Imperial Guard Grenadiers a Cheval

No - parade dress a crown, campaign dress a grenade, for that reason I would opt for grenades depicting them on campaign.

Rousselot shows the Young Guards squadrons also with grenades, caveat - seconardy source.

There Rousselot is a bit dated - I will also check what Paul Dawson has to say in his book about the Imperial Guard cavalry.

@Hans - Karl Weiß and @Kevin F. Kiley and @Peter O'Brien

It is probably more complicated than we thought... I checked Dawson's "Napoleon's gods" again and found the following on p. 100-101 concerning the schabraques...

"Some 1370 parade schabraques (with crown) were purchased from 1808. 1270 in 1810 and 100 in 1813... Every man in the regiment received a new schabraque for the coronation parade in May 1810. Clearly these remained in service until lost in the campaign of Russia."

Were these schabraques only used for parade or were they used too as campaign dress after the coronation parade?

"1450 undress schabraques (with grenades) were made in 1813 and 295 between 1808 and 1812. These 1450 examples, to which we add 100 parade examples (with crowns), possibly for NCO'S, give a total of 1550 schabraques. Again, as with the dress habits, the undress items out of a need for economy became parade items in 1813."

Is it possible that after the disaster in Russia, due to scarcity and lack of money, no distinction was made between parade schabraques and campaign schabraques at all?

"List of manufacture and supply in 1810 show 295 saddle cloth for the undress uniform without grenades and with a single row of lace..."

I think it is likely that the campaign schabraque was the most common for the regiment throughout the period, but that the parade schabraque was also used in the field from 1810 onwards. In 1813 and 1814 there seems to have been no more distinction at all between campaign and parade equestrian equipment, equipment was used that was available, even schabraques without crowns or grenades.

@Immo Frese

I also checked Dawsons Imperial Guard, almost impossible to digest, would come to the same conclusion than you - crown maybe already typical for the 1809 campaign.

The grenade is for the glory days, still in 1805 - 1807, it changed in about 1808 for the crown, a royal aspect, for your period of interest - 1809 - 1814 it was a crown.

@Hans - Karl Weiß The undress saddlecloth always used the grenade...and it was an imperial symbol, not a royal one.

What do you think they would wear for battle?

@Hans - Karl Weiß

It is commonly said that the Guard went into battle in parade uniform.But I'm not sure whether this was still common practice after the Russian campaign, because the lost equipment could not be replaced so quickly. So I think it is possible that a large number of the Grenadiers à cheval in the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 had no parade uniform at all.

@Immo Frese That would depend on the situation and if there was time to change into full dress before an action began. It is much more probably that they wore either campaign or service dress which is what they would have been wearing.

The service squadron might well be in full dress as they were around Napoleon's person, but that would also depend on the situation. Routinely I would tend to doubt that any of the Guard cavalry regiments would be in full or full parade dress in combat.