'The Fighting Third' Peninsular War Army

It’s all in the timing and with hindsight it would have probably been a better idea to start this project in the new year! A busy December at work followed by the double whammy of Christmas with the family and New Years with my wife’s family, left me little time to do much in the way of painting.

Thankfully, January has been more productive and I have managed to get three companies of the 5/60^th Royal American Regiment of Foot done. From what I can tell they wore similar uniform to the famous 95th only with red facings and blue trousers (there is some confusion between the sources on this but it would seem that they started out in blue before they eventually got replaced on campaign).

I’ll do a brief history of their experience in the Peninsula in an upcoming PLOG post.

Next up are the 74^thHighlanders. These guys left me in a bit of a conundrum. They were a Highland regiment but it seems in order to encourage recruitment from lowland areas they got rid of their kilts in 1809 and wore trousers instead (losing their Highland Status in the process according to some sources). I spent ages looking for evidence of their uniform but struggled to nail it down. From what I can tell their uniform was almost identical to the regular line infantry, however several sources depict Highlanders with red and white chequered headband around their shako.

I wasn’t sure how to represent this regiment on the table. I was tempted to ignore the fact they switched out of their kilts and take liberties with history, leaving them fully kilted; after all, what’s the point of having a Highland regiment with nothing to distinguish them as such! In the end I couldn’t ignore my research and so used the same Perry Peninsula figures as before but have been laboriously been adding the chequered headband that seemed to come up in many of the uniform guides.

Once these are finished I have a couple of skirmish bases to finish and then I have decided to further strengthen the highland identity by adding in the Perry highland command stand. Officers were responsible for their own uniforms and I have seen many examples of drummers and pipers in kilts even when the soldiers around them were in trousers.

If anyone knows more details about the uniform and status of the 74^thplease leave it in the comments. Hopefully, my solution remains somewhat faithful to history whilst giving a clear nod to their highland roots.