"Austrian infantry uniform meltdown " Topic

Okay so I've finally started painting my 28mm Austrian army. I have F.-G. Hourtoulie's book "Wagram The Apogee of the Empire". Working from the illustrations in this book I have managed to paint up 4x 28mm battalion's from Nordmann's Vanguard in just three weeks.
But today I just happened to check my uniforms against the uniform guide supplied in the Perry infantry box and found their guide shows Beaulieu's 58th regiment has black facing while my book has Yellow. I then found a second book that also states the 58th had black facing. but this book also disagrees with the perry guide on other regimental facings.
In short should I/would you have a meltdown about this (72 figures)and change the regimment's name and therefore look for another formation at Wagram to base the army on or just go F%#k it their 58th yellow/ black or what ever the facings?

cheers

Bonjour,

Hourtoulle is wrong on that one, IR58 Beaulieu had black facings.

You can trust Acerbi's work on Napoleon's series
here
link
go to Military section, then organisation and find the Acerbi's articles.

All the best from Froggie's land

Gboue

indeed, Hourtoulle is wrong and his books have to be cross checked, espeically on non French units, see also Prussians of 1806
Beaulieu's facings were black, I checked it in the Miliätschematismus of 1805 and 1811.
The Perrys have it right there, in case you have any questions about regimental facings, I could check the Militärschematismus and I agree with gboue2001 that Acerbi's work is very reliable

cheers

Just to toss in two other sources, Pivka and Osprey also list the 58th with black facings.

Chill out. Open your favorite beverage, a favorite snack and relax. If it causes you stress, you can have that at work.

Rustymusket, you seem to dismiss such questions as the kind of thing no chap would admit, as part of a chat-up line, with a heterosexual girl in a bar.

(at my age…I wish)

But these things are important. Even if never resolved. My knowledge of Austrians is confined to ski slopes. yet. I share the poster's grief.

Once it was angels dancing on the head of a pin or transubstantiation (seriously, and you could be burnt at the stake, if you got it wrong )

". . . burnt at the stake if you got it wrong." My, how quickly that would thin the ranks if applied to wargamers, rules writers, and other self-appointed experts on militaria!

I think being burnt at the stake for painting the horse leathers on ancients in electric sky blue is probably reasonable.

As to the OP, leave it how you painted them, everybody knows they were briefly issued yellow facings and withdrawn a few months later.

David F Brown

I feel the OP's pain. I have a 28mm battalion of Austrians in light mauve facings and I have no idea what unit I thought I had painted there. I have a spreadsheet with Austrian facing and button colours and I'd picked out a number of units such that I had a blend of interesting distinctions. There's no light mauve faced unit there.

<shrug> Does it matter? Not really, it was going to be a fictitious force so the fiction just goes a level lower…

The *big* challenge for me with Austrians is what to use for white. I am far from convinced that creamy white is the right shade. Some natural wool is that colour but not all of it is and they would have bleached it using lactic acid from sour milk, or in the case of officers' uniforms they may have used sulphuric acid to do so as this technique was in use by our era. They then used pipeclay or chalk to whiten their uniforms further. Hence there is an argument for grey or even blue as the shade / base colour.

For my above try-out battalion I went with the Shep Paine technique. He considered there to be two main shades of white: warm white, which is pale green, and cold white, which is pale mauve. The highlights are then lighter shades of those. It works in 54mm that's for sure.