No one is immune from The Good Idea Fairy

No one…

Four generations of infantry weapons, 1815-1914

 

Top to bottom:

Napoleonic Brown Bess

American Civil War muzzle loading rifle

Franco-Prussian War Chassepot

WWI SMLE.

You can’t pull off beard and tartan like they can

Men of 72 Highlanders who served in the Crimea: William Noble, Alexander Davison and John Harper, 1856

The token remnants of the Dutch Cavalry

The Royal Netherlands Army had a long and celebrated horse cavalry tradition that included three historic hussar (huzaren) regiments (Regiment Huzaren 1st Van Sytzama, 2nd Prins van Oranje and 3rd Prins Alexander), dating back to cuirassier units first organized by Napoleon back in 1810 (though other Dutch cavalry units went back much further). They ditched their horses after 135 years for tanks after 1945 (building to over 900 main battle tanks by 1985), but overtime all three of these units were disbanded– though a small measure of each remain.

Read the rest here: The token remnants of the Dutch Cavalry

Napoleonic musketry drill of Szekler border guard infantry

Another excellent channel, capandball

 

The Szeklers, or Székelys were and are Hungarians who live in Transylvania. They played in important part in the border guard system of the Habsburg monarchy and Hungary. During the French and Napoleonic wars they were used widely as light troops. They were rough people, tough fighters. Here is the demonstration of their musketry drill according to the 1806-1807 regulations.

Storming Badajoz

“The Devil’s Own” 88th Regiment at the Siege of Badajoz. Watercolour en grisaille by Richard Caton Woodville Jr. (1856-1927)

About 15 years ago I was burned out on reading about and researching 20th Century warfare. I had a 24 hour duty shift coming up and wanted something different to read during the downtime so I hit a local bookstore. I found Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Rifles and figured “Why not?” as I knew next to nothing about the Napoleonic Wars. It didn’t take long to get hooked on the series. Even though the plots were fairly similar, the historical information contained in each was fascinating.

So there you go, I have interests besides aviation and cars!