Generalissimus set
Maybe it's time to stop? - say you, dear fans of military miniatures. No, I can't! After all, we forgot to tell about the uniforms of noble conquerors of the seas, brave sea wolves. And also about Yeomen Warders, Chasseurs Alpins, Scottish Guards of Maison du Roi, Papal Zouaves, His Imperial Majesty's Own Escort, Royal Guard of the Archers....
And let us recall a little of the naval rivalry and arms race inherent in that peaceful era. By becoming "Lord of the Seas", England had become the world's largest colonial empire. It covered 20 per cent of the world's land area. Colonies served her as suppliers of raw materials and cheap labour, were the market for English goods. England accounted for 1/3 of world industrial production and 2/5 of world industrial exports. In addition, England organised the production and sale of opium on a global scale, which caused the Opium Wars in China. But by the beginning of the XX century the young imperialist powers of the USA and Germany begin to overtake Britain by the rate of
growth of industry, they are looking for markets for goods and sources of cheap raw materials outside their countries, but all territories are already occupied. Thus begins the struggle for the redistribution of the world between the major capitalist powers.
The second half of the 19th century revealed the complete predominance of economically and technically more developed powers over the powers that retained the "knightly", "noble" traditions of neglecting new technology. And even if a government sought to modernise the armed forces, but did not have sufficient means to do so, it quickly put it in a losing position on the international arena. The inability to arm the army and navy at a modern level without a powerful industrial base, as well as to provide soldiers with the necessary equipment, and even just maintenance on a mass basis led to spectacular defeats. It is worth remembering the crushing defeat of industrially backward Spain in the war with the United States. But even in the United States, the industrial dominance of the North
ensured its victory over the South in the bloody Civil War. As for the precedents of confrontation of feudal powers with the strongest capitalist states of Europe, it almost always ended with the complete defeat of the former. Such, for example, was the experience of China's military actions against Great Britain and France during the Opium Wars of 1840-1842 and 1856-1860.
In the nineteenth century, Europe was first confronted with the phenomenon of the "arms race". The transition from the smoothbore muzzle-loading shotgun, firing with smokeless powder and only single shots, to the magazine-fed breech-loading rifle, provided with standardised smokeless powder cartridges, required an enormous technical shift, followed by a production shift. The accelerated rearmament of the British and French infantry gave it a significant advantage over the infantry of the Russian Empire in the Crimean campaign of 1854-1855.
The second half of the 19th century was a time of colonial wars fought by European great powers around the world. Advances in small arms gave the armies of metropolises a significant advantage in clashes with rebel groups, as well as the armed forces of African and Asian principalities, khanates, sultanates of feudal type. But this advantage was not decisive until rapid-fire weapons appeared on the battlefields: first the mithralieza (a weapon firing in bursts, with a hand-driven revolver block of several barrels), and then the machine gun. A variation of the mithralise such as the Gatling machine gun gave the North a powerful tool against Confederate infantry during the United States Civil War. The traditional machine gun, powered by the energy
of cartridges, became part of the armament of the strongest armies in the 1880s and 1890s. On the battlefields of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 it was already being used en masse. But a much greater effect from its use was obtained during the large-scale struggle of the Anglo-Egyptian armies for the Sudan. During the 80-90s of the XIX century, the Islamic Mahdist movement inflicted on the Egyptians and their British allies a number of heavy defeats in the Sudanese territories. The decisive battle was fought at Omdurman in 1898. Machine guns gave the British a decisive advantage. Having lost several dozen men killed and several hundred wounded, they in one day put down tens of thousands of Mahdists, who fearlessly and hopelessly rushed to attack their lines under a downpour of lead.
An equally significant change in military technology was brought about by the improvement of artillery. In the early 19th century, cannons fired cannonballs, bursting "grenades" and buckshot. A hundred years later, high-explosive, armour-piercing and shrapnel shells were used, causing an order of magnitude more casualties and destruction. The preponderance in the quality and quantity of artillery pieces was a very significant factor in Prussia's victory over France in the war of 1870-1871. Artillery underwent a period of rapid development, which powerfully influenced the war industry as well.
But the most significant changes took place in the navy. During the Napoleonic Wars the main striking force of the naval forces were line ships and frigates - three-masted sailing ships with wooden hulls. They were replaced by squadrons of screw battleships and cruisers, which were propelled by steam engines. This transformation required a total re-equipment of military shipyards, and the entire naval industry as a whole. Technical changes in the navy were rapid.
Since the 1860s, clashes of sailing fleets became a nonsense. Large combat sailing ships simply stopped being built. But for several
decades there was a competition between armour and artillery: sea armadillos turned out to be invulnerable thanks to their armour, then artillerymen got at their disposal such effective guns that they could send armoured giants to the bottom of the sea, and this, in turn, caused new works on armour strengthening....
At a time when sea supremacy was achieved in battles between sailing titans, many powers could claim high status, and the construction of such ships was mastered throughout Europe and in many states in the Americas. However, the advent of mighty battleships, rifled long-range naval artillery and submarines put an end to many states as "great sea powers". The construction of battleship and, even more so, submarine fleets required a highly developed industry, an abundance of engineering personnel, experience in the management of large enterprises and, finally, monstrous, incomparable to the period of the sailing fleet, financial injections. This meant that henceforth the sea was dominated by a small number of countries. Among them were Great Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia,
Japan and, to some extent, Austria-Hungary with Italy and Turkey. The same Danes, Swedes, Spaniards, and Dutch, who once gained the glory of great maritime nations, completely lost it in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
In turn, the need to develop the naval industry constantly, from decade to decade, stimulated scientific and engineering thought, gave fundamentally new experience in production management. In the mid 90s of the XIX century, the famous historian of the war at sea H. Wilson, emphasising the relationship between the economy and military affairs in the fleet, wrote: "In all probability, in the history of mankind do not find another period that would be characterised by so numerous, striking and profound changes as the present century or, as we would almost be right to say, the current half century. Fifty years ago ships, guns, and the art of war continued in many respects in the same condition in which they had been placed at the close of the Dutch Wars of the seventeenth century... With the use of steam engines everything changed. Ships equipped with steam engines were able to follow their own course, disregarding the direction of the wind. Man was able to use mechanical devices of immense power. Before the introduction of machines, the working and forging of large masses of iron was inaccessible. Nor was it possible to achieve precision and accuracy in such things as cutting the channels of gun
barrels or dressing the breech of a gun... Before the advent of iron-rolling machines and steam hammers, iron ships could not be built cheaply, and perhaps not at all. When we take pride in our rapid progress, let us remember that our ancestors, step by step, created the means that moved us forward".
So, mass armies needed mass production of effective and unified weapons - firearms, cold steel, artillery. In addition, they required mass production of soldiers' and officers' uniforms, footwear, horse harness, ammunition. All this could be provided only by large enterprises working on a permanent basis. And, therefore, the formation and development of mass-type armies turned out to be a powerful incentive for the increase of large-scale industrial production. In the XIX century there were many industrial enterprises - manufactories, factories, plants - built exclusively to serve the military needs of this or that state. Thus, in the 19th century, the military business turned into one of the main accelerators of scientific, technical and industrial progress.
Each tin soldier is handmade by the finest craftsmen in the industry.
Here are all 24 miniatures from the set.
(please click on the picture to learn more about each miniature and the character depicted)
Louis
of Battenberg
George Washington
Custis Lee
Cromartie Sutherland-Leveson-Gower
Maurice FitzGerald
John
Stewart-Murray
Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia
Louis Bonaparte
Gubaydulla
Chingiskhan
Prince
Felix Yusupov
Victor de Broglie
