Alternative Saxon Infantry Uniform

Here is an alternative interpretation of the "standard" SYW Saxon infantry uniform, without collar, with a different cuff style and with hat lace as shown in e.g. Mollo "Uniforms of the Seven Years War".

Second Saxon Infantryman - Grenadier 1756-7

This Saxon grenadier of 1756-7 is wearing the later Prussian-style mitre cap; earlier grenadiers wore a low cap very like that of the Prussian fusiliers. Apparently the Prussian fusilier design was taken from the earlier Saxon grenadier style so both were filching from each other! After 1757 Saxon grenadiers abandoned the grenadier mitre and reportedly wore white lace on the tricorne to distinguish them from the musketeers.

First Saxon Infantryman - Regiment Prince Friedrich 1760

The Saxons won the Poll and so here is the first of the Saxon Infantry. There seems some dispute about many of the details of Saxon uniform; here (specifically for a musketeer of the Regiment Prince Friedrich 1760 serving with the French army) I have followed Wolfgang Friedrich's 1998 work, Die Uniformen der Kurfürstlich Sächsischen Armee 1683-1763. I can also fairly easily do variants that cover the other interpretations of the Saxon uniform. Major differences in my sources are in the buttons on the cuffs, the collar and the lace on the hat. If anyone has definitive information, please let me know and refer me to your source.

War approaches...

As war looms large over Tippelbruder, offers of help have flooded in from others opposed to the tyranny of Stagonia. Both the Soweiter League and Hesse-Engelburg have pledged troops to defend the town and we await details of the troops which Saxe-Bearstein will be able to commit to the impending conflict. At a tense meeting of the Town Council of Tippelbruder last night all present vowed to resist the tyranny of Stagonia, should the present animosity escalate into war, as most fear it will. The general council were addressed by the great orator and patriot (and pie shop proprietor) Herr Adolf Flegelruck whose stirring speech concluded: "We shall fight them in the forests, we shall fight them on the lakesides, we shall fight them in the streets. We shall never surrender!" The meeting concluded at 9.35 and refreshments were served in the Council Chamber.

Trunkenbold Freikorps

The staff artist with the Tippelbruder Allgemeine Zeitung has produced this drawing of the uniforms of the Trunkenbold Freikorps, so that all citizens meeting them in the woods or the local alehouses can recognise them and make them welcome with friendly words and offers of food and drink.

P.S. Lock up your daughters...

Heightened tension in Tippelbruder

From the Tippelbruder Allgemeine Zeitung, 1st August 1757: "Sabre rattling and threats from the court of Stagonia over alleged insults to their king Maurice by that upright and noble citizen David Linienblatt have led to a state of high alert in Tippelbruder. The Town Watch are now manning barricades at all entrances to the town, the drawbridges are routinely kept raised (despite protests from many merchants who are feeling most inconvenienced), and muskets and cannon have been issued from the town armoury to the town militia for the first time in over 30 years. It is believed that the Freikorps of Count Hans Trunkenbold von Misthaufen is spending the summer in the woods around Tippelbruder, allegedly for the sake of their health; this may be only a coincidence but it is public knowledge that the Count is cousin to David Linienblatt and their presence, as well as a promise of aid from Saxe-Bearstein in the event of hostilities, is helping to maintain good morale and public order in the town."

And the winner of the Poll is...

Saxon Infantry! It's a surprising winner but as it's only a matter of time before the others are done too everyone who cast a vote will ultimately be happy, I hope. Next will be the Highlander followed by the Russians and trailing in at the very end of the field, the hussar. So, the plan is to do 1 or 2 Saxons this week and the Highlander next; we can then see how long things take to develop in the real world of making templates and not having much time to do it! The Highlander will be an entirely new template so will of course take longer to do. Thank you to everyone who voted; it was a near run thing (apart from the poor hussar, who will now crawl off to some lowly dive in Gin Alley to get monumentally blitzo...).

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.