10th Prince of Wales Own Royal Hussars

Having been donated a lovely Prince August 45mm metal figure I've decided to have a crack at making and painting it as a one-off piece of decoration (maybe mount it on a nice piece of wood). I'll be painting it in traditional toy soldier fashion - nicely glossed - but I am having trouble pinning down the exact colour scheme of the uniform.

Left: The colour sample from Prince August's own web site - unfortunately this only succeeds in confusing the issue of what colours to use, looking at additional reference material!

I suspect the only completely reliable way of getting an authentic palette for the uniform would be a visit to the regimental museum, but that's not going to happen! And although my brother has very kindly lent a hand by supplying a few examples of the history of the '10th' in pictures the uniforms changed subtly through the years and so made it a bit difficult for me to pin down just what colours to go for.

After a bit of head scratching I have plumped for this set of pictures on which to base the colour scheme for my model...

The red trousers seem to be a feature of the regiment of the 1890 period.

I may have to accept that I may not get this one entirely right without digging into regimental histories. So, on second thoughts I may just do the best I can and transfer my horseman to the army of Molatero as a 'generic hussar'!

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Postscripts: Typically, while trawling the internet for picture reference although finding hard to get definitive colour illustrations of my 10th Hussars kettle drummer I found some wonderful pics of the 3rd and 7th Hussars kettle drummers!

Not colour, but a lovely period piece - 3rd Kings Own Hussars Kettle Drummer...

And, the vital full colour reference of the The 7th (Queen's Own) Hussars kettle drummer from 1992...

There is actually a whole host of very interesting and useful pictorial reference material on their unofficial regimental web site at: www.thequeensownhussars.co.uk

...I just wish something similar was available for the 10th Hussars!

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Update: Sometimes it doesn't seem to matter how many times you sift through Google for a subject, a random and quite insignificant change in your search definitions can produces results. So it was this afternoon when, trying again, I came across a site called www.hussards-photos.com - although not, as stated, photos the web site does include some nice period postcards showing the full range of Britain's Hussar regiments.

The site includes this wonderful illustration...

It seems very likely now that Prince August's painted model is completely wrong, as the web site shows a common relationship between the jackets within the family of Hussars regiments (except the 21st rgt., which was a lancers regiment). That common feature is the dark blue jacket and none of the depicted regiments featured any use of the sky blue tunic that Prince August has used on it's sample model.

I have a suspicion - that Prince August used the cigarette card of the 10th kettle drummer that I have included at the beginning of this post as reference for it's model. If you look at the card you can see that the inks used do give the impression of a greeny-light blue tunic - but this is simply due to the poor quality or even the age of the card. I do believe it is supposed to be dark blue.

But, I speculate...In any case I found this wonderful lithograph which depicts 10th Prince of Wales's Own Royal Hussars, Officer, Review Order. Published by Legras (Paris), late 19th century...

© Look and Learn / Valerie Jackson Harris Collection

So, I now feel a little better equipped to reproduce a reasonable representation of the 10th's kettle drummer and will now turn my attention to the metal model and it's construction.

Cavalry reinforcements from Scotland!

Fresh recruits have arrived from Scotland! Well, by way of my brother's new mini-forge works anyway. He found a Prince August mould on eBay and made me a casting of this lovely kettle-drum horse-mounted musician (sorry, not sure what regiment, but he looks like a hussar of some sort)...

Even inventive my brother scoured eBay and eventually found a cheap pewter tankard which was then melted down to provide the metal for this kit. He told me that Prince August don't do this as a stand alone figure any more, they just make the mould now.

As far as scale goes it's another one of those very loosly defined '54mm' figures - I've sort of given up on expecting a consistent standard scale for 54mm metal toy soldiers now, but this figure comes in at the taller end of the spectrum...

Here I compare one of Black Hat's '54mm' toy soldiers to the
Prince August figure. The cavalrymen's face is a little thinner but
otherwise it's a good match for this taller '1/32' scale soldier.

My rule of thumb these days is to define '54mm' as generally relating to the smaller traditional toy solder's based on Britain vintage models - as exemplified by those produced by Dorcet Miniatures and Irregular Miniatures - while I use the term '1/32' to indicate the taller modern figures made by the likes of Armies in Plastic, Airfix, Black Hat, etc. It's just my own definition, but it saves me from getting muddled!

As a nice 'one off' piece this cavalrymen will come in very hand as a mini-project to be slotted in between my more intense obsessions. I don't intend to create a complete horse-mounted band!

Many thanks go to my brother, Ian, for making such a wonderful job and providing me with this piece.

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Edit: My brother came back with the following information about the regiment of the cavalryman:

"It's a 10th Hussar ( Prince of Wales Own) Kettle Drummer. Uniform seems to be early Napoleonic. They changed to the Shako around 1813."

I'm trying to track down some better colour reference guides for this uniform, there's bound to be an Osprey book on British Napoleonic cavalry.