The ‘Right’ Green

The folks who created our uniform back in the bicentennial did an amazing job researching every aspect of the 1779 regulation uniforms. Unfortunately most of that research has been lost, including pictures of original uniforms.

Over the past few years, in light of the Battle Road Regulations, we’ve challenged our selves to document every aspect of our uniform. It’s not a question of, where the founders of Saintonge right or wrong, it’s a question of, how did they come to this conclusion. We’ve been looking at museum pictures, regulations, diaries, etc to help us document our uniforms and equipment.

The biggest question on everyone’s mind is, what color was our ‘Green Trim’, and were can we find a sustainable source? The founders of the unit used Forest Green wool from Woolwich. WHY? Well our 1779 Regulations state “Vert Foncé” which translate to Dark Green. The founders of the unit looked at woolwich, found a dark green and went with it. It was a sustainable source and a logical choice. They used this green wool on everything, including the Linen Small clothes. There are too things wrong with that. 1) The 1779 uniforms do not mention wool on the linen small clothes; 2) You can’t just wash linen small clothes with wool on them. As we’ve seen over the years the wool shrinks, or bleeds, and sometimes it does both.

About 5 years ago, we went through a very lengthy task of finding a suitable linen for our small clothes. We weren’t just going to just through green wool on it and call it a day. So the search began to find green linen. Which brought back into question, what is the correct green and where do get it. Since the bicentennial a lot of research has been done into finding and even producing materials of the time period. We’ve had these experts tell us, ‘this is the green you should be using’. It turns out, that green they had shown us had more yellow than blue but was still considered a dark green. It didn’t really look like any other green we had seen or used before with Saintonge. This green found its way on to a coat and was ‘praised’ as the correct color. But is it?

Today a very interesting thing fell into our lap. A picture of wool swatches from the French National Archives. These wools where being produced in France and sold to the Spanish in 1762. The label for the last color is cut off, but we believe it to be “Vert Foncé ” Which is what is called out on our 1779 Regulations. Is this it, have we found it? If so, once again the founders had it right, but now we have something we can point to say, ‘this is why we have chosen this shade of green’.