"Highland Light Infantry buglers?" Topic

Should be a simple question: Did the Highland Light Infantry have buglers at all?

I'm trying to convince Tony Barton to expand his Napoleonic range with what should be a simple head swap of Highlander heads onto Light Infantry bodies.

HLI wore light Infantry shakoes with a chequered head band didn't they, not highland bonnets? So no head swaps needed just a paint job.

Yes, HLI buglers existed. Like the rest of the regiment they wore Highland bonnets stretched over their shakos (I believe) so, as Vintage says, all you need is a paint job.

It is so much more complicated than that…

But only if you are a total anorak (a term that may not translate across the pond) all are wrong so far.

The highland bonnet was probably stretched over some kind of a former, but could never have fitted over the cap worn by Light Infantry Regts. Sorry VW….definitely wrong there.

Worse than that…last few days have taught me that no British headgear was called a shako until well after Boney was gone to a better place. It was called a cap.

Much evidence HLI had buglers. That is easy.

I have often asked if they had bagpipers in the field by 1815. OK, Courcelle and the Funckens very convinced they did, and many a pic before the kilt was lost……. I want evidence a lad wore the blue bonnet, the grey overalls and carried pipes at Waterloo…

Whatever the detail, I think this is a reasonable approximation of what you are trying to achieve Lion.

Not only were the caps of the light infantry not called 'shakos.' but neither were the drummers called 'buglers.'

The cap of the 71st was esssentially the knitted, milled, Highland military bonnet, including band of dicing, cocked in the form of an infantry cap. Hence the toorie on the crown, and the detachable peak secured with ties.

Perhaps your bugle should look something like this?

yes they had them but it would be a 'horn'

In the British army? French, Prussian, Austrian yes….but even there only after translation into "English"

Confess I tend to think of a horn as a circular thing, like on a Light Infantry cap badge or the German postal service…!

This is interesting.
link

The classic, 'coiled' modern bugle (see Dibble's post), as opposed to the looped hunting horn, would seem to have been adopted in the British army circa 1812.

@ 42 Flanker. & Deadhead;

There are contemporary paintings by one of the Dighton's portraying the HLI at Waterloo showing them with the bonnet cocked like a Prussian Feldmutze. Badge on the front and a tourie ( can't remember the colour.), and the peak.

There are also paintings/drawings of several Scottish Fencible units with bonnets cocked like a cap, but more cylindrical.

I've never seen a picture of a HLI piper in the grey trousers, but it strikes me as feasible in bad weather. The pipers were reputed to have kept full highland dress; but as pipers were unofficial at this point, and kept by the officers, they could probably have been dressed in any fashion. H'mmm. Mackenzie kilts, Feathered bonnets, Captured cuirassier breastplate; Hessian boots and hussar pelisse?

Shouldn't the bugler in the illustration above have buff belts? I've noticed this on several illustrations, but not in Haythornthwaite's 'Uniforms of Waterloo'. PS Dibble-were you ever at RHS?

I was referring to the British army at the time would have called it a horn. as in hornblower etc. It is a bugle horn of course but in soldier terms it is a 'horn' Of interest would be the fact that most would be 'musicians' and the instrument used Drum pipes horns etc would have been according to the task at hand. ie Horns are better when units are more scattered like cavalry and light infantry and drums of course will be useful in close order, and of course i woulddn't rule out bagpipes as this unit was Scottish! So for ceremonial use at the very least.

The term in the British context was 'bugle-horn' as seen for instance in Rothenburg's influential 'Regulations for the Exercise of Riflemen and Light Infantry' (Tr. 1798).

At the end of Rothenburg's book, he lists with the appropriate musical notation 'Signals of the Bugle-Horn in the Movements of Light Troops.'

In 'Journal of a Soldier' [71st] and '25 Years a Rifleman' [95th], which happen to be to hand, the instrument is always referred to as a bugle while 'horn' is reserved exclusively for a drinking vessel

Buglers were listed as drummers on the rolls and paid accordingly. They were soldier-signallers rather than musicians (the band), whose battlefield role was to evacuate the wounded.

Glencairn

PS Dibble-were you ever at RHS?

No I wasn't…I can't stand gardening.

Paul :)