This is one I have had sitting around for quite some time and have not uploaded for some reason. I have depicted the simpler central cartouche from the 1757 MS; some illustrations show palm leaves round that cartouche. It seems there were no colonels' flags, only the Ordonnance flags; the 1757 MS illustration shows only Ordonnance flags, for instance.
At the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 53 French infantry battalions were disbanded but it was decided to retain their compagnies d'élite as a corps called the Grenadiers de France. Organised in 4 brigades (= battalions) of 12 companies and numbered 40th in rank, the Grenadiers de France and Grenadiers Royaux had 8 battalions at Minden: "as fierce and terrible-looking fellows as I ever saw", said one British eye witness. At Wilhelmstahl 635 were taken prisoner by the 5th Foot and tradition has it that the 5th took their bearskin caps into wear.
Having only a short existence meant that the Grenadiers de France's campaigns were all in the Seven Years War, although they were often in reserve and did not see action.
They fought at or were present at:
1757: Hastenbeck, Hanover;
1758: Krefeld, Bork, Froweiler, Münster;
1759: Minden (Todtenhausen);
1760: Homberg, Sakenhausen, Göttingen;
1761: Duderstadt (Heiligenstadt), Villingshausen;
1762: Grebenstein (Kassel), Johannisberg.
Minden was their most famous action and there they suffered severe losses, mostly from the Allied artillery fire. Much more detail of their history etc. can be found on the Kronoskaf web page and in this account (in French): http://grenadiers-de-france.e-monsite.com/pages/historique-du-corps-des-grenadiers-de-france.html
And this was the uniform in the SYW:
Very handsome flag, David!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jon. :-) There is something about it, isn't there? Ove ron the Facebook SYW Gaming page it has had more likes than any flag I have posted, I think.
DeleteAll the best,
David.
Very nice, may even push the she French up the painting queue
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bill :-) Sounds good to me!
DeleteAll the best,
David.
it was a question being a lot of colonels from the disbanded regiments whose grenadier companies thay constituted the regiment . They all took it in turns on rotational basic to command the regiment
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed, but still curious that they had no separate flags for the colonels...
DeleteAll the best,
David.
That really is a lovely flag and superb work as always David:).
ReplyDeleteThanks, Steve. :-) Can't work out why I did not post it much earlier as I did it ages ago; if I'd known how popular it would be I certainly would have done! :-)
DeleteAll the best,
David.
An other beautiful flag and uniform David, fantastic thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteWillz.
Thanks, Willz. :-) Probably back to rather plain Prussian flags next; I'm near to the end of the Prague infantry flags now. Then I need to work on more of the WAS Austrians and most of the remaining flags are pretty complicated...
ReplyDeleteAll the best,
David.