Blue Butchers: Chasseurs d'Afrique 1831-1840

In researching armies for the first expansion campaign of the French conquest of Algeria, I discovered there were no readily available publications covering the period 1831-40.

Starting with the French colonial forces, there was sufficient resources to instruct collecting and painting French infantry for the period as well as ranges available to depict the Foreign Legion - albeit that they are quite limited.

Looking into the foundation of the Chasseur d'Afrique; however, was another matter. There was next to nothing for their foundation years. For these campaigns, the original regiments were lancers.

Thanks to Google Translate (where would we be without it?) I scrounged across several articles and managed to compile sufficient information to give me confidence in going forth and collecting several units in 28mm for myself. Currently there are no miniatures available which represent the original four regiments for this period in any scale - not plastic, metal or even 3D printing options.

No matter the selections I chose for these units, a degree of conversion is going to be required.

I have written a pretty comprehensive reference guide and assembled images downloaded from across the internet. See link below. This required a good deal of examination (and re-examination) of the images to figure out uniform patterns and understand what I was looking at to ascertain rank and regimental distinctions. 

The reference guide includes:

Foundational overview (history)

Uniform

Equipment (including weaponry)

Horse Furniture 

Regimental distinctions (1st - 4th)

Saphis

Collecting Saphis

Collecting Chasseurs d'Afrique 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AX61_Z4WnC5YdVV9CRQsqBmubqpmg6uI/view?usp=drive_link

As with all my articles, the errors are my own. I edit and re-edit these documents myself but ultimately proofing your own work is problematic.