Garibaldi's Redshirts

I SUSPECT most Brits, if they have heard of Garibaldi at all, would assume he was a foreigner, possibly Italian, who invented the garibaldi biscuit, or at least had it named after him.
If this were the extent of their knowledge, they would be more or less right, as far as it went.
Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-82) was a mainly-self-appointed general who became the sensation of his age for leading successful military campaigns against great odds in South America and Italy.
He regarded himself, and was looked upon by contemporaries, as being Italian, although arguably he was French, having been born in Nice (coincidentally the name of another biscuit popular in Britain) two years after it was annexed by Napoleon Bonaparte's France.
When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in July 1870, Garibaldi, like many European liberals, sympathised with Prussia (Italy's ally in the Seven Weeks War of 1866) as a victim of Napoleon III's aggression.
But with the swift defeats of France's armies, combined with deprivations caused by the Siege of Paris and Prussian determination to grab German-speaking parts of east France, Garibaldi changed his mind.
Following the declaration of a new French republic, he famously wrote to the radical Movimento newspaper: "Yesterday I said to you: 'War to the death to Bonaparte'. Today I say to you: 'Rescue the French Republic by every means'."
Garibaldi offered his services to the new French authorities who, reluctantly it seems (Garibaldi had strenuously opposed a second French occupation of Nice - Nizza in Italian - in 1860), eventually appointed him commander of the volunteer Army of the Vosges (a mountainous region near what would be the German border from 1871-1919).
As well as French volunteers, the army included many foreigners who rallied to the liberal cause. It was arguably the most successful of all France's armies in the Franco-Prussian War, but that is not saying much.
From his early days as a military commander, Garibaldi was known for his Redshirts or Redcoats - the respective Italian phrases Camicie Rosse and Giubbe Rosse were both used.
Legend has it that he first equipped volunteers in Uruguay with red tops produced for slaughterhousemen, the tops being cheap and distinctive.
My Army of the Vosges volunteers will be made up of two figures from the Armies In Plastic zouaves and two from the AIP French Foreign Legion.

Army of the Vosges pre-painting

The only thing uniform about all four of them will be their red tops, as shown below.

A suitably irregular look