Friday, December 6, 2013

Winged hussars circa 1770 - Bellotto

Salve,
In November I posted a photo of XVIII century painting by Italian artists residing in Polish Kingdom Bernardo Bellotto showing Warsaw as seen then from the right bank of Vistula.
I wrote that you could see king's Royal uhlans there, detail of this painting below. But this is not the case.

Well, as you can see I had a rather tiny copy of a photo and I assumed that these were the Royal Uhlans, and my friend and winged hussaria historian Radek Sikora, via email, pointed to me that the colour of the riders' national uniforms, red 'kontusz' and navy blue 'żupan' underneath, correspond rather to the winged hussars uniforms of the period, in their final stages before conversion into the National Cavalry, and not to the uhlans, with their green uniforms

So I did some sketches of these hussaria uniforms of 1760s - showing towarzysz hussars.
I will continue this thread, as more sketches of  uniforms, arms and horse tack should follow




by the way the Osprey book on the Polish armies of 1770-94 has a very peculiar reconstruction of the winged hussar towarzysz, I will eventually copy the drawing and show you here with some discussion etc.
...
ps
I plan to address the pancerny (kozak) and petyhorcy cavalry of the same period, and other cavalry units of XVIII century Poland.
All comments and suggestions are always welcome.

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