"Bavarian Infantry 1809" Topic

"I wanted to post something that I have been editing for awhile and not so much research based. Below can be found a work in progress of Bavarian infantry and Austrian infantry in 1809. The Bavarian cornflower blue is slightly darker than many paint their miniatures, but thanks to the help of von Winterfeldt on TMP, I was able to see the actual uniforms and paintings by von Kobell and Albrecht Adam from the period. First we have the Bavarians. The plates were very heavily edited from the great website centjours.mont-saint-jean.com One of the best sources for uniforms on the Bavarian Army from 1800-1815 are the Cantler Plates…."

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Armand

The Cantler series had been published on Napoleon Online and translated to the Napoleon Series page at link

And here are some more images of the Bavarian troops in 1809 on the uniform portal of Napoleon Online: link

Greetings from Berlin
Markus Stein

A disappointingly darker blue. Reality ruins good fantasy.

(smile)

Armand

Mine will most definitely continue to sport the cornflower blue!

Which is a heresy!

nice to see that Bavarians are now painted in a more realistic blue mirroring what they did wear then, instead of the baby blue.

I like the darker blue.

Tango, thanks for the repost! I moved over to Facebook, but I need update the blog with another French officer I have been working on.

A votre service mon ami…

Armand

I've often thought the Bavarians to be the ideal wargame army because they can be used on either side.

If anyone asks my Bavarian uniforms faded in the sun…

they did not serve in Spain

So often we do paint figures in what looks better, but proves not to correspond to museum relics.

French drivers of the Artillery, or supply, train had a much darker blue rig than usually shown. See the extant coat in La Musee de l'Armee.

Same with French orderly officers, or trumpeters of the Imperial Guard cavalry. Sky Blue is surprisingly dark.

The excuse of course is "scale effect", the smaller the figure the lighter the shade needed. It is some excuse anyway.

As for serving on either side, so did the Prussians, the Austrians, the Saxons, the Spanish etc at one time or another.

Thanks.

Armand

The relative advantage of the Bavarians is that the uniform didn't change. So your 1800 figures work for Leipzig. The trouble with the Austrians is that this only works for 1809 and on.

Although 1812 is a great opportunity to pit Austrians against Russians.

True…!

Armand

"If anyone asks my Bavarian uniforms faded in the sun…"

At the end of the Franco-Prussian War, a Bavarian infantry battalion marched back to its depot and, despite being spotted whilst still some way off, attracted virtually no crowd to welcome them back as they marched through their home town. Why? Because a combination of sun, rain, snow and sweat had altered their cornflower blue uniforms to a light purple and nobody recognised them!

Having seen surviving cloth samples myself in the Army Museum in Ingoldstadt, I can confirm that they are much darker than any of us tabletop warriors paint them. If you want accurate depictions, ignore Cantler, Knotel, et al, and look at the military paintings by Kobel who was one of the Bavarian court painters, who was contemporary and most importantly, painted from life.

fading in the sun, didn't know that the Bavarians fought in the desert.

They made an unrecorded appearance at the battle of the Pyramids and kept their uniforms until 1814…

A genuine challenge for wargamers as there is a desire and a need to differentiate Bavarians from French.

In reality, as i understand it, French uniforms could be so dark as to be almost black. But "we" paint our French (and Prussians etc) a darker shade of mid blue (normally). Try painting 15mm infantry in a blue so dark it's almost black and see how well that turns out.

So. With Bavarians, "we" aim for a lighter shade (otherwise they're just the same – and we know in reality everyone refers to their cornflower blue so it must have been distinctive)

Hence colours closer to sky blue

Is it accurate? No. But what is in this miniature hobby of ours

I know it's boring but they really weren't lighter at all, they really were "just the same". They still look cool due to the helmets.

I don't have any Bavarians but when the time comes they'll be in a similarly dark blue to my other troops.

Cheers,
John

I believe that, as an economy measure (those corn flowers were not cheap, you know), the Bavarian infantry adopted dark – ie Prussian-type – blue during the WAS/SYW period. They only reverted to the traditional mid-blue in the early 1800s, having previously worn it from about 1700 (before that it was mainly grey) to 1730-something.

Which does rather beg the question as to how long something needs to be worn before it becomes "traditional"…..

Not "in the early 1800s", but the later 1800s. So not in the Napoleonic era.

Cheers,
John

Surviving bolts of cloth (seen by me, close up) in the Bavarian Army Museum in Ingoldstadt suggest otherwise…..

The uniforms that survive, as well as contemporary paintings, suggest a much darker blue. I have never heard of these bolts of cloth. Can you tell us more?

Cheers,
John

I think it was the Napoleon Series (where they hosted the Cantler paintings) that they showed photographs of them. They, and the surviving uniforms in the display cases, certainly were dark-er than usually depicted, but not as dark as say, the Prussian infantry, or British artillery.

There is a link here in this thread, but I fear it has expired.
TMP link

Je pense que comme dans l'armée française, des échantillons d'uniforme fabriqués dans la capitale (Munich) étaient envoyés aux différents régiments.
À charge pour eux de les faire confectionner dans les manufactures locales.
D'où, obligatoirement, une différence de couleurs entre les régiments d'une même armée.
À l'époque, les uniformes n'étaient pas confectionnés de façon centralisée dans le même atelier.
Il devait donc y avoir des bleus plus clairs, des bleus plus foncés, etc
Tout ceci est NORMAL pour l'époque !