Cuirassiers and carbines?

[Clone of Undave]

I got myself a box of Perry French heavy cav from Salute for my French Peninsular Nappies. Apparently the only regiment of heavy cav present in Spain was the Provisional 13th so it looks like I'll be doing Cuirassiers. My question is; did the Cuirassiers carry carbines in the same way as the Carabiniers did? It's a bit hard to tell from the pictures on the box whether I'm supposed to put them on both variants or not. Any ideas?

[Cubster]

Yes, they had carbines and the 13th Regt had blue-grey collars, turnbacks and cuffs with blue cuff-slashes (ie, the little tongue of material the cuff buttons are on was blue like the coatee with blue-grey piping round the edge).

Incidentally, since horse equipment and such is a pain to find good source material for and books like Ospreys are necessarily limited in the amount of regiments they can depict (espeically for armies with such enormous variety like the French) I can thoroughly recommend picking up a pair of superb books that cover almost all uniforms, for all units, in all armies of the Napoleonic Wars. They are out of print but you can still pick them up pretty cheaply on eBay. They are called 'Arms and Uniforms - The Napoleonic Wars', parts 1 & 2, by Liliane and Fred Funcken. You get full uniforms in picture form and text description with such oft-ignored stuff as horse furniture, trumpeters and undress uniforms.

Hope this helps.

[Clone of Undave]

Thanks for the speedy reply. Apart from the different helmets was there any actual difference between Cuirassiers and Carabiniers?

Also was the bugler's coat green in all regiments like on the box art?

[Cubster]

Not so much. Other than the helmet differences you mention, the coatees on the Carabineers were white, of course, as opposed to the French blue of the Cuirassiers, and the horse equipment had similar minor differences, but really they were just converted into cuirassiers in 1806 and continued as such despite the name.

Yes for the trumpeters after 1812, when they converted to green coatees with seven yellow, red-piped chevrons up each sleeve and the same pattern repeated on five stripes down the front at the buttons.

The helmets were the same as the troopers except with white horsehair instead of black.

Before 1812 they had coats in the same colour as the troppers' facings (ie. blue-grey for the 13th) edged in white, French blue facings, no chevrons on the arms and with white stripes down the front at the buttons. Helmets the same as already stated. The horse cloths followed the same pattern, being the same colour as the troppers' facings, edged in white (obviously the horse was grey).

Now, I stress, this info comes from my sourcebooks, and other people may have differing info.

[NTM]

Slightly different details given here;

http://empire.histofig.com/-Cuirassiers,225-.html

I would be inclided to go by the details on the Histofig site rather than Funken. Funken were perhaps the best available when published 30+ years ago but they have shown to be lacking in many areas since.

Incidentally the 13th Cuirassiers are oft cited as having worn tunics made of local brown cloth in Spain.

[Cubster]

Yeah, in truth Funcken do contain the odd minor error, so if Histofig have it different I'd also trust them first!

[TheGreatMarquis]

The definitive book on the cuirassiers has to be Volume Three of Cdt Bucquoy's "Les Uniformes du Premier Empire" which Historex Agents used to sell years ago and which I last saw on sale at the Invalides museum in Paris. The illustrations show the 13th with carbines and illustrations 74 and 75 show cuirassiers in local brown cloth baggy. almost mameluke-style trousers. The text states that most of the cavalry in Spain wore these.

There is no mention of brown coats, unfortunately but if you want a different appearance one of the cuirassiers has a beard, which the text suggests was not unusual in Spain!

Hope this helps. The Bucquoy books are invaluable if you can get hold of them. They reproduce literally hundreds of uniform cards based on contemporary or near-contemporary illustrations.

[uriah_heep]

just for something different why dont you do the spanish cuirassiers

[Comte Michel]

There is a VERY good uniform reference book called Uniforms of The World (Army, Navy and Airforce Uniforms 1700-1937 by Knotel, Knotel and Sieg which is well worth getting hold of if you can find a copy. It's a little short on illustrations but contains an incredible amount of detail, especially about regimental variations. Used in conjunction with, for example, the Funcken books it covers just about everything you would want to know about Napoleonic uniforms.

The one I have is an English translation published by Arms and Armour Press in 1980 - I was lucky enough to pick it up from a second hand shop. Before that I'd had to resort to inter-library loans to get hold of an older edition, in the original German....

The Funcken books are very good but they lose something in the translation from French, so it's always best to check them against a second source.

Also FYI the Bucquoy books always used to be on sale from the shop near the Lion Mound at Waterloo. Quite expensive though if I remember right

The trumpeters you see illustrated in green jackets with red and yellow lace are wearing something known as Imperial Livery. As stated by Cubster it came in in 1812 and superseded the use of reversed colours.

[Invisible officer]

The Cuirassier Regiments got the Carbine mod. Year IX in 1812, before they had only a pair of pistols Mod. Year XIII.

The differences, apart from the arm itself, are the bandelier worn as a carrier and a shoe for the barrel.

The 13th, formed in 18o8, are the former 1st provisonel regiment (1er Régiment provisoire de Grosse Cavalerie) , formed from detachements from other Regiments that continued for some time to wear the uniforms (or parts of it) of the parent units. (1st, 2nd and 3rd Cuir. and 1st and 2nd Carab.) But late 1808 this would have ended.

It was the only Cuirassier Regiment that fought in Spain and we would assume that the men got some sort of carbine before 1812 , just because there was little "heavy" work for the big brothers in Spain.
But De Gronville from that Regiment wrote in his mémoirs that in 1812 he had to led a troop à pied to France to get horses and het states: "On donna des fusils et des cartouches à mes Cuirassiers et on les chaussa avec des espadrilles". So we must assume that they had no carbines before 1812, the year of the introduction in all Regiments or that this detachement got infantry muskets to be better able to defend themselves on the walk to France. The later is not very probable since the carbine was issued with bayonet for dismounted service.

The 13th got his distinction colour dark red (lie de vin) but we should never forget the problems in Spain. The greater part of the unit was in rags or replacement dress made locally from brown Spanish cloth.

The fantastic book Napoleon's army 1800-1815 by Lucien Rousselot , Andrea Press 2010, has a very good set of colour chips with the French Uniform colours, including the lie de vin. But it shows only the dress that should be worn, not actual campaign dress! Haythornwaite, Uniforms of the Peninsular war 1807-1814 shows a nice brown clad 13th Trooper in 1810. Bucqoy shows a lovely man in blue but with brown trousers and an enormous net full of fodder at the back of the saddle.