1866 - THIRD ITALIAN INDIPENDANCE WAR - Regiment Nr. 9 LANCIERI DI FIRENZE

 I had always had the will to try myself with a template of Italian units of their first campaing, i.e. the 1866 War, that saw Italy and Prussia against Austria. I wanted to make some templates of Prussians but them I moved to this little project.

So I decided - eventually - to represent a little fighting of that Campaing, i.e. the Battle of Versa on 26th July 1866.

In this battle, from the Italian side, fought 5 squadrons (400 men) of the new Lancieri di Firenze, Regiment Nr. 9. I think that in English there is really no info. At the contrary, in Italian I found a lot of info that allowed me to make the template of this regiment at that Battle.

Copyright Michele L. SAVASTA FIORE

To  do that I used as a basis the template of the Cavalier or the Nizza Regiment (Nr. 1) during the First Italian Indipendence War and I tranformed it.

It was not very simple - as usual - to understand all the details, even though there are a lot of articles on it. First I had to decide whether to go for the campaign or service uniform. I opted for the first one, because I want to represent the Battle. The problem that immediatly arose was the kepy. In the service uniform it was of the colour of the Regiment (for Nr. 9 the orange) but in battle I had doubts: actually as in colours, I found only this painting. While the ribbons seems to be red, they were orange. The kepy - here - is yellowish and some other representations make of this regiment for all its troops in this way. 

Nontheless, I was able to find the Stato Maggiore dell'Esercito Italiano that pointed out that the troop covered the kepy in battle with a black cover, while officers only carried the yallowish cover of the kepy. I had so doubts about how to represent it.

In fact I found a quite simple copy of a postcard with this colours:

I was keen to follow in any case the info from the Italian General stab and hence to make the cover in black. To finally help me to solve it I was lucky (and able) to find original photos of Lancieri in campaing uniform ("Montura di via").

It seems evident (having a look at these pictures) that the cover was black for troops and NCO, and yellowish only for the officers.

But then I friend on TMP pointed out that in b/w photos yellow colour became like black.  So I got back to my doubts and I found this painting of lancieri:

I hence understood that I was wrong and the cover on the kepy was actually yellowish. (moreover I found another mistake: the stripes on trousers were blue for all regiments and in distinctive colour just for officers)

So I went on the superb non plus ultra unifor text/tables painted one century ago by Quinto Cenni and I found all... I should have done before...

Here bottom another 2 confirms that the campaign kepy was covered with a yellowish protection

It is possible to see (frontal top) the cover of the kepy in the correct colour. yellowish. So I decided to remake my template, as follows:

This (top) is the new version corrected

and the last one with correct monogramm (see top left) and apulettes in white, new white belt

Further with my researches, it went out that the Lancieri did not carry any rifle. So I remade it again. This time I use a template of the Regiment Lancieri di Aosta to give idea (bottom).