Fig. 146.—Chain mail illustrated by the brass of Sir Richard de Trumpington, A.D. 1289.
In the earlier part of the book it was made evident that military uniforms afford a fine field for research, though apart from the remains of armour, however, they are comparatively modern. It was not, indeed, until the reign of Charles II that we meet with uniforms regularly adopted by the Army; and the red coat which has given its name to the soldier, though many regiments are dressed in other colours, was previous to that time merely a best coat. We see it now on fox-hunters and golfers, though a long coat of this colour is still worn by the King’s footmen and coachmen. A writer in the Spectator, No. 129, says, when speaking of Cornwall: “Here we fancied ourselves in Charles II’s reign, people having made little variation in their dress since that time. The smartest of the country squires appear still in the Monmouth cock; when they go a-wooing (whether they have any post in the militia or not) they put on a red coat.”
There had previous to the Restoration been some attempt to introduce uniform dress for soldiers quite apart from the sovereign’s special guards, who, after the fashion of retainers, wore his livery. For instance, the Duke of Norfolk, in the reign of Henry VIII, issued instructions that every soldier should wear a blue coat guarded with red, the right hose to be red, the left blue, and a red stripe three fingers broad down the outside of each leg. The archers are described as wearing white gaberdines, at one time in this reign, while in 1576 those belonging to Ireland had a cassock of blue cloth with two small white guards. Red coats as well as others of blue or white were worn by the English troops in Turenne’s army in 1657, and examples of the last two colours are by no means extinct in the army to-day. Red, blue, grey, and green, it may be added, were all worn during the Civil War on both sides.
It must not be forgotten, however, that gay uniforms are now only used at home in times of peace, for we have learnt a lesson from the lower animals, many of which are protectively coloured, and the service uniform to-day is one calculated to render its wearer as inconspicuous as possible. Before the time of firearms which could be used with precision, and when hand-to-hand combats played a great part in war, it was necessary for two adversaries to be able to see one another, but now each tries to hide himself.
Fig. 147.—A reversion in military equipment.
| One of Cromwell’s Ironsides (1679), from a print. | A Cavalryman sketched at Aldershot in 1901. |
Copied, by permission, from the Daily Mail.
Some years ago a sketch, which was made from a cavalry man at Aldershot, was given in the Daily Mail; side by side was shown another taken from a print representing one of Cromwell’s Ironsides, and the likeness between the two is almost exact. (See Figure [147].)