"French blue compared to Prussian blue?" Topic

Are they about the same or is Prussian blue a lot darker? Is Prussian blue actually close to black?

Pictures in magazines are often lightened so you can see detail e.g. those sky blue French light infantry in one Osprey. So I don't want to rely on that.

BTW, I'm thinking about the Napoleonic uniforms, not one of the paints.

If I am not mistaken, both nation's uniform blues were obtained with indigo dye so should in fact be the same or similar shades.

French blue is a pure blue, Prussian blue is a blue with a greyish hue.

Happy Wargaming to All.

fogsoldiers.it

fogsoldiers.blogspot.com

If I am not mistaken, both nation's uniform blues were obtained with indigo dye so should in fact be the same or similar shades.

You're mistaken. Indigo is a plant dye. Prussian blue was one of the earliest synthetic chemical dyes, made with blue prussiate of potash with iron salts as a mordant. It's much darker than organic indigo dyes.

Interestingly (or not) until a more reliable method of fixing the dye was discovered, it wasn't very fast on woollen fabrics. Such as Napoleonic uniforms…

With everything I've researched I've settled on French Blue being more of a Royal Blue or dark blue, with Prussian Blue being visibly darker.

You're mistaken. Indigo is a plant dye. Prussian blue was one of the earliest synthetic chemical dyes, made with blue prussiate of potash with iron salts as a mordant. It's much darker than organic indigo dyes.

Was that the start of the German chemical industry ?

I seem to remember reading that France was limited in the dyes available due to the British navy controlling access to other dyes. But I may be mistaken.

I have always painted Prussian blue as a touch darker than French blue

A couple days of rain and sun bleaching and they look the same anyway. (your friendly heretic)

Prussian Blue is an insoluble pigment, not a dye. It can be used as a stain but would be too expensive to use as a practical dye for clothing.

The colour of Indigo dyed cloth varies both with the source of the dye (the active agent Indigotin is present in a number of plants) and the method of processing.

I've always thought of Prussian uniforms as being darker than French but for no good reason.

French blue is an age old debate. There are a many paint recipes out there that are bordering on quite 'out there'. It used to be quite common to mix prussian blue with a little skin tone, a little black, and a little something else to come up with a French looking blue. Complicated stuff !

I have settled on the following vallejo equivalents for 15mm :

Prussians :
base in 70899 Dark Prussian blue, heavier highlight in 70965 Prussian blue. (These 2 paints work a treat together)

French A:
Base in 70965 Prussian blue, light glaze in 855 black glaze, very light highlight 70962 flat blue.

French B:
Base in 70962 flat blue, heavy black glaze, splash in a little 854 brown glaze on some figures, light highlight in mix of 70962 flat blue with a tiny touch of 987 medium grey.

Be careful with 70962 flat blue – it looks nice and grey in the bottle, but comes out quite bright on the figures.

I use French A for fresh troops, and French B for dirty, slightly faded campaign look. Even these come out looking a little dark on the table due to the small scale.

Example photos -

Prussian method :
(15mm SYW Prussian infantry)

French A: (Couple of line regiments in fresh uniforms)

French B: (French Legere, with a dirty mix of varied trouser colours)

For something a little different – other troops that use dark blue uniforms, but you want a different shade compared to the French and Prussians, I use 70963 Medium blue. heavy black glaze, and 70965 Prussian blue highlights. Medium blue is a very awesome intense blue colour that looks very bright in real life.

I have found this handy on things like Bavarian artillery, and 1905 Japanese troops .. I will use this method for other dark blue uniforms that are neither French or Prussian, as it works well in 15mm scale.

Finally, there is Oxford blue for British uniforms, yet to try that one yet :)

Hope that helps.

OK. Just to be clear – this is in no way meant to be some sort of declaration of war on anyone who hasn't painted their toys my idea of the "right" colour: your dime, your figures, your choice of paint.

However, just for the record…..

The first thing we need to do is to sort out the confusion over "uniforms of French blue" and "blue French uniforms". French blue is a greyish blue, not unlike an RAF uniform colour, whereas French infantry wore an indigo blue which tended to look like this:-

See? Dark. Very dark. What is it, class? Yes, that's right – very dark. To all intents and purposes, black at any kind of distance. The same confusion appears to have arisen over "Prussian blue uniforms" and "blue Prussian uniforms" – they are NOT the same colour. Model/game paint manufacturers who use the term "Prussian blue" when what they are really selling is a blue for 18th and 19th Century Prussian uniforms, should be horse-whipped.

To answer the original question, unless a radically different dyeing process and/or source of indigo was used (see previous posts), there is no reason why dark blue French uniforms would look any different from dark blue Prussian uniforms, dark blue Spanish uniforms, or dark blue British uniforms (Oxford blue is simply another name for dark blue, so-called because at one time the colour was uniquely worn within the English army of the 1660s by the Earl of Oxford's horse regiment; it was made famous again by Humbrol in the 1980s).

The blue used by most wargamers for their French troops is way, waaaay off (that Osprey MAA on French Light Infantry didn't help, either). And for those about to say, "Ah, but my men's uniforms have faded in the sun/rain/vacuum-sealed plastic wrapper they came in!" – er, sorry but no dice. Indigo does not fade to a bright medium cobalt blue; in the words of the song, it fades to grey (well, a dull(ish) grey(ish) blue which I'm told may – or may not – possibly be the origin of "French blue" [see above]).

Hope that helped.

Thanks for the support Supercilious Maximus!

I'm fairly certain there were no synthetic dyes prior to the mid-19th century. For dark blue indigo was the only game in town.

Just take indigo to paint either French or Prussian uniform coats – of course one has to lighten the colour (at least in my taste) for wargaming figures – but not as bright as French or Prussians are usually painted, they would go well for Bavarian infantry.

@Steve

I'm sorry but your French units just look far too bright for me.

Has anyone got any written descriptions of the blue written at the time ? And some prints of the era.
All of my books and prints are in a storeage shed.

This is what I went with for the Prussians:

url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/26018006@N03/3028984207/]

‌
1st Silesian Landwehr by britishlinescarlet, on Flickr

In my view much too bright, the contemporaries would class it as light blue.

Here an immage of Royal Deux Ponts, wearing a bleu cleste fonce – that is a dark light blue and not a dark blue

and here some ACW Uniron infantry I did

As someone who is a. Colour blind (basically can only see in primary colours, black, white and grey) and b. about to start painting a shed load of 6mm French Napoleonics.
All this talk about Blue with hint of faded *insert randon colour while mixed with chemical/plant extract* confuses the hell outta me.

Use VJ Oxford Blue. Highlight it by adding white.

OxBlue has the purplish tinge which indigo produces. As an aside, there are two ways of colouring material with indigo; One produces the dark blue colours used for US federal soldiers' jackets. The other is more familiar to us; it's the colour of jeans (and US federal soldiers' trousers).

Indigo is relatively lightfast -- it doesn't fade very quickly. Not on the timescale that uniforms would wear out in. What it DOES do, as anyone who's sat down on light coloured furniture in new jeans knows, is rub off the clothing. This is because it's not a true dye, it's a pigment. As such it doesn't colour the fibres all the way thru; it just coats the surface and doesn't have a great bond with them.

Technically, then, it should be dark on top of the shoulders and lighter in the armpits where the friction of marching will wear it off.

In my view much too bright, the contemporaries would class it as light blue.

Quite right. They are 15mm and from a distance of 2 feet look almost black.

"Prussian Blue" refers to an iron-based chemical formula (cyanoferrate) for artist's pigments, not to the uniform colour. Also known as "Berlin Blue" or "Parisian Blue" (!), it was known from the early 18th C. but was not used to dye uniforms.

As discussed many times on TMP and elsewhere, the exact hues of uniform coats of the same basic colour would vary by batch and age rather than by nationality.

That said, if you prefer to have readily identifiable units by painting your French in a lighter tone of blue than your Prussians, go right ahead! It's your game, you don't need a chemistry footnote for it ;-)

I wonder if French and Prussian soldiers ever got together and fraternised and said "Hey your uniform blue is the same as mine!"

Another thing to think about is that I imagine that there would have been several suppliers of fabric for the uniforms and they would each have had different dying processes and dyes. And each batch would probably have been different. (without today's standards and quality controls)

Other factors to bear in mind are:-

1) that the various nations were not constantly at war, and occasionally they would buy stuff from suppliers in other countries (who were more than happy to take the money) – Napoleon's troops famously had boots and greatcoats made by British contractors; and

2) a great deal of use was made of captured material, often kitting out entire regiments, so that the opposing sides would often look exactly the same.

Excellent points both, SM!
Several Prussian Reserve Regiments in 1813 also received British-made uniforms, originally meant for the Portuguese or Spanish. Contemporary accounts mention alterations to make the cut and details look more Prussian (e.g. removing chest lace), but I'm not aware of any complaints about them being the wrong shade of blue.

Maximus, I have always been a little embarassed when I see the shades of blue that many paint French line and legere troops. Some indivduals, trompettes, etc and specialists had a medium blue, but the main uniform color is dark indigo. Very true that some contemporary renditions are misleading. In the period plate reproductions I have, the line coat is always quite a dark blue. I never have said anything to anyone who put in so much time and effort about it though.

+1 vote for Humbrol's Oxford Blue and its Vallejo namesake- clone. It has a slight greyed tone that under most lighting conditions, from 3 or more feet away comes across as a nice versatile standalone dark blue that can also be highlighted or washed lighter or darker to suit. YMMV, and IME Oxford Blue makes white details and officer's gold bits"pop". Lovely stuff!

Remember dye fixing in the period. how new the garments were had a lot to do with the shades. No unform (no pun intented) manufactors meant there wasx no standard. Am I correct?

I've always used Humbrol Oxford Blue or similar for both French and Prussians, and British artillery/light cavalry. Agree with Selly501

I copied this from a TMP thread years ago.

French Blue = Navy Blue, so dark as to almost appear black.

British Blue (including infantry facings, cavalry uniforms, and uniforms sent to Portugal and Prussia) = Royal Blue, very rich. Think medium Testors blue.

Prussian Blue = French Blue with light grey added. French Blue is certainly darker.