Being a uniform and flag design service to wargamers and to the imaginary crowned heads of 17th and 18th Century Europe, especially of the Seven Years War period - now By Appointment to the Court of Saxe-Bearstein! (But please note that the uniforms and flags presented here are not fictional - they are genuine 17th and 18th Century uniforms and flags that are as authentic as I can make them from my sources.)
This is the relatively austere uniform of the kanoniere of the Prussian foot artillery; earlier, the other type of foot artillerymen, the bombardiers, wore a helmet rather like a flattened version of the fusilier helmet but this apparently went out of service in 1756. I might get round to drawing this one too as I rather like the unusual helmet and it survived in service until just about the beginning of the SYW! (The garrison artillery wore it for several more decades.)
This regiment was set up in 1757 to provide a permanent corps of men to assist the gunners in handling the guns in action. The uniform is very like that of the German gunners but with gaiters rather than the cavalry boots.
The Austro-Hungarian army was a multi-national force and the artillery were divided into separate German and Netherlandish corps, an arrangement that dated back to Spanish times. This is a gunner of the Netherlands corps, again with the cavalry boots and with lapels on the coat.
Or put more simply, an Austrian German gunner! The Austrian artillery managed to hang on to many of its ancient "craft" traditions well into the 18th century and the unusual names were part of that. The artillery also wore cavalry-style boots and the German artillery had a very curious arrangement of buttons on the cuff.
Well, it's been an even slower week on the template front than I thought; I really have had little time to spare this week. (I know I should have spun some exotic yarn about Tippelbruder; perhaps being chased through the streets by recruiting parties and so being forced to spend days taking refuge in the wooded hills around the town, drinking water from streams and chewing shoe leather, until they've gone on to some other unlucky town - but I'll leave that to your vivid imaginations to colour in... :-)) Tomorrow I'll be posting Austrian German and Netherlands Artillerymen, and probably a Fusilier of the Artillery Fusilier Regiment. It's not a great leap forward but every little helps (as a dreadful supermarket advertisement in the UK used to say). ;-)
It's going to be another slow week on the templates; or perhaps that should be "this is the new slower routine", real life having first call. Mmm... Anyway, I'm still working on the Hanoverian Horse Grenadier - those complex shabraque patterns are a pain to draw accurately, and the Highlander figure, which will be an entirely new figure, is still at the back of my mind. As a small but productive recreation I'm thinking of doing Austrian and Prussian artillerymen, who require far less work; infantry-style figures are so much easier and more relaxing, especially when the basic template is already drawn. We'll see how it turns out. I feel like pleasing myself at the moment, when I have so little time and energy. As soon as this starts to feel like work and not play, it naturally becomes very much less appealing!
Four out of the twelve Prussian dragoon regiments (all with lapels) had a rounded shabraque very like the cuirassier shabraque and this template represents them. Regiments 1 and 2 had more complex designs on the shabraque but this simple variant is specifically that of regiment 3 (that of 4 was slightly more complex). ImagiNation artists will be happy to include their own heraldry, no doubt! :-)
It's taken quite a lot of work this week but here at last is the Prussian Cuirassier Template. I've missed off the sabretache as it obscures the details of the coat tails; it's very similar to the pistol holster cover anyway so nothing new has been left off the image.
