Good Afternoon Everyone!
I have a question for all the experts out there.

I need help with creating the battalion fanions for the Tirailleurs Algerien (Turco) units. in the few images/references I've found I know each flag had the hand of fatima in the center and 4 crescent moons in the corners.

But for all my research I cannot for the life of me find what colour these crescents and hand should be! Does anyone know what colour the hand and crescents should be for the battalion fanions? A source would be good too! 


I know that the company fanions had coloured borders as listed below.


The regulations of 1857 laid down that battalion fanions were:

1st battalion: blue sheet
2nd battalion: red sheet
3rd battalion: yellow sheet
4th battalion: green sheet

When wartime expansion created extra battalions, these used the same sequence of colours, but had a central vertical white band down the sheet.

The devices were coloured by company (note that in the French army, companies were numbered consecutively through the regiment, and not the battalion):

1st, 5th, 9th, 13th: blue
2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th: red
3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th: yellow
4th, 8th, 12th, 16th: green

Here are two colour photos of 2 surviving examples which were captured in the frontier battles.

http://dhm.de/datenbank/dhm.php?seite=5&fld_0=MI008197
http://dhm.de/datenbank/dhm.php?seite=5&fld_0=MI010015

and because life wasn't meant to be easy I also found these anomalies to the official rules (Thanks to Chad for writing this out and the official rules listed above in a different post I had about Zouave Fanions)

The pennant of the 2nd Tirailleurs, 1st battalion, lost in Woerth (Franco-Prussian war, 6 August 1870), is 49 x 54.5 cm, with a red field and a light blue border of 5 cm width. The crescents and the hand of Fatima are light blue.
The pennant of the 2nd Tirailleurs, 2nd battalion, is 47 x 52 cm, with a blue field and a black border of 5 cm width. The crescents and the hand of Fatima are light blue, but they have their points oriented to the inside.
The pennants of the 3rd Tirailleurs, 3rd batallion, is red-orange with w white border and a white hand of Fatima.


Thank you!
-Patrick

You best bet in this would be Dour Puritan, Fenton, Mollinary, Cameronian or Le Manchu (apologies if I missed out any of the other FPW big guns).

I did remember this topic coming up before, so I went to see if it held anything useful, however, you started the original thread Oat and we never got a resolution; there  had been  lots of discussion (some of it on topic), but no answer.

All I'll say is, at 10mm scale, the fanion will only be a couple of mm tall, so I suspect you can get away with whatever you fancy! I would go button colour or opposite to base colour? 

Me?. I know nothing about the period. I can make something up if you want

Why not, it's what the rest of us do!

Hahah no need make anything up but thanks for the offer

I took a look in one of my books  Pierre Charrie's Drapeaux et Etendards du XIXeme Siecle and there it was... The crescents and the hand on the battalion fanions are in green. Its at the company level that they get colourful. At least that's how I understood it! My french isn't the greatest.

Regards
-Patrick
 

I've only ever seen two fannions illustrated in colour. One was green with the hand, moons and border in red. The other was blue with the insignia again in red. As I game in 10mm, 6mm and 2mm I don't actually bother with fannions.

Mollinary is the world expert on, German helmets (fnarr fnarr) and flags, he'll be along any time now. I think Pendraken's FPW flag sheet (French) has something with a hand on it but I couldn't swear to it.

BTW and apropos Turcos, I tried some of the ACW zouave figures as I didn't/don't like the FPW ones (too spindly) alas they don't look that great, the monster kitchen-sink-and-all pack is missing and it really adds character.

I really liked the ACW zouaves!

I use some of the old ACW zouaves as Turcos - another variation as they are on marching pose.

I know, nice sculpts but the huge pack is so much of the 'look' they didn't do it for me. Wouldn't take much to modify the existing figure (hint hint).

Although there are contemporary illustrations showing the Turcos attacking sans pack.