WALLOON GUARDS 1743: PART TWO – REFERENCES

The War of Austrian Succession is quite a difficult area to research (especially for the Spanish) – competing for attention between the War of Spanish Succession and the Seven Years War. There is surprising little information available on uniforms, flags and organisation. What little there is tends to be quite Anglocentric and at a quick glance you might think that Fontenoy and Dettingen were the only battles of note in this war. Another frustration is that searching on Google for ‘Spanish army in the War of Austrian Succession’ brings back pages of results for the Spanish Succession – grrr!!!

There are however some useful key resources and the basics can be just about stitched together. I even managed to get some interesting links by using Google.es and searching in Spanish language terms!

The most useful printed resource by far is “The War of Austrian Succession: A Wargamer’s Guide” by Giancarlo Boeri & Stephen Manley. This is still available in the UK from Caliver Books . This includes most of the uniform details that you need for the key combatant units. No flags though.

My brigade will have fusiliers, grenadiers, musicians, officers/NCOs and at least two types of flag. So I have tried to get these all clearly referenced in some way before I start.

A particular challenge with the Spanish army of the period is that pictorial references tend to be from the earlier War of Spanish Succession or later sources that draw on earlier uniforms or even Napoleonic schemes. The Walloon Guards wore similar but frustratingly different kit in each of the wars of the 18th Century so some decisions needed to be made – some of which are quite arbitrary !

Flags

Each battalion needs two flags: A Coronela (Kings Colours) and a Sencilla (Regimental Colour).

My previous brigades (Castille) used a set of Kings Colours based on Philip V’s ensign. Although this has naval origins, it provided a nice large canvas to show off the coat of arms, so I decided to adopt this for the regular line brigades. The sencilla would be a plain red Burgundy cross with symbols of the regiment at each end.

The Guards regiments have some clear examples though of the King’s Coat of Arms superimposed over a red Burgundy Cross. This against a white field for the coronela and a blue background for the sencilla.

Most of the commercial wargames flag examples use a photo of this banner from the Spanish Army Museum as the template.

Walloon Guards Sencilla

It is great to have this a resource, however the flag must date from after 1759 because the coat of arms is that of Charles III not Philip V. So …. what I need is this flag but with Philip V’s arms instead (see below)

Philip V Coat of Arms

So my task will be to create a template and paste in the new coat of arms to allow the handpainting of the flag in the way I want it. The base template I will use will be from “Not By Appointment“, it really is superb and I highly recommend David’s wonderful flags. More on this will be covered in a future post where I construct and paint the standards.

The other issue to resolve was whether to have the reverse a mirror image of the front of the flag. It isn’t clear what the practice was – but I don’t really like the aesthetics of reversing the coat of arms so I am going to assume that all of my flags consist of two silks stitched together with true images.

Flagpoles – evidence is scant but a spiral effect using red and yellow seems to be most prevalent in the few pictures that I have found.

Uniforms

Thankfully, the Boeri & Manley guide has most of the information needed, but there is certainly some variation in image sources. There is a wonderful digitisation of the Taccoli uniform plates at the Real Biblioteca del Palacio Real de Madrid , although these do date from 1760 they appear to mostly align to the wargamer’s guide. I have had to make a couple of arbitrary judgements, usually following Boeri & Manley.

Example Taccoli Uniform Plate

The final decisions that will guide my painting recipe are therefore as follows:

Coat/breeches/turnbacksRoyal Blue
Veste/cuffs/collarScarlet
Lace button holes & edgingWhite [Silver]
GaitersWhite (no stockings visible)
Shoulder knotScarlet [Silver]
ButtonsPewter
Tricorne BraidSilver
CockadeScarlet
Cartridge pouchBrass coat of arms on front
Grenadier FlammeScarlet edged silver
Drummers/fifers laceRed on a white chain
Drum BarrelRoyal blue with coat of arms
Drum cordsWhite
Drum rimsRed & yellow strips

Next Steps

So thats most of the referencing done, and captured in the notebook ready for when painting starts

And I have managed to tick some tasks off the work plan, but added a couple of new ones. There is a lots of royal blue and also silver lace. I find both of these quite difficult to paint so will do some tester samples of recipes before taking the plunge !

After that it will be time to get started on the figure conversions but also I can begin creating templates for the flag painting.

The next entry will describe my flag painting stage here

2 Comments

  1. December 17, 2024
    Reply

    That’s a lot of interesting info there. Don’t envy you painting those flags though.

  2. Iain
    December 17, 2024
    Reply

    I only discovered (rediscovered?) your blog, Simon, because Andy was making incoherent comments about your note book. Careful questioning led me here……and I’m very glad it did.
    Your notebook is going to be a thing of beauty.
    Iain

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