Napoleonic French Military Uniforms 1798-1814

Book excerpt: Three talented French artists, Carle Vernet, Horace Vernet (son of Carle) and Eugène Lami, capitalised on the wave of nostalgia for the First Empire brought on by the death of Napoleon in 1821 by producing a series of prints of French military uniforms of the French revolutionary and imperial armies. These colourful lithographs, each accompanied by a text by an unidentified author describing the unit depicted, were published in book form in 1822 as Collection des Uniformes des Armées Françaises de 1791 à 1814 (Paris: Gide fils, 1822). The broad range of uniforms depicted includes many from infrequently-illustrated foreign and auxiliary units in the French army. The images also include unusual back and side views of uniforms. The images in this book are contemporary watercolor copies of the prints and are reproduced with permission from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, where they currently reside.