Chevaliers of the Crown
The Count of Bussy traveled to Chambéry where the Count of Artois asked him, on June 1, 1791, to raise a body of men intended "for the defense of Religion and the Throne
" composed mainly of gentlemen and "bourgeois or town or country owners" drawn"mainly from the provinces of Dauphiné, Provence, Auvergne, Velay, Lyon and the surrounding areas"(Baron de Vitrolles).
After going to Coblentz in September to the Brothers of the King to conclude the definitive organize the corps – which already had 150 to 160 volunteers – , on November 15, an order of creation establishing the corps and organization; the "Dragon Knights of the Crown" claimed the same privileges as the Gendarmerie, so each rider had the rank of second lieutenant of the dragoons (confirmed on January 5, 1792). However, as several testimonies attest, including the Memoirs of the Duke of Enghien, who discovered the body in January 1792 in the States of Cardinal de Rohan, this formation, which had joined Condé's army at the end of November, was then designated as the "Bussy Legion or the Knights of the Crown"and was about 200 men strong; it was then increased to nearly 300, including 200 cavalrymen and a hundred infantrymen. Due to their insufficient number, the latter were reformed on May 1, 1792 to form a company of the noble infantry regiment on foot (Corsac company), while the two squadrons of the Knights-Dragons of the Crown were joined, in the Austrian formation of April 1793, to that of Dauphin within a half-division of the Noble Horse Regiment (3rd division, 1st major).
The Count of Bussy and the Vidame de Vassé both had the rank of colonel at the head of these two units while the Viscount of Bussy, brother of the former, and M. d'Orville were first captains. The Marquis of Frotté was for a time among the Knights-Dragons of the Crown but he withdrew before the Alsace campaign to join Normandy and organize the counter-revolution there.
From February 1794, the Count of Bussy undertook steps to raise a cavalry corps of 1300 to 1500 horses for the benefit of the Duke of Saxe-Teschen, general-in-chief of the German forces of the Empire, and these negotiations were to lead to the creation of the Royal and Imperial Regiment of Chasseurs de Bussy , raised for the King of Denmark in the name of his Duchy of Holstein. Few volunteers having wished to follow him, the Count of Bussy then sought to leave the army of Condé with his corps, which the prince fiercely opposed; in his Memoirs, he describes the Count of Bussy as
"a very interested man, very ambitious, hated in his corps and who had obtained through his intrigues in Heidelberg the raising of part of the contingent of the Empire"
Finally, the regiment of the Knights-dragons of the Crown was disbanded in the summer of 1795 and immediately reconstituted under the name of Knights of the Crown.
Inspired by the uniform of the Lorraine dragoons in the 1786 regulations, that of the first Bourbon volunteers did not survive the adventure of 1790 and the corps experienced two successive ones: the first (1792-1795) was very close to the so-called Emigrants uniform (especially buttoned by a single row of buttons) but was distinguished by some features from that of the noble cavalry (button, pockets, equipment and armament, the noble riders not having rifles). If we suppose that the corps initially wore a uniform mentions a "hat in the ordinary form, decorated only with a gold braid and a waistcoat button (engraved in relief with a royal crown)" and wearing a white basin cockade. Grouvel deduced this from an illustration after the Restoration (Vernet) and from the fact that from the spring of 1792, the Knights-Dragons of the Crown adopted (like the legions of Mirabeau and Hohenlohe) a Austrian Rumford helmet during their stay in the states of the princes of Hohenlohe a model very well represented by Patrice Courcelle drawings below.
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| Trumpeter |
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| Standard and finials |
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| Portrait of a member of the regiment |
Cheers
Matt
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