US Local Militia

French Guards Chasseurs by Strelets in 1/72nd scale for the Napoleonic Wars.

The set has a dozen horses and rides and three people on foot including two women.

A pretty interesting collection of troops, mostly just sitting around on their horses.

Blue plastic with no flash.  Well molded and nicely detailed.

Since I don't do Napoleonic Wars I got these to use as the 1st Troop of Cleveland, Ohio, and The 2nd Troop of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from the Post-Civil War militia troops.

My plan is to use them as local militia for the 1898 War of the Worlds, even though these particular units were disbanded by then.  I figure as vast as the US was there could have been troops as a local militia in those day uniformed like these troops.  Some of the colorful uniformed militia and National Guard troops existed into the Second World war, so my plan is to have token numbers of these kinds of colorful troops as HQ and perhaps a troop or platoon of cavalry or infantry.  They will function for at least 1898 and probably even 1918 and 1938.  Many cities had units like this that were as much social groups as military groups and could be deployed in combat or riot control or emergencies.  Mostly they rode in parades and other society functions.  Still some were called to the colors at the Spanish-American War, WWI and even WWII.  These types of units went out of fashion after WWII.  Maintaining horses was expensive and after a Second World War and the Federalizing of the National Guard most states no longer maintained state or local militias.  After 9/11 some states once again formed State Militias, even California has one that is armed and uniformed as light infantry.