'Monstrous' from SidneyR: Les Chevaliers de Versailles: 1688

From the journal of Don Fernando de Torrescusa, Marquess de Girona, Envoy of His Most Catholic Majesty, Carlos the Second, King of Spain, to the Flemish Free City of Laarden in 1688. 

I could tell something was wrong immediately. 

Over my months in the Free City of Laarden , Antoine de Gautier had been my near constant companion and commentator. No comment intended to praise his Flemish home, and slyly cast unfavourable comparisons on His Majesty’s Spanish Domains, had been missed. No opportunity had been neglected by him to introduce me to the frothy, childish, swaggering world of a Flemish aristocrat with more time and money than good sense would suggest is wise to grant to a young man of his age. And at no time had the grounds of good taste and discretion been evident in his personal tailoring as, day after day, he promenaded across the Grote Markt in my company, proudly inspecting the troops parading daily in Laarden's civic heart, dressed in a hundred shades of yellow and gold, his favourite colours. 

So, when de Gautier’s excitable commentary of the deployment of the French enemy forces in the field before us came to an abrupt end in a very uncharacteristic silence, I immediately knew there was a problem. 

At first, my instinct was to think there was actually a real problem. A swift outflanking manoeuvre by French hussars, or the deployment of the feared Gendamerie de France, perhaps. But after a moment, my panic subsided. This was Antoine de Gautier, Flemish cavalier, bravo and fop. No, I reassured myself, the problem was bound to be more intimate, more personal. 

I glanced at him, moving my spyglass a fraction away from my eye, and followed his line of sight. The root of his concern, etched into his fashionably pale and rouge-tinted appearance, was not hard to identify.

Our Enemy's line was barely a quarter of a league away from our foremost battalions. Standing just a few yards in advance of the Regiment de Nettancourt were two gentlemen of the Court of Versailles. Their coats of pink and purple glowed incandescently in the fog-drenched morning gloom, the monstrous splash of vivid colour matched only by the shock of blossoming pantaloons and stockings of cerulean blue and opalescent silk. They appeared to be discussing the field of battle, hands curling in endless circles of vacuous pleasantries, doubtless arguing over the order of precedence for the attack. Immensely long wigs of coiffured hair wobbled precariously on their heads as their discussion continued, oblivious to the ranks of drab-dressed veterans waiting in the regiment behind them.

I was unable to resist a smile, calculating that the two French peacocks were likely to be the only two noblemen on the Field of Mars surpassing de Gautier in the exuberance and sheer idiocy of their clothing. My companion was visibly wounded, upset and distressed by this common realisation.

I waited longer then I should have done to speak to him. Everyone needs their wilder dreams dented a little, and no doubt the sight of the two French chevaliers had been a sobering experience for the young Flemish cavalier. "Don't worry, my Lord", I commented, trying hard to keep any tone of conspiratorial collaboration from my voice. "Just think of what wonderful plunder there might be in the Enemy's baggage train. They say some of the gentlemen from Versailles travel with a significant wardrobe. I mean, who on earth would wish to attend a field of battle with only a single set of riding clothes?"

And in return I was granted that most rare gift from my Flemish companion - a smile of genuine warmth.

*************

I was rather stumped for anything really 'monstrous' from the 17th Century which I could build and paint off this themed round.  However, a look through some of the fashion from the Court of Versailles gave me the idea for some very monstrous clothing which could be brought to bear on the enemies of the Sun King in 1688 Flanders.

The figures are a mix of Dixons (the nobleman in purple), Old Glory (the nobleman in pink) and Foundry (the rather dour matchlock armed fantassin, who I painted rolling his eyes at the nonsense unfurling before him.

I added extra green-stuff wigs, orders of chivalry on chains, puff-ball shoes and other idiocies to the Chevaliers, but not the veteran. I tried to keep the veteran very plain, so there's not much shading or highlighting. With the French Chevaliers, however, I used a white undercoat to make the colours glow a bit more, and added a purple base to Vallejo Flesh for that oh-so-fashionable pallor!

'Childhood' from SidneyR: Ada the Goose-Girl of Laarden

My entry for the “Childhood” themed round is, for me, very nostalgic. Growing up in the 1980s, I was a keen player of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I remember many amazing hours with like-minded school friends exploring The Keep on the Borderlands, or wandering through The Village of Hommlet. And I am more than sure that many fellow Challengers, and readers, will have done that as well. 

I collected miniature to use for AD&D, and still have lots of the miniatures from companies like Citadel (before and after being purchased by Games Workshop), Marauder and Chronicle. Some of my favourites were the Citadel C46 Villagers - for no better reason as they’d easily double up for both AD&D and convenient eye candy in 25mm Medieval skirmish games using the 'Lamming Medieval Rules' (oh gosh, that was a while ago!).

One of my favourite Citadel C46 Villager miniatures was called ‘Ada the Goose Girl’, a wonderful whimsical casting of a young woman and her goose. For anyone who has even attempted to hold a goose, you will realise they are not a bird which sits easily under the arm - unless I’ve been doing it wrong. I had an 'Ada' in the 1980s, and early 1990s, and then lost her somewhere - no doubt exploring with my chums in Hommlet, Bogenhafen, Middelheim or Nuln. I have missed her greatly ever since, particular since I started collecting civilian figures for Laarden.

So, for the “Childhood” themed round, here’s Ada - or ‘new Ada’, complete with perhaps less tame geese, which are waddling around her feet in some Laarden allotment or Sint-Vaalben farm. She’s a Midlam Miniatures casting - which are fantastic, flash-free and very nicely proportioned miniatures.

The geese are from Hovels and Magister Militum, with the Magister Militia geese being particularly characterful. Although, I admit, ‘New Ada” slightly lacks the charm of the Citadel original, I'm hoping she’ll be perfect until I can try and find one of the C46 originals...  

'Music/Musician' from SidneyR: The Polish Drummer

“One of the soldiers of the Lord of Bek’s contingent is a Polish drummer. He bears an unpronounceable name, and has a dark scowl on his face when I have seen him in the field or in the Gote Markt on parade. Yet the Lord of Bek is resolute in asserting that the Polish Drummer is invaluable to his command, for his drumming on a large Polish drum is both fast and loud. The drummer is rumoured to have fought in the Baltic Wars, and I have heard that on the field of Honingfeld his resolution helped rally an Imperial brigade being hard pressed by their Swedish adversaries.”

For the ‘Musician” themed round, I’ve chosen a drummer, recruited from the ranks of Wargames Foundry’s Polish 25mm range, and added the figure to an Imperial brigade commander accompanied by a Croat light horseman.

The commander, the Graf von Bek (perhaps the grandson of Ulrich von Bek from Challenge VII), is a Dixon Miniatures Grand Alliance officer, on a Wargames Foundry ECW horse. The Croat is from The Assault Group. I did a few small conversions on the figures. The commander has a lengthened coat flowing over the horse’s flanks, and I added reins with copper wire. I added some late 17th century-style cuffs onto the drummer’s sleeves, and completely remade his Polish cap into a fur-bagged hat with feathers. The base is by Warbases, and the tufts from Silfor and WSS.

I scaled down the size of the submission to fit the time I had. I tried to think about how to add something a bit extra, and hit upon the idea of the Lord of Bek’s commission for the recruitment of the Polish drummer, complete with the Graf’s personal seal. Some fancy paper and sealing wax later, and I’d added an Imperial commission to my Laarden-themed documents and created some fluff for the player (un)fortunate enough to command the Lord of Bek on the tabletop.

'Flight' from SidneyR: Troops in Flight, 1688

"When an entire Victory is obtain’d, he who hath lost the day 
should not lose his Courage too, but ought to 
gather up his Shipwreck, rally his dispers’d and broken troops,
 get new recruits, dissemble his losses, 
encourage his party and draw to a head again; 
these are things practis’d by all intelligent Generals." 

Pallas Armata, Chapter XXII, 1683

I love the idea of replacing formed wargames units of troops which are in rout on the tabletop with bases of shattered troops in flight.  The first themed round of the Challenge gave me the chance to create such a "flight", depicting two groups of troops, each of which could replace a routed unit on my late seventeenth century tabletop.

I got the idea from a Barry Hilton article in War-games Illustrated in the 1990s, and all the credit for the idea is therefore Barry's not mine.  I set about creating the bases before the Challenge started, ordering the MDF bases from Warbases, and converting the figures to provide two unique scenes.

The French hussar attacking the German gunner is converted from an ECW dragoon, with a Polish dragoon head, and a spare pistol arm, with a greenstuff coat.  Yes, it was that kind of a project...!  The other figures are from 1st Corps, Wargames Foundry and Perry Miniatures.

I made another four such bases, and hopefully they'll appear later in the Challenge.

'Characters/Scene from' SidneyR: Don Hugo, Hero of Laarden

 “A Relation of the Recent Warres in Spanish Flanders”; auth. Don Alonso de Moncada, Marquis of San Lúcar de Barrameda; pub. Antwerp, 1690; 1st Edn., 2 folios, 364 pp, bound in old leather, foxing on the pages, but otherwise tight and surprisingly well conditioned for old volumes.

"… And, after an uneasy night, the ground in front of both armyes was soaked in mist and dew, the half-light of dawn barely yet breaking through the last shadowes of night. Along the battalia of French and Italian armies the sounds of drums, fifes, trompets and cries of awakening could be plainly heard, the noise carrying far over the field. It was at that time that Don Hugo de Velasco advanced with many divers grenadiers, drawn by volunteers from the Spanish regiments in the service of the City of Laarden. He chose soldiers from the Tercios of Sevilla (los Morados viejos), Granada (del Casco de la Ciudad de Granada) and the German battalion of the Baron de Gorcy to accompany him, declaring that his assault over the covered ground would be nothing less than plucking the feathers of the King of France’s cockerel…..".

————————

Here’s my submission for the last of the Themed Rounds.

You can find Don Alonso’s book in a dusty bookshop, close to the Rue de Rennes in Lille, on a high shelf in the back room of the shop, just along from the "History of The City of Laarden” (in Flemish) and the full five volume history of the Spanish expedition to Laarden in 1688 (in Old Spanish). You may have to brush the dust from each of these volumes - none of them seem to have been read for some time, if ever. I would expect that you might be surprised by the bookseller’s asking price - but, don’t worry, you can haggle the price down if you try hard. Extracting the story of Don Hugo’s assault on the Franco-Papal lines in one of the battles of the summer of 1689 has been time-consuming, but I thought his dashing assault would make a perfect vignette for the "Characters from a Book” themed round.

The figures are Dixon Miniatures and Foundry, with a couple of small conversions. The collapsed gabon is from Frontline Wargaming, years back. And yes, I could not resist recreating Don Hugo’s assault in a wintry 2mm base to complete the submission.

'Home' from SidneyR: A Laarden Townhouse

For the themed round entitled “Home”, I painted up one of the fine Hovels buildings in 25mm from their Flemish range.  I felt this would be a simple, quick painting task to fit with my schedule, but it turned out to be a little more involved.  Resin buildings reward time and effort, but they can also be tricky to paint - almost like painting a very large figure in miniature.

One day I dream of having a dozen or so of these stately buildings, on a fully laid out town plan, surrounded by a low city wall for a perfect siege game.  I’ve counted this as my fifth (painted after about two years), so there’s some way to go.  It’s partly that idea which keeps me painting one every year or so, all with the aim of making a living, breathing (if fictional) 17th Century town for the regiments and battalia of Laarden to occupy.

'East' from SidneyR: 17th Century Eastern Light Cavalry

 
“Each man has only two pistols and a sword for offensive purposes, namely for pursuing the foe when he is in flight rather for the act of routing him.  There can be no question that the Hungarian, Croats and other kinds of persons much employed in the Imperial army are perfectly suited for such assignments”  (Raymond Montecuccoli, Sulle Battaglie, 1640-1642)

I love the thought of light cavalry swirling onto the flanks of armies, or screening an advance of slower infantry and cavalry.  And the place I always think of such cavalry being most at home is in Eastern Europe.  In the Seventeenth Century, no Imperial army would have been complete without regiments of Croatian and Hungarian cavalry preceding any advance.  They were present in numbers at the battles of Lutzen and Nordlingen and numerous other engagements.  I also think it’s reasonable to field them later, through the 1650s and the Second Northern war, right into the 1680s as mercenaries for campaigns as far apart as Livonia and Germany.

I’ve prepared a few figures here for the ‘East’ theme, both in 28mm (with figures from The Assault Group), and 2mm (with figures from Irregular Miniatures for my Thirty Years War collection).  They’re on different bases - an Autumnal theme for the larger figures, and the frosted-hard ground of Lutzen for the 2mm figures.

Are they quintessentially ‘Eastern’ - I think so, and at the very least, they’re certainly east of Flanders!

'Armour' from SidneyR: Graf Ulrich von Ben and Grigory Sedenko

I didn’t have a great deal of time for this entry, and prepared just two mounted figures from one of my favourite books.  Here we have Graf Ulrich von Bek and his companion Grigory Sedenko, both from Michael Moorcock’s excellent “The Warhound and the World’s Pain” - a must for anyone interested in the Thirty Years War (albeit a fantastical setting of the War).

And why “Armour”: here’s an extract from Chapter One:

“The steel I wore, helmet, breastplate, greaves and gloves, was of the very best, as was the west-soaked silk of my shirt, the leather of my boots and breeches.  My weapons had been selected from the richest of those who I had killed and were all, pistols, swords, daggers and musket, by the finest smiths.  My horse was large and hardy and excellently furnished”

An armoured krieghund as an entry into the Themed Rounds.  What better way to start!

'Choice of the Challenge' from SidneyR - Body of Work

 

 

'Risk Taker' from SidneyR - 'The Flemish Cavalier'

One character we’ve encountered on previous themed rounds has been the Flemish cavalier, Antoine de Gautier, one of the young noblemen of the Flanders town of Laarden. He’s an impulsive, rash, proud and headstrong professional soldier whose military service has already taken him campaigning across the Europe of the 1680s. He’s sold his sword and pike across Germany, The Empire, the Northern Crowns, as well to his native Flanders and home town of Laarden. 

He has served mainly as a gentleman volunteer and aide-de-camp, becoming a very accomplished swordsman. He has been taught in the Spanish-influenced sword-style of Flanders, but has also studied hard during his travels to hone his skills in in the fighting schools of Germany and Eastern Europe. However, he has become over-confident – mainly as a result of numerous successful duels (caused by a variety of arguments mainly regarding women, gambling debts and politics). Swollen with the rashness of youth, he has taken to fighting with a wooden dueling sword, deeming all but the most skillful opponents worthy of his fine Spanish steel blade. He dresses ostentatiously, wearing the most fashionable clothes, a ludicrous wig and remarkable hat, complete with ostrich feathers.

We see him here in two characteristic poses. First, preparing himself for an opponent in the back-streets or Grote Markt of his native Laarden. Saluting with his wooden dueling sword (and clearly already having deemed his opponent unworthy of the contest), he is oblivious to the preening cockerel parading before him.

And we also see him on the field of battle, risking all in a typically dramatic and ill-considered charge. He is accompanied by his war hound, Ares, and two retainers from one of the Laarden civic companies of Horse, both dressed slightly more soberly than their lavishly dressed commander. As ever, Antoine is taking a huge risk – living by his wits and his (wooden) sword blade, like any true risk-taker or gambler.


***

In this last themed round, I wanted to add another character vignette set in 1688 and the fictional town of Laarden. I chose the young Flemish cavalier who has already featured in themed rounds 2 and 4 (having his portrait painted along with the Laarden Militia in theme round 2, and declaring his love and a proposal of marriage to Mademoiselle Brochet in theme round 4).

I decided to build out his life-story a little more, giving some context before his rash gamble in battle, attacking his enemies with a frontal charge, armed only with a wooden dueling sword.

In town and in the field, Antoine still wears the outlandish ochre-yellow clothes he was seen in during rounds 2 and 4. In his dueling pose, I’ve tried to recreate his “fashionable” wig from round 4, and also added a wedding ring to his right hand – a sign that Mademoiselle Brochet has melted to the young cavalier’s charms. I thought a preening cockerel (one of the many chickens of Laarden seen in themed rounds 1,2 and 4) parading around his feet was a suitable nod to the arrogance of the young popinjay. 

 The wooden sword was an idea shamelessly stolen from the Syrio Forel method of swordsmanship (for all you “Game of Thrones” fans). A couple of arm swaps (with some old Mordheim plastic swords) gave both figures a weapons downgrade, and I added lots of putty for extra feathers, cuffs, hats and wigs.

For the battlefield mounted version, I’ve given Antoine’s dog, Ares (previously seen in themed round 4), a larger bow – perhaps Mademoiselle Brochet tied it on Ares before Antoine’s departure for battle? The mounted cornet and kettle-drummer each display the Laarden coat of arms, a Pelican, on the trumpet banner and pistol holsters, and the colours of the Laarden contingent deliberately echo the yellow and pale blue civic colours of Laarden’s coat of arms.