February 8, 2021
Napoleon's Soldiers Were Outfitted In Grand Style
While the oldest known photograph was taken in 1826, we have photos of soldiers from Napoleon’s Grande Armee, thanks to veterans donning their uniforms in 1858, not in battle but as they commemorated Napoleon. In this colorized version of the photographs of the veterans, we can have a better sense of the colorful flashiness and variety of their uniforms.
When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in 1799, he began a series of military campaigns. Prior to the French Revolution, more than 90 percent of the officers in the French army were members of the nobility. The Revolution changed this, as only three percent of those remained by the time Napoleon came into power. Napoleon then put together the Grande Armee, comprised mainly of conscripted lower-class men who had to wear uniforms that seemed to reflect the changing society and that may have been impressive to look at, but they were often uncomfortable and ill-fitting. Don’t let the uniforms fool you, as these soldiers may have been the most feared force in Europe.
Although men died in battle or from illness, and others deserted, Napoleon had a force of 600,000 men in 1812 since he kept his numbers up by using troops from conquered or allied states. These soldiers were men from all over his empire. Napoleon continued to fight until 1815, despite a brief exile in 1814. In 1815, he was defeated at Waterloo by the Duke of Wellington, and later died in exile. Of the more than 60 battles he fought, he lost only 8, and his military career lasted 20 years. After his death, the surviving veterans of his army continued to honor his name for many years. Each year, on the anniversary of his death, May 5, the veterans who had fought in the Napoleonic wars donned their uniforms and marched to Place Vendome in Paris to pay their respects to their emperor. These veterans were not only decked out in their uniforms, but also wore their Saint Helena medals with pride. These medals were issued on August 12. 1857 by Napoleon III; everyone who served between 1792 and 1815 received a medal to commemorate their service.
They Had Fabulous Hats
Prior to the French Revolution, soldiers’ uniforms were in their countries’ colors, with the French wearing white. The soldiers typically wore the tricorn hat and the wide-skirted coat; while their uniforms were distinct since the soldiers wore country-specific colors, the style of the uniform mirrored the clothing which civilians wore. However, in Napoleon’s Grande Armee, the soldiers were outfitted in quite the array, wearing a range of colors from scarlet to yellow, to royal blue and bright white. Other details of their uniforms were also inconsistent, and in some cases, an individual uniform may not be made of consistent materials. For example, the hussar (the calvary soldier) may have had 156 buttons on their uniforms, but they may have been comprised of five different types of buttons. The uniforms were designed based on each regiment’s own specifications, and the uniforms also had a wide range of accessories, including epaulettes, sword knots, and shako cords. The epaulettes, or shoulder pieces, were decorative or often signified rank, but they also may have helped to give the soldiers the illusion of being larger than they were, and of course, the tall hats added to that illusion. These tall cylindrical military hats, or shakos, typically had visors and could also be decorated, as some had the aforementioned cords, while some had pom poms and some had plumes. Some were adorned with a metal plate and some were tapered at the top. The shakos were not worn merely as decoration though or just to provide the illusion of height, as they could be used for practical purposes as well, providing storage solutions for supplies such as potatoes and wine bottles. Once, shakos were used as improvised sandbags as the Armee repelled an attack. Other hats were worn as well, as some soldiers donned busbies, which were fur-covered hats, and others wore schapskas, the tall square-top hats. Incidentally, the Polish army still wears a variant of the schapska. Some of the uniforms include fur, and those that have it may have been members of the Old Guard. The Scandinavian bears had been over-hunted, and to resupply the Armee with fur, they had to smuggle it from America, which was quite expensive. Because of this, the ministries abolished the use of fur headwear for the basic infantrymen. Officers wore essentially the same uniform as their men, but their uniforms were of higher quality and had details that distinguished them from the rest.
