Madrid Provincial Regiment

As well as the regular army, the Isabelino forces could draw on provincial and national militia units. I will deal with the latter in due course. The provincial regiments formed the long-established nationwide militia. They seem to have been organised on a city-by-city basis and some 42 regiments existed in total. The regiments had the usual mix of centre and flank companies, but the cazadore and grenadier troops were assigned to form the Royal Guard. Consequently, the regiments were much smaller than their regular line counterparts and so my provincial militia units will consist of only 12 figures rather than the standard 20.


Once again I developed the uniform scheme from documents posted on the Carlist Wars yahoo group. The uniform basically follows the cut and design of the regular infantry, but with red piping rather than white. There are a couple of other differences: I did the turnbacks in full colour rather than turqui with red piping and the collars are also all red instead of turqui with red flashes at the front. As noted in an earlier post, I am painted my FCW units in pairs and therefore put this regiment in white trousers whilst the next provincial regiment is in grey trousers. The yellow motif on the turnbacks is supposed to be a fleur de lys.

While I'm finishing off the 17th Foot and some more Isabelinos I'm putting some thought to what I might paint in the final 4 weeks until Baby-Day. It should be AWI, I think, and the contenders are: Hessian musketeers, British line infantry, British light dragoons, British Saratoga artillery, Hessian grenadiers and the British Legion. If there is anything that readers would particularly like to see then please let me know, as I fear the blog is going to be somewhat desolate for a while as from early December....

12 figures. Painted September 2009. Flag by Adolfo Ramos.