SYW Hanoverian Horse Grenadier 1763-style

After many trials and tribulations, here is a Hanoverian Horse Grenadier. It is a slight cheat, as it is in fact the uniform worn from 1763 onwards by the combined Horse Grenadier unit created by the amalgamation of the old guards cavalry units, and is not the early Seven Years War uniform. I finally had to admit defeat on the zigzag pattern on the shabraque of the early uniform, which I simply could not get to look right after much struggle. It is amazing how tricky some of these patterns can be to get right.

There does seem to be some dispute about the uniform worn by the earlier Horse Grenadiers; the contemporary illustration in Niemeyer and Ortenburg depicts a uniform without lace around cuffs, lapels and buttonholes for the early uniform, whereas in Mollo's SYW uniforms book or in e.g. Preben Kannik's "Military Uniforms of the World in Colour" the early uniform is shown with the lace.

Hopefully Jeff of Saxe-Bearstein will now be happy!

All templates now updated to 256 colours

And all future templates will, of course, start as 256 colours! Now that's out of the way, I can hopefully do some more creative work and finish the Hanoverian Horse Grenadier.

With the newer versions of the images with their 256 colour palettes dropping them into a graphics program and colouring them in should be easier. I've found that one of the easiest and most intuitive programs is the free version of Graphics Gale http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/download.html where if you load one of my templates into it it clearly shows you the entire range of 256 colours available and, using the fill tool, you can easily select a colour and fill the required area. Quite a number of graphics programs I personally find *very* unintuitive to use, especially with my templates.

SYW Hanoverian Dragoons Template 2 - 256 colours

SYW Hanoverian Dragoons Template 1 - 256 colours

SYW Hanoverian Horse Template 256 colours

As I can't insert these in the right sequence, they'll have to be put here; they are not new but the Hanoverian cavalry templates with which I had such fun trying to post them some weeks ago.

Converting the templates to 256 colours

With 6 votes [now 9 on Monday 23.07.07; 11 by Tuesday 24.07.07] in favour of converting the templates to 256 colours and not one against, it is a clear majority for the motion. :-) I've started converting them but it will take a while to get the job finished and post them all up on the blog. The next new templates to be posted, hopefully in the coming week, will be the Horse Grenadier for Saxe-Bearstein and perhaps the Highlander - haven't decided on that yet. ;-) I rather like the idea of doing the Saxons, a favourite of mine - British liking for the underdog, perhaps, as they had such a rough time at the hands of Old Fritz. Then perhaps some Russians will follow - and possibly a new, improved hussar but of which country first I'm not yet sure. Anyway, we'll see.

Update Tuesday 24.07.07 - I've uploaded 256 colour versions of the templates back to the Prussian cuirassier. I'll do the rest in batches as soon as I can.

Second Update Tuesday 24.07.07 - I've now uploaded 256 colour versions of all the templates back to the Austrian Dragoon (first posted 28.06.07). The final 256 colour templates will follow soon; now I'm for dinner and bed!

Prussian Horse Artilleryman

Here's a gunner of the Prussian Horse Artillery, pre-1762 without the hat plume.

The image now has a 256 colour palette, making it easier to colour in with a simple Paint-style program without the need for further conversion. The poll on palettes is still open for another 6 days but with 2 in favour of a 256 colour palette and 1 don't know ;-) I hope I'm not "jumping the gun" by starting now.

Kanonier of the Prussian Foot Artillery

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.)

Austrian Fusilier of the Artillery Fusilier Regiment

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.

Austrian Netherlands Artillery Büchsenmeister

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.

Austrian German Artillery Büchsenmeister

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.

Coming Friday 13th...

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). ;-)

David.

Another slow week...

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!

Another Prussian Dragoon Variant

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! :-)

SYW Prussian Cuirassier Template

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.

A flattering review...

I'm sure the old Prussian officer corps would disapprove of my mentioning it (didn't Ferdinand of Brunswick refuse to nominate a single officer for an award in the SYW on the grounds that it was simply their duty to behave heroically?) but Russell Gregory's interesting 6mm SYW wargaming site, with photographs of beautifully painted 6mm figures and tutorials on how to do it, has a very favourable review of NBA here: http://syw6mm.googlepages.com/july.htm It's certainly good to see people liking what I'm doing... :-)

I have hundreds of SYW Austrian and Prussian 6mm figures which I bought 20 years ago and I still haven't painted a single figure! I just don't get on with figure painting, I'm afraid. Perhaps I should have offered to swap templates for painted figures. ;-)

David.

SYW Austrian Croat Template 3

And here is the last and simplest of the Croat template variants, worn by the Broder and Peterwardeiner Regiments.

SYW Austrian Croat Template 2

The second Croat template is the simpler uniform of the Creutzer and St Georger Regiments.

SYW Austrian Croat Template 1

Here's the first of a few possible variants of the Croat uniform - this one was worn by the Carlstädter Likaner and others. It stands out as nowhere near as elegant as the usual SYW infantry uniform!

A slow few days...

Certainly on the finished template front it has been slow but "real life" has been busy, and made more frustrating by a bad cold, back trouble (must be carrying all the heavy kit round the template shop in Tippelbruder), bad sleep and consequent tiredness. Ho hum. Some progress has been made on the Prussian cuirassier template, though, which has proved tricky as the cuirass would not fit any of the current cavalrymen and one has had to be redrafted to fit into it. He's still not finished. Then I've been fiddling with making a detailed Hanoverian mitre cap, with all the heraldic trimmings - again, a time-consuming job, not yet finished, as well as Prussian monograms for cuirassiers' shabraques and sabretaches. So things are moving behind the scenes... even if from the imaginary country point of view, most of these things are not terribly applicable! I just like the authentic detail and it has been less strenuous than doing complete templates.

SYW Prussian Dragoon Template 2

And here's the second Prussian dragoon template, without lapels.

SYW Prussian Dragoon Template

Here's the first of the Prussian heavy cavalry, a dragoon (with lapels ).

Hidden in the drawing cupboard 3

And finally the Prussian grenadiers with the Prussian cuff...

Hidden in the drawing cupboard 2

The Prussian fusiliers with the Prussian cuff...

And hidden in the drawing cupboard are...

Prussian musketeers, fusiliers and grenadiers with the Prussian cuff. I'd done these some days ago but hesitated to put them on the blog, thinking no-one was especially likely to want this particular variant. Well, as luck would have it, Hesse-Fedora today sent a courier saying they were desperate for these templates and the courier was under orders not to leave the premises until he had them in his eager (if somewhat grubby) hands. A little arcane magic on the infernal machine to convert them into useable items and he has now gone off a very happy man who had to wait far less time than he imagined. No doubt en route he will tarry for far too long with a few jugs of ale and a waiting wench in some tavern, and yet he'll still arrive earlier than expected. Everyone will be happy! The fine reputation of the Tippelbruder Template Shop will spread yet wider - oh joy... ;-)