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What effect does rain have on leather ?.
What effect does cold have on leather ?.
Consider the hot Crimean Summer then the
sub zero temperatures of the crimean.
Within months those Pall mall parade ground dudes will have been humbled to sheepskin and ragtag wearing army.
Alot of the oil in the leather will have probally dried out and shrunk along with the leather dyes.
Polish , huh barely can do much for th eleather in such conditions. It takes a few yards of wet grass to wipe off hard worked coats of polish(even todays kiwi bootpolish cannot retain the dye)
Even the Gun oil then would most likely have frozen then also and had given problems for keeping cartwheels lubricated.Often there was a easy solutuion which was used by the troops.
I saw leather webbing freeze solid in the arctic for myself, pretty hard on the skin chaffes deep until it warms up form body heat , then condensation soaks in and then it freezes when you take it off. when left even in the tent with people and animals it would still freeze.
Leather freezes like a board. And keeps the image it is left lying in.
For an entrenched army to maintain leather equipment in lets say warm weather again teh oil drys out and shrinkage starts and the stitching rots. Just think about any leather straps on mules and loads(poor packers)etc
Again hot arid conditions leather drys out. Shrinks a bit but not as bad as the freezing process.
do you have this book? There you have excellent colour-plates of the British cavalry. They used simple grey cloth on campaign. Like in the Napoleonic period. The rest was too expensive to spent on campaign.