Hi, all, here's another Prussian for my collection:
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This is a musketier from the Duke of Brunswick's regiment ("Brunswick-senior", or "Alt-Braunschweig", since his younger cousin also had a regiment at the same time). Another casting from the Rylit catalog, and another example of the great, everyday poses of so many of the figures in that catalog.
Our friend refreshes himself after a long march, with a lunch of a chicken drumstick and a mug of beer. He's taken off one of his shoes, in the meantime, to air out those barking dogs.
I read that the soldiers used to cut the bottoms off their wool socks and wrap their feet in strips of cloth impregnated with tallow. You can imagine what that smelled like on campaign in high summer!
The casting had some sort of round metal bottle in his right hand, kind of like the old crown-top beer cans, but nothing like that existed in 1756. The Prussians carried a square metal flask, and the Austrians and others had round canteens made of wood or metal. So I modifed it into a stoneware mug by filing the cap and drilling out the center, and adding a handle. I have a similar mug in my collection, which served as a model.
As always, thanks for looking!