Hasty Hussars Hussle off to Historicon!

Here are the last of the Prussian units needed for Historicon (well, Czar Barry has a few Prussians to paint this weekend, too). As you might recall, as I started to paint them, I discovered that the bag labelled "Prussian Hussars Command" in fact contained Line Dragoon troopers. Oops!  A quick order and message to Old Glory, and I had the right pack within 4 days (the extra Dragoons will eventually become more Landwehr Cavalry). Meanwhile, I painted up the horses (using some from the Dragoon bag - same castings), and the 10 troopers, so I really lost no time at all, and they actually were finished in record time this past weekend.

Hussar Regiment #3, 1st Brandenburg".  All Prussian Hussars had black belts/leather work.

A few details of their uniform required consulting several sources. First, the colors of the barrel sashes. Hofschroer in his Osprey says the colors of the dolman and the lace, but Nash and others say the color of the facings and the lace. Indeed, the illustrations in his book by Fosten show the girdles as facing and lace colors as well. Diotto the color for the wings and the trumpet cords for the trumpeters - from everything I could find, it looks like those should also be in the colors of the facings and the lace, and so I have painted all three of these items in those colors. 

In most Prussian Hussar regiments, the fur lining of the pelisse was white for troopers, black for NCO's, and grey for officers. Officers lace was in the metal corresponding the men's lace color, and their sashes were always in the silver-mixed-with-black common to all Prussian officers. So they appear here. 

The sabretache was red with border and Royal Cipher in the l;ace color. Prussian Hussar regiments post 1807 did not have standards, but Old Glory kindly supplies them with standard bearers anyway. For my previous regiment, I just left those figures as being lance armed, but after consideration I have  decided to give them an unofficial "guidon" flags to carry, rather like those carried by some Prussian Uhlans. I debated what colors to use (the Uhlans carried different pennons/flags for each regiment, until changing to all black over white in 1815 after Waterloo). At first I thought of using the colors of the corresponding Uhlan regiment where applicable, but that really didn't make any sense, so I settled on the Dolman color over the Lace color for that regiment. Perhaps not completely defensible historically, but at least simple and not utterly implausible!

The second unit is Hussar Regiment #10, "1st Magdeburg". It was one of the "new" regiments raised after the start of the "War of Liberation" in 1813. The unit had its origin as the "Elbe National Kavallerie Regiment", which began recruiting in November, 1813. It was officially converted into a Regular unit with the aforementioned title in May, 1814 (Other sources say May, 1815). 

I have painted this unit according to Nash, with white fur for the troopers. Hofschroer says they were one of the units that adopted black fur for all ranks in 1815 (Nos 2,7,8,9, and 12), but again that change may well not have occurred until after Waterloo. 

In any event, the white fur looks snappy with the yellow, light blue and green of the rest of the uniform of the "Green Hussars". Once again black fur for the NCO, and grey for the officer (all ranks would have black fur after the transition). 

The highly speculative guidon in green over yellow at least looks good! All of the Hussar regiments had grey pants and black lambskin saddle covers with red "wolves teeth" edging.

There is a guide to the uniforms of all of the Prussian Hussar regiments after 1807 previously posted  here on my blog.

Some modern day German re-enactors wearing the uniform of the Elbe National Cavalry Regiment. Black fur  - oh well! The flag they are carrying is that of HR #10, but was issued in 1815 after the Hundred Days campaign had already ended. HR #10 fought at Wavre.