1st Reichsarmee Template - Musketeer of the Hessen-Darmstadt Infantry Regiment

05.05.09 Coloured template added and both revised, especially adding the aiguillete hanging from the right shoulder.

06.09.07 This template now revised and improved!

I'm taking a little holiday from the mess of contradictory information that makes doing the French templates such hard going and starting the Reichsarmee templates with one of my favourites. This single battalion regiment was reckoned to be the best infantry unit in the Reichsarmee; Soubise called it "excellent" (Duffy, Prussia's Glory). Prince Georg of Hessen-Darmstadt was also the best general in the Reichsarmee; a former Prussian officer, he had left the Prussian service and joined the Reichsarmee at the command of his father Landgraf Ludwig VIII. For a sympathetic and detailed account of the travails of the Reichsarmee and the doings of the estimable Prince Georg in the 1757 campaign leading up to Rossbach, see Duffy's wonderfully readable Prussia's Glory. I'd happily ramble on about it here but I'm not sure I could do the tale justice without spending too much time and space on it.

Mollo and Knötel show 2 different variants of the collar on this uniform, very unlike the normal type of collar shown by Pengel and Hurt, so I've done two variants for those (like me!) who are niggled by these things; P and H's more conventional collar-type is on the left, the one in the middle is Mollo's and the one on the right is Knötel's collar. I've now revised some of the detail on this template and improved it slightly.

Does anyone have a good detailed image of the front of this regiment's grenadier mitre cap? The best I can find is the picture in Mollo, which is not really large and detailed enough for me. Please contact me via comments if you do and can let me have a copy. Thanks.

Next time I'll be back to the French German units, once I've got the Hessen-Darmstadt grenadier done.