"French White uniforms 1806" Topic

Line infantry by Andre Jouineau.

More here

link

For translation you can used.
translate.google.com/#fr/en

Hope you enjoy!.

Amicalement
Armand

Interesting information, esp. about the 15th in Spain wearing them until 1812. But are we quite certain that Jouineau's work is in the public domain, and not protected by copyright?

As soon as Baccus gets round to re-sculpting its French Infantry, I'm definitely doing a division's worth of troops in white.

Thanks Armand!

I've got my hands full painting Austrians and Italians. Why on earth would I want to add the French to that list? Talk about going snow blind!

for a very good discussion for that – look at napoleon-series.org

Whirlwind,

Beware, only a selected group of regiments (sometimes mere battalions) were issued the white uniforms on an experimental basis. And they were not selected based upon division. There was no division all dressed in white, but rather a few regiments in white scattered through the army.

That same year, the first shako made its appearance. And in the above plates, as in all sources I've seen, there are white clad troops portrayed in both bicorn and shako. So I've always wondered – would we see a white clad unit in all shakos or all bicorns? Or would we see mixed bicorns and shakos in the same battalions?

von Winterfeldt,

Where is the article in the Napoleon Series? I cannot find it.

@Widowson,

Thanks for the reminder. As you say, they are for mixing in to the other French formations.

Regards

it starts here

link

key points are that pretty much all the evidence for 1806 is from November or after, so unlikely to be at Jena/Auerstadt, but certainly at Eylau (underneath all those great coats)

with exceptions

3rd batallions were issued first, so some recruits would ahve gotten to the front units – and colonels may have had something to say either way about that, but all we can say with some evidence is restricted to a couple of regiments only (which escape me at present but are listed in there somewhere, and include the 17th and 33rd of the 3rd corps (which was the corp I was interested in when I asked).

and yes, I'd expect that jouineau to be under copyright too, but there are links on the series to legal images in the 1807 shako uniform (or you can just read the osprey, which has the colours and facings, but no detail on exactly when they were received)

I recently learned that these "white" regiments were supposed to bear new flags of the regimental facing color.

However these new colors were never carried on the field.