Burgundian Artillery Command

This command vignette is to complement the artillery bases that I've done to date. It depicts an inspection of the artillery park by a senior Burgundian nobleman, carrying a directive from the duke himself, accompanied by a retainer and flagbearer.

The Burgundian artillery was substantial; duke Charles inherited a sizeable train, ranging from large bombards to more portable serpentines and crapaudeau field pieces, all of which were housed in strongholds or towns across the dukedom. The duke took a personal, active involvement in the development of his artillery and no doubt saw his wealth and prestige reflected in the commissioning of the latest military technology. He also put his artillery at the core of his bellicous plans. However, with the possible exception of Montlhery in 1465 when the Burgundians appear to have 'out gunned' the French opposition, his artillery failed to make any impacts in his battles and sieges. The amount of artillery at his disposal is quite staggering; over 4,500 different pieces have been identified that were owned by the Burgundian dukes in the fifteenth century.

The Master of Artillery depicted here is Gauvin de Bailleul. It appears that the duke employed several men with this title concurrently during his reign. I've yet to identify if any nobleman was appointed by the duke to control the artillery, in the way that conductors were for each of the Ordonnance Companies. It is possible that Charles retained direct control over this prestigous arm. De Bailleul is known from extant letters of March 1476 from the duke instructing him to assemble guns stored at Thornville. I've denoted his identity by applying his coat of arms to a wooden box and a powder sack.

The vignette are all Perry figs, with some minor conversion work, which I did a few months ago but have just managed to paint and base. The master of artillery is one of the WotR metal gunners with a plastic headswop and an open hand replacing the linstock. The burgundian nobleman is the Henry VI figure, with a chaperon built up from putty and my very best attempt at adding a hung fleece badge to his collar to denote his seniority as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece. the others are out of the box metal and plastic, with the flag as a free download. The baggage items are mix of Foundry, Front Rank and TAG and pavise transfers are LBMS.

Finally, my apologies for those of you with your own blogs that I follow. Due to a PC glitch, which I hope will be sorted, I've been unable to add any comments recently - instead being caught up in an infinite google blog account validation loop! So I'll comment retrospectively when it's all sorted.