After St. Clair's Defeat in November 1791 — the worst single defeat the U.S. Army has ever suffered, where almost a thousand soldiers were killed in a single morning by Native warriors of the Northwest Confederacy — Congress recognized that the army it had wasn't going to do the job and built a new one. In March 1792 Congress authorized the Legion of the United States: four "sub-legions" of roughly thirteen hundred men each, combining dragoons, artillery, infantry, and riflemen in a single combined-arms formation. Anthony Wayne was given command and spent two years drilling and equipping the force at Legionville in western Pennsylvania and later at Fort Washington in Ohio. In August 1794 the Legion destroyed the Northwest Confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the action this figure's 1794 dating commemorates. The Legion existed only until 1796, when it was reorganized into the regular U.S. Army infantry, dragoon, and artillery regiments — but the discipline and the institutional culture Wayne built into it became the foundation of the new army.

This figure shows a Legion infantryman in the standing firing position — musket shouldered, bayonet fixed, aiming forward. The fixed bayonet is in character: Wayne insisted that his infantry train constantly with bayonets and carry them fixed in action, a reaction to St. Clair's force which had failed to use the bayonet aggressively in 1791. The dress is the early Federal-era U.S. Army uniform: blue coat with red facings, white waistcoat and trousers, cartridge box on a wide waist belt, and the distinctive round hat that was replacing the tricorne in U.S. service by the early 1790s. The musket is a Charleville-pattern French smoothbore. He pairs with General "Mad" Anthony Wayne Mounted, 1794 — his commander — and sits in the American Revolution & Federal Era collection alongside other Legion-era figures.

1/30 scale (60mm), matte-painted, single figure boxed. Catalog number 16111. As with the rest of the W. Britain modern range, the painting is photographic-quality detail intended to read well in dioramas and display cases.