Napoleon's Officers: Uniforms and Equipment

This book documents the dress of Napoleon’s Grande Armée staff with meticulous, period-based detail.Forming part of the author’s ground-breaking series of books providing the essential reference point for the dress of Napoleon’s army, Napoleon’s Officers: Uniforms and Equipment will be the most important study to be presented in over 200 years of this perennially popular subject for wargamers, artists and historians.Relying primarily on period regulations and little used archive records held in the Archives Nationales and Service Historique du Armée de Terre in Paris, as well as contemporary illustrations and original items of uniforms, the author sets out to describe the dress of the Grande Armée’s staff in the most complete and accurate manner since the glory days of the First Empire.Napoleon’s Officers: Uniforms and Equipment examines the dress of generals of brigade and division, including the lavish and elaborate wardrobe of General Lasalle, the idol of the light cavalry. Among the uniforms described are those of the adjutant commandants, adjutants, secretaries and other often forgotten, but essential personnel who were responsible for the day-to-day management of the Grande Armée on campaign.The flamboyant dress of Berthier’s aides-de-camp is shown, with their scarlet pantaloons and black dolmans, as well as the aides for the both the marshals of the empire and other senior field officers. Also examined are ordnance officers – the men who acted in the name of the Emperor – dressed in green or mid blue, these officers outranked any other officer in the army. These men ensured the Emperor’s orders were carried out. Equally important to the functioning of the French Army were the couriers and post men who transmitted orders, they were essential to the command and control of the Grande Armée.Other staff members were topographical officers who mapped the route of the army, war commissioners, the men who made sure the army was fed and obtained the necessary raw materials to make new uniforms, and inspectors of review who ensured that the army was clothed – the very essence of this visually stunning book. Read more