"Spanish Grenadier Flam" Topic

Does anyone have a good picture/description of the design on the grenadier flam for regiments El Rey and Zaragoza? Only pictures I've found have been on the NYPL Digital Library, but they're not entirely clear.

I haven't got pictures of the specific regiments you are interested in but here are a few links to sites that include reasonably clear illustrations of the embroidered bags that will at least give you a good idea of how they may have looked:

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I had used SJDonovan sources when painting a Zamora rgt pioneer. It was some good fun to paint the flame (28mm, by Capitan Miniatures)

Thanks for the Links Mr. Donovan. I have hopes of painting a Spanish Army someday. Anything I can find, I add to my collection I'm creating of Spanish uniforms. I do wonder how long these bearskins lasted after 1808, because I want to do an army around 1810 through 1812. Also how long Grenadiers continued to exist. My sources don't mention anything about line grenadiers, but the guard battalions seem to have survived.

Lovely figure Colonel – and very nice plates.

Traveller:

Zaragoza are one of the 12 regiments that never received their 1808 uniform anyway. They were still in the 1802 uniform in 1808 (mid blue jacket with black facings, edged red). This is now confirmed by many sources. There is no published illustration of their grenadier bag but it is easy to reconstruct:
- the basic design of the grenadier bag for the 1802 uniform is illustrated on the 3rd and 5th of SJ Donovan's links (illustrated with Princesa that was wearing the 1802 uniform when it went to Denmark). In the round part at the top appears the regimental coat of arms (yellow lion rampant on a red field) flanked by two crossed flags (this is the same design as the one that appears in the 4 corners of Spanish flags). The background colour of the bag is a lighter blue than the uniform. Then there is a squiggly design down the back, plus piping to the edge of the whole thing, both in yellow or white (button colour).

If you are planning an early Spanish army (1808), get yourself Cronin, Gerard and Stephen Summerfield (2014) "Spanish Infantry of the Early Peninsula War, Huntingdon, England: Ken Trotman Publishing, ISBN 978-1-907417-42-9

Uniform details for the period 1810-1812 are very scarce and only available regiments, mainly some of those garrisoning Cadiz (who fought with Blake at Albuhera). The Osprey books have some gems (but beware the stovepipe shakoes in the illustrations – they are an assumption, wrong in my view). The 1808 uniform styles had certainly disappeared by 1810; all the original Spanish armies had been destroyed, and remnants of them forced through winter marches through the mountains. From 1809, line grenadier companies were wearing shakoes or round hats like the rest of the battalion. There was sometimes a grenadier battalion in an army called something like *Grenadiers of the general," but there are no uniform details for them.

Shakoes in 1810-12 were bell-topped, French style – the British style shako is a myth inspired by a late 1811 "aspirational" design for a standard uniform that was illustrated later by Clonard -historian of the Spanish army- but never in practice implemented. Even in 1808 of the 40,000 new uniform sets produced in Granada, two thirds of the headgear was bell-topped shakoes and only one third round hats. As far as I know, there's no documentary evidence at all for the British stovepipe shako (despite their appearance in books on uniforms and older figures ranges) except for three (light) units with strong British links: Muerte (1808: ex-prisoners of war from South America shipped to Galicia); Tiradores de Doyle (date unknown: a contemporary illustration I saw once – Doyle was a British officer, he raised the unit) and Cazadores de Mallorca (1813: in the British generaled and paid Mallorca division). That's it. All other contemporary accounts or illustrations either specify bell-top or say nothing.