Post
by Arthur » Tue Jan 17, 2012 1:34 am
I do not have the Hall plates, so can't comment on their accuracy. René Chartrand's Osprey book on Louis XIV's army offers limited but reliable info on the cavalry.
Depending on how you look at it, the issue of WSS French cavalry uniforms is either extremely simple or extremely complicated. It's simple because the overwhelming majority of line cavalry units wore grey faced red while the royal regiments had blue faced red. There were a few exceptions, particularly before 1700, but the rule generally holds true.
The problem is finding out the saddlecloth and housing colour schemes which normally reflected the colonel's coat of arms along with the livery worn by trumpeters and kettle drummers. Given that some regiments had as many as three or four successive owners during the period, housing and livery colours could change several times in a single decade. Anachronicisms are rife in pictorial representations of late C17th/early C18th French cavalry, some illustrators often using mid-18th century housing colour schemes (or even cuff colours) to depict WSS French cavalry.
Although it deals with a later period, René Chartrand's Osprey booklet on Louis XV's cavalry does a good job of compiling most known livery colours for the ancien régime. You won't find everything in there, and most of the more minor colonel's coats of arms were never properly recorded, but if you apply caution and double-check your sources to avoid anachronicisms, you will have a list of most of the major households' liveries and housing colours.
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.