League Of Augsburg - Fighting Talk

Gentlemen,
I've got a query about Danish cuirassiers in the WSS. Did they wear the cuirass over their coats or underneath it? I've done a quick look at the books I've got but have found contradictory opinions,
Many thanks in advance for any answers,
Best wishes,
Simon

You have a what about Danish cuirassiers?

Hopefully Dan Schorr will respond.

I *think* that if they were wearing the coat, it was worn over the cuirass, but they wore the cuirass over the buff coat. Maybe that was an argument for convenience to myself for how I wanted to paint the figures I had though - I don't clearly recall and I didn't write down notes about why I did what I did.

Dan's now defunct website can be accessed through the wayback machine.

http://web.archive.org/web/200903142317 ... nwars.com/

There you can click to download a pdf on the Danes which should answer your queries. There's lots of other useful stuff there too.

Let's wait for Tacitus to reply.

AFAIK in combat they wore buffcoats, with cuirass over it.
But before 1709 only two regiments had cuirasses - one being horse guards, another - 1st Jyske, that stayed in Denmark.

The article by Torstein Snorrason, which was a part of Dan Schorr's former web site, states that the cuirass was worn over the coat (regardless if it was of cloth or a buff coat). The only exception would be officers with richly embroidered coats who could be seen (for the sake of vanity?) wearing the cuirass underneath an open coat.

The other sources I have do not mention how the cuirass was worn. But if you have specific information about Danish cuirasses that contradicts Snorrason then it would be a good idea to check its list of references. There are a lot of publications out there who use Otto Vaupell as their source. Vaupell wrote two thick volymes covering the history of the Danish and Norwegian armies in 1872 and 1876. But he was considered to be a highly unreliable historian already in his own time and his books have certainly not improved by the fact that they now are about 140 years old.

The topic of this thread has also been covered in these threads:

Best WARFARE Cuirassier Figure for WSS and GNW Danish Horse?
Danish Cavalry Uniforms & Banners

Many thanks for your replies. I'm mainly interested in the early part of the WSS so it looks like no cuirass for the Danes,
Best wishes,
Simon

Otto Vaupell is available on Google books, interesting and confusing at times (that maybe my poor grasp of Danish) I have also heard him to be unreliable but no specifics, a large chunk of regimental detail seems to check out, although the details are scattered around.

still worth adding to your collections

Dansk biografisk Lexikon (Danish biographical Lexicon) has a scathing review of Vaupell as an historian. The article about Vaupell was written 1905 (six years after his death) and I have translated the relevant section from Danish to English (I did not understand what "Sans" means and if that is something that can be "plastic")

«Kampen for Sønderjylland 1848-50 I-III» [The struggle over Schleswig 1848-50] was published 1863-67. V. wanted to write the history of the Three Year War, but he wrote the saga of it; as such it is however excellent. The events are described with force, often with dramatic life, the participating persons are depicted with plastisk Sans; but a sourcebook it is not. V. have not brought himself to sift his rich and miscellaneous materiel, he was too unsettled, too unmeticulous, too subjective to become a real historian. His flaws were even more pronounced in his next great work: «Den danske Hærs Historie til Nutiden og den norske Hærs Historie til 1814» I-II (1872-76) [The Danish army's history to the present and the Norwegian Army's history to 1814]. A work covering that subject had long been desired and V. put it on himself to remedy this, but he did not reach his goal. The books were so filled with unsatisfactory, incorrect and mistaken statements that they from a scientific point of view made more harm than good. V's other contributions to military litterature are without great scientific significance, and the same is true about his voluminous works concerning Denmark's general history: «Rigskansler Greve Griffenfeld» I-II (1880-82) og «Dronning Margrethe» (1897).

I apologize for resurrecting this thread, but I want to correct and hopefully clarify a few points.

Firstly, I was wrong when I stated that the three Danish cavalry regiments serving in Ireland and Flanders during the Nine Years War wore the cuirass. They did not.

Secondly, with respect to the use of the cuirass and buff coats by Danish cavalry during the War of Spanish Succession, I contacted both Torstein Snorrason and Karsten Skjold Petersen on this issue. Snorrason remains convinced that the cuirass and buff coat were worn by the cavalry units of the Auxiliary Corps. Petersen, on the other hand, admitted he did not know. He never investigated the issue.

The 1707 issue of cuirass and buff coat pertained only to those cavalry units remaining in Denmark. Once the cavalry units were accepted into service by the Maritime Powers, the English and Dutch were responsible for their upkeep, including replacing uniforms and equipment, not Denmark. The 1710 issue was to replace losses from the Scanian Campaign and the Battle of Helsinborg, as well as equipping dragoon regiments with the cuirass, including the three Norwegian dragoon regiments; although, it is doubtful the latter ever used them.

I hope this provides some clarity to the issue of cuirass and buff coat.
Regards,
Dan