That site used to sell them for Biiiig bucks! Things have changed.
I read that almost no French Hussars ever wore a pellise and a dolman together. They either had one or the other… but the re-enactors always wear both!
Also, speaking of unwieldy bonnets- There's a great old newspaper report and accompanying cartoon about the time the Duke of Wellington was made to wear a huge bearskin hat (Queen Victoria loved her officers in the latest gear), and it caused him to be embarrassingly blown right off his horse in front of an enormous crowd!
There's another story about him having to wear tight breaches and a sword and all that guff while visiting the royal yacht, and getting all tangled up half way up the ladder on the side and then falling back down into the dingy in an embarrassing heap…
He never liked wearing uniforms very much apparently (heaven knows why…), but he HAD to when visiting Victoria. Poor bastard must have been pretty old and frail by then.
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I read that it wasn't a bearskin but the huge ostritch plumes on his bicorne that blew him over and the Iron Duke wasn't the only officer who ever tripped over his sword while boarding a ship. There were several generals while boarding for the Crimea. There was specific sword practice that if you didn't watch one would be tripping all over the place. Same with those long floor length gowns ladies wore. One carried or swung the train just right to avoid falling over it. Something my wife discovered while wearing an Elizabethan gown several years ago.
As for pelisse and dolman, some were obligated by dress regulations to wear both especially Napoleon's Guard Chasseurs. Officers and aides often wore both to appear more dashing. Typical campaign dress was to just wear the pelisse and keep the dolman and troublesome barrel sash in the baggage. Among French hussars even more often the surtout was worn which was a simple short tailed coat in the same color as the pelisse. It was called "chassuer dress" as opposed to "hussar dress" and you had chasseurs dressed in hussar dress and hussars in chasseur dress. The practical considerations of such ridiculous costume would make for a pretty humorous comic.
With Russians and Hungarians all bets are off. With cossacks wearing those huge robes and hussar dress originally being Hungarian wearing both was no big deal any more than an exercising woman having her sweat jacket tied about her waist while on the stairmaster. And of course the English just had to wear it all because it was just not done to look slovenly by wearing just one! Someone might mistake you for one of those filthy KGL German hussars. Professional soldiers, but definitely not gentlemen! Rifle regiment officers bought pelisses to wear over their shoulders even though it was not part of their issue uniform.
What I've read about the French (and most other armies) is that while regulations said this and that it just wasn't always physically possible… Like with the jackets- there simply were not enough to go around and the expense was just so much that you could have one or the other, and either way it'd probably be secondhand since unlike the British, French officers weren't all gentry with estates to support them.
I'm sure there were a few who could get the whole kit, especially during good times, or flush after a few victories and a bit of looting… but on campaign that was quite uncommon. Rarely would anyone actually own both apparently.
Osprey for one is pretty clear on that. :)
My source was pretty clear it was a bearskin. And even the cartoon showed that as well. And I tend to think that sounds about right since a cocked hat is quite light and pretty aerodynamic; if you turn sideways the wind drag will be cut in half- which is as simple as turning your head.
Plus, it's NOT fixed hard to the head.
Now bearskins are a very different matter- it's a heavy concoction of bear skin and fur, hoisted high in the air over cane loops, fixed to the head by a tight leather band and a leather chinstrap backed with brass chain…
You can't turn your head to avoid gusts and once your centre of balance has been pushed out of whack by a good breeze, that thing will help topple you right off a horse.
For even the biggest ostrich feathers on a cocked hat to do that you'd need the sort of wind that'd knock quite a lot of the other people over as well. But really it's blow the hat off first, they're just so much lighter.
SPEAKING of cocked hats…
I looked in Google for "Cocked hat"
and came up with this from here: http://sandraflood.blogspot.com.au/
Now, I KNOW that pic…
Hahaha! I'm famous! ^_^
Remarkable likeness!
According to his biographers the story is apocyphal since Wellington would never have worn a bearskin even as colonel of a guards regiment. IIRC he was colonel only of the 33rd and not of the Guards. With there being so many apocyphal stories about him and quotes attributed to him that he never said I find it very believable. Further more having read all his biographies I doubt he would ever have worn a bearskin. He hated the things. His correspondence is full of his telling Horse Guards and various regimental commanders to specifically not bring furry hats to Spain.
As for officers not being able to afford their uniforms, they bought them on credit. It was nearly universal that a soldier in peacetime was in debt.
The returns generally do show that hussar regiments rarely had enough dolmans and pelisses to go around. But French regiments invariably had that surtout. The one regiment for certain that did have both was Napoleon's Guard Chasseurs a Cheval considering he was their colonel and his preferred uniform was as a colonel in that regiment. He made certain his Guard had their uniforms and in fact at the onset of the Russian campaign chided his lancers for wearing their undress uniform insisting that he hadn't spent all that money on dress uniforms for them to sit in the depot!
She got the positions of my hat feathers exactly the same. Pretty good for using a blurred photo as reference! ^_^
Your post makes the bearskin more likely… Since it's no wonder he hated it. :)
OK, I've just looked it up here, exact words:
"When wearing the nearly 2 foot high regulation First Life Guards' bearskin cap with its enormous swan feather while attending a review in 1829, he was literally blown off his horse by a gust of wind in front of thousands of spectators and soldiers. The incident roused considerable ridicule in print and in caricatures, and had the undesirable political effect of giving a good fillip to the strong feelings of hostility toward the duke at a time of political crisis."
- The Times, May 29, 1829 was the newspaper reference given.
This book is:
British Military Spectacle; from the Napoleonic wars through the Crimea.
by Scott Hughes Myerly,
Published by Harvard University Press 1996.
This is a heavily researched exhaustively footnoted, fairy dry academic book. Myerly is definitely one to know an apocryphal tale and report it as such.
Anyway, I did some digging and you can find the newspaper referenced here:
http://newspaperarchive.com/the-times/1829-05-29/
But LORD knows if you can make any use of that truly HORRIBLE archive site. -_-
He mentions other newspapers of the day and I have seen caricatures of the event, so it's unlikely it was an invention I'd say.
But it'd be interesting to know for sure!
Most online recources mention the very book I reference, except this one:
LINK: www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/w/Wellington/life.htm (DD messing up)
-which also mentions the event
Oh, and here:
LINK: web.me.com/abacusinfo/English_Monarchs/35._George_IV.html (DD messing up)
"The Prince Regent’s bizarre taste in dress is most amusingly
demonstrated by an embarrassing incident, in which the Duke of
Wellington was blown off his horse during a Review of the Horse Guard.
On that occasion, the Duke was required to wear a new Grenadier
head-piece designed by the Prince. It was over four feet high, so tall
and lavishly embellished with plumes, that it was impossible to retain
one’s seat on horseback in a high wind, such as the one that blew across
the parade on that unfortunate afternoon."
Though "four feet" seems like a silly exaggeration, unless the swan feathers mounted on top gave it an extra two feet in hight? I'd doubt that too unless they were blown up and it gave the impression…
It'd be interesting to know more.
This is really becoming the year of the hats isn't it…
So today was the first day of my last term of college… which is mostly made up of courses I took before in aviation but the business people don't accept because they were taught by aviation teachers. Still it hasn't been too bad. I don't have a freakishly large work load like last term and the teachers seem nice so far. Only problem is that it's summer which means that the school is holding tours like crazy. These tour kids kinda creep me out. I mean you feel like a landmark as they run through shouting and giggling and taking pictures of people in the halls…. creeeeepy
Well crap.
I'm a little late with these news but I just heard that Edd from Eddsworld passed away around the turn of last month. And no, that doesn't mean it's an April fools joke.
And in case you don't know who Edd is...
I was very sad to hear about Maurice Sendak too, ayes.
We've never had cable or anything so when I was young I was stuck watching fuzzy farmervision or one of a few VHS tapes when my parents set me in front of the electronic babysitter. One of those tapes was an animated version of a bunch of Sendak's stories. I loved it, except for In the Night Kitchen, which scared the heck out of me. My older sister and I still spontaneously break out into "Pierre" or "One Was Johnny".
—
I got kind of a nice phone. Very unexpected. It definitely pays off to wait and watch when buying electronics.
ozoneocean wrote:Now I'm convinced it happened once the name of the Prince Regent is attached to it. An oppurtunity to publicly embarrass Welington would have been willingly embraced considering how stiff Wellington was known to be. The typical bearskin including plume in 1829 was often upwards of 48 inches tall. Search for pictures of Crimean War Grenadier Guardsmen. In one photo the bearskin appears to be three times the size of the guy's head and that's without plumage. The bearskins of the 2nd French Empire under Napoleon III were just as ridiculously tall.
This is a heavily researched exhaustively footnoted, fairy dry academic book. Myerly is definitely one to know an apocryphal tale and report it as such.
Anyway, I did some digging and you can find the newspaper referenced here:
http://newspaperarchive.com/the-times/1829-05-29/
But LORD knows if you can make any use of that truly HORRIBLE archive site. -_-
"The Prince Regent’s bizarre taste in dress is most amusingly
demonstrated by an embarrassing incident, in which the Duke of
Wellington was blown off his horse during a Review of the Horse Guard.
On that occasion, the Duke was required to wear a new Grenadier
head-piece designed by the Prince. It was over four feet high, so tall
and lavishly embellished with plumes, that it was impossible to retain
one’s seat on horseback in a high wind, such as the one that blew across
the parade on that unfortunate afternoon."
Though "four feet" seems like a silly exaggeration, unless the swan feathers mounted on top gave it an extra two feet in hight? I'd doubt that too unless they were blown up and it gave the impression…
It'd be interesting to know more.
I can just see the Prince regent haw-hawing as Wellington goes tumbling off the horse which would probably been the tallest in the stables. Just the kind of trick I'd pull if given the oppurtunity considering how vocal he had been about impractical uniforms during his career and how humorless he could appear at times.
—
Just no desire to do anything. I had two totally free days to work on the comic and nothing happened. Then there's pricing all my mother's plates. The more I research the more valueless they become. So much for putting that 24 K gold edge on them. The gold is probably worth more than $5 if you managed to scrape it off. (just being facetious)
Yeah, the prince regent gets a baaaaaad rad RE uniforms. All countries were over the top though back in the 1800s , there are even some creative Lancer/hussar type uniforms in some old state US traditional units. People loved that chocolate box spectacle.
In Australia the various different states were still separate colonies in the 1800s before they were later federated. They had more allegiance directly to Great Britain than they did to each other. The official army/navy units were simply British, but the states colonies later had a go at each creating their own armies… which was in many cases just wealthy landowners and their sons playing dress-up, copying some fancy European uniform that they all had to buy themselves.
So we have some interesting fanciful 1800s uniforms in our archives, that would've been worn by units of no more than 20 or so men…
Later on though units were made up of actual retired veterans. And the first official Australian Army uniform comes from one of those volunteer units, Melbourne riflemen or something I think…? The man feature being the slouch hat and emu feathers.
———
Woot! Pinky TA finally updated!!!!!!!! http://www.drunkduck.com/Pinky_TA/
I have the books Uniforms in America from the Corps of Military Historians. US history is awash with colorful militia uniforms. Some showed up at First Bull Run in 1861. Americans copied everyone, everywhere without regard to era. But the real exciting uniforms are those designed by Santa Anna for the Mexican Army. The Mexicans attacking the Alamo looked like nothing so much as one of Napoleon's revues with czapskas and busbies and shakos in the dusty heat of south Texas.
There was one one mid 19th Century NY milita cavalry unit that copied the uniform of Napoleon's Chasseurs of the Guard. Little incongruous escorting the governor to the opening of the Erie Canal. Then there were the bright yellow faced blue uniforms of the Essex troop of NJ cavalry when they escorted Woodrow Wilson to his inauguration. And then there were those terrible red-shirted Tennessee riflemen led by Jeff Davis in the Mexican American war.
I just had Weezer playing on Pandora, and this started playing:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/sRYNYb30nxU
I'd never heard it or seen what the lead singer looked like, but the moment I heard it playing it instantly reminded me of Oz for some reason. And I don't mean in the "crazy, ridiculous, this guy is hilariously over-the-top" way. It doesn't even really seem to fit, but for whatever reason I just seem to have randomly associated the song with Oz. Occassionally I just seem to do that. My roommate from college is forever linked to Lit's My Own Worst Enemy. Although in his case, it actually makes sense.
Product Placement wrote:Does anyone have brain bleach? And a diamond tipped hand drill? I'm gonna need them…
Oz believes in a thing called love.
Poor Lonne- you just can't handle your fantasies coming to life… :(
Gawd, I would totally do a cover vid of that song if only I had a purple spandex cat-suit with bell bottom legs… Dammit!
And I've no big spaceship set either! Double dammit! Bugger and bums! Cocks!
I doubt it'd be a patch on Justin (is that his name?). You know The Darkness is back together again now? They're in Melbourne currently on their comeback tour. The lead singer now has dark hair and a little hipster curly musketeer moustache, and a full body coating of tats… Looks a bit second hand now.
That would be my dream come true Gullas…
OK, still haven't psyched myself up to finish that musical thing for the DD soap, BUT I just finished recording silly traditional sounding blues song to a backing track made by Gunwallace. God I had fun!!!!!!
^_____^
zIt will be the theme for this week's Quackcast, which will be a drawing and artwork focussed one with an interview of the famous Monique MacNaughton, AKA Coydog.
http://www.graphicsmash.com/comics/unafrontiers.php
www.drunkduck.com/user/Coydog/
Lonnehart wrote:
Product Placement wrote:
Oz believes in a thing called love.
Does anyone have brain bleach? And a diamond tipped hand drill? I'm gonna need them…
There is no special reason why I'm qouting this post. I just wanted this picture to carry over to the next page.
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