"Interpreting these illustrations" Topic

I've been looking at Tim Reese's "technical drawings" of French hussars, eg

link

and I am wondering if anyone knows how to interpret these? I.e. are they of a standard layout? The leftmost figure mostly seems to be an elite company man, but does anyone know whether there's a convention in these as to who's an officer etc?

You raise a point that has bothered me for years – I assumed the chap with the sword and no carbine was an officer, but never was sure and certainly did not seen to be always at the same place

Have you tried contacting Tim Reese? If you click on his "blue" name you'll get an e-mail address.

Jim

There is no 'standard' layout. With French cavalry you can usually identify the officers by their pouch belts (or lack of them). In the light cavalry the other ranks have plain white belts while the officers have something more fancy and without the carbine belt. (Sometimes these are covered by a leather protector with fancy buttons.) In the heavy and medium cavalry the officers generally had no shoulder belts.

Tim's prints are excellent but you need a little prior knowledge to make best use of them.

Oh yes, and in the light cavalry, the officers sometimes wore a colpack even though they were not in the compagnie d'elite.

Plus officers also had a lot of decoration on their sleeves and breeches which helped to indicate the rank.

Tim sells each theme for $30 USD so I guess that's where you find out who's who – the captions to the plates so to speak.

It doesn't really work for me as a model because I'm only going to need one regiment…

Personally I would use the Fort illustrations on Gallica (which are free) or the ones in Joineau's various books.

How on earth did I forget Rousselot, when I typed the previous post!

Rousselot:

Will post the links to Fort's work later

Gallica items:
Uniformes des régiments de hussards français…. I. – 1er-6e hussards / aquarelles par René Louis.
link
Uniformes des régiments de hussards français…. II. – 7e-14e hussards / aquarelles par René Louis
link
Uniformes des trompettes de hussards français, 1787-1813.] / Aquarelles par E. Fort
link

Price of Essling, out of curiosity are those Russian characters at the top of the Rousselot plates?

My set of Rousellots don't have that!

Tom

@ Davout

Thanks mate, really helpful.

For bonus points: French hussars are often described as wearing "sky blue". Is this a translation of "bleu ciel", meaning "sky blue" which is light blue, or of "bleu celeste", meaning "heavenly blue", which is mid-blue? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?

Morocco leather shoulder belts, white fur trimmed pelisses in black-trimmed regiments and gold or silver cuff rank insignia, depending on regiment lace colour are the usual give-aways. Oh, and note the ones with red boots!

Combinations may be regimental or idiosyncratic, requiring case-by-case research for accuracy.

@Garryowen,

Yes – they are the only ones I have seen that have the basic description on the various plates.

Other Ernest Fort entries:
Uniformes des hussards sous la 1ère République, le 1er Empire et la Restauration. Part I. – 1er à 4e hussards
link
Uniformes des hussards sous la 1ère République, le 1er Empire et la Restauration. Part II. – 5e à 13e hussards
link

@4th Cuirassier,
Here are the colour charts I posted some while ago but I (couldn't find the thread to link to:
1796 to 1803
link
1804 to 1812
link

@ Prince

Superb resource! So there was bleu celeste – but there was also bleu celeste foncé! Who knew?

The charts were taken from Michel Petard & Rigo's "La Cavalerie Legere du Premier Empire" by Histoire & Collections