"French forage cap" Topic

While tooling around my area hobby shop, I notice some French Line infantry figs with the forage cap on. The figs were in charging, firings and advancing poses. It made me wonder, did any of the French infantry units wear this caps into combat? I was always thought it was worn while in camp and not battle. Thanks for the help.

As a rule soldiers smartened themselves up to go into Battle. But entirely possible these were worn when on the line of march and so in ambush or encounter battles, or if a soldier had 'lost' his heavy and cumbersome shako!

I would agree that, if a shako was lost or destroyed, a soldier would not go about "uncovered" and would resort to his forage cap if he had nothing else.

This probably happened more often in the earlier period, when the bicorn was regulation. Bicorns were infamous for losing their shape in any kind of inclement weather. That's probably one reason they were replaced by the shako.

I modelled a 10mm infantryman in bonnet de police for a bit of a campaign look in a fighting unit. There must have been countless ways of losing a shako or bicorne.

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