Just looking for suggestions on proxies for Napoleonic Ottomans?

The early 18th century Ottomans seem like a good place to start, but are there any major differences that make them inappropriate? Anything else that would fill in well?

I’d also be keen to hear from / see examples from others who have put together a Napoleonic Ottoman army; they seem pretty rare!

Cheers,

Bish

They look quite nice.  When are you thinking of starting your campaign?

Sorry to awaken this thread from the dead, but I get the feeling that Peter might be thinking of re-activating the shopping cart soon, and I could do with an Ottoman (Mameluke) army to oppose a Revolutionary French army.  After adding to my aviary, er, I mean bookshelf  (didn't mention the word 'Osprey' at all) I have had a couple of thoughts about proxies.  Please feel free to shoot me down in flames.

OTT07 - Levant infantry, musket from Early 18th Century range - Janisaries in Egypt.  For other parts of the Ottoman Empire you could consider OTT01 - Janissaries, musket - formed

CMA03 - Mahidist cavalry from the Colonials range - Mameluke cavalry

OTT14 - Levant Artillery for artillery

CMA07 - Mahdist Riflemen for locally raised infantry

CEG01 - Egyptian/Sudanese Infantry, Formed - White Uniform from the Colonials range might serve as Nizam-i-jedid infantry.  Unfortuneately, I have a feeling that they might not have been present to oppose Napoleon Bonaparte's trip to Egypt

Any comments or other suggestions about proxies?

Nice thread. I'm thinking of starting a napoleonic ottoman army. I have a lot of ideas for infantry and cavalry, but I don't know what to use for generals/officers. Any idea? Thanks. 

@Repanocho - Not a good option, but I will probably order CMA05 Mahdist Emirs for my Mameluke army.  Other Ottoman armies might be a bit of a problem because I would expect tall felt hats.

This time around I will just be trying to attempt Napoleon in Egypt.  Must admit that I wouldn't mind looking at the Russian wars with the Ottoman Empire.  It would be nice to do some Napoleonic Wars fighting without the French.  That, and the War of 1812 with the USA will have to wait, I am afraid.

I have a Nap Ottoman army in 6mm, I'll try remember to take some photos later and post. I also used some Mahdists, the colonial Egyptians work well for Nizam's, got some ACW Zouaves too, and, sorry for mentioning non-baccus models, the Mamluk cavalry are Adler French Guard Mamluks. Use them to play Blucher.

Neil

Must admit that the ACW Zouvres sound like a good idea.  I have painted 4 bases of them earlier this year, 1 Confederate and 3 Union.  Will be using them on Sunday so I will have a good look at them after the game.

Edit: They look as if they might do for locally employed but well-trained Albanian Infantry, although the bayonets might have to come off!

Sorry for hijacking this thread a little bit, but I've actually been looking into making an Ottoman army myself. I've been able to read through some sources on the surprisingly vague topic of late 18th century to early 19th century Ottomans, and I'll try to convert what I currently know into which models you can use for the different units. I can move this post to its own thread if a a (relatively) large amount of people want to reply to this.

I recently came across some images made by a certain Dr Chris Flaherty, which show many of the different uniform colours as well as some of the banners and flags in use. We're generally lucky with the fact that the Ottomans only very rarely changed uniforms and military guidelines, so most of his information as well as the models I will suggest can be used from about 1700 to 1826.

The infantry
In general one has to make a distinction between the elite infantry and the amateurish rural forces, the former being the ones that usually couped the government every other year while the latter were the ones responsible for losing 90% of the pitched battles the Ottomans fought. The problem is that this distinction doesn't extend to the different types of units - there are the elite janissaries and rural almost irregular janissaries, for example.

1. the Janissary Corps
I think it's somewhat obvious that you can use OTT01 and OTT02 janissary models for the "elite" and moderately-trained janissaries from Thrace and probably Greece and parts of Anatolia. Do note that atleast some of the ortas (regiments) might have had uniforms, or atleast some kind of colour distinction. While I haven't found a good source on that yet it might be handy to use colour uniformity to distinguish some of your elite regiments from the provincial rabble.

The provincial janissaries, especially from the Levant and Egypt, had different clothing styles. For those I'd suggest you use either CMA07 Mahdist riflemen and some of the OTT07 formed Levant infantry with muskets, and (try) to form them up in lines - that might be a little bit difficult with the Mahdists though.

2. Nizam-i-Djedid Infantry
As already suggested the CEG01 Egyptian infantry is probably the best match for these guys.
One thing I do like to note though is that there were some variations in uniform styles and colours of the nizams besides the common blue-red one. Because of that you can also add a few regiments of CEG03 and maybe even those Levant infantrymen I talked about before if you can find a matching uniform variation.

3. The Provincial Forces
Excluding the provincial janissaries. I'd mostly stick to using the Levant infantry and the mahdist riflemen. Try to distinguish them from the janissaries by setting them up in more chaotic lines and maybe mix those two model ranges together, as well as giving them more colour distinctions within the units while also sticking to "poorer" colours such as white and brown.
Because these forces were recruited from all over the empire, as well as vassal states, you can try to find a model that might represent a few irregular southern Slavs, Romanians or Greeks. I can't really judge those models very well, but maybe a creative painter could use the Haiduk and Polish musketeers from the Great Northern War Poles and turn them into those hardy mountain peoples of the Balkans that occassionaly found employment in the armies of the Padishah.
For the bashi-bazouks I'd throw all of the above and maybe even more together and make them look even more chaotic. If you want to recreate Makovsky's the Bulgarian Martyresses I'd also throw in some wide skin colour ranges. While some bashi-bazouks would probably still prefer to go in with swords blazing by the time of the Napoleonic Wars I'd imagine most wargaming rules wouldn't really allow for that, although feel free to add them for aesthetic purposes.

The Cavalry
Note that, like with the infantry, there is a pretty odd distinction between elite regiments and the amateurisch cavalry groups.

1. The Guard/Household Sipahi
For these ones I'd mostly stick to GNP06's pancerni. Besides a few very minor differences they probably would fit well for the sipahi. I haven't been able to figure out whether the sipahi tied to the palace dropped their armour, but from what I've been able to find they seemingly stuck to it.
What you can maybe do is use the CIS01 Seljuq Turk Heavy Cavalry (without horse armour) or CIS02 (with) from the medieval Saracen range, and make the shields red to give them some uniform distinction. However, I'm not sure how great those helmets would fit for an 18th century sipahi. I'd suggest these if you think they could pass for sipahi lancers.
EDIT: I was able to dig for some extra sources on the sipahi. They kept the armour around but often wore colourful coats over them. Might be paintable on Baccus' pancerni but from what I can tell it should be doable to have them wear their chainmail over their coats instead.

2. The Mamelukes
I'd stick to the mahdist cavalry as suggested by the Baccus store and try to make them pop out with colours. Try to use the colours green and yellow/gold besides just white. You could maybe also add a few of CIS11 mamelukes from the Saracen range, although I'd look out with that as I'm not sure whether their clothing would necessarily fit a Napoleonic mameluke (then again the mahdist cavalry isn't a 100% fit either).

I have absolutely no idea how the Georgian mamelukes of Iraq dressed like, but I'll offer a possible solution down in the section about flags.

3. The Rural Sipahi and Miscellaneous Cavalry
This is a hard part. The feudal part of the sipahi had by the mid-18th century mostly settled as the rural nobility. Some of the cavalry they provided "fought in the style of the hussar" while a smaller portion were talented soldiers sent to form the kapikulu sipahi regiment(s) of the palace sipahis.
I'd probably stick to the mahdist horsemen for this one, but to make a distinction between them and the mamelukes by making giving the sipahi mostly red-and-white clothing in comparison to the green of the mamelukes.
For other cavalry forces that provincial leaders might recruit I'd stick to a mixture of mahdis and keep their white clothing to resemble Arabs fighting for the Padishah, and throw in some camelry for good measure.

Lastly you could use some of the GNR10 cossacks from the Great Northern War Russians range to resemble a handful of irregular cavalrymen from the Danubian principalities as well as Georgians and Circassians in Ottoman service.

4. Commanders
For mameluke commanders you could opt for a few models from the Saracen command as well as the Mahdist emirs. The Saracen command and a few of the armoured emirs could maybe also work for the sipahis as well as field officers on horseback in general for lack of other command models for the Ottomans.

Artillery
OTT14 Levant Artillery will still work exceptionally well in my opinion. Do note that according to some authors the artillery corps would stick to wearing very colourful clothing like the janissaries.

Flags
One thing that I want to point out is that the mamelukes of Egypt, and the forces bound to their beys there, seemed to have used their own flags. While it's a bit contenteous on what it exactly was used the online "consensus" is that they used a green-yellow-green horizontal striped flag as a naval/mercantile flag, and that this flag together with variations thereof were probably used by the mamelukes in the field against Napoleon.

We sadly enough don't know if the mamelukes of Iraq had their own flag at all, and what it could be if they did. There is one source that states that the mamelukes also used a blue-yellow-blue flag, which you can maybe use as your own canonical version for Iraqi mameluke forces and use blue instead of green for their clothing as well. This source is from 1899 though, so I'd take it with a grain of salt.

The elite Sipahi regiments had their own banners, which you should be able to find online through Flaherty's research. Beyond that there doesn't seem to be any major standardisations for flags and banners other than that they were most of the time red, sometimes green, and always contained a moon and anywhere from no stars to three stars.

Here's that flag I talked about. Change the green to blue and you have that alternative mameluke flag.

I hope that will help some people out! If you think that some of my suggestions are incorrect please tell me, I've tried to do my best but I'm far from an expert on the Ottoman army.

Just received some more supplies, including a packet of Nizam-i Cedit (which, for some reason, is shown as "CEG01 Egyptian Infantry, formed - White uniform" in the catologue).  Packets of infantry come with 4 units, and I can't really see myself fielding more than 2 units of Nizam-i Cedit.  However, if you remove the bayonets of the 2 spare units, the figures bear a passing resemblence to the Sultan's solak or peik guards, with the aid of a bit of yellow paint.

In 6mm paint is your best friend!