Piedmont, or the Kingdom of Savoy, was a monarchy in Northern Italy stuck between the great powers of France on one side and Austria on the other. Diplomatically aligned with France, they had expected their next war to be against Austria across the open plains of Northern Italy and thus spent vast sums of money buying state-of-the-art “semi-automatic” cannons and horses to raise good quality cavalry regiments.
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This quickly changed with the French Revolution and they joined the rest of the monarchs of Europe in an uneasy alliance. Unfortunately, neither their cavalry or artillery had a large effect on the war with France, which was mostly fought at high altitudes in the Alps.
These figures would be appropriate for the battles of the First Coalition in Italy from 1792 to 1796, including Napoleon’s famous Italian Campaign. The Piedmontese mostly fought a defensive war, inflicting defeat on the French at the Battle of Saorgio and generally blunting the French offensive into Northern Italy.
However, once Napoleon took command of the Army of Italy in 1796 he defeated the Piedmontese in less than a month, forcing them to sign a peace treaty after the defeat at Mondovi. Although the Piedmontese soldiers were brave, in particular the artillerymen were highly respected, they were lead by generals from a bygone era and were beaten by the modern and energetically lead Revolutionary French.
In the lead up to the battle of Marengo in 1800 the Austrians hired over 14,000 Piedmontese troops as mercenaries, many of whom were veterans of the earlier wars. Although they did not see combat, this does make for an interesting what-if scenario where these figures would also be usable.
These 3 links give further information about the Piedmontese army and the uniforms.
100WFR801 Line Infantry marching 100WFR802 Line Infantry advancing 100WFR803 Line Infantry firing and loading 100WFR804 Line Infantry NCO 100WFR805 Line Infantry fifer 100WFR806 Line Infantry drummer 100WFR807 Line Infantry officer 100WFR808 Line Infantry standard bearer