"2nd Brandenburg Hussars in 1809." Topic

Anyone know what the uniform colours were for these? I have a picture of Major von Schill and he appears to be wearing the pelise as a jacket which looks black with grey fur trim and yellow or gold braiding, grey overalls, black saddle cloth with red trim. A trooper behind him appears to wear the dolman only in black or very dark blue with red collar and cuffs and with the same grey overalls and saddle cloth. More troopers in the distance appear to have light blue dolmans!
Thing is I can't seem to square this with any of the regimental colour schemes I have listed.

Hi – this is probably both more and less information than you wanted, but…

1. Schill led an ad-hoc freikorps behind French lines in the winter 1806-07 war, and the men came from a variety of units and had a wild collection of uniforms.

2. After that, he became Chef of the 2nd Brandenburg, and they had the regulation uniforms, BUT… then he led his uprising and recruited men from a variety of places.

3. For the next two centuries Germans produced idealized images of him and his rebels, despite not knowing the story very well, and thus you have any number of erroneous prints, full of confusion and inaccuracies regarding Schill's uniform, his men's uniforms, and even which Schill freikorps they're talking about.

When I wrote my book about Schill, I came across no fewer than 400 biographies, most of them amateur, full of an incredible variety of illustrations, many times in color. During his life and thereafter, Schill was the subject of a zillion pamphlets and broadsheets and home-collectibles like souvenir dinner plates, teacups, key-chain fobs, necklace cameos, children's coloring books… you name it. I've seen Schill in every imaginable color and pose.

So: if you specifically want to do his hussar regiment in 1808/09, then it's in the regulation cut and color. But if you're doing his revolt… then pretty much anything goes. He even recruited from deserting Westphalian, Saxon, and Mecklenburger troops, former Swedish militiamen in Pomerania, Prussians from various units, and of course civilians.

Thanks that's usefull. I have found a reference to officers having grey Russian lamb's wool on the pelise so that would explain the grey fur. Standard uniform with some odds and ends mixed in will do fine.

Your picture seems to be the Knötel print:
link
- go to Knötels Uniformkunde, vol. IV no. 8

For the 1809 campaign, the regiment broke out of its regular garrison, so may be assumed to have been fully uniformed throughout, without too many "odds and ends". See also
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- As Sam Milo said, any volunteers that joined up during his mad ride are another matter of course.