When I first put a set on, I automatically fitted them with the buckle outwards - modern habits die hard!John M wrote:You are of course right, Uncle Arthur. I had made a careless observation. When mounted, the stirrup leather would half twist to place the loops and buckle in front of and away from the rider's boot with the smooth side of the leather against the riders boot.
There's a story about Brigadier General John Slade, ordered by Lord Paget to clear French dragoons from a Spanish village (Mayorga, I think). Slade led the 10th Hussars forward but stopped to fiddle with his stirrups. After a delay, he led them on again, only to stop a second time to adjust them again. Paget was so exasperated at the delay he ordered one of his aides to take over command of the 10th and lead the sortie.
I guess you can see why it might have taken Slade quite some time to get the adjustment just right.
I was intrigued by the introduction date for the hussar saddle. Haythornthwaite actually says 'designed in 1805' but then goes on to say ' the use of this saddle was extended to ALL light cavalry in 1812' (British Cavalryman 1792-1815 - Osprey). So - hussar regiments first, then. Mollo says re-equipping took 18 months with the 7th Hussars ready first, in September 1806, and the 10th and 15th by the middle of the following year (The Prince's Dolls).
Unfortunately, Gordon and Griffith (15th Hussars), Thomkinson and Luard (16th Light Dragoons), Brotherton (14th Light Dragoons) and Robert Ballard Long (16th LD transferred to 15th Hussars) all fail to mention anything about saddles in the diaries and letters of theirs I've come across. Edward Charles Cocks (16th LD) wrote to his brother in December 1810 asking '...would you order me a new hussar saddle with accoutrements complete, from Whippy' (Intelligence Officer in the Peninsula), so were planned changes common knowledge that early (and with a saddle having a service life of 16 years, although officers purchased their own so might be expected to renew them more frequently) or had the process of re-equipping Light Dragoon regiments already begun?
Then Cocks spoils it by adding 'I wish the pads for the valises to be made very large and fixed to the saddle', thus ordering new a piece of 17th/18th century equipment apparently then obsolete (though Mike Chappell's British Cavalry Equipments 1800-1941 shows a 1778 drawing of a proposed new 'Light Horse Saddle', designed by Sir Wiliam Erskine, with such a pad).
Carl Franklin, in his otherwise (apparently) excellent British Napoleonic Uniforms seems to have gone with Tylden's 'no-spoon pommel'. He obviously couldn't find any new information after trawling through regimental archives. Or maybe he treated saddlery as being of secondary importance.
Confused? I am. Perhaps we'll never know. I'm sure if more private dragoons had kept diaries we'd have far better information to work with.
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