"From 1550 to ..." Topic

From what date to when the pluderhosen were worn by the German mercenary infantry ?

From 1550 ? To..?

Earlier. The battle of Jemgum in 1533 reports that the losing Eastfrisian army left lots of raw lambswhool on the field that were used to bolster their trousers :-)

I would have thought that it was about 1550 to I do not know which siege of which city?

Puster,
I don't see how that is evidence for the use of pluderhosen for two reasons.
The first reason is that none of the surviving pluderhose were constructed with bolstering/filling/padding and the so called "Sture" costumes include 3 diffrent styles of pluderhosen including a set made for travel/more everyday wear. And the apperance of the Sture pluderhose matches the ones seen in Landsknecht artwork quite well so we can make good conclusions about the construction of Landsknecht pluderhosen. (Pictures of the Sture costumes here link For a detailed examination of the design of the Sture costumes see Janet Arnold who examined them down to the level of the stitching.)

The second reason is that none of the large number of drawings we have of Landsknechts show pluderhosen as early as 1530's, they don't appear in the images of Hans Döring from the 1540's and it is only with Virgil Solis and Jost Amman we see them as more or less universal among Landsknechts (though with variations in design)
(For well dated Landsknecht images see Matthias Rogg or Birgit von Seggern if you want academic sources.)

The raw lambswool could have come from a number of types of hosen that were in use in the 1530's. If we look at Vermeyen's Conquest of Tunis drawings he shows Landsknechts wearing hosen with a very padded look link
The Frisians could also have been wearing an early form of Trunkhosen which often do feature extensive padding to retain the fashionable shape. One of the Landsknechts do seem to be wearing a set in the Tunis image above and here is a surviving set in the Dresden collection which are from a bit later

Seems plausible. Contemporary depictions do not show Pluderhosen before 1550, though I thought it could be a local fashion quirk.

Paskal,
To try to answer your question it is hard to say for certain as the rich sources we used to have for the apperance of German soldiers disappear. Good images of soldiers become much rarer compared to the first part of the "pluderhosen period" but based on the images I have seen the pluderhose seem to begin to be replaced by simpler baggy breeches in the 1580's with so called venetian hose appearing in images from the 1590's as well as other forms of knee-lenght breeches copies from other nations soldiers in the years around 1600.

The reason for the disapperance of the pluderhosen could well have been economic, inflation was bad in the later half of the 16th Century and German soldiers wages lost much of it's purchasing power. This can be seen in the increasingly complex system of "double pay" in use, no longer was it a simply twice the pay of the common soldiers but rather a single regiment could have 10-20 diffrent pay rates for it's soldiers. The pikemen got most of the double pay which is perhaps why we still see some pikemen wearing pluderhosen in images from the early 1590's. Or perhaps the artist simply thought that the fashion looked nice.

Daniel S,

Congratulations and thank you for your post, there is however a siege where it is indicated that they were worn for the first time, I think it is written in the old MAA Osprey on the lansquenets, but I do not have more…

The Swiss pantallons of the Religon Wars, though much shorter, were also called pluderhosen !?

Had a look at the old Osprey "The Landsknechts" which claims that pluderhosen were first worn in at the siege of Magdeburg in 1553, only problem is that there was no siege of Magdeburg in 1553. I'd say this refers to the long siege of Magdeburg in 1550-1551 but author wrote the wrong year.

Pluderhose design was not static or uniform, at best you can seen clear trends such as earlier versions being shorter than ones seen in the 1570's and also had less volume. Much would depend on the wealth of the wearer, how much cloth could he afford and could he pay for the silk needed to make the largest ones. (Yet silk was also more prone to wear and tear when on campaign compared to pluderhose made of wool.)

I'd consider most of the hosen worn by the Swiss to be pluderhosen but they favoured a shorter style and also used less volume. The 1564 image on my blog link shows the diffrence though the Landsknecht pluderhosen are extreme for the year 1564, other images show much less volume in the hosen. On the the whole the Swiss seem to have kept much close to the style seen in the 1550's, for example this image from 1555 link

Yes Daniel S as explained on your blog where I often go to see the illustrations of Swiss during the FWOR (French wars of religion) the Swiss pluderhosen are shorter than those of the Landsknechts "… So the pluderhosen were first see after the siege of Magdeburg in 1553 until 1590.

Do you have links to other Swiss mercenary illustrations during the FWOR?