Back to French cavalry

Cavalry can be a chore to prep and paint, so I tend to try and discipline myself to produce a regiment on a regular basis. My French army is still under strength in cavalry and as the regiments tend to be smaller they are less of a task to produce. For some time I have mulled over my next French regiment, and today I have started prepping up the Gentleman regiment of the Duc de Noailles.
This regiment ticks all the boxes for me. It has a pretty red jacket (which I wanted as a contrast), blue horse blanket, which also contrasts nicely, and buff waistcoat and pants.
My airline pilot friend from Argentina, Daniel recently posted the image below on a Seven Years War group page. For those of you who do not know him, Daniel has a wonderful collection of Trident 40mm French army figures. He is a superb painter and converter. Trident now operate from NZ. The quality is fabulous, but the scale is slightly too large for my collection, and would fit with Perry 40mm or Front Rank. Daniel's work features on the 40mm Facebook group and other 7YW groups and is well worth a look.

The illustration below is taken from Kronoscaf and shows a slightly different lapel colour which I will go with.

My other main reason for choosing Regiment Noailles, is because of the actions that it fought in.
Hastenbeck, Krefeld and Minden amongst others. This is important to me, as I like to make regiments that saw action and featured historically, rather than just looked pretty. Hastenbeck was the most enjoyable 7YW western battlefield that I have visited, with Warburg a close second. Both battlefields are well preserved, and have convenient hills/high points to allow the visitor to get a panorama view of the whole site. Hamelin itself was a slight disappointment. This was to be one of the highlights for my wife with its "Pied Piper" connection, but the town itself, although interesting in parts was not as quaint or appealing as many other German walled towns... Just my view... Our accomodation was very pleasant, central in the old town, but the bedroom had a rat theme running through it which was not really to our taste !!
Regiment Noailles presents a dilema, because in 1756 it consisted of 2 squadrons, but after Minden where it took heavy losses it was down to a single squadron. I normally reflect the smaller French regiments by painting 12 figures on 6 bases. For this regiment I may reduce the number to 10.
If I continue with my French army in 2020, by the end of the year it will outnumber my Prussians.
But do not fear, as the Prussians will be revisited. I currently have 15 full infantry regiments, not counting grenadiers, so there are plenty of gaps to fill. I have never been happy with the sculpting of my Prussians. They are chunky and the leggings are too thick and resemble boots. I will attempt to remodel my infantry figures at some point and introduce them to the existing collection. I have already converted an Austrian figurebut my Austrian collection is nearly complete, however the figure will be useful for the Reicharmee.
Enough of my rambling.... Back to prepping and Saxon infantry.