"AWI - Flags for Brit LI?" Topic

Would amalgamated LI units have carried any flags with them?

I guess I could save a post and ask about amalgamated grenadier units while i'm at it.

Not from what I have read. Grenadiers, nor light infantry carried colors.

Sorry.
Grenadiers didn't carry flags, either.

Flags were a sign of regimental identification, and converged units from several regiments would not carry flags.

Besides, a regiment only had two flags, a King's Colour and a Regimental Colour. Why would the LI and grenadiers take either flag with them when they were stripped away from the parent unit?

I srill hold out faint hope that Guard battalions would carry flags, but I am in the minority here

What OFM said. Converged companies carried no colours.

And there is a lot to suggest uncertainty if colours were regularly carried by the remaining hat companies in the field as well, at least all the time anyway.

And sad to say, there is nothing to suggest the Guards carried any colours at all, or even brought any with them. :-(

That said, I like colours with units, except converged ones – which would include the Guards.

Not unless it was an ememy flag that they had just grabbed and had not brought it in yet, Just was not done with the converged units in this period!

Well, I will just have to be a fantasy gamer & give my Guards battalion a color-none for the lights or grenadiers though.And I may have a few late war British units in tricorne as well but then I have a cheap bag o' early war Foundry to use.

Wasn't the Guards battalion a converged unit as well, with companies drawn from the three Guard regiments back in the UK?

The problem with the Guards is that they were, well, weird.
Each company of Guards contributed a draft of around 30 men. Contrary to "normal" practice, each company also had colours.
I have some AWI, err… American Revolution … flag books which show Guards Colours. Some even gave examples of which companies would have contributed Colours.
This contradicts "later research" which says that they carried no colours. "Piffle on later research!", I say.

In the face of contradictory evidence, I always go for what pleases me, and it pleases me to give my Guards colours. ESPECIALLY since all my early flags are hand painted. "From my cold dead fingers" and all that.

Good for you, John. I also have my Guard battalions with colors!

Jim

OFM,

could you share some of those flag books with me? Preferably the "most bang for your buck" one's?

I'm using online resources at the moment, but nothing beats a book with a little explanation.

Dugal

The Guards colors did not make it to America. As mentioned above, the Guards battalions that served here were detachments and the parent regiments/colors did not make it to the AWI. That said, we will never know if they carried something other than the regimental colors…maybe a King's Color?

Best Regards,

Scott Wetherell

King's Colours would have the same deices as Regimental colours. Oddly enough (I told you the Guards were weird…), the normal pactice was reversed. The full Union was called the Regimental Colour, and the maroon field with "Ancient Devices and Badges" was the King's Colour.

Dugal, the standard reference for American Revolution flags is Richardson:
link
He is excellent on American flags, good on French, and average to so-so on German and British.

The only American flags he misses are the Tarleton collection which just came to light at an auction. I would love to see his take on them.

Whilst the consensus seems to be that no Guards flags went to America because they were a unit of drafts from all three regiments, I would not dismiss the idea out of hand. Similar detachments of Foot Guards went to Europe in the WAS and SYW and are known to have carried colours. There is anecdotal evidence that the Major's Colour of the 3rd Foot Guards, and one company colour (again possibly 3rd Foot Guards) were taken to America, and as the Major's was the junior King's Colour of the junior Guards regiment, this would seem the logical choice. But as historygamer rightly points out, they may well not have been taken into the field; this was, in fact, the norm in British regiments during the F&IW, following an order by Amherst.

There is certainly no record of any colours being captured with the Foot Guards at Yorktown (like those of the 43rd, 76th and 80th) or smuggled out (as the 23rd did); nor is there any record of them being the subject of a struggle at Guilford Court House – and we must assume that, being the King's own household troops, capturing their colours would have been a priority for any public-spirited Continental! In fact, the Composite Brigade was very much under strength in the South, and even if colours were present in America, I suspect that the unit may have been considered too weak to defend them properly and have left them in NYC.

The two flags I referred to above were on display in a military museum in Scotland (United Services in Stirling, IIRC) a few years back – may still be today – and are illustrated in Edward Richardson's "Standards and Colors of the American Revolution" which is probably the best single source available.

link

My two guards battalions carry colors. My converged Grenadiers and Light Bobs do not.

What figures to use for Guards? Perry figures in shortened coats?

And slouch hats. They're the ones!

Being the stitch Nazi that I am,I chose NOT to give my 2 Guards Bns. colors.Now,I do own them,from Flgs for the Lads,they make a whole sheet of them.But I knew AFTER I got them,that it would NOT be historically correct to have them.
I did the same with my 17th Ft. They lost their colors at Stony Point in 1779,and I have them as part of my Southern Army sans regimental colors.It may not look nice,but dammit,I know its correct!

Sgt. Bob