Hi folks,
Somewhere in the dim and distant past, I can recall reading (not sure if it was in the original German or in an English translation) a list of the colours of the horses ridden by all the senior officers - general staff, brigade commanders and individual unit COs - in the Schwarze Schar during the 100 Days. It was probably in the last 2-3 years, but sadly that now qualifies as "dim and distant past". Unfortunately, a computer meltdown has lost this resource - amongst others - and I am hoping to reclaim it via these pages. Any help (preferably the list itself!) greatly appreciated.
Brendan
Thanks, Stephen - two very interesting quotes there.
The first one, from Maj. Gen. Torrens, perhaps reflects some confusion over what is occurring in Brunswick, since the "new" hussar regiment clearly had more than one squadron at the time of his writing, although it does make clear that the "old" regiment was still in the Mediterranean.
Ms Eaton's comment is more pertinent, being an eye-witness account. It does seem unlikely, bearing in mind Markus's quote from the regimental history, that ALL of the hussars were mounted on black horses. However, it is not impossible that perhaps one smaller group was, possibly because it was acting as a bodyguard for the Duke (although at Quatre Bras, he seems to have spent most of his time with the Uhlan squadron). That said, it was unusual for light cavalry to ride black horses, due to the prevailing thought at the time that the darker a horse's coat, the stronger the animal was likely to be - hence the darkest-coloured mounts generally went to the heavy cavalry.
As I said in my reply to Markus's original post, whilst the actual procurers may not have had instructions to buy horses of specific colours, I think it highly likely - these are German troops, remember, noted for efficiency and professionalism - that once they had possession of them, the officers and NCOs would have arranged some kind of "sorting process" so that mounts of similar colour were grouped together within a troop, if not necessarily an entire squadron.
Once again, many thanks for bringing those excerpts to my attention.
BM