"Hessians in bear skins?" Topic

I made a slight error in ordering figures and ended up with British Grenadiers in bear skins.

Any chance a unit of German mercenaries in the AWI wore bear skins?

Your nerdy uniformology and/or sympathies are appreciated!

thanks kindly,

Bob

Look in the Mollo book, I believe there was a German unit with bearskins, they may have had a bag hanging off of it, like a SYW French grenadier.

cavcrazy: my hero! you just saved Christmas.

Brandenburg-Anspach. Picture 86 in Mollo.

Look up the discussion on these boards about 3 years ago

link

There is also the Anhalt-Zerbst Regt. Hessians in white!

Thanks Gnu2000, grbrt and PVT641! Much appreciated.

If you check the link provided above, our experts firmly shoot down Hessian bearskins.
However, I am firmly in the camp of "If I've already painted them from a reputable source", I'm not going back to do them over.
I'd really rather have Hessian with bearskin figures than using British grenadiers and painting them blue instead of red. So much is different, like the straps, packs and wings.

I refer the learned gentlemen to my previous response – so sorry folks, no furry hats for the Germans.

Bob -- you can never have too many British Grenadiers in your collection.

Paint 'em in red and move on with it!

You guys are so going to hate me when I repurpose my 7YW Prussians (Elite) as Hessians…

Oh no. I have no problem with that.

Would also love to see hessians grenadiers in bearskin.

I read once upon a time that a good rule of thumb for the bearskin question for grenadiers is that Roman Catholic countries used the bearskin, everyone else used the miter cap.

I have found over the years that pretty much sums it up nicely.

Why do Catholics hate bears? Is it a variant on .. Does the Pope 'bleep' in the woods joke?

Catholic states in Germany tended to follow Austrian practice.
Protestant/Lutheran states tended to follow Prussian practice.

And Austria was a Catholic country, Prussia a Protestant one…

Britain in the later C18th wasn't notably Catholic though…

Great Britain suppressed Catholicism as a point of fact.

Regarding grenadiers headgear, they did wear a cloth miter cap before and during the Seven Years' War/French and Indian War.

The change occurred with the 1768 Clothing Warrant. British grenadiers were wearing bearskins by at least 1770.

Britain in the later C18th wasn't notably Catholic though…

We're talking about German states and general tendencies. We're not talking about a fast rule for others.

And Catholic countries suppressed protestanism as a point of fact (to a much larger degree) – SO What ?

We're talking about hats, and where they were in fashion.

Brechtel198:

You are correct. The only Crown unit to wear bearskins in the SYW/F&I was the 42nd. Friends who do the 77th Highlanders cannot document bearskins wore by their grens.

It may have caught on as fashion previous to the Royal Warrant, or perhaps a cover to protect the clothe mitre cap. However, an inventory of the 60th Grenadiers at Fort Pitt shows no mitre cap or bearskins in the early 1760s. I also believe some British units may not have worn mitre caps either, just cocked hats and wings on their coats.

Now some of the French troops during the AWI did wear bearskin caps.

I'll amend the above statement. In the movie, Last of the Mohican's, the 60th Grens are shown as wearing bearskins as the costume designer liked the look. No doubt they were looking at the old Robin May Osprey book where Gerry Embleton said he was speculating on the uniform. Good enough for Hollywood. :-)

The staff of Last of the Mohicans went to the Company of Military Historians for uniform information and expertise, and then proceeded to ignore it.

When John Ford made The Long Gray Line at West Point in the 1950s the production staff asked the Department of Military Art and Engineering for uniform assistance regarding the French of War I.

The information was duly given and noted and Ford got angry because it wasn't 'colorful' enough.

Like you said, 'good enough for Hollywood.'

I, and some others from my 60th re-enactment unit, were hired on as full time extras for a whopping $75 USD a day, when we worked. We had to report to Asheville, NC, in May (1991). Dale Dye was running the military boot camp. Needles to say they crew knew nothing about the F&I period, drill, etc. We bailed in the end, though many friends went down to be extras at different times.

Funny, but the big scene they pitched us on of the 60th march to Fort Edwards got left on the cutting room floor.

I will also note that the Director's cut had more battle scenes in it than the theatrical release. That one sometimes appears on TV.

Grenadiers of the Black Watch (Murray's Highland Regiment) were reported wearing bearskin caps in the late 1740s. Whether it was a fashion picked up from the Austrians during the WOAS, we can only speculate. The Highlanders were arguably the British version of grenzers, and the 'wild man' image may have appealed to the Colonel.

To what extent the 42nd wore the bearskin grenadier cap in the field during the F&W, or the AWI for that matter, is another question.

I have read a suggestion that the adoption of the 1768 bearskin cap as Regulation may have been to promote a greater degree of uniformity when grenadier companies were brigaded together, in contrast to the rainbow efffect created by the embrodiered caps, which is an interesting thought.

The French army seems to have adopted grenadier caps, of fur, surprisingly late, during the WOAS IIRC(even though Vauban included figures with fur trimmed caps in his sketches). Whether before that French grenadiers simply wore bonnet de flamme forage caps for field operations, I don't know.