Copplestone Chahar Mongols

[Sir Rodney Ffing]

I am just about to prime a unit of twelve Chahar Mongols and am wondering how to paint them.  The long coats have shoulder boards, which suggests to me they are wearing some form of uniform, although that seems unlikely.  I have found photos of some painted examples on the Lost City of Carcosa blog, where they are all wearing blue coats, white furry hats and an orange sash.  The painter said the clothing was traditional and "as described" but I couldn't see where the description came from.

My other Mongol units are in grungy reds, greens and browns, and I had intended to do the Chahars the same way.  However, that wouldn't look right to me given the shoulder boards, so I am stuck.  Can someone help me out please?

Thanks

[ts]

Go to
http://www.kolchakiya.ru/uniformology/Ungern_div.htm
and use Google translate

[Mark Plant]

Are you painting them as the Mad Baron's (or equivalent)?

Because you can always shave the shoulderboards off if they are not going to be fighting for some Russian outfit.

[Nogbad]

Conventional wisdom is that they were the baron's favourite troops (stands to reason as both they and he claimed kinship with Genghis Khan) and so he gave them a proper uniform. His colour was yellow so yellow shoulderboards and hat crown. I read somewhere that Chahars favoured red as a coat colour (while Buryats favoured blue) but personally I think red and yellow tend to clash - as if that mattered to them! - and blue works better. Orange sash looks good too

[Ignatieff]

Mines are deep red coats with yellow shoulder boards and hat crowns. They look rather good and always fight rather well

[Sir Rodney Ffing]

Thanks chaps for some great suggestions there. 

My Chahars are indeed destined for the Mad Baron's service, and I only hope they fight better than the rest of the Mongol horde, who proved to be a rather brittle and ineffective rabble on their one and only outing so far. 

Torn between red and blue, as the link to the Russian site ts posted suggested clothing was looted from captured Chinese towns and either colour was feasible (plus a rather fetching purple if I understood correctly). 

[Lord Raglan]

Purple would be striking.

I went with various shades of moroon for the Baron's favorites.

[giles the zog]

Hi,

My books are in storage, as are the Chahar Mongoils, so I cannot confirm my source material currently.

My most likely sources would have been from one of Hopkirk's books, Lattimore's and or photos I have from a friend whom went to that region on holiday.

As others have suggested, this might be a moveable feast of uniforms and colours due to the disruption of supplies etc.

The King In Yellow.

[Mark Plant]

OK, so I found this.

The largest Mongolian unit in the Asian division was the Mongolian division of Prince Sunduy-guna, which actually consisted directly under Ungern and served as an escort*. According to Ossendovsky, the riders of the division were dressed in red robes with yellow shoulder straps, on which a stencil was applied in the form of a swastika.

This information is partly complemented by the French historian V. Gerson, who claims that the shoulder straps were light yellow and the swastika was embroidered. The rest of the Mongol detachments under the command of Tseven-Tergun, princes Baljnyam Bayar-guna, Luvsan-Tseven, Dugor-Meren, Darih-lama and others who submitted to Ungern did not have a uniform form, continuing to wear national robes.

* "convoy" is not a convoy, it is an escort or bodyguard unit. It's not just auto-translate that gets this wrong either.

and this

In general,due to Ungern, the Asian Horse Division acquired a rather exotic look. The most recent testimony to this was left by Colonel V.Yu. Sokolnitsky -- the chief of staff of the Partisan Non-Cossack squad of the Gorno-Altai Region under Ataman A.P. Kaygorodov, seconded to Urga to coordinate actions with Ungern. On May 23, 1921, he caught up with the division, which had set out on the march to Transbaikal. “The troops were marching in brilliant order, and I somehow involuntarily transferred my thoughts to the good old times." - he wrote. - "The alignment was like in a parade. It was not delayed. A long column of cavalry and artillery powerfully left behind it a mile, stretching to the unknown ... The bright clothes of the regiments: Mongolian, Chinese, Buryat - ruffled my eyes. ”

It's auto-translated from "Symbolism of the Asian Horse Division by A.A. Karevsky, and A.V. Lebedeva

You can find it here: http://a-pesni.org/grvojna/bel/a-simvaz.php

It's quite a hard read, and you need to check the original Russian on a lot of the proper names and specific terminology in particular. I can help with some bits.

Apparently the ethnic Russian officers weren't happy about being put in Mongol uniforms and continued to wear Russian ones. The Buryat and Kalmyk officers didn't mind however. The officers were given bashlyks (not sure if the Russian type or some Mongol equivalent) in red for staff, Green for Tatars and Yellow for Tibetans. This seems to be the old Tsarist pattern: Moslem troops were almost always given green as a distinction colour and Buddhists (and anamists) were given yellow. 

[Sir Rodney Ffing]

Mark, that is really helpful, thank you!