Fake Army

During the Napoleonic Wars the British captured a French senior officer named Charles Sandre, sent him to Dartmoor Prison. While his comrades marched and countermarched across Europe, he could see them all in his mind's eye, every rank, every regiment, from drummer boy to Bonaparte. To refresh his memory there were 47,000 other French prisoners in Britain. He began to make a complete set of 16-in. toy models of what he saw.

The cloth for their uniforms he cut from the backs of fellow-prisoners. From his guards he bought tin for the tiny swords which could be drawn from the scabbards, for the bayonets which could be fixed, fur and hair for the headgear which could be removed, leather for the boots and belts. Every gaiter, buckle, knapsack was exact. Even the tiny buttons were embossed with the French eagle. He trimmed the mustaches according to each regiment's custom, gave fair hair to the northern troops, black to the southerners. The beardless drummer boy wore wooden shoes, striped trousers, hat like a modern U. S. Army fatigue cap. The sapper of grenadiers of the Imperial Guard wore a big black fur busby, a forked beard, white gaiters, a pure white cassock under a black white-cuffed jacket, crossed white bandoliers. He carried his sapper's axe. The typical Napoleonic uniform included high stiff headgear, tight white trousers or very baggy ones, crossed bandoliers. Charles Sandre made one of each to the number of 900, including every rank in every regiment in Napoleon's armies.

By some miracle this amazing collection survived in nearly perfect condition, the only collection of its kind in the world. Last year its owner, granddaughter of one of Napoleon's secretaries, sold it to an unknown buyer.

Fortnight ago Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum announced that Sir Robert Ludwig Mond had given it Charles Sandre's toy army. Sir Robert is a trustee of the Royal Ontario Museum, a brother of the late British nickel tycoon, Alfred Moritz Mond, first Baron Melchett. While the Museum was waiting for the army to arrive, its director, Dr. Charles Trick Currelly, called the colorful collection "effective anti-war propaganda. . . . Just as in arms and armor the diabolical nature of the whole thing is revealed, so we will show the public how Napoleon's gay uniforms and the romance he drew around war brought entire battalions to their slaughter. . . ." (In 1930 German Nazi collectors of toy soldiers called toy soldiers "the best of all means for fostering thought of preparedness and counteracting the weak-kneed pacifism so prevalent in Germany these days.")

Last week a box came to the Museum from Sir Robert. Shaking with joy, Director Currelly pried the lid off, clawed out excelsior packing, unwrapped a surprisingly small package on top. It contained one quite ordinary and worthless lead soldier. The box held an entire regi ment of ordinary lead soldiers.* Mystified and vexed, Director Currelly popped the regiment back in its box, returned it to Sir Robert without thanks. Observers deduced the mystery's solution: the Royal Ontario Museum had swallowed whole a British newspaper story that the army Sir Robert was sending was the Charles Sandre army.

*Last spring the International Society of Collectors of Lead Soldiers held an exhibition of more than 10,000 models in Paris. An allied organization is the German League of Culture by Means of Toy Soldiers, including the entire adult male population of certain villages. Two neighboring villages meet in battle, one producing the Russian and Austrian armies at the Battle of Leipzig, the other Napoleon's armies. Best-known private collectors: Spain's onetime King Alfonso who has one of Europe's best toy armies, British Film Director Maurice Elvey (specialty: pre-Christian armies), rich Mrs. John Nicholas Brown of Providence, R. I. Most of Mrs. Brown's soldiers are German and French manufactured. Britain, whose King George is a fan, specializes in knights. The U. S. produces comparatively few toy soldiers.

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