To find back every actor MHSP would be like find the names and surnames of each soldier in the Wargram battle!
The most important thing is the story of those figurines, and this website was made for this purpose. Release dates are more or less precise, series were distributed for a whole year.
Each piece are made of ZAMAC : Zinc Aluminium Magnésium Copper. They are in scale1/30
The first series Austerlitz dates from 1973. Figurines are sold separately or as a whole by post but without a wood base. Those last ones only appeared with "Train d'artillerie", which is the 5th series. That is why the drum completes it and is a real part of the Austerliz diorama, but it doesn't fit on the board.
Same thing with "le servant de canon" that was suggested with the Gribeauval cannon. This one was sold separately (cf. special edition)
Joséphine standing up is one of a kind. It was suggested with a colored drawing and thé fac-similé of a letter by Napoléon.
To sum up, the 3 first series and the Cannon were produced by the manufacturer Jean Montagne (pseudonyme). His project was to create characters of the Napoléon era one by one. Then came Société Remanences S.A. that took it back and added wood bases, as well as changed prices! At that time, sells became very organised, collectors received tons of letters, order forms, etc. From Carrousel, MHSP began to mean "Historical Miniatures and Soldiers of the Past"
When they produced Bivouac, engraving was not the same. Figurines sometimes have weird positions, and the faces and hands sharpness is became second-rate. It went on with "Avant l'attaque", and then improved again from "Le Sacre".
You can also note that the pieces numbering is sometimes wrong, as if there were holes. For instance, number 22 can be found under some bases of Murat's horse (Moskova 33).
Finally remain the musicians and plate series. Were they out before or after the Napoléon era? To this day there are no clues to answer that. The engraving on the musicians resembles Pilef figurines (Perre Lefebvre) from "les Ateliers de Nantes". They are engraved MHSP. As for "Petits métiers du temps passé", a document proves this series was indeed produced by MHSP (cf. the dedicated page).
Those figurines were created to be painted as the opposite document states. That is how they gain all their value. To leave those uniforms so colourful in metal state would be like saying Waterloo was a victory!
The brand MHSP is now owned by SARL Effigies.
