Solre Regiment WSS

[archiduque]

Hi all!!
I've completed the rest of this French unit of the War of Spanish Succession (without base) .The flags are handpainted.Figures of Front Rank.
Hope you like !













































Saludos
Rafa

[OSHIROmodels]

Wonderful 

Intrigued by the grey flag though, I'm sure it's historical but never seen something so bland before.

cheers

James

[flags_of_war]

Wonderful 

Intrigued by the grey flag though, I'm sure it's historical but never seen something so bland before.

cheers

James

Pretty much standard for French Regiments up until after the French Revolution. Some would have different Drapeau colonel with Fleur De Lis on them but the majority would have the plain white cross on a white field.

Great painting Rafa. They are great figures to paint

[archiduque]

Thank you both, and thanks  FoW for the excellent explanation

Saludos
Rafa

[Captain Blood]

Wonderful job Rafa 

[JArgo]

Beautiful work.

[Arthur]

Pretty much standard for French Regiments up until after the French Revolution. Some would have different Drapeau colonel with Fleur De Lis on them but the majority would have the plain white cross on a white field.

What Iain wrote. Each French infantry regiment's first battalion officially carried one white drapeau colonel and one coloured drapeau d'ordonnance In the case of multi-battalion units the second, third and fourth battalions had drapeaux d'ordonnance only.

Rafa, if you allow me a bit of uniform pedantry, the cuffs should probably be green instead of red for the period. Croy-Solre was a Walloon regiment in French service and we know it had grey coats with green cuffs in 1692 and 1702. The red cuffs came later, possibly in 1711 when the regiment became Beaufort or maybe even later still between 1711 and 1730 (the ordonnance flag also changed after Beaufort became colonel). Solre being a Walloon unit, it's also unlikely that its musicians wore the king's blue livery : they almost certainly wore the Croy-Solre livery, which I don't think was recorded.

Yes, I know, I should get a life...  

[archiduque]

Arthur my dear friend I think it is not so , first was Solre , after in 1711 de Boufflers and after in 1712 de la Valliere. According to the book " From Pike to Shot 1685 to 1720 "
You can also check it on this great french website:

http://royalfig.free.fr/index.php?/category/35

uniform and flag. As for liveries, as you've said it, no information.


Saludos
Rafa

[Malamute]

Lovely brushwork, just about to order some of these figures

[Arthur]

Arthur my dear friend I think it is not so , first was Solre , after in 1711 de Boufflers and after in 1712 de la Valliere. According to the book " From Pike to Shot 1685 to 1720 "
You can also check it on this great french website:

http://royalfig.free.fr/index.php?/category/35

uniform and flag. As for liveries, as you've said it, no information.


Saludos
Rafa

Ah, I see where the problem lies. From Pike To Shot is not always reliable for WSS French uniforms because it largely uses Lienhart & Humbert as its primary source - though in Grant's defense that was probably all he had to go on when he wrote his book some 28 years ago. Not all its contents is wrong, mind you, but a fair bit of it is largely anachronistic.  

Lienhart and Humbert's Les uniformes de l'armée française depuis 1690 jusqu'à nos jours was published in 1897 and while it is perfectly valid for post-1750 subjects, it is not to be trusted for the uniforms of Louis XIV's reign. The authors obviously didn't have period sources for the 1690-1714 period and so used post-1750 cuff colours instead. One telling detail is the frequent reference to collar colours for a period when French military coats did not have collars. Most of Lienhart & Humbert's uniform info was recycled in Fred & Liliane Funcken's lace wars volumes, and since the Funcken books proved very popular their content has become virtual gospel among wargamers and provides the basis for a a great deal of the info that can be found on the net.

I'm afraid the Royalfig uniform schematics are no more reliable than Grant. I had a quick look at the plates and I spotted a few egregious mistakes in a matter of seconds: the Berwick regiment with black cuffs instead of yellow ones, the Auvergne regiment in violet cuffs and collars whereas Auvergne had grey cuffs until 1753 - a sure sign that Lienhart & Humbert were used here - just to name a couple. Gilles Boué does not state his sources so there is no way to determine where he got his information and if he used the correct one, which is a major methodological issue.

Solre's green cuffs can be taken for granted until at least 1711 : the 1692 Etat général des troupes de France lists the regiment with green cuffs, as does the Etat des troupes de France en l'année 1702 ten years later. Both manuscripts are preserved in the French military archives in Vincennes and are the essential and most reliable source for 1690-1710 French uniforms. The red cuffs are given by Lienhart & Humbert - along with an anachronistic red collar - and it is not clear when they were introduced but this is likely to have happened either in 1711 when the comte de Beaufort became the regiment's colonel or after the WSS.  

Grant also has the regiment's genealogy wrong, by the way. The correct one is as follows, based among others on Lemau de la Jaisse :

1688 : Régiment de Solre
1711 : Régiment de Beaufort
1721 : Régiment de Boufflers
1727 : Régiment de la Vallière
1741 : Régiment de Guise

The best one-stop shop for French uniforms remains Robert Hall's Flags And Uniforms of the French Infantry Under Louis XIV 1688-1714, available from Baccus in CD format. Not only does Hall list his sources thoroughly but he also discusses them when they contradict one another.

Right. Sorry again for the long post and for being such a pedant. As I said earlier, I definitely need to get a life    

  

[Jeff965]

Bloody lovely painting all the same 

[Arthur]

Bloody lovely painting all the same  

Being a big fan of Rafa's work, I certainly won't argue with that  

[archiduque]

Thanks lads for the comments!!

And maaaaany thanks Arthur for the excellent info!!!!
It is difficult to trust a historical source in concrete.I also have the Fred & Liliane Funcken lace wars volumes ,but  they are not very reliable in some stuff too .

Saludos
Rafa

[Arthur]

You're welcome, Rafa. I just hope I didn't come across as an insufferable know-it-all (this is one of my favourite historical periods and a pet obsession of mine, so I can get a bit carried away sometimes).

The army of Louis XIV can be a tricky subject, to be honest, one that requires juggling with sources that are sometimes contradictory, especially as reliable period info can be a bit thin on the ground.

In any case, even top authors are not above making the occasional mistake : I had to edit my original post as I had followed Robert Hall in saying that Solre had become Beaufort in 1709. I double-checked afterwards and it turned out that Hall had got the date wrong, the comte de Beaufort only becoming colonel two years later in 1711. And Hall is an acknowledged authority on the subject, which proves that even the very best can experience the occasional mental fart    

[Captain Blood]

Lovely brushwork, just about to order some of these figures

You are? Why?
(Smugglers still?)