Not standard French Napoleonic uniforms

[The Gray Ghost]

the regulation uniform was blue coat, red turnbacks, collar and cuffs with white lapels for Line but were there any variation to that.

[capt.carson]

If you are asking about standard line regiments then they are many eyewitness accounts and/or mis-interpretations of day to day campaign dress which would vary much from full dress. For example local cloth would be used to replace worn out garments. Regulation changes took time. Colonels like to express themselves.

Alternatively, should you be bored of painting blue then there are a number of units that can break up the sea of blue but these tend to be from the period prior to 1812 when much of the foreign regiments became the higher ordinals of the line.

• Regiment de la Tour d'Auvergne wore green faced light blue jackets
• Regiment d'Isembourg wore light blue faced yellow jackets
• La Legion Irlandaise wore green faced yellow
• Regiment de Prusse
• Regiment de Catalogne wore white faced blue
• LA Legion Potugaise wore brown faced red

From recollection these wore light infantry uniforms but they were seldom deployed as such.

Hope that helps

[Emir of Askaristan]

Check out the plates of the Otto Manuscript which shows some very unusual variations, especially for regimental sappers and others we'd include on our command stands. The book "Napoleons Soldiers" by Guy Dempsey contains the plates and there are a few examples online

Then of course there are the white uniforms issued to the French from 1806, but withdrawn supposedly after the slaughter at Eylau.

Croatian troops wore green and the Legion Hanovrienne wore red.

Hope that helps
 

[abdul666lw]

The Légion Irlandaise was in green:

[a 'political message': the 18th C. Wild Geese{1} wore red as (theoretically) part of a Jacobite ('British' rather than specifically 'Irish') army in exile]


Later the Croats were also in green



The Légion Portugaise had a very peculiar uniform including the barretina which looked like the ancestor of the 'Waterloo shako'.

(Btw were they allies like the Spaniards of the Division de la Romana, or fully part of the French army? What did their flags look like, Portuguese or French? In the former case you could add the Italians, Neapolitans, Germans of the Confederacy of the Rhine... many of them were not in 'standard' blue)

The Légion du Midi (ex-Piémontaise) also wore brown, a color traditionally associated with Italian (and Corsican) units in French service


The infantry of the Légion Hanovrienne was in red


The short-lived Régiment de Westphalie had white coats



The Bataillon de Neuchâtel (the 'Canaris', allies rather than members of the French army actually) wore a yellow coat



The Swiss infantry regiments of the French army by tradition had red coats with various facings (line infantry cut; seemingly the bearskins of the grenadiers were slightly smaller than the 'French' pattern and not always bore a full front plate).



Same for the Bataillon Valaisan, Swiss Valais, independent by then, having signed a 'capitulation' with France on the traditional Swiss model.


Note that the 'light infantry' uniform was not given to all foreign infantry regiments: mostly to the 3 'old' ones: La Tour d'Auvergne, Isembourg, Irlandais and later some of  those recruited in 'Southern Europe'.

Plates from Histofig: Napoleonics


As French infantry units in non-standard uniforms which served at least in Spain the Gardes de Paris had one regiment in green coat and one in red, and the Chasseurs de montagne were entirely in brown.

(See also the very informative 1789-1815 site; and The Napoleonic Wargamer)


---
1: e.g. the Franncaighibh, 'Frenchmen' of the 1745 Jacobite version of 'Óró, sé do bheatha abhaile': the 'Irish pickets' sent by Louis XV.

[fastolfrus]

And if you go for the Egyptian campaign you can get almost any colour you want.
Plus camels.

[The Gray Ghost]

Neat
Thanks guys