I converted three of my Hungarian musketeers into as many masters of Pandours, the infamous South-Slavic irregulars that set the standard in small-scale warfare for the mid 18th-Century and beyond.
Although early representations of Pandours - notably those commercialized in the 1730s and early 1740s by the German engraver, Martin Engelbrecht - tend to exaggerate their exotic appearance, other synchronous pictorial evidence seems to suggest that the general look of the Pandours that took the field at the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession was probably more similar to that of dismounted hussars.
Winged felt caps (Flügelmützen) were popular, although conical ones and fur-trimmed stocking caps were also in use. The vest and the short coat were piped in hussar fashion. Footwear included Hungarian ankle boots and opankas, a kind of Balkan shoe of leather and cords construction, fastened at the ankle with leather straps.
Besides musket and saber, these wild irregulars carried pistols and yataghan Turkish daggers tucked in their waist sash, or into special conical leather holsters suspended from the hips or chest by shoulder belts. Hussar-like Säbeltaschen were also popular.
I made sure that the arms of my Hungarian musketeers fitted also on the new body masters, so that a number of Pandour poses were readily available.
I painted a few of my new Pandours in a variety of attractive color schemes, based on different combinations of blue, red, green, yellow and crimson.
Note the stylized tulip floral devices on the Säbeltaschen, a motif quite common in 18th-Century Central European folk art.
Here a party of Austrian Pandours are combing a Flemish farm in search for plunder...
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