Imperial Brazilian Uniforms
During the War of
the Triple Alliance

Part 4: General Staff and Engineers

Figure 15

By C. A. Norman


FIGURE 15: General's Rank Insignia: All dark blue collars with an outer piping of white, an inner edging of gold lace and gold oakleaf embroidery indicating rank:

    15a: Marechal: A double row of wavy gold oakleaf embroidery, joined at the ends to form a sort of frame around the collar (and full dress cuffs).

    15b: Tenente General: A single row of embroidery with leaves on both sides of the branch.

    15c: Marechal de Campo: A single row of embroidery with leaves only on the top side of the branch.

    15d: Brigadeiro: A spray of oakleaf embroidery at the front of the collar reaching to about an inch past the seam of the shoulder on the jacket.

    15e: Full Dress Cuff, Brigadeiro: On the full dress (Coatee) cuff a Brigadeiro was distinguished by a sort of "star shaped" spray of oakleaf embroidery with a single edging line of gold lace just inside the white outer piping. Other Generals wore the same pattern of embroidery worn on their collars, plus a varying number of gold lace edgings, 2 laces for a Marechal de Campo and 3 for a Tenente General, a Marechal had only a single slightly wider lace, but it had a scalloped edge on the inner side (note - these varied lace edgings were only worn on the cuffs, the collars had only a single plain lace for all ranks).

    15f: Epaulet, Marechal: Barroso included a detail sketch of a Marechal's epaulet in the text section, distinguished by an embroidered device of the world globe within a wreath with the Imperial Crown above on the strap. Unfortunately, he gave no details of the epaulet devices, if any, of other General's ranks (or for that matter, of other officer's ranks).

    Uniform Plates

    Back to Table of Contents -- El Dorado Vol VIII No. 1
    Back to El Dorado List of Issues
    Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
    © Copyright 1997 by The South and Central Military Historians Society
    This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
    Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com