Uniforms of Les Compagnies de la Marine

A Few Notes

by James J. Mitchell



There has long been a bit of controversy brewing as to the exact color of the coat worn by the French soldier of the 18th Century. As past readers of the Seven Years War Association Journal may recall, Bill Protz has at various times addressed this issue. The controversy involves whether the color of the justeaucorps , or overcoat, was white or gray-white. Both colors have been used interchangeably to describe this coat, both by modern and by contemporary authors.

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Hotel des Invalides in Paris earlier this year on the way back from the Christopher Duffy tour. While there, I hoped to clear up this mystery once and for all, if I could be so fortunate to see an original uniform firsthand. It so happened that there were two original uniforms that caught my eye.

One is merely labeled as an officer's coat from (I believe) 1744. This particular coat is definitely a gray-white. It is slightly lighter than the coats worn by the actors portraying the French soldiers in the film The Last of the Mohicans , but is definitely of a grayish cast.

The other coat was of a regiment from the era of the American Revolution. This coat is definitely more of an off-white, very similar in shade to the coats worn by the reenactment unit to which I belong. I would describe this color as ivory.

The above observations prove very little. Since the first coat belonged to an officer, it can only be demonstrated that one unkown officer of an unidentified regiment owned one gray-white coat that has survived into the present. Unfortunately I did not have time to interrogate a museum employee or any other expert as to whether all French regiments in 1744 used the same color wool in their coats or not. I will probably send a letter to the museum as some future date.

The reenactors at Louisbourg definitely use a gray-white (I would almost describe it as light gray) uniform for their portrayals. I was able to observe this first-hand when I made a trip to Louisbourg several years ago. The time period being portrayed at Louisbourg is the 1740's. Most reenactors who portray Les Compagnies de la Marine during the SYW, however, have opted for the lighter, ivory color for their uniforms.

Literature that I have consulted has not completely resolved this question either. Fred Funcken, in L'Uniforme et les Armes des Soldats de la Guerre en Dentelle (Casterman, 1975, pp. 50 - 56 .), states that all regular line infantry were a gray-white from the early years of the 18th Century until 1762, when they changed to white. Rene Chartrand, in The French Soldier in Colonial America (Ottawa, 1984 p. 21) says essentially the same thing. Rene Chartrand and Jack L. Summers also mention gray-white cloth used by most regiments until the time of the American Revolution in Military Uniforms In Canada 1665 - 1970 (Ottawa, 1981, p. 16). Finally, Andrew Gallup and Donald Schaffer's book, La Marine: The French Colonial Soldier in Canada 1745 - 1761 (Maryland, 1992, p. 58) uphold the notion of a gray-white cloth. However, they also include the interesting quote from W.A. Thornburn's book, French Army Regiments and Uniforms (New York, 1976, p. 7 ), which reads as follows:

    During the 18th Century white was the standard colour for the Line Infantry. This was not as spectacular as might be imagined however, since this was the colour of the coarse undyed wool that was used, dyed cloth, apart from distinctive cuffs and collars, being reserved for Guards, Cavalry and foreign corps.

I believe that the key term here is undyed wool. If one looks at a herd of sheep and pays attention to the color of the wool, I think that this is the color that the previous paragraph implies. The problem is that the uniform that I saw in Paris seems to be too gray not to have some dye in it. Someone suggested to me that the discoloration may be due to the smoke of 18th Century lighting implements being ground into it. This may be the case, but I doubt it. The color is too uniform throughout. Besides, I would think that the museum would have cleaned it before putting it on display.

Ken Bunger, a founding member of the Seven Years War Association, was recently kind enough to send me an unpublished doctoral thesis by Gilles Proulx (dated 1971) titled Study of Military Costume at Louisbourg which contains many first-hand references to uniform materials. On page 6 is a reference to the uniform of Lemau de la Jaisse in 1741. He describes the coat as being white. On page 7 is mentioned a clothing contract for 1697 which uses the phrase gray-white for the coat. Numerous other references in this interesting document are made to the uniform.

The most common contemporary term seems to have been graywhite. The buttons on the uniform are referred to consistently as being copper on wood, save for the officers who had gilded copper on wood. Don't all of you panic and repaint copper over the brass buttons on your miniatures, however ! Gallup and Schaffer maintain that the correct button color is brass, based on numerous examples unearthed at Louisbourg and Michilimacinac. They maintain that "copper" is a mistranslation. This may be true since both copper and brass can translate into the French word cuivre .

My best guess,in light of all this, is to paint one's figures the color of undyed wool and hope for the best.

[ Editor: I have been using the Ral Partha " grey "for my French line infantry since this color looks sort of white to the eye. Sometimes I use it for the undercoat color and highlight with Armory " uniform white ". The effect is very eye-pleasing and approximates the colors shown in Funcken for 1745.1


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© Copyright 1994 by James E. Purky
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