"Corsicans for the French, all brown, Naples?" Topic

Guys, I have seen a few uniform plates for troops with shako's but all brown uniforms. None of the plates are in English so not for sure "who" they are.
As the title suggest I think they fought for the French and were part of either Naples or Italy????
Any one know about these guys and can help me get unconfused, at least on this issue:) Thanks in advance.

Travis

For what it's worth, the only brown uniformed troops I know of are Portuguese Cacadores (Light Inf.) but I'm unsure what their headgear was.

Many of the Spanish troops of General Bonaparte's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, wore brown uniforms.

link

Could possibly be Austrian Landwehr. Some of them wore brown uniforms with shakos. Although they would be more likely to have white or blue trousers.

Depends on how strong the French connection is.

Tirailleurs Corse maybe? I seem to remember them in brown?

gamer1, if you can transcribe the caption under one or more of the plates, some us can read Foreign.

But yes, Portuguese cacadores, some Austrian landwehr, almost all of Joseph's army, the Tirailleurs Corse, some I think of the New Levy Spanish and also the Miguelletes (Sp?)--Catalan militia/conter-guerilla units in French service. (Whether they actually ARE French depends on how seriously you take Napoleon's annexation of Catalonia to France.) Hmm. Now that I think of it, maybe some early Neapolitans, too.

You've got to give us more to work with.

No way they are late Neapolitan. Murat was too flashy to have his troops wear brown.

If they have light blue facings they may be the Legion du Midi, an Italian light infantry unit.

the French Army had in brown indeed the piemontese Légion du Midi, also the Black Pioneers Battalion, the Portuguese Legion with british-style shako and the Corsican CHASSEURS battalions
some French infantry (and dragoons) regiments from Spain were also clothed in brown

but the Battalion of TIRAILLEURS CORSES in BLUE and not at all in brown despite a repeated and repeated common usual mistake

Good point, Lilian. I stand corrected. Jim, I did say EARLY Neapolitan. In fact, I think you'll find that when the Black Pioneers became Neapolitan infantry, they initially still wore that brown uniform. It sticks in my mind there were others among the early Neapolitans, but I'm not rummaging through old magazines until gamer1 here gives us some text to work with.

I think Mserafin hit it with the Legion du Midi, which was a unit of Italian origin serving with the French Army, but in a brown uniform. That unit was consolidated into the regular French Army at a fairly early date, but were still around in the early phase of the Peninsular War.

Units clothed in brown the French Army had also
the Pyrenean Mountain Chasseurs de Montagne Battalions, French Miquelets version of the Spanish Migueletes
and the despostats soldiers of the Compagnies d'Infirmiers Nurses Companies