"Colour of field signs for 30 YW Swedes??" Topic

My understanding of the 30YW / ECW period is that the armies used field sign colours to identify themselves and recognize their enemies and that this procedure was necessary, as they had no uniforms.

AFAIK, these are the recognized field signs:

Red – Spanish, Imperialists, English Royalists
Blue – Catholic League, Bavaria
Orange – Dutch, English Parliamentarians
Blue and Yellow with White bow on sash – Danish

Can someone tell me what the Swedish field sign colour was?

I would guess Black and Yellow, as this was the livery colour of Gustavus.

Check Brzezinski's Osprey about Swedish cavalry of Gustav II Adolf, he had a wee paragraph there about it. According to him at Breitenfeld and Wittstock it was green, on few other battles just a straw on arms and/or hats.

See link for the Brzezinski section – a little bit more than a "wee paragraph", really, more like a couple of pages.

A discussion of 30 YW field signs in general at link

Thanks, guys. I am going to go w green, I guess.

Green is the best choice since most figures come with the dang things even though the sparse evidence suggests that Swedes did not make much use of sashes in the 1630's

Most of what I could add I've already mentioned in the FoG-R forum thread. Just a quick note on Gustavus livery colours, they were indeed yellow and black but that was Gustavus private livery used as a Vasa rather than a national livery. It's use was restricted to a small group of people such as certain parts of the court staff, the drabants and so on who were issued with livery clothing for certain occasions (Usually yellow cloth with black decorations).

Gustavus himself did like black sashes with gold decorations.

but there is no evidence that his officers followed his lead.

The portrait above was painted by Cornelius Arendtz in 1625 and is a rare example of a Gustavus portrait painted "from life" and the clothing in the painting matches items recorded in the accounts of the Royal Wardrobe. The King's equipment is typical of what he prefered prior to his wounding during the battle of Dirschau (1627) with a magnificent shash, buff coat extensivly decorated with gold bands and rich lace cuffs and collar. He also wears armour in the shape of a black gorget with gold decorations.