"Austrian SYW Flag Poles - Length?" Topic

I'm having a bit of a deja vu moment here, so if I've asked this before, forgive me…

I know the size of the banners on Austrian standards (140cm x 180cm), but not the length of the actual standard poles. I had it written down as 13 feet, but have not been able to find the source for that or confirm it.

13 feet seems unlikely (too long). Something closer to 11 feet seems a better match for the illustration from the 1749 Regulations (shown below again), allowing for the man being approx 5-1/2 feet tall.

Does anyone know the actual length of the Austrian standard poles?

Cheers

My flagpole lengths are determined by two things.
1) The size of the printed flags.
2) The height of the box or drawer I store them in.

"Actual" length is irrelevant.

Indeed. :)

And I suspect you're not alone in this…

John speaks with authority on this. I learned the hard way after knocking an Eagle off a pole, because the storage box was exactly that much too shallow.

Rick

@Snowcat,

Cheers, I did take some effort to find any reference to the length of the flagpoles, believe me. To no avail, honestly. This detail seems to have been ignored with the sources. I'm currently on a business trip, lacking my books, but it is only a single source I can have a look when I'm back home. All other I have with me on my labtop.
But – you have the image of the rather official 1749 pattern. If you know the height of the silk, you can deduce the height of the pole. You will not get it much better, I believe.

Cheers,
Christian
crogges7ywarmies.blogspot.com

Christian

I suspect you're right re not getting much closer to knowing the length of the pole than from that image.

However, you need to ignore the height of the flag relative to the pole, or you get very strange results. The flag is only meant to be 140cm high x 180cm long. In the illustration, the right-most figure's flag takes up most of the pole, and that simply cannot be so.

So I shall settle for approx. 11 feet based on the pole being approx twice the height of the man, and the man being approx 5-1/2 feet tall.

Cheers

PS Is it only the Austrians that we don't have this info for? ie Do we know the length of the Prussian flag poles, and those of other nations? These might provide a guide.

Cheers

Austrian staff lengths depend upon the model of flag.
Stephen

But what were those lengths? The question remains.

(For modelling purposes, I'll be going with approx 11 feet in length for the infantry standards, as that is about what the above image from the regulations shows, given a 5-1/2 foot man holding it.)

Dear Snowcat
The above illustrations is from the 1749 drill manual. The flag shown is the old large square flag used from the War of Spanish Succession through the War of Austrian Succession and into the 7YW.

The new flag that was issued from 1745 and again from 1765 was much shorter and oblong. I have now written and added 34 flags to the 2nd edition of my book. I will again check as to what the dimensions are.
Stephen

just for fun

if the above drawing is to a reasonable scale we would get the following-

actual man = 8.5CM pole length=16CM

so if man is 5.5ft tall or 170CM (average 18th C.)the scale is 1:20 approx.

this would make the pole 16x20 = 320CM 10.5ft

however if the depth of flag is 140CM actual then the scale would be 1:14 and makes the man about 4ft tall!

with it being in the regulations you would expect the drawing to be reasonably accurate, however the amount of uncovered pole seems very short, too short to allow easy handling of the flag.

As Stephen said, it looks like it's an older and larger square WSS flag, rather than 140cm x 180cm. But yes, 10.5 – 11.0 ft seems about right for the pole, going by the illustration (and other good illustrations I've seen). :)

I look forward to what Stephen can dig up. One chap reckoned they measured 2.8 metres. But that's only 9 ft 2 inches.

Cheers

The 2.8 metres would match those of the smaller flags of the M1745 and M1765 versions. There was no regulation of size as far as I can find. The earlier flags were 2-3m square. There was no standardisation. They were used until the wore out and some into the late 1750s.
Stephen

It would be nice to know actual pole lengths, but at the end of the day as John OFM says, its how it looks with your figures, I always used to make my standards slightly larger than they should have been anyway, it just looked better.

Agreed. 5.8cm is looking good. ;)

if the colour is 140 cm high – as on this supplied photo, the staff is incredibly short – almost like Landsknecht colours – and I would guess only 2 meters long, I don't know if the staff got longer – later.

As Stephen mentioned, the flag shown in the image from the 1749 Regulations is larger (taller) than 140cm. However, the length of the staff is a fair match for illustrations I've seen bearing the later 140cm x 180cm flag – somewhere in the 10-11 foot range.

Cheers