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I can't help you with the issues but I'd treat the Bill Boyle material with a great deal of caution as a lot of the info it provides is either erroneous or anachronistic. It was a gallant attempt and Boyle did the best he could with the sources he had at hand but a lot of the uniform details he describes are simply wrong.
French Infantry liked to melee and the 'Fury of France' dates from this period. When it came to defending or prolonged fire fights, they tended to wilt.
Pikemen were unarmoured.
The Maison Du Roi (gendarmes) wore red or blue coats. The only other cavalry Regiment that wore red was the Royal Roussillon. The guards’ horse furniture was black. Cavalry often wore cassocks with livery.
French infantry were mostly in grey (or gris blanc) with red, white or blue also used.
Dragoons coat and cuffs combinations included; blue blue; red blue; green red; and yellow red.
French Royal Regiments (both mounted and infantry) could be either in dark or light blue.
Tilly, the commander of the Catholic League (Bavarian) Army, always said, “a ragged soldier and a bright musket". The old warrior monk Tilly was one of the most successful generals of the war and his ragged (poorly dressed) soldiers made short work of the better-uniformed Protestants
Doing this in detail would require a very lengthy post (which I'm afraid is going to ensue anyway) so I'll stick to a few examples to illustrate the problems in Boyle's methodology. The parts on the Swedish, Danish, French, Catholic League and Imperial armies should be sufficiently telling, I think. For the Swedes and Danes, click of the link below and scroll down to Daniel Staberg's (posting as Gustav A) remarks on the matter : http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=26111 Regarding the French, which I know best, the bottom line being that most of the info given by Boyle actually dates from the 1670’s and 1680’s, when the French army finally went into uniforms. The phrase furia francese was actually coined in 1495 after the battle of Fornovo and referred more to cavalry tactics. French troops certainly did favour aggressive tactics during the TYW and were known for their élan, but they could equally hold their own in defense. Not systematically. Suits of armour were standard issue for pikemen (Jacques Callot’s engravings from 1632 show pikemen in full armour, based on his personal observation of the French troops who had just invaded his native Lorraine). What happened though was that like most armies of the late 1630’s and 1640’s, the French gradually lightened the amount of body armour worn by their infantry - or rather pikemen lightened their load by getting rid of everything that was deemed unnecessary and too cumbersome. Tassets were the first item to go and as time went by even the back and breast would occasionally be ‘lost’. Helmets tended to be retained as head protection was deemed both sensible and necessary. However, on paper at least, armour remained officially worn by French pikemen until the pike was abolished in the late C17th. Only applicable to the 1660’s onwards : during the TYW, the Maison du Roi cavalry wore either full cuirassier armour (befitting its elite status) or the lighter buffcoat/back and breast combo. Incidentally, aside from one company of guard gendarmes, the Gendarmerie de France was not a part of the Maison du Roi, though it had precedence over the line cavalry. Royal Roussillon never served in the TYW since it was only raised in 1652 as Montclar. It was originally a foreign (Catalan) unit of horse and did not obtain royal status until 1668 when it became Royal Roussillon. Its distinctive red coat would not have been issued until 1671 at the earliest. I have no idea what Boyle means by ‘cavalry wore cassocks with livery’ : a sleeved or sleeveless buff coat worn with or without back and breast plates was the standard dress for French cavalrymen before 1660. The cloth jacket worn underneath the buff coat would not normally be seen except for the sleeves and does not appear to have been issued in a uniform colour. Only trumpeters and kettledrummers wore cassocks or coats in the livery of their mestre de camp. Gris-blanc did not become the standard coat colour for French infantry until the 1670’s. French infantry regiments were not uniformed during the TYW, the responsibility of clothing the men falling on each company commander. Captains were supposed to purchase enough cloth every year to have it turned into suits of clothing for their men in they company. The material was acquired on the basis of availability, not colour or uniformity. If purchases were made on a regimental basis, which was probably common enough, a unit may well have presented a more or less homogeneous appearance for a while, but the rigours of campaigning soon put paid to that. Undyed cloth was probably often used because it was cheap, meaning that brown, grey or off-white coats and breeches would be commonly seen. If they had the materials at hand, the men would try and brighten their array by adding coloured ribbons. The Weimarener who entered French service in 1635 were probably the exception to that rule : some of Duke Bernhard’s veterans may have clung to the uniform colours they had worn while in Swedish service, notably the yellow regiment which may still have been in yellow coats as late as 1639. The are the uniforms worn in 1680 by dragoon regiments Dauphin, Colonel Général, D’Asfeld (previously Audigeau) and La Lande. None of these units existed before 1668 and there are no contemporary references to dragoon uniforms for the 1635-1648 period : like the infantry, they received suits of clothing every year and the colour of their coats would most likely depend on what was available. No. Royal cavalry regiments (i.e units whose colonels were princes of royal lineage) did not wear blue until a royal order of November 1671 instructed them to do so. The only ‘royal’ foot regiment wearing blue was the Gardes Françaises who did not adopt this uniform until 1685. Post 1670, royal infantry regiments would wear grey if they were French, and other colours if they were foreign units. For instance, Royal Italien had brown coats, Royal Roussillon (which had started out as a Catalan infantry unit) red, etc. On to the Imperial and Catholic League forces now, though i'll try not to go into as much detail here. Put succinctly, this is bullshit. Tilly’s oft-repeated ‘quote’ is completely spurious and first appeared in Walter Harte's 1759 biography of Gustavus Adolphus, which is more pro-protestant propaganda than actual history.Period documents show the exact opposite, with Bavarian and League regiments being issued with suits of clothing of a uniform colour and Tilly (along with Anholt, his second-in-command) consistently insisting that his troops be properly clothed and paid. There were times when the Catholic League army was indeed ragged and poorly supplied (notably between 1628 and 1630, when Wallenstein was doing his nefarious best to ensure that most supplies went to his own army rather than Tilly’s), but on the whole, Tilly’s troops were never the ragamuffin horde of cutthroats they’ve sometimes been made out to be. Eyewitness accounts of Breitenfeld insist on the fact that the appearance of Tilly’s army was far neater that Gustavus Adolphus’. As for the ‘better-uniformed Protestants’, many actually weren’t uniformed at all. Christian IV’s Danish-German army was at least partially uniformed, notably its Danish component, but the armies of Ernst von Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick (a.k.a the Mad Halberstädter) were not (it is now acknowledged that the references to the ‘blue’ and ‘red’ regiments in Mansfeld’s army only refer to the colour of their flags). A full discussion of the uniforms worn by the Imperial army and the army of the Catholic League would require a very extensive discussion and an even longer post that would most likely bore everyone to distraction. Suffice to say that as far as we know, the most common coat colours were blue, red and grey. Yellow and green do appear in one account (some of the suits of clothing captured from Catholic League stocks by the Swedes in Würzburg after Breitenfeld were in those tinctures) but I’d like to see proper primary sources for the use of these colours in Wallenstein’s army : blue, red and grey appear to have been once again the most commonly used coat colours (Wallenstein is known to have purchased large quantities of cheap ‘Venetian red’ - i.e a dull brownish red - cloth in the early 1630’s to issue it to some of his regiments). But Wallenstein’s ability to fully equip and supply his large forces is probably largely overrated as the sheer mass of troops he raised over very short periods of time must have stretched his admittedly considerable resources to their very limits - and there are several period eyewitness accounts of Imperial troops being shockingly ill-clad and poorly equipped anyway. Incidentally, the Austrian infantry did not adopt pearl grey as its standard colour until the late C17th, just like the artillery did not go into brown coats until much later (artillerymen were not military personnel then anyway : they were hired civilian specialists). As for Wallenstein’s guard lancer unit, it is now strongly suspected that its appearance was largely invented by K.A Wilke (though red and blue certainly were Wallenstein’s livery colours). Ultimately, Boyle's biggest problem is that he never quotes his sources, which is critical when dealing with the TYW given the amount of fallacies and misconceptions floating around both on the net and in book form. Hope this answers your query somewhat and once again sorry for the long rambling post.
As explained above, Boyle's remarks on uniforms all seem to be derived from secondary English-language sources and are not to be taken at face value. His use of the word "cassock" for both the French and other nations is particularly suspect. Regular French infantry musketeers did not wear King's Musketeers style cassocks, their annual (barring any logistical problems) issue of clothing consisting a coat/jacket, one or two shirts, a pair of breeches (or two), stockings and shoes. Buff coats were very expensive items and would only have been worn by those officers who could afford them. Period accounts often mention officers wearing capes and cloaks of an unspecified type, but that's about it when it comes to cassocks. Civilian cloaks were probably worn by at least some of the rank and file in cold or foul weather, but I don't think any period document mentions cloaks as standard issue items, meaning that those that were worn were privately acquired or looted. Keep in mind that Thirty Years War armies were notoriously predatory while on campaign and that looting was considered standard military practice by pretty much everyone, the French included. Despite his best efforts, even Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden never really managed to prevent his German protestant troops from looting the areas they moved through, and every shrewd politician endeavoured to keep his army as far away as possible from his own lands as he knew that bands of soldiers were worse than a plague of locusts. . The tabard-style cassock you mention was indeed something that would be used by bodyguards or personal retinues : given their elite status, the men would wear their own quality clothes underneath as befitted gentlemen, with the cassock effectively being the uniform. The King's musketeers are the most famous of these units, but other personal life guards probably wore similar garments (cardinal Richelieu's guards certainly did). When it comes to figures, there is no proper French TYW range currently available : Foundry do a couple of suitable musketeer packs in their TYW range (TYW003 and 004) and the halberd-armed sergeant in pack TYW001 wear a type of breeches popular among French troops in the 1640's. Redoubt also have eight decent French "mercenary" miniatures in their ECW range (CW 100 to 107) but that's about it. Cavalry are easier as most late TYW figures will pass muster : for Rocroi, you need mostly lightly armoured figures for the chevau-légers who only wore buff coats and (sometimes) back and breasts by that time, full cuirassier amour being only retained by a handful of bodyguard units (and even they may have lightened their armour to a greater extent than we think by then). The Redoubt ECW range is very useful in that regard because of its flexibility (you can mix and match legs and upper bodies and have a wide variety of separate heads, including a couple that are more specifically French). The only downside is that the Redoubt horses aren't that great, unlike their riders. Outside of the very large (30/36mm really) mounted Redoubt figure from their Three Musketeers sub-range (code TM 30), I am not aware of other musketeer on horseback miniatures for the period (there are plenty of dismounted swackbuckling types in other ranges though). North Star do a very nice pack, but the coat they wear under their tabards firmly places them in the 1670's rather than the 1640's if you care about such things. If I were to do a TYW French army, I'd wait and see what 1898 Miniaturas intend to do once they complete their superb Tercio range : it would make sense for them to tackle the French next as they were the Spaniards' main enemies. The company actually post here on the LAF and are easily contacted via their facebook page, so it might be worth asking them if the French are on the cards. As Paul says, Pete Brown of TAG did mention that he and Nick Collier would get to the French eventually, but that was a few years ago already and I wouldn't hold my breath for them (which doesn't mean they won't come out at some point in the distant future)
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Topic: Bill Boyle's article on Thirty Years War uniforms... (Read 7445 times)
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April 23, 2024, 06:30:31 PM