"25/28mm 30years war-Spanish/French/Dutch" Topic

Looking for figures for the mentioned armies. So no more eastern types ans Swedes.
Probably most would look like German armies of this period but are there eg specific French?

Old Glory ECW range and Western Mercenaries from Polish range. Essex and Redoubt ECW ranges. Warlord ECW and 30YW ranges. Any range from any company labeled 30YW or ECW.

There was no difference in appearance of Swedish, Dutch, French or Spanish troops. Long time ago there was a series of articles in WI on appearance of various nationalities of the 30YW. Author illustrated a bewildering array of coats, hats, pants, shirts, etc. Because of mercenary nature of armies and extensive Baltic trade, all those types can be found in any of the Western armies. Even in later period of ECW only small cosmetic changes like the size of the collar can be noticed by 17th century fashionistas.

Saying that I do not dispute that certain elite national units could have distinct appearance in color or style. Also, in many countries it was fashionable to have exotically dressed elite or guard units. Scottish and Walachian units existed far away from home, often not even composed of said nationalities, just dressed as such.

Don't forget The Assault Group ! Lovely figures, and many to choose from.

You can have a look at my TYW figs. horcata.eu

The Swedes got most of their armor and many of their armaments from the Dutch. A buff coat looks much the same no matter who is wearing it.

Here is a list of manufacturers to investigate…..

link

brunet.
Finding figures for the French in the TYW is probably easier than any other nationality, simply b/c their involvement was towards the end of the war, and so close to the ECW, in which numerous companies make accurate figures. So you can get away with some armor for pikemen, and just a back and breast plate for cavalry. Thus the regional differences between armor, hats, and other garb become irrelevant for the most part. I think most ECW figures would be fine for the French for the battle or Rocroi for instance,(minus the knitted cap.)

There were a remarkable amount of differences between different nationalities. Again, we are talking not of one war, but many conflict we group together as the "Thirty Years War." It is true most of the major players relied heavily upon mercenaries, but there are simply certain styles of dress that remained distinct to particular regions. During the early stages of the war(s), a German pikeman would look very different than the later Swedish pikemen. Hungarian helmets were very popular to the Germans, in both foot and mounted figures. Closed helmets, which one tends to find in only ECW figures, or troops who were not clad in 3/4 armor, were not as common as the open style Hungarian helmet for Central Europe. However, it is difficult to find figures in 3/4 armor with open helmets, which was often times the norm.

Daniel S. is the one who really knows this stuff, but I think he has changed his name on TMP… I cannot recall what it is off hand.

EmilvonKarwin

I had emailed you a few months ago. The email bounced back, and I did not know if you were still in business or not. I really do like the look of your early war figures.

Please email me at:

ilodic@yahoo.com

Thanks,

William

thanks for all the info

IIodic,
No name change on my part AFAIK :)

There was no difference in appearance of Swedish, Dutch, French or Spanish troops.

Well the 17th Century sources do tell a diffrent story .
I remember the WI articles, the problem was that the author relied heavily on period images with very little use of written sources. Once you compare the written descriptions with the images you find that there is a lot of clothing that was never portrayed in drawings or paintings. (A good example would be the "Hungarian coat" adopted by both Gustavus and Wallenstein for their infantry.)

If you took the Spanish army of Flanders in the Palatinate campaign of 1621 and deployed it next to the Swedish army fighting in Livonia that same year and it would be quite easy to distinguish most of the Swedish troops from their Spanish counterparts due to the distinctive nature of the clothing worn by the Swedish and Finnish conscripts who made up a large part of the Swedish army.

Five years later both Gustavus and Wallenstein adopted the "Hungarian coat" as the standard dress for their infantry. But while the cut and shape of the coat would have been quite similar the Swedish coat was decorated with strips of cloth in a diffrent colour inserted into or sewn on top of the seams while Wallenstein's version was undecorated. The shaped of the Swedish breeches was probably also diffrent with a much more narrow cut than what was usual the case in Germany. (Though Wallenstein may have adopted a more economical cut as well, unlike Gustavus he left no written details aboyt the design of the breeches. Also Swedish coats and breeches were supposed to be the same colour while Wallenstein had no such intention.

A further diffrence was that Swedish musketeers were issued with helmets while Wallensteins men used hats. The Swedes on the other hand were not issued with hats so the native soldiers would have worn their distinctive native caps on the march and in camp.

So while wearing the same style of coat there was still more than a few details that set the two styles of dress apart. If you placed musketeers from Tilly's Catholic League infantry next to Gustavus' and Wallenstein's men would it would have been easy to spot the CL musketeers since not only did they wear the the short German coat but they also wore a Schutzrock (a type of cassock) over it.

Lieutenant-Colonel Wrangel (German in Swedish service) was killed in action during the battle of Honigfelde in 1629. The Poles who recovered his body on the battlfield noted that he stood out from the other fallen German troopers because he was dressed in the "Bohemian fashion". Unfortunately they didn't bother to record just what Bohemian fashion looked like since it would have been common knowledge among the men who would read the account of the battle.

Similarly a 1612 description of how Habsburg troops to be dressed mentions breeches in the "French style" but without providing many details about the difference between that style and the German style.

Daniel,
thanks.
Any information about the more "western style". Is this more like the ECW style (without montero etc)?

Brilliant as always, Daniel! I was reading you other posts about the TYW, and I was wondering, could you please share some sources that mentions the Catholic League use of 'ash grey', 'silver grey' and blue as coat colors? And where can I find that 1612 description of how Habsburg troops dressed?

Without access to my notes the main reference for the CL uniform colours was Freiherr von Reitzensteins two volume study of the campaigns in the Palatinate 1621-1622. Probably it was in the first volume:
"Der Feldzug des Jahres 1621 mit der Besitzergreifung der Oberpfalz"
Reitzenstein used the Würtemberg and Bavarian archives for his research but did not leave a direct footnote for the uniform references IIRC. Nor did he mention specific units.

The 1612 description is a lengthy qoute in the 2nd appendix volume of Sveriges Krig 1611-1632 by the Swedish General Staff. It is from a handwritten manuscript found in the Zierotin family archive which is a identical to a text by Georg Fuchs which is/was kept in Vienna and which providesa very detailed instruction for the creation of a "Landdefension" in Bohemia, Moravia, and (parts of?) Austria. The manuscript was published in 1914 by Otto Schier as "Eine mährische Wehrverfassung aus dem Jahre 1612". Very interesting if you can find it, took me many years to locate a copy for sale. It is basicly a very detailed instruction for how you raise, equip, organise, train and use a small army.

Thanks, daniel! I will be travelling trough europe at the end of the year, and I'll certainly try to find copy of the many sources mentioned by you at tmp! Are there any sources that mentions the colors of the uniforms of the Imperial Army?

Also, daniel, have you ever tought about offering to write a book for osprey? From what I've seen on other threads, you could write some amazingly good campaign books using only the notes you already have (:

Also, I'd like to know your opinions: Can Pieter Snayers paintings of the late TYW be used as a general source for the soldier's dress of the later part of the war? For example:

-In his painting of the battle of Diedenhofen (1639), he shows cavalrymen wearing plates and helmets, but not the full cuirassier armor; less infantry helmets and more hats and some uniformity on the color of the coats
link
link

-While in his paintings of the battles during the 1640s, there are fewer helmets for cavalry and pikemen (and more cavalrymen without armor), less uniformity in the coats of the infantrymen(from what can be seen at distance) and in general, the soldiers all look more ragged.

Yes, used with care and an understanding of the limitations of his artwork Pieter Snayers is one of the most important visual sources of the period.

What one needs to keep in mind is that Snayers paintings first and foremost shows the dress and equipment of soldiers at the time the painting was made rather than portraying soldiers at the time of the event. An example of this is his painting of the battle of Lutzen which shows Imperial soldiers of the 1640's (it is dated to 1642) rather than from 1632.

In addition he first and foremost painted soldiers he was familiar with at the time rather than trying to recreate "foreign" fashions that he had limited or no knowledge of.
For example his painting of the battle of Kirchol shows the Swedish army dressed and equipped after than fashion used by Spanish and Dutch troops in the Netherlands rather than the dress actually worn by Swedes. Painted in 1630 he has taken the unusual step of portraying the Swedes in a style that was at least 15 years out of date but that was a style he was very familiar with from his days as an apprentice to
Sebastien Vrancx (another great painter of soldiers)

Snayers used a lot of details and "tricks" to improve his portrayal of events or to send certain messages. For example he regularly exaggerates the number of pikemen present, particularly in his early paintings which often have more pike than shot in them. He also does not portray proper distances between units since doing so would make the paintings impossibly large. For example the lines of cavalry in the last painting would in reality be separated by several hundred paces between each line.
Another example is that he used officers with sword and shield to identify Spanish units in some paintings, this can be seen both in his Painting of Fleurus 1622 and in the Thionville paintings.

Snayers portrayal of unit deployment and the terrain could also vary greatly depending on the knowledge he had of an event. For example his painting of the battle of White Mountain is very generic and shows little detailed knowledge of the battfield and the battle. On the other hand the series of 12 paintins he made for Piccolomini which shows the most important events of Piccolomini's military career shows that he must have been given a lot of information by P. The Lutzen painting in particular stands out in it's portrayal of the deployment of the two armies and the unit formations are also depicted with a unusual accuracy.

link all of the suppliers listed, rated and with links to their websites….

Daniel, what is the name of the series painted by Snayers for Piccolomini? Also, is there any source mentioning the colors worn by the imperial infantry, other than the Julius Hardegg (blue lined red) and Galla (pearl grey) regiments?

Belagerung von Einbeck
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Der Posto bei Presnitz, 1641
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Belagerung von Neuburg, 1641
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Entsatzschlacht bei Thionville. 1. Phase, 1639
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Entsatzschlacht bei Thionville. 2. Phase, 1639
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Die Niederlage bei Grancourt, 1639
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Entsatz von St. Omer, 12. Juli 1638
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Entsatz von Löwen
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Übergang über die Somme, 1636
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Die Affäre bei München
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Entsatz von Meißen
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Schlacht bei Lützen, 1632
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Twelve paintings in total which show nine events during Piccolomini's career. You can see how important his victory at Thionville was to him since he had no less than 3 paintings made of it showing diffrenth phases of the battle. (1st & 2nd phase and the French rout at Grancourt at the of the battle)

No, I stopped trying to research the Imperial coat colours in any detail many years ago. Too much effort & time with very little results due to how the sources are scattered and hard to find.

Do watch out for the numerous mislabled paintings by Snayers, a number have been labled as describing the wrong event such as a painting of the battle of Fleurus which is posted online as being the battle of Wimpfen. In addition you have a lot of "Snayers" paintings online and in more than a few museums that were not made by him. Either it is a question of honest mistakes were works by his students or associates have been misidentified. A good example of this is the series of paintings of the battle battle of Nördlingen which today is in the collection of the Swedish national museum. Originaly these were thought to be by Snayers but today they are instead considered the work of Pieter Meulener. (A fellow apprentice of Vrancx) Then there are the paintings which are either outright forgeries or have been deliberatly mislabled even though they show little of Snayers masterly skill.

There are more than few Snayers paintings not well known due to a lack of published photos. A good example is the painting of the battle of Stadtlohn event though it is kept in a major art museum. It is easier to understand the obscurity of the series of paintings made for Count Bucquoy which shows events early in the TYW (1619 campaign in Austria) which today is part of the Schloss Rohrau collection.

Thank you, daniel! Those were amazing posts!

And Daniel, I'm thinking in trying to research the Imperial coat colours. Besides the name of the regiment's Colonel and "röck" (it's the word for coat in german, isn't it?) what are some good words to look after?

You are welcome :)

Unfortunately it isn't that easy , not only did the period Germans use a lot of diffrent words for the garments in question but they also insisted on spelling them in various ways. "Jupe" "rock", "röckl", "wams" may all be used even though for example the last is today assumed to refer to the garment called a "doublet" in English. Then you have the Schutzrock, what the English would call a cassock and on top of that some writers also use the word kassack(en).

And as with the Swedish troops a lot of times you would not find a description saying "Regiment X wore coats in Y colour". Rather you have to try to find administrative documents which say that Regiment X got this amount of cloth in Y colour and that amount in Z colour. Or try to find the recipt that says that merchant A was paid B thatler for delivering C coats to the army, if you are very lucky colours will be mention but otherwise you will then have to try and track down merchant A's archive if it still exists… And because Imperial regiments were raised by military contractors at lot of documents remained family property rather than being collected in goverment archives like the Swedish documents.

I understand why you gave up on looking for imperial coat colors. It seems awfully hard D:
(But just asking, what would be the period german word for "cloth" that generally appears in the administrative documents?)
And Daniel, have you seen this site? ( link ) It's a spanish blog, and the post in question shows an interesting painting of the battle of white mountain, where some uniforms can be seen

The German word used for wool cloth in the documents and quotes I've read is "tuch" while linen cloth is "leinwat(h)"

Nice, blog I've not seen those paintings before. They are almost certainly not made by Snayers, not at all in his style. But they may well be based on his several paintings of White Mountain. The use of a cassock/schützrock in uniform colours is interesting and very plausible since we know this was done by both Habsburg and Bavarian troops well before the TYW. The use of the Saltire/cross of Saint Andrew to identify Bavarians is interesting, it may be artistic licence but in 1605 Bavarian troops were ordered to wear white cassocks (probably made from undyed wool) with blue ragged saltires.

Another post seems to have what may be a picture of a part of one of the paintings made by Snayers for Count Bucquoy. This is the first time I've seen one. link

It's an interesting blog, isn't it? The painting on the post you linked even shows the dress of some artillerymen.
On the subject, I found this painting, probabilidade made in the 1650s or ealier (

) . Do you think it's a good reference to the dress of the late TYW swedish and polish mercenary cavalry?

And one question to all: Does anyone knows any reference about Dutch uniforms on the period of the TYW?

Picture link does not seem to work properly

Did it work? It's from Philips Wouwerman, called "Poles in battle against the Swedes"

link has more and larger images of that painting.

Wouwermans paintings are fascinating as art but given that he never left his hometown for any lenght of time he would have painted what he knew or what he could get information on from hearsay, written accounts and other images. What we see in his paintings is more of an artistic interpretation of Swedes and Poles rather than a painting "true to life".

Compared to Snayers there seems to be next to information on the origin of the paintings. For whom were they painted, after all the Swedish-Polish war of 1655-60 was of limited concern to Western Europe compared to the TYW yet someone comissioned Wouwerman to make several paintings showing actions from the war.

Some of the military clothes worn by the Swedes in Wouvermans "Deluge" paintings match that seen in engravings commissioned for Pfuffendorf's heroic history of Karl X Gustav of Sweden. We know that those early plates were made close to events so Wouverman's paintings are much closer in time than for example the later Pfuffendorf platse made in the 1670's.

All in all I'd say that Wouvermans paintings gives an idea of how the mercenaries in Swedish service could have dressed but gives no information about styles adopted during the invasion or the style worn by native Swedish troops. Their usefullness as depiction of Polish troops is very limited.

Thank you, daniel! So the best pictorial source for the mid century swedish cavalry would Pfuffendorf's early engravings about the life of Karl X?

Also, does anyone knows If the Dutch troops wore any uniforms by the time of the TYW?

Guys, any ideas on the Dutch uniforms?

No uniforms at that time. Also note that uniform could mean "of the same cloth", "of the same cut", or "of the same colour".

Thank you, rampjaar!

I also must add that Philips Wouwermans did travel abroad, to France, the Spanish Netherlands and Hamburg (where he stayed 2 years if I am not mistaken), and probably to other parts of Germany. Like most artists at that time he used contemporary and older prints for his work.

About the dutch, I've found some interesting paintings:

- This painting about a siege by Frederick Henry appears to show cassocks of the same color being worn by the dutch infantry
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-This colored engraving shows the funeral procession of Frederick Henry, and also shows infantrymen with cassocks of the same color (black, probably for the funeral), but also in red coats under it.
picture

-There is also this one, which was possibly made some time after the war, but which shows some uniformity for the dutch infantry

Also, does anyone knows if the Bohemian armies under Frederick V ( "the winter king" ) would have worn uniforms?

Any clues on the bohemians?

Some more paintings about the dutch troops of the period:

-The first one, made during the 1630s and depicting the 1600 battle of Nieuwpoort does not have a lot of uniformity, tough some units on the background appear to have mostly yellow/buff and grey/blue-grey cassocks (Look for the ones on the background, behind Prince Maurice. There are also some weird troops in what looks like some kind of Pluderhose, but those, like the musketeers in the center, don't show much uniformity):

-This one, made by Sebastian Vrancx in 1640 and also depicting the battle of Nieuwpoort, does not have a very resolution, and does not show much prevalence of uniforms but the main infantry groups seem to also have lots of coats in yellow/buff/ochre and grey colors:

Overall, my impression, based on the paintings I posted, is that the dutch, like the spanish, made less use of uniform than the Germans of the period, but it seems that yellow/buff/ochre and different shades of grey were prevalent coat colors. Blue and Red also appear in some infantrymen coats, but they are more prevalent as trouser colors of the said troops (in general, the trousers of the soldiers seem to be more randomly colored). What do you all think?

The Wikipedia page you used seriously misdates the Vrancx painting. it was painted in 1620 according to the museum to which it belongs which fits well with the style of clothing shown in the painting.

Yellow, buff and ochre are because of all the buff coats being worn. The buff coats were often stained a yellow colour when made using a mix of ochre and whiting. Since the tanning process makes it impossible to clean a buff coat they were "freshend up" by re-painting them with yellow ochre paint. So they all ended up more or less yellow in colour.

Grey is simply undyed wool which came in a lot of diffrent shades depending on how you mixed it. As such it was often cheaper than the dyed stuff. (There were exceptions to this, the fine high quality grey Spanish wool that Gustavus Adolphus favoured for the trousers that were part of his "military" outfits was quite pricey)

Thank you for pointing out the correct date, Daniel! Do you think my reading of the paintings and the dutch not making extensive use of uniforms, but having some common coat colors (possibly bought in bulk by the captains?) makes sense? I was curious about the rareness of blue and red coats/cassocks (also popular soldier colors)

And wasn't it expensive to equip foot soldiers with buff coats? I tought only Cavalrymen, Foot officers and some militias would have worn them.

Blue cassocks can certainly be seen in soem Vrancx paintings but red are rare. link

It could simply be a question of cost aswell as the available supply of cloth. It is also quite possible that red cassocks were not fashionable in the Low Countries at that particular time.

When you see buff/ochre yellow on foot soldiers they are not wearing buff coats, rather they are wearing much cheaper (and thinner) leather doublets or jerkins. The tanning process used was the same hence the identical colour.

Thanks for the answer, daniel!
Do you have any guess on why uniforms seem to be less common (besides the colored clothing bought by individual captains for their companies) in the french/spanish/dutch armies of the period than in the english/swedish/danish/various-german-states armies?