BestSoldiers announced new kit:
1st Grenadier Regiment of the “Old Guard”, 1814-1815
Scale: 75 mm
Material: resin
Sculpted by Antonio Zapatero Guardini
Box art by Gustavo Gil
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Beautiful. Seeing the guy holding his hat makes me wonder how much that hat weighed.
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Too much, I’ll bet! I suspect it spent most of it’s life in a protective bag on top of his back pack. Looking at the right of the picture (the three-quarter rear view), see the little gold tassel hanging under the flap of his cartouche box? That’s his “Bonnet de Police”, a lightweight cap for use when not wearing the Bearskin; although many retained the bicorne previously worn as a preferred option to the Bonnet.
Cheers,
M
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Don’t forget the bearskin also had a tall plume which fitted behind the cockade on the left, so it would have been even heavier! The bearskins were worn on campaign, certainly at Waterloo if the contemporary reports and pictures are to be believed. IIRC the plume was strapped to the sabre-briquet on campaign. As was the case for many of the Imperial Guard, he is wearing the “Legion d’ Honneur”, long service chevrons (there was no direct entrance to the Garde, you had to have served several years in a Line regiment) and the single gold stripe of a sergeant..
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