"The Royal Ecossais" Topic

"Raised by John Lord Drummond of Perth with a capitulation dated 3rd December 1743 followed by a royal ordnance dated 1st August 1744. Their organisation was to be based on that of the Irish regiments ,to be made up of 11 companies of fusiliers and 1 of grenadiers each of 50 men plus officers for a total of 660 effectives. The officers and men used to form the regiment came from several different sources, firstly from Scotsmen serving in the Irish regiments, Scottish exiles living in France together with recruits smuggled out of Scotland. With an effective of 500 men and officers assembled at St.Omer, with John Lord Drummond as lieutenant colonel, (as for all Royal Regiments, the King of France was always the colonel ) although Lord Drummond wrote on the 29th December 1744 that he was missing only 10 men to complete the regiment.

This regiment, as many other foreign regiments in tjhe French Army were not mercenaries as is often claimed, they were more often than not political or religious refugees who could not safely return to their homeland for fear of persecution.

In the spring of 1745 the regiment was sent to join the army of the Marshal de Saxe in Flanders. They started off their career at the siege of Tournai which started on the25th of April and stayed until the end on the 20th of June, said to have been at the Battle of Fontenoy on the 11th of May but I have found no definitive proof of this, their name does not figure on any official documents, but as their is some proof that John Lord Drummond was there as an observer with the Irish brigade ( he had previously been a captain in the Regiment de Rooth ) and this may be the reason for this error. Now under the command of the Count Lowendahl they were at the sieges of Gand and Audenarde in July, Ostend in August and Nieuport in September…"
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Figures

From here
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Hope you enjoy!.

Amicalement
Armand

Nice figs but some of the info in the Scot Wars site is a bit spurious if you ask me. Too much reliance on Stuart Reid.

I hope they do a mounted officer!

Hope they do too my friend!.

Amicalement
Armand

They will.

See the design for the RE is based on Stuart Reid's interpretation which perhaps does not bear close scrutiny.

They look tremendous figures. I tried to do the Royal Ecossais in 54mm

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I always thought the Royal Ecossais wore normal French uniforms in blue and red with extra lace and tricorne?

@ Graf Bretlach;

There are a couple of threads on TMP debating that. Broadly, in the '45 they wore short jackets and bonnets, after the '45, standard French style uniforms.

spontoon,

The evidence for short jackets in the '45 extends only to two officers: Drummond and another a former Aberdeen excise man IIRC). Stuart Reid has conflated this into the short jacket and bonnet look for rank & file as depicted above, in Like Hungry Wolves and the Culloden Osprey. There is no indication that the rank and file were ever equipped like that. More likely that they looked like the Irish Picquets in that they wore normal French style uniforms whilst the officers did their own thing.

I would have thought the regiment coming over from France would have been pretty standard, once in Scotland I can imagine some officers expressing their Scottishness but unless someone supplied 350 odd bonnets and they all had their jackets shortened or newly purchased, which seems unlikely.
Any new recruits to the regiment once in Scotland, then anything goes.

still very nice figures, I always hated painting tartan clad regiments though so i'll leave you to it. :-)

The bonnets may have been relatively easy to procure, and might have helped to prevent "friendly fire" incidents?

Shortening the jackets on the other hand would have taken more time and effort than they could invest in sartorial pursuits?

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I'll still recruit a unit of the Crann Tara RE for my imagi-nation!

@ Thomas Mante;

I am aware of the discrepancies. Seems they wore standard French uniforms for the small aprt they played at Fontenoy. I definitely feel the bonnets would have been acquired soon after arrival in Scotland. They'd hold up to the weather better than a cocked hat, and avoids blue-on-blue fire. They were also dirt cheap. The only item of uniform cheaper than an English regiment in British army service!

Since some of the Royal Eccosois arrived in late 1745, they might have shortened their coats for ease of marching and moving about cross-country, or just for cloth to repair damage! I feel the short coats are plausible. Not the grenadier caps though!

The bonnets may have been relatively easy to procure, and might have helped to prevent "friendly fire" incidents?

Musketier,

If that were the case why do the Irish Picquets appear to have maintained their 'normal' appearance of long red coats and cocked hat? Surely they were in greater danger of being subject to 'friendly fire' incidents than the RE.

@spontoon

We obviously disagree. The Stuart Reid interpretation (for that is what it is) is based on two officer descriptions all else is unsupported speculation. In the Culloden Osprey he bends his view further in one of the colour illustrations by placing the officers in cocked hat and long coat and the rank and file in short coat and bonnet. This is the opposite of what little evidence does exist.

As to shortening coats on campaign it certainly happened in both the AWI and FIW in much better documented circumstances. However in the '45, the Penicuik drawings appear to show some Government troops in 'campaign' rig. The turnback are let down but the coats are full length, coats appear buttoned up (not clear from the drawings) and the cocked hat let down. In a Scottish winter a long coat is to be preferred to a cropped one!

The figures are well sculpted (by Richard Ansell say no more) but let us not pretend the RE interpretation is no more than an extreme extraplation of very limited evidence.

Great Looking Sculpts

Glad you enjoyed them my friend !.

Amicalement
Armand

@ Thomas Mante;

I wouldn't say we disagree, just don't quite agree. the Stuart reid interpret ation is based on mostly textual evidence, that can be taken in variousways by different readers. Too bad no Royal Eoccosois officers had paintings done, eh?

I some times wonder if some folk confuse the Royal Ecossois with the Royal Cantabrian volunteers. If I could figure out how to post pics here I'd post one of Michel Petard's excellent plates of the Royal Cantabrians; quite similar to the short coat and bonnet idea of Royal Ecossois!

this is good news to me, I want to do the 45 using the Front Rank figures and he doesn't do the RE in short coats and bonnets suggesting the standard French inf would be fine ( tho I may convert a few officers) That just leaves me to find something in the FR catalogue to allow me to field some more poses for the mounted government dragoons rather than the static at rest pose in the 45 range !!

Given that there would have been troops on both sides wearing Scottish bonnets, the 'tactical recognition' aspect is not a very strong argument. The respective white and black cockades were expected to fulfill that function.

I had assumed that the Royal Ecossais shortened jackets were produced by sewing coat sleeves onto waistcoats, and not by actually cutting coats down. I believe the British light companies did this in North America. I presume the rationale in both cases was to make it easier to move over very rough ground.

Rod

@ Rod MacArthur;

Most illustrations show the Royal Ecossois in either red or white waistcoats. I believe the short coats were just cut off to provide cloth for repairs.

The black and white cockades would not be a great help; since they have relatively low visibility at musket ranges; also there were units wearing green, orange, and red cockades too! Probably a lot of blue-on-blue fire; and personal recognition at close range. " Aye there's that bastard Angus Macweaver, stuck a pink strip in ma plaid! I'll scunner 'im!"

I believe the British light companies did this in North America.

Rod, the circumstances were somewhat different. That took place over a decade later in 1758 and was ordered by enightened British officers before the troops took to the field, so as to provide suitable dress for campaigning in the Colonial backwoods. Something similar is believed to have taken place in 1777, prior to the Philadephia campaign.

The black and white cockades would not be a great help; since they have relatively low visibility at musket ranges…

I did say the respective white and black cockades "were expected to fulfill that function…"

Given the restricted visibility on a black powder battlefield. I don't think TR was taken very seriously in those days. I love it when each summer Trooping the Colour is explained as training the troops to recognise their own colours in battle. If only…

Commanders at best might judge by coat colours (fun for the Austrians and French) and any national flags that could be discerned at a distance. As for the soldiery,

"Eyes to the front and fire when you're ordered."

And fnck ups did happen. The early French Revolutionary wars
are replete with tales of British soldiery being confused over blue French and red French, which the pesky red French allegedly exploited.

I had not realised that the evidence for the Royal Ecossais in short coats and bonnets was quite so flimsy. I am currently building a 1745 set-up and have finished all of the British for Prestonpans, Falkirk and Culloden. My Jacobite Army is about 2/3 finished and I will soon be modelling the Royal Ecossais. My plan is to have two battalions, one in their official French uniform, and one in short coats and bonnets.

I will probably use the short coat battalion for the 45, and the standard uniform for the WAS (which I intend expanding into) but allow both battalions in a "What If" 45 scenario.

Rod

@ Rod MacArthur;

That's been my plan, too. I have the Royal Eccosois in long coats and Three-cornered hats for French service; or early landing in Scotland. I intend to paint them up in bonnets and short coats for service in Scotland.