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| Provincial Militia, 1809 - Top, L to R: Granada, Jaen Bottom, L to R: Ciudad Real, Cordoba |
Here, then, are the regulation coronelas for the provinciales of Granada, Jaen, Ciudad Real and Cordoba, all ready to have a bad day at the Battle of Ucles. I hope to have the tabletop units finished, with their flags, in a day or two, so a photo should appear in the fullness of time.
I confess that I wimped out on the Cordoba flag - I was so impressed by Bueno's prints of blue militia flags for units from the Asturias that yesterday I produced a striking red, non-regulation flag for Cordoba bearing some funky text and the province's coat of arms. It looked fantastic, but after a night worrying about it I replaced it with the normal, boring coronela this morning. Of course I haven't the faintest idea what the unit actually carried into battle, but the version reproduced here is pretty much what they were supposed to carry!
Lovely stuff!!! I've saved these to print out later for Postie. (Printer trouble) They're 10000 times better than his Militia flags, the dopey sod put a plain white flag on his with the words "For God and Spain" and yes he wrote them in English......doh!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ray - I appreciate that very much - especially from a noted flag man such as yourself!
DeleteI can see the English text is a bit of a problem, but the urban militia and the later "militia" who were really just bandits or irregular partidas might well have had something very plain - just a scrawl and a picture of the Virgin on a dirty white sheet!
The milicias provinciales, as you and Postie know, were a pretty serious national guard set up, regulated as an extension to the regular army, and (in theory at least) the uniforms and flags were heavily based on normal practice for the Line units. According to my new book (and my trusty Spanish dictionary!), the provinciales originally had lots of flags, but officially they were restricted to a single "King's colour" (coronela) in the style of the Line, as in my illustrations, from about 1802 onwards. What they actually carried would depend on all sorts of things, as I mention - didn't one of the Sharpe stories feature an ancient flag which on its own was capable of driving the French out of Spain (crap, but gripping...)?
The Bueno plates I link to in the post were an eye-opener to me - it seems that there were non-regulation flags bearing religious, local or other patriotic symbols and themes of which there are surviving images and even examples. Wow - that's not a surprise, but the evidence is news to me.
Years ago I had a booklet which gave coloured drawings of a good number of Spanish flags held as trophies from the Napoleonic Wars in the Musee de l'Armee - I wish I still had it, but i do recall that very few of the flags looked like the Spanish army regulations - maybe the militia and the local volunteers were more likely to give up their colours, or leave them behind if the going got rough!
This is not a simple subject - please tell Postie that I'm aware that I don't know very much, but that isn't a bad starting position sometimes!
Cheers - Tony
Simple it certainly isn't! Keep up the great work!
DeleteBeautiful flags on a very interesting subject!
ReplyDelete