Sunday, February 28, 2016

French vs. French

When I made up the concept for my Pre-Bardin uniform project, I originally had in mind to depict the uniforms of all the armies which fought in the same uniform as Napoleons French army did. As I went through my research, this concept of painting all possible varieties of that uniform type diversified a lot. For example, I wasn't aware about how many different units with different uniform colours even the Italian army had.

I wasn't aware about how much different varieties of the same uniform were in duty even within the French army itself. And this is why I have to paint at least several different French regiments in order to display that even within an army with common regulations, there was a certain range of variation.

My newest unit is the line infantry regiment no. 30:


What all French line regiments had in common, was the general design of the uniform and the basic colouring. Some regiments directly adopted the shako for grenadiers, some not. Some had the shako rim coloured in the colour of their branch, some not. Etcetera, etcetera...

For direct comparizon, here's the 63rd regiment once again:
The main difference throughout all the regiments is the colour of the musicians/drummer uniforms. This may have - if I'm not wrong - have to do with the former distinctive regimental colours worn in reverse order. Whoever has more information about the logic in behind of the drummers' uniform colours, please let me know!


2 comments:

  1. As A rule of thumb (Faustregel)Musicians wore reverse colours to make them more distinctive on the battlefield but that made them an obvious target. The british army for example, stopped the reverse colour
    idea after 1812*..but as you know..the logic of this doesn´t apply to anything in the napoleonic period.

    *On looking at uniform plates for AWI british uniforms for painting the airfix set I found examples of Drummers/fifers with the same colour uniforms and reverse colours, so pre 1812.
    Excellent brushwork as always

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