Creating La Haye Sainte

La Haye Sainte was a crucial positioned farmyard on the road to Bruxelles. Napoleon knew that it was very important to capture this small by wall surrounded fortress to beat the allied forces. I was very eager to find reliable measure drawing of the farm.

 

One of the few cards you can find on the internet of La Haye Sainte. On this photo you can see that the hills behind the farm are already gone.

 
 This original oil painting must have been made not long after the battle.
 
 

My first step was to recreate a perfect scale model of La Haye Sainte. This was the farm were it all happened. The central point of the battle. In the 70's we had a model from Airfix, that had to be suitable with scale 1:72, but that was really nothing. On the photo you see the plan of La Haye Sainte, found on the internet. I builded the farm in wood.

 
 

The model had to be like it really was on that time. I used plaster on the wall and roofs to create a real effect of stone and rood tiles. In the plaster that was still wet I pushed relief paper that is used for model trains.

 
 

On these photo's you can see the effect of using relief paper in the wet plaster

 

The first scouts arriving at the farm...

 

This was going to be the place in my landscape, central in the middle.

 

Creating the landscape