7/2 the officer and B7/3 the drummer. They all bear the Ros logo too.

British Line Infantry Centre Company Belgic Shako B5

I found these figures as part of a group of ten lurking amongst a mixed group of poorly painted British line infantry. There were also examples of the British line infantry command (to follow).  In the Ros range there is another figure, which represents flank company troops.

On the base the word Ros can be made out, the date 1975, along with B5:

British Napoleonic Light Dragoons - probably!

Lurking amongst a group of poorly painted Hinchliffe type Prussian dragoons I spotted some odd figures. There were 4, they looked like Ros figures, possibly hussars. On closer inspection I am pretty sure these are the rather elusive British Light Dragoons. The horses match other British cavalry figures in the Ros range and, although the detail is vague the uniforms fit as well:

French Napoleonic Command

At last I have been able to locate and purchase a full set of the French Napoleonic command figures. In common with other cammand sets, this one has a standard bearer, two officers and two drummers, making a total of five figures. On the base the figures are numbered F3/1, F3/2 and F3/3 respectively. The name Ros can be seen and the drummer figures have the date 1976. The officer figure also follows a common pose for infantry figures; advancing with left arm extended with sword by his right side. The standard bearer has a nice eagle mounted on the top of the pole:

Prussian Jaegers - Ros Figures 25mm

A group of 10 Ros Figures Prussian Jaegers.  They appear to bear the label PL 2 on the base and can be distinguished by the lack of a bayonet on their rifles. They also have a blanket roll on top of their packs as opposed to the blanket roll worn over the shoulder by their line infantry colleagues:

Another nice find, proving that these figures were indeed manufactured by Ros and were not just a listing in their catelogue.

A Nice Surprise - French Guard Foot Artillery

I wasn't at all sure when I spotted these on Ebay; it was just the pose that made me suspect that these five figures were by Ros. Sure enough, once I had removed the card base the details could be made out: F15 and the name Ros. One clearly has a date stamp of 1976.

Now, this is the first time that I have seen these figures and up until today I doubted that they were produced, even though they did appear in the Ros listings.  It now gives me hope that many more of these elusive figures were indeed produced and are waiting somewhere to be found.