Quote Originally Posted by Jolt View Post
What are plates? I can give you hand, since I'm arqueologist, though that is not my area of specialty.
The uniforms of the Portuguese infantry followed the evolution of fashion throughout the 18th Century. In the Century's beginning, in the reign of D. João V, it followed the uniforms of the Catholic Powers - France, Spain, Austria, using uniforms in light grey colour called "Alvadia" - of ample size, usually without lapels with large tricorners, with the grandadiers using fur caps.

In 1762, uniforms still followed the Catholic powers uniforms, specially that of the Austrian crown's armies, the uniforms colour being now white, and the jackets began having colour lapels, to distinguish regiments more easily. With the franco-spanish DoW, there was the need to increase the amount of soldiers per infantry regiment, since these since 1754 with half of the normal amount of soldiers. The transition of one regiment with 360 soldiers to one of 1200 in 1762 disorganized the production of uniforms, since there were too few uniforms in the military warehouses, and few in the factories of the Kingdom. The regiments had to content themselves with the textiles that were already available, and they even got to search for these in the fairs of the interior of the country, thus the Portuguese army made the "Fantastic War" with uniforms of all colours - With soldiers in white but also blue, green, yellow, red, etc. Throughout the conflict, it seems that it was managed to standardize the uniforms of the regiments with white, blue and brown uniforms. The majority of the regiments of the 1st batallion recieved to usual uniform - white -, while others were dressed in blue. The ones of the 2nd batallions were dressed in brown. Although there wasn't that amount of standardization for the entire army.


Translated for the first two paragraphs of this site: http://www.arqnet.pt/exercito/evluninf.html