Read it and weep!

Although my painting mojo is back, progress is not prodigious. I’m now about halfway into my second militia unit of eighteen figures. So it’s probably a good thing I was too late entering the Painting Challenge. I’m still trying to finish my eighty miniatures by late March, but hors competition, so to say. Better to tell you a bit more on my other line of preparation for the battle in August.

At the start of this project I kept telling myself I wasn’t going to read upon the background of the battle of Camden and the Revolutionary War. Just focus on painting, and be done with it. But here I am browsing through new books about warfare in North America in the second half of the 18th century.

Of course, there are the Osprey books for uniforms and equipment, and the campaign series offers good introductions to the battles. The recent combat series book on the combat tactics used by both the British and the rebels in the Southern campaign adds new light by using more contemporary eyewitness accounts. And there is a new campaign book about Camden planned for publication in March, so that seems like an obvious addition to my AWI shelf, given that we’ll be refighting that particular battle.

But all that seems to be just the start. I started out with a little gem I have long kept: Greg Novak’s “We have always governed ourselves” about the organisation and strength of both armies in the northern states (note: later expanded as the two-part American War of Independence, ed.). Then Jasper pointed me to With Zeal and With Bayonets Only, about the development of the strategy and tactics of the British army in North America. Then there was John Grenier’s First Way of War about frontier warfare against the indigenous population. Although it only briefly talks about the Revolutionary war, it gives a good account of the style of warfare that the Americans were used to and which they would also employ against the British, and against their patriot neighbours.

So apart from painting project, this also threatens to turn into a reading project. Oh noes!