"Horse colours – British Dragoons 1812 –1815" Topic

I'm about to start painting either the 3rd Dragoon Guards or the 4th Dragoons and wonder about horse colours. I'd always assumed dark bays for these heavy regiments with the trumpeters on greys. Of course there's then the possibilities of horses being lost and replaced. What was the official line was on horse colours and how well could be applied in the field? For example, did the regiments have spare horses with them on campaign in Spain and ditto during the 100 days?

Thanks in advance.

I'm pretty sure Horse Guards issued some kind of directive banning the practice of mounting trumpeters on grey horses (of course, this being the British Army, the fact that someone issued an edict doesn't mean that anyone actually took any notice of it).

There is some discussion of the subject here: TMP link

AFAIK all british cavalry regts apart from the Queens Bays and Scots Greys for obvious reasons, tried to have all black mounts. If this wasn't possible then as dark a brown as possible, so Bays would probably be fine, on campaign it probably went as far as allowing chestnuts, but piebald and skewbald were definitely not acceptable.

The British cavalry arm, generally speaking, was probably the best supplied with prime horseflesh throughout this period, yet I doubt any serviceable, mature remount sent out would have been rejected because of its colour!

My understanding is that no British cavalry used greys for the trumpeters.

Per regulations of 1796- all heavy regiments on mixed browns and dark bays except for-
Lifeguards, Blues, KDGs, 1st Royal and 3rd King's Dragoons- black horses.
- 2nd Dragoons- no prizes for guessing.
- 2nd Dragoon Guards- light and chestnut bays.

Trumpeters all on greys under 1796 regulations, and shown in many illustrations up to 1812. But- as pointed out above a subsequent order of 1812 required trumpeters to be mounted on the same coloured mounts as troopers.

There are though contemp illustrations of trumpeters of the 4th Dragoons on greys in c1814 and c1818, so it would appear that this unit at least was slow in responding to the order. The 4th Dragoons also recruited black men exclusively as trumpeters. This was a regimental tradition dating from at least 1715 and lasted till at least the 1820s.

In terms of how uniform the colour of mounts would be on campaign- it obviously varied with time and circumstance- but there are references to regiments exchanging horses by colour (when off campaign) to keep the units close to regulation. The British army, despite being on the end of a long seaborne supply line, generally managed its remounts quite well, and the basic supply of horseflesh from UK was much better than that available to most other armies. It was rare for captured French horses to be deemed good enough quality for British regiments and any that were temporarily accepted were normally donated to their allies as soon as proper remounts from UK became available.

In the short 1815 campaign, even 'Peninsular' regiments had sold off or exchanged any odd coloured horses, and all would have been mounted pretty much according to regulation colour.

I would agree. The British were probably the most uniform re horse colors. They had great remounts in the UK, where nobody else could get to them, and they didn't have so much cavalry that color coordination was much of a problem.

I would add that in the French army, at least as far as the Guard is concerned, the horses were VERY regulation for the Waterloo Campaign. During the first restoration, Ney had been placed in command of the Guard Cavalry, and they were completely up to snuff by the time the 100 Days kicked off.