Uniforms for Richard Sharpe TV dramas

 I have been watching my collection of the Richard Sharpe videos.  Sharpe, played by Sean Bean, is a British Army officer in the Napoleonic wars.  They have some cool shots of the redcoats, in uniform, in line or column, in action.  The red coats are really red, so red that I wonder if they could dye cloth that bright a red back in 1810 or so.  The redcoats and most of the other troops wear white pants which are nice and white and clean in most of the shots.  I gotta wonder if in real life white uniforms could stay looking that presentable after a bit of scrabbling around in the dirt.  But they look cool for the video.  And the officers get to wear gigantic hats.  I am not a real expert on period costumes so I don't know just how real the ones in the videos are, but they look cool.