Black Brunswickers - Uniform

Uniform

The Brunswickers were awarded various nicknames by their contemporaries, including the Black Crows, the Black Legion and the Black Horde. However, although the uniforms of the individual units that comprised the corps were, as the names suggest, predominantly black, they varied in their details.

• Infantry units in 1809 wore a black polrock or "Polish coat", a type of frock coat derived from a Lithuanian garment called a litewka which had six pairs of black lace fastenings down the front. A tall collar showed the regimental colour. Trousers were black with a blue stripe; footwear was black shoes with buttoned gaiters. They wore a shako on their heads, with the deaths head or a hunting horn badge for light infantry, also a black feather or horsehair plume. The shako, backpack and other equipment were of Austrian design and manufacture.. The Sharpshooter companies wore a dark green Prussian-style coatee and a tall hat of Austrian origin with an elongated brim turned-up at one side. In the Peninsular War, the polrock was replaced by a short black koller or cavalry-style tunic. Equipment and badges of rank were of British pattern.
• The hussar cavalry were garbed in a black, light blue collared dolman, sometimes with a black pelisse. Black overalls were worn over tight breeches of the hussar style. The hussars also wore a black Shako. The sword and equipment were originally of Austrian design. The Uhlan squadron wore a green kurtka or lancer's jacket with red facings and a traditional czapka cap, their uniform being a copy of the Austrian Graf von Meerveldt Uhlan Regiment. The lance had a red and yellow pennon. By 1815, the Uhlans were wearing all-black uniforms, but retained the yellow-topped czapka.
• Artillerymen wore similar clothing to the cavalry: mostly black in colour with a koller and black trousers. They were additionally equipped with a standard hussar sword should they have need to defend their guns.

There are a number of speculative theories on the origin of the Brunswickers' dark and seemingly grim choice of garb. It has been suggested that black was chosen to mourn Duke Frederick William's late father; as a sign of respect for the Duke; or in mourning for the Duke's occupied homeland.