I'm reading Paul L. Dawson's Marshal Ney at Waterloo and in it he quotes a passage from Cavalie´ Mercer's Journal of the Waterloo Campaign in which Mercer describes being woken before dawn on the morning of June 17th 1815 by the sound of musketry. He was then surprised to see "numerous white discs, which were continually in motion, changing place and disappearing." He says this "puzzled me exceedingly, and I could not even form a conjecture as to what they might be." Once the dawn arrives he realizes that what he has been looking at is "a corps of Nassau troops, lying on the ground, having white tops to their shakos."
I know that some Nassau troops had white shako covers, but the effect Mercer is describing sounds rather different to that. Does anyone know whether the tops of the shakos of Nassau troops were indeed white?
Thanks Marcus,
It sounds like Mercer must have seen troops in white shako covers and was a bit fanciful in his description of them.
Best wishes
Stephen
The best article about the Nassau infantry during the Waterloo campaign is in German at: http://www.napoleon-online.de/armee_nassau_infanterie1815.html ... in the uniform section ("Uniformierung") the authors write that the center companies of the 1st regiment began the battle white linen shako covers, which should be removed by order of General Kruse at about 3pm (due to large losses, of course by artillery with the easy "white" targets). The center companies of the 2nd regiment had black shako covers.
And of course there was no white band at the shako - they were black.
Greetings from Berlin
Markus Stein