28mm SYW French: Royal-Nassau Hussars

Raised in 1756 by Guillaume Henri, Prince of Nassau-Saarbruck, it was initially named Volontaires de Nassau-Saarbruck and consisted of two squadrons. In 1758 it was increased in strength to 4 squadrons (about 600 men) and was placed on the official French establishment.

28mm SYW French: IR59 Royal Comtois

This regiment was raised in 1674 by the Marquis de Listenois and it became a Royal regiment in 1685. Besides being involved in the capture of Minorca at the beginning of the SYW the regiment does not appear to have participated in any major battles. But during the WAS it was heavily involved in the invasion of Bohemia.

The unusual flags show a Burgundian cross on an aurore background.

28mm SYW French: Swiss Regiment Eptingen

This Regiment, which appears to have been unnumbered (although IR122 seems appropriate), was raised in 1758 from the Basel area although most of the officers came from Alsace, perhaps by virtue of their bilingualism.

The other thing that is unusual is the yellow facings. The other 10 Swiss regiments in French service (as well as the Swiss Guards) had blue facings and Kronoskaf suggests that in 1761/2 the facings changed to blue. Meanwhile, for a few short years, the regiment had these striking yellow facings. Figures are from Crusader.

28mm SYW French: IR 3 Navarre

This was a 4 battalion regiment, formed in 1558 as Garde du Roi de Navarre, with an admirable service history which is available on Kronoskaf.

28mm SYW French: IR 57 Cossé Brissac

Kronoskaf has a strange comment concerning this regiment: “In 1757, the regiment was considered as cheerful, noisy but otherwise well behaved.” I am not sure what this means – does it mean that it was reliable in battle or that it was somewhat rowdy? It certainly had a rough time at Rossbach despite it's colourful flags.

40mm WAS/SYW IR22 Roth 1st Battalion

In my previous post I said I was going to be painting an unusual Austrian Regiment and here it is.

This is taken from Kronoskaf: “For the moment we have very few information on the uniform in 1756, at the outbreak of the war. Most of our references describe the uniform in 1762. However, Muhsfeldt and Schirmer mention that, in 1756-57, the coat was white lined red (therefore red turn-backs), the distinctive colour was red and the waistcoat and breeches were blue.N.B.: in his work, Gustav Ritter Hubka, mentions that, from 1714 till 1767, the uniform of this regiment had ponceau red lapels and cuffs, and yellow buttons. Furthermore, from 1757 to 1767, he mentions a blue waistcoat and blue turn-backs with white breeches. Even though, this description seems very surprising, it must be pointed out that Hubka has been Oberlieutenant and Regiments-Adjutant in this regiment, so he might have had access to privileged sources.”

I am going with the colour scheme of Gustav Ritter Hubka so white coat, blue waistcoat and turnbacks. White trousers. Red cuffs and lapels.

As for the flags, they were probably not used by this regiment which spent most of the WAS in Italy and was not present at Hohenfriedberg. But I think the red-white stripes perfectly match this regiment. One of the problems of painting the Austrians for the WAS is not the number of strange and unusual designs (which I rather like actually) but rather attributing them with any certainty to any particular regiment.

The second battalion and grenadiers will follow later this year. Figures are from Sash & Sabre.

28mm SYW French: IR 42 Rouergue

This regiment had hard fights at both Minden and Warburg. At the latter, where it was initially kept in reserve behind the centre, it vainly tried to rescue the Bourbonnais regiment, losing about 800 men. Out of the 49 officers present, 33 were killed or wounded.