"Portuguese Cavalry" Topic

Hi,

I've just started painting some Portuguese cavalry and my sources indicate either white, blue or grey breeches were worn.

My question is does anyone know whether these colours were mixed throughout each regiment or different colours were more common to the districts the cavalry recruited from. I'm happy to use some artistic licence but if there is some evidence of specific colours for specific regiments then I will go with that.

Best wishes to everyone for the new year ahead.

Gav

Add in brown and you are good to go. During the War in Spain many units had mixed pant colors . As the wore out they were replaced with local cloth. Hence the variance of colors. And yes they were mixed . .. especially on campaign when items wore out due to usage, etc. This also goes for most of the armies in Spain ( Brits, Spanish, French, etc).

I would suspect white for summer/parade and blue (or grey) for winter – this was a common split for most armies of the time. Generally, cavalry legwear wore out less frequently than that of their infantry counterparts, not least because the areas in contact with the saddlery or the horse were reinforced.

Hi
I decided to go for one predominate colour for each regiment with a few brown thrown in (thanks for reminding me Tyler326) and white for the officers.

I'm painting up the 4th and 10th Regiments based on the orders of battle for Fuentes de Onoro.

Supercilius maximus, you make a good point about the summer and winter. I think I remember reading something similar concerning a different nation.

Thanks for the help guys, it's really appreciated.
Gav

The "white for summer, dark for winter" theme was common to pretty much all European armies of the time.

Another reason that cavalry would have been less likely to have an assortment of colours is that they were smaller units and thus easier to supply with material of one colour.