Sergeant and Private of Infantry in Winter Marching Order.
1813.
When the Peninsular Army first started on its campaigns, the heavy dragoons were the most archaic-looking corps in it, for they still wore the broad and heavy cocked hats, which had prevailed in all armies during the middle years of George III., and jack boots up to the knee. This headgear, which after a single campaign in the tropical rains of the Peninsula always became sodden and shapeless, and hung down limply towards the shoulders, was fortunately abolished by a royal warrant of August, 1812, and during the following winter many of the heavy dragoon regiments received brass helmets of a classical shape, with a crest and plume, which, though rather heavy, were an immense improvement on their former shapeless hats. At the same time they were given instead of jack-boots (which had made skirmishing on foot almost impossible) grey cloth overalls, with a broad red stripe, and short boots. This was the dress of the heavies in 1813–14 and during the Waterloo campaign.
The light dragoons had gone to the Peninsula in 1808 with the black japanned helmet with a bearskin crest along its crown, which had been in use since the time of the American War. With it they wore blue coats with white froggings, and buckskin breeches with Hessian boots. The general effect was handsome, and in use the dress was not unpractical. General Foy mentions it with approval in his history. The French outposts were much puzzled when, at the commencement of the Vittoria campaign, the English vedettes and outposts appeared in a new uniform, which was introduced for light cavalry at the same time as the changes made for heavy cavalry just mentioned above. It was at first suspected that new regiments had been joining from England. The 1813 uniform substituted, for the black helmet with fur, a shako with a small upright plume, slightly bell-topped in shape, and with ornamental cord and tassels. It looks as if it had been suggested by the head-dress of the French chasseurs à cheval, and was much too like it to please Wellington. At the same time the blue jacket barred with white lace was changed for a blue coat, with a very broad plastron of the colour of the regimental facings in front, extending from collar to waist, and the buckskin breeches were replaced by tight-fitting breeches of webbing. This was the Waterloo uniform of all light dragoon regiments.
Cavalry Uniforms
The large majority of the British cavalry regiments in the Peninsula were light dragoons: for the first three years of Wellington’s command there were only three heavy dragoon regiments in the field, and no British hussars. Of the latter, a new introduction in the national Army, there was one brigade present in 1808 during Sir John Moore’s operations,[304] and the same regiments came out in 1813, to see the last year of the war.[305] During the greater part of Wellington’s campaigns the only hussars present with the army were Hanoverians, the very efficient corps belonging to the King’s German Legion. The fantastic hussar uniform of the period, a development from a much simpler Hungarian original, is well known. Over a jacket fitting tight to the body, was worn the furred and braided pelisse, which was usually not completely put on, but flung back, so as to hang over the left shoulder. It flapped behind, and was a hindrance rather than a covering. On the legs long overalls were worn. The head-dress was a very large fur cap, or, as it would have been called later, a busby. I find very severe criticisms on this head-gear. One officer says, “These flimsy, muff-like appendages encumber the heads of our soldiers. The awkward cap, being constructed partly of pasteboard, soaks up a great quantity of wet during the violent rains of this country, and so becomes unbearably heavy and disagreeable, while it affords no protection to the wearer. At all times it can be cut down to his skull with the greatest ease.”[306] The cause of its adoption seems to have been rather the Prince Regent’s eye for splendour in military costume than anything else. For strength and protection, no less than comfort, the light helmet of the early dragoons was universally preferred by critics. Later improvements made the busby more solid and less heavy, but in 1808 it was evidently a most unsatisfactory head-dress.
Artillery Uniforms
Artillery uniform may be described in a few words. That of the horse artillery was a close copy of that of the original light dragoon—black japanned helmet with fur crest, blue jacket laced with gold (instead of the dragoon’s silver) and buckskin breeches. Field artillery, on the other hand, were clothed almost exactly like infantry of the line, save that their coats were blue instead of red. Their tall felt shako and tuft, trousers, and coat with white stripes, were exactly similar to those of the linesmen. Engineer officers wore a dress like that of line officers before the shako came in, having a cocked hat down to the end of the war, and trousers. The rank and file of that department—Royal Military Artificers down to 1812,[307] Royal Sappers and Miners after—had shako and blue coat down to 1813, but changed the latter for a red coat, like that of the line, in the last-named year. It was braided with yellow across the front instead of white, the only practical difference in appearance.
Doctors and commissaries down to the end of the war were wearing a cocked hat, like that of a general or a staff officer. Hence some queer mistakes, when these peaceful gentlemen were mistaken for combatant officers, the colour of their plume, the one differentiating point, failing to be observed in the dusk or in dirty weather. It is said that some young commissaries were prone to pass themselves off as staff officers on the Spanish and Portuguese peasantry, and even on local authorities. A ridiculous anecdote is told of Doctor Maurice Quill, the surgeon of the Connaught Rangers, who was the best-known humorist in the army.[308] A general, who caught a glimpse of his cocked hat behind a hedge, took him for a staff-officer shirking, and hunted him for some time from cover to cover, the doctor meanwhile shouting back to him, “I’m off; seen plenty of fighting for one day.” It was only when he took refuge with his mules and medical panniers, that his irate pursuer discovered that he was not a combatant officer. Other wearers of the cocked hat were the drum-majors of the line, who are said to have had much adulation paid to them by the country-folk, because of their enormous gold-laced head-dress and lavish display of braiding, which caused them to be taken for brigadiers at the least.
The most distinctive infantry uniform in the whole army was that of the rifle battalions, whose sombre colours contrasted in the most marked way with the red of the British and the bright blue of the Portuguese line. The dress of the 5/60th and the two light battalions of the K.G.L. differed from that of the three battalions of the 95th, in that while both wore the dark rifle-green jacket, the three German units had grey-blue trousers not unlike those of the line, while the latter were in green from head to foot. All wore black shakos of a high shape, like those of other regiments, and with a green tuft or ball at the front. The accoutrements were all black, in order to avoid the showing of light or shining points on the body, when the men were dispersed in skirmishing. In the head-dress of the officers there was a certain variety, the 5/60th and 1st Light battalion K.G.L. having a tall shako similar to that of their rank and file, while those of the 95th and the 2nd Light battalion K.G.L. had a peculiar head-dress, something like that of an eighteenth-century hussar; it was a tall, narrow cap, much adorned with diagonal twists of braid, and destitute of the peak to shade the eyes which formed part of the normal shako; it had a green tuft at the front. The 95th officers for some time wore over their tight jackets a black furred and braided pelisse, in the hussar style—surely a most absurd and inconvenient encumbrance for men who were continually scrambling through hedges, and working among thick brushwood. When thrown back, as it seems generally to have been, it must have caught in every possible twig. The officers’ jackets were distinguished from the plain-breasted coat of the rank and file by having a great quantity of narrow braiding across the front: they all wore falling “wings,” instead of epaulettes. The Portuguese caçador uniform, save that it was brown and not bottle-green, reproduced very closely the cut and form of that of the 5/60th.