La Grande Armée (Episode 2) - The Infantry & Officer Corps [53:16-58:21]

or otherwise sourcing pikes, daggers, shovels and other pointy things for close encounters. This policy of restricting certain weapons to certain troops carried on throughout Lagrange and Armée. The Charneville came in three main varieties, the base fusil given to line infantry and skirmishes, a short barrel of carbine called a muscuton, and a version of the carbine called a fusil de d'urgant. The muscuton was issued to the company musicians and the sappers, both groups needing their hands free, and as the name hints the fusil de d'urgant was a cavalry carbine. Officers and sergeants were issued special carbines with their barrels rifled for enhanced accuracy and range. The rifling made the carbine tough to reload as the cartridge had to be forced down the barrel, but in skilled hands it could take the head right of a target up to 200 paces. For this reason it was popular with the skirmishes, particularly the vertigeur. Firing prone, resting the barrel on their shackle, vertigeur did more than harass enemy troops. They could sight and shoot enemy officers and musicians with relative impunity. Personal non-regulation weapons were also found among the ground-down May's officers. And with no prescriptions on using such weapons and so many carried cavalry carbines and long-barrelled pistols. Others purchased bespoke German, Italian and French firearms from artisinal workshops. None of these non-standard designs ever saw widespread adoption. French designers profiled breech loading rifles, double-barrelled pistols, hand-craned carbines and other novel innovations, but they all shared the same essential problem, an neat idea that could not be feasibly mass-produced. Any man could have wheeled a musket, but it was only by wearing a uniform he could claim to be a soldier. By the time the ground-alme was formed, the provisioning of uniforms was directly overseen by the Ministry of War, replacing the reliance on an inefficient system of contractors which consistently hampered the revolutionary army. Contractors were still used, but they augmented state-run textile works, and all sources of uniforms were carefully vetted by the Ministry. The various components of a uniform were produced to the specifications of a regiment or its colonel, with the orders placed at a company level. There existed a bewildering plethora of styles, designs and tones on display in French uniforms. Famed for their extravagance are the flashy uniforms of the Hussar and Imperial Guard, who will get the spotlight in due course, but that doesn't mean that the regular infantry didn't boast their own fantastic designs. Each infantry regiment had its own tenu or outfit made of two parts. The petite tenu was essentially consistent between regiments. It consisted of a sleeved white waistcoat over which was worn of vest and suspenders. On the legs went white breaches worn over stockings. Gators were often worn too either at full or half length. The grand tenu was a battle dress and parade dress in one. The main part was a fitted coat made in the regimental style. No matter the style, fitted coats were always replete with a fine array of embroidery, butting, patterning and lining. Sleeves, collars and the coat lining were usually gold, green or red. A bunny, a simple field cap, was top cover for the petite tenu. In battle, the soldiers wore a shackle. A conical hat made of felt and bored leather. On its face went either an imperial or regimental emblem. To distinguish at a glance, drab a black or gray shackle from one unit to another, many were adorned with a colorful set of feathers, ribbons and embroidery or stitchwork. The more ornate the better. Worth noting too was the French practice of summing rank in Cygnia into the lower sleeves of their uniforms. Enlisted and non-commissioned ranks were denoted by a series of chevrons and stripes. Soldar, privates, wore no in Cygnia. Capurral, corporals, wore two horizontal red stripes and capurral furrier, basically supply clocks, two red chevrons. Sergeants, sergeants, wore a single golden or white stripe, and a sergeant majeur, sergeant mages, two parallel golden chevrons. At ten years of service, regardless of rank, an enlisted man was granted the honor of a single golden chevron, one above the sleeve on the shoulder. Uniform regulations for the grand dame were only set in February 1806 and even then only loosely. Infantry regiments almost exclusively used blu-ompérial as their base color, though many light regiments preferred green. The use of dark blue was a hangover from the revolutionary army that had dyed its stalks of white royal army coats with indigo. The British embargo made importing indigo tough so there was serious consideration given to only a light doorb of indigo or ditching blue entirely and dyeing the coats gray. White made a perfunctory return in 1806 and 1807, though blue took back its rightful place when