‘Can we not fight without dying in tinsel?’ Plus new pages

Hostile reaction to the “muffeteer” styling of the newly converted Hussar regiments of the British army is knowingly and entertainingly discussed within Ben Townsend’s chapter on “The Rise, Wobble and Triumph of the Hussar Craze” in his excellent Fashioning Regulation, Regulating Fashion, Vol 1, published earlier this year by Helion. (Incidentally, if you’re into British uniforms of 1800-15 and you haven’t bought this book, do so. Right now. The only thing better will be Volume 2.)

This bizarre episode in military couture has much to offer researchers in historical gender studies, appearing to some as an outburst of “effeminacy”, and “foreign” to boot. But there are other interesting strands, too. Here’s a prolonged rant – or at least some selected passages – that I happened across while trawling the papers, by “AN OFFICER … and a decided enemy to extravagance”, submitted to the Editor of the Tyne Mercury, Northumberland and Durham and Cumberland Gazette for 28 January 1806:

Good God! are our Colonels, and even some of our Generals, fit for nothing but to be master taylors? Instead of studying military tactics, languages, or the geography of their country, they are inventing the pattern of a cuff or a pantaloon, or admiring (like a woman), their head-dress in the glass, at the same time ruining the fortunes, expectations, credit, and character of their inferior officers …

On [a light dragoon] officer joining now, he must provide himself, (can it be believed?) with no less than four different head dresses; namely, the real useful, but at present discarded and unfashionable helmet; a most expensive hussar cap; an immense cocked hat; and a fine superbly laced foraging or watering cap … how truly ridiculous it is to see our modern light dragoons strutting about with immense heavy dragoon cocked hats, like sparrows without tails …

… I will next proceed to the jacket, pelisses, and pantaloons. Look at an officer in them. Why, his fortune is on his back, or they are not paid for – one or the other. He is nothing but lace before and behind, up to the elbows and down to the knees … Then to be completely an hussar, an officer must have gold lace and embroidered cartouch belts and boxes, sabre or sabel tashes, and belts, expensive hussar sashes, two or three swords and sword knots, a pair of spurs for every pair of boots, shabrackes and rich horse accoutrements; and some regiments (can it be credited!) have their regimental pipes and tobacco pouches, and even the very whiffing of their tobacco is regulated by the movement of the commanding officer when they are on the parade, according to whichever flank he moves to; the same as eyes right, eyes left, it is, whiff right, whiff left …

… an officer now on joining one of those regiments, must have a ready money fortune of 3 or 400 guineas at least, to enable him to equip himself, or he will know the consequence in a short time … An officer of the old school would never comprehend, and would be astonished at the recapitulation of the jawbreaking names of our new fashioned foreign frippery. Can we not fight without dying in tinsel?

Let us resume our helmets like English dragoons. Let us cast off our foppery. Let us be armed for war, not for parade and show … Let us banish effeminacy far away … Then we shall not be ruined in our fortunes and our character … and we shall cast away all our superfluous articles, or make a present of them to the theatres. What else are they fit for?

The Hussar pipe craze is well documented, but was there anything behind the allegation of “whiffing” by numbers on parade? As for the charge of extravagance, Ben tabulates in his book numerous prices extrapolated from the Meyer tailor’s ledger that easily substantiate this: an officer of the 7th Hussars obliged to part with £57 in 1810 for just a jacket, pelisse, waistcoat, pantaloons and overalls, let alone all the rest of his necessary kit, would have to fork out £4,522 in today’s money, according to the Bank of England’s handy online inflation calculator. Nor were the auxiliaries immune to foppish posing, as suggested by the rather nice etching above by Colonel Thomas, Lord Grantham, of the court dress of the Yorkshire Hussars.

Speaking of Yorkshire, there are two more new pages on this site; they cover the North Yorkshire Militia of 1759-1820 (quite extensively), and (a bit more unevenly) Lancashire yeomanry and association cavalry of 1797-1828. The North York page touches, among other things, on the vexed issue of the regiment’s legendary (or urban legendary?) green clad “riflemen” of 1795. Were they or weren’t they? It’s a niche topic, but there’s no niche so tiny that no-one takes an interest.

A dress coat of the Grimston Hussars

Here’s a rather beautiful item I can’t resist posting, which bobbed up unexpectedly during some recent routine browsing. It was lot 56 in the vast and remarkable historic fashion collection of California collector Helen Larson, sold a year ago by Charles A Whitaker Auctions of Philadelphia, and was, I think, the single military item in the collection, most – or all? – of which seems to have been bought by the FIDM Museum of Los Angeles. Described simply as an anonymous “red wool military coat”, it is in fact an example of that rather overlooked garment, a light cavalry officer’s dress coat, and the buff facings and lining, the silver and buff braid, and the crown and “GY” buttons tie it incontrovertibly to the Grimston Yeomanry of East Yorkshire, the 1803 revival of the earlier East Riding Yeomanry detailed on this page. [Click to enlarge all images.]

When the light dragoon field uniform was radically replaced by a jacket and shell in 1784, the officer’s dress coat remained as prescribed in 1768, though now in dark blue. This oddity was ironed out in 1788, when a new dress coat was introduced; a fine drawing of an 11th Light Dragoons example of 1798, in the Welch and Stalker pattern book at the V&A, shows the new style to have been a version of the 1784 jacket, but with longer skirts and full double turnbacks edged with two rows of braid. (For the texts of the 1784 and 1788 orders, see Hew Strachan’s indispensable British Military Uniforms, pages 112 and 115.) This was certainly an update, but meanwhile the officer’s jacket had moved on to the 1796 closed “hussar” style, leaving the coat still a step behind the fashion curve. Two other drawings in Welch and Stalker, both for yeomanry dress coats of 1801 and 1803, show that the final version of the coat used the richly laced and buttoned jacket style front, but keeping the full skirts, with those curious three branched pendant ornaments introduced on the 1784 jacket.

And that’s what we have here. A skirt ornament (a silver star between script “GY”) has gone, and the scarlet is patched here and there, but it’s still a breathtaking item: the heavy silver braid, interwoven with buff, is particularly impressive, and on the cuffs and turnbacks the double edging is laid onto a scarlet “galloon” to show a scarlet light, which is real quality. It’s the only surviving garment I know of for the 1803 Grimston Yeomanry, or “Grimston Hussars” as they also liked to be known. (It could even be the very coat referred to by William Vaughan, tailor to Captain Thomas Grimston, when he enquired if the new “scarlet regimental frock” should “be made Hussar fashion, same as the last.” ) Is it the sole surviving light cavalry dress coat of its type?

Offhand, I’m really not sure how long these coats lasted in the regular light cavalry; for a start, they seem to have been abandoned by regiments converting to Hussar status. I have a vague recollection of an order prescribing them to be worn with cocked hats, breeches and shoes for “court” occasions – or was that for riflemen? Same thing, I guess. Feel free to set me right.

King’s German Legion revisions

My KGL cavalry pages have seen some fairly extensive revision, correction and expansion lately – particularly those for the Hussar regiments and the Light Dragoons of 1813, which, though I say it myself, are now looking fairly comprehensive. Or as comprehensive as the evidence allows. If more information arrives, it will be added. The menu for these pages is in the sidebar to your right, or up the top and drop down.

As pages here in WordPress Land are not tagged, this post is just a way to throw some tags and images at Google, hopefully to allow searchers to discover the pages in question. Otherwise, please ignore this and carry on …

Some thoughts on the King’s German Legion

My overwhelming interest, as posts here show, is in the auxiliary forces of the Georgian period, but recent discoveries have sparked a new interest in the dress of the King’s German Legion.

I’m in the process of laying out some aspects of this in a set of pages here, beginning with some thoughts on sources, then moving on to look at elements of the dress of the Legion in the light of those.

It seems to me that it’s a matter of unravelling some of the received wisdom, revisiting some primary sources and trying to take a fresh look. If and when new information comes along, the pages will be amended. And I’m always happy to be proved wrong!

So far, ten pages: on sources, the Line Battalions, the 1st and 2nd Light Battalions, the early Light Dragoons, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Hussars, the “Heavy” Dragoons and the later Light Dragoons. Artillery and Engineers to come in due course.

Links are just to your right, at the top of the side bar, under “Pages”, or use these:

page1: some sources

page 2: Line Battalions

page 3: 1st Light Battalion

page 4: 2nd Light Battalion

page 5: Light Dragoons 1803-7

page 6: 1st Hussars 1808-16

page 7: 2nd Hussars 1808-16

page 8: 3rd Hussars 1808-16

page 9: ‘Heavy’ Dragoons 1803-13

page 10: Light Dragoons 1813-16