SNC084-C
Consignment
This is a Consignment sale figure we are offering. It comes in bubble wrap with original Osprey Booklet.
Large paint chip on saddle bag.
Del Prado SNC084 Ordenski Cuirassier, 1815
In the later years of Catherine the Great (1762-96) the Russian army had been modernised by her favourite Prince Potemkin, but when the unstable Tsar Paul I acceded to the throne in 1796, all this good work was undone. Paul had for some years maintained a private army on his estate at Gatchina, which he had clothed and drilled in the style of Frederick the Greats Prussia, according to disciplines that were already some 25 years out of date.
Driven by hatred of everything associated with his mother, in November 1796 Tsar Paul ordered the entire army to adopt the methods of Gatchina a return to automaton-like drill and outdated uniforms. Enlightened commanders were replaced by parade-ground martinets, and even that great veteran General Suvarov was disgraced. The Russian army that embarked on the European war in 1799 was thus hopelessly outdated.