"Battle of Vienna 1683 info needed" Topic

Hope someone can assist me here?

What colour uniforms would the Bavarians, Saxons, Swabian and Franconian troops, (cavalry and infantry) worn in this period?

And good reference material you could recommend – books etc, ideally pretty pics in an online wargamers painting guide utopia…

thanks
Ian

Bavarian infantry was issued with blue coats to replace the old white and grey ones in the 1680's. It is far from certain that this process was complete in 1683. Exactly what shade of blue was worn by the Bavarians is a hotly detbated subject which has been discussed more than one here at TMP.
TMP link
TMP link
TMP link

The Bavarian cuirassiers had replaced the buffcoat with a grey wool coat with armour and helmet worn over the coat. Lifguards wore richly decorated blue uniforms. Dragoons wore red and blue coats at first but later on in the 1680's wore only red. Artillerymen wore grey coats.

The regiments were distinguised by the colour of the lining of the uniform which mainly showed at the cuff.

Saxon infantry wore grey coats with lining in distinguishing colours. The Guards (Leibregiment zu fuss) wore red coats with white decorations. Cuirassiers were still wearing buffcoats with armour and possibly helmets on top. (As a rule many of the German cuirassiers still used the lobster tailed Zischagge due to the need for greater head protection when fighting the sabre armed Ottoman cavalry)
link

Thanks Daniel, very useful

The Saxon Leibregiment zu Fuss wore red coats faced blue 1683-94. The unit became in Leibgarde zu Fuss in 1693 and adopted white facings in 1694 when Friedrich August became Elector.
Blue did not become the standard uniform coat color for the Bavarians until 1684, and even then two regiments continued wearing grey coats until stocks ran out. In 1683 units wore grey, blue and even green coats (see Knötel, "Uniformkunde" and Staudinger, "Geschichte des Bayerischen Heeres II-1")

Bamberg-Würzburg regiments
Infantry
Kraft Cuno von der Leyen (Würzburg): 10 coy., 1500 men, 2 regimental guns, dark grey, yellow facings
Hans Carl I. von Thüngen (Würzburg-Bamberg): dito, dark grey, red facings
Cuirassiers
Veit Heinrich Truchseß von Wetzhausen (Würzburg-Bamberg): 6 coy, 468, -
Dragoons
Philipp Jacob von Hedesdorff (Würzburg-Bamberg): 4 coy., 312, stahlgrün / "steel-green".

Franconian infantry regiments:
Philipp Heinrich von Andlau: light-grey – red (?)
Johann Wilhelm Köth von Wanscheid: light-grey – blue (?)

I strongly suspect that the "fact" that the Bavarians wore tricorns are based on the images of the Ottoman wars in the Schleißheim Palace. However these were painted in the early 18th C and reflects the style in fashion then rather than what was worn in 1683. Swedish lieutenant-General (later Fieldmarshal) Nils Bielke served as a senior commander in the Bavarian army against the Ottomans and never reports them wearing tricorns. (He did mention other details where Bavarian and Imperial was diffrent from the hats and the karpus in use by the Swedish army at the time)

I based the painting of most of my Turkenkrieg units on Knoetel. He gives the colors of the seven infantry regiments sent off to war as follows:

Berlo-pearl gray coats, white cuffs
Puesch-green coats, yellow cuffs
Degenfeld-pearl gray coats, dark lilac cuffs
Montfort-dark gray coats, blue cuffs
Perusa-blue coats, violet cuffs
Stiienau-blue coasts, red cuffs
Preysing-blue coats, yellow cuffs

The four cuirassier regiments seem to have been in gray coats, but of the four regiments two uniforms are unknown, the others are:

Haraucourt-light gray with blue cuffs
Beauvau-light gray with red cuffs

By 1701 three units are reported in white gray with blue, carmine, and green cuffs respectively.

For 1683 Knoetel offers dragoons in red coats with blue distinctions or blue coats with red distinctions.

Some accounts give a total of four cuirassier regiments in two brigades each of which had a couple of squadrons of dragoons attached.

Dear Mr. Condray, in which book does Knoetel deal with the unifroms of the Turkenkrieg? Also, do you know any work by him about the german uniforms in the 1660s (Around the time of the battle of St. Gotthard)?

I am also thinking of doing this period, using Northstar's 1672 range. There are three blue coated Bavarian regiments. A medium "cadet" blue color seems the most appropriate to me.

Clearly, grey was the primary "uniform" color for most infantry during this period , with red and blue facings predominating. The trick is to mix and match to allow maximum flexibility. Sergeants, pikemen, and drummers often reversed colors. Officers also often reversed colors, but some wore whatever they felt like. A very colorful period.

Bavarian(and Saxon) uniforms for the Turkenkrieg are covered in : UNIFORMS OF THE WORLD by Knoetel, Knoetel & Sieg Scribners 1980, a translation of Handbuch der Uniformekunde. Generally its treatment of material before 1700 is sketchy.