Swiss front rankers

I am about to start in earnest with my Swiss Confederation army, circa 1475. The bulk of the troop types will be pike or halberd armed. Using the Swiss Chronicle illustrations as a key guide, it appears that at least the front ranks of these units frequently wore full harness.

So when considering what figures to use, I realised that relevant figures wearing with full armour and holding polearms were a bit scarce. I tried adapting some Perry plastic foot knights - however after drilling out the hands to add pikes I was concerned that they were a bit brittle, with a risk of future damage. So the solution has been to commission a couple of figures, open-handed in advancing poses, to use as Swiss front rankers.

The figures has been designed by Oliver of Steel Fist Miniatures. Oliver is a first class figure sculptor in my opinion and improving all the time. He has a deep interest in armour (both Western European and Japanese) and an appetite to sculpt it with great accuracy. His style also compliments the Perry figures very well.  With lots of assistance from Oliver's experience of casting etc, the outcome are figures and arms which can either be used on their own or alongside Perry WotR plastic figures, by swopping arms and heads to maximise an array of poses.

Oliver completed the sculpting in a very short timeframe and I've been waiting for moulds to be made at Griffin. Here are pictures of the castings I received this week. I have ended up with two bodies in full harness, four pairs of open-handed arms and  four heads (these are pretty generic for any late fifteenth century well armed figures). I also have a halbard (again commonly seen in Chronicles) and a baselard short sword. The helmets aim to extend the styles of Swiss troops seen in the illustrations shown below. The pairs of arms should be useable on either body (with a tiny bit of filling).

My assumption is that these would have been the most wealthy and prominent from urban areas of the Confederation, whose social status put them at the front of the fighting. In fact, full harness is also shown by Swiss using handguns in images of sieges - perhaps the same individuals taking prominent roles here too?

One of each of the castings

These castings have had a wash of black on to show the details better. I have plans to personalise the figures a little more - by adding items from putty, such as mail sleeves, bends, hoods, plackart, tassets, etc. No two figures the same is my aim - must be on the verge of madness methinks!

Schilling Chronicle image -armour, halbard, turban and helm.

Another Chronicle image - kettle helm.

I'll get some painted up very soon.

Swiss Crossbowmen (II)

This posting has leapfrogged my planned next update. I'm awaiting some bases being cut for my Burgundian command vignette (all the figures are done), so I've had time to paint up the Swiss conversions as a first unit of crossbowmen.

The main colours for my Swiss Confederation will be red and black, which I've taken from the city of Berne (who provided the majority of troops for the battles of Grandson and Morat) to visually bind them together.

As usual on 60mm square bases. Happy with the completed look, although I'm trying to improve the quality of mail (added with Green Stuff) with the aid of new shaped tools (and invaluable guidance from Matt Bickley) and more practice. I'm pleased with a mail sleeve I've done - we'll see what the next batch look like.

Swiss Crossbowmen (I)

As mentioned, prep on a first unit of Swiss crossbowmen has been done. As with my Burgundians, these skirmishers will be composed of nine figures, three per base.

All of these use Perry plastics, from the Mercenaries box with extra arms selected from Light Cavalry and Agincourt French Infantry boxes. I've tried to do some work on them to reflect the images in the Berne Chronicles that are available online - these images will be my reference points for all Swiss troops. So this has meant applying some green stuff to either add mail shirts or convert existing tabards to coats.

I'm satisfied with the finished figures; for me using green stuff has to be a gradual process where I can only apply a small area on each figure before letting it set hard, then returning to do the next area. So this has been a relatively slow process, with other painting progressing alongside. I'm particularly pleased with the figure reaching for the spare bolts tucked in the neck of his coat - as spotted in the Tschatchlan Chronicles of 1470s.

Will post again when painted and based up.

Simon.

Schilling Chronicle Vignette (I)

My thoughts are turning to planning the build of a Swiss Confederation army, to oppose my Burgundians. My primary visual sources for getting a contemporary 'look and feel' are the illustrated chronicles complied during and just after the wars by the cities of Berne and Zurich - to record their civic history, defiance against Charles the Bold and military victories.

Whereas I used to scour publications to find relatively rare images from these chronicles, several complete volumes are now online and I've started to click through the pages for useful references - of which there are plenty. One of these showed an image of a rather panicked Burgundian man at arms being attacked by a Swiss halbardier (Berne Amitliche Chronicle, volume 3 folio 727). So I thought I'd start off my Swiss additions with a version of this.

The horse and rider are from Perry's mounted men at arms, the only major change was to use a horse head from their ACW cavalry box, to provide a bit more movement as it's reins are grabbed by the assailant. The Swiss soldier is a plastic body from WotR box with arms selected from the Agincourt French Infantry sprue and a Swiss metal head. The joins have been covered with green stuff, to represent a coat, rather than the livery vest that's designed on the plastic body (which the Swiss don't appear to have worn), although I've not added a breastplate which the image seems to show. Like the illustration, a discarded lance and halbard will lie on the ground.

Now on to the painting stage.

Berne pike - rear ranks done.

Phew, I've finished the painting of the rear ranks for my Berne pike block.

A total of 52 figures done, with a mix of colours but with an attempt to show a predominance of red and black to visually 'key' them together. The models have some elements of conversion (about a third in all), mostly head swops on the Perry Swiss EA1 pack of metals with a few plastics to add variation. Perhaps a few more figures wearing helms are needed to be added?

The figures are only placed on the bases for now; I'll not glue and finish basing any until I have all the figures done. I've taken a picture of the proposed plan of the entire pike block, which is a large one to represent the gewalthut, which consisted of the largest volume of Swiss Confederation trooops in the battles against the duke of Burgundy. It may still be too unwieldily on a wargames table, we'll see. The bases with flags are nicked from my other pike block and are only there for show at the moment - I have the relevant flags ready from the excellent Pete's Flags. I'm planning to add a few halbardiers guarding the sides of the pike block, thats why theres a gap on the edges at the moment, as indicated by the unpainted castings. The front bases will have pikes horizontal, hence the proposed placing of two ranks of figures only at the rear of the bases.

For now these may have to be put aside and await whatever additional Swiss figures are released by the Perrys later this year.

Putty pushing...

...of the most basic kind!

These are some pictures of a few of the Swiss Confederation pikemen, who have had helmets from various Perrys plastic boxes added, to create some variety from the turbans.

The cast on heads were removed with a small hacksaw and the new heads glued on. However the joints were a bit ugly on several, so built the collars back up with 'green stuff'. I also added a couple of small bags/purses whilst I had spare putty. The bareheaded figure has his turban hanging down from his neck, an image which I spotted in a Schilling Chronicle illustration. A couple more be-headings and helmets to add; then I'm onto painting the last batch of rear rank pikemen.

The horse will be used for another Burgundian man at arms. I used green stuff again to extend the depth of the barding, to enable me to possibly paint on a device and I attempted to add a chamfron too. These represent the limit of my sculpting skills. My key learning from this is to complete it in small steps. I've let the putty harden before tidying up what's been done, with scalpel and smoothing files, before adding the next step with more putty. This takes more time, but at least I'm getting modest results, which I'm happy with.

Berne pike - more WIP

These are a few more Swiss Confederation pikemen for the rear ranks of my pike block done this week. I'm not going to post all my works in progress, as it'll undoubtedly get awfully tedious, but I'm also fiddling with a new camera I purchased at Christmas, trying to get a grip of the best settings for indoor pics of figures. Not sure these are an improvement on my previous (cheaper!) camera - colours look quite different on the models to my eye, but I'll persevere.

These are Perry plastics (all bar two) with heads from the Swiss heads pack. Next batch will be the opposite -  Swiss metals with plastic heads to add a selection of helmets.

Berne Swiss Pike - WIP

I've started preparing and planning a Swiss pike block. This will represent Bernese 'Gewalthaufen' pike, along with allied regions and towns of Solothurn, Fribourg, Thun and Schwyz. At present the plan is to create a 'double sized' unit using the same base sizes as for my Burgundians; this would produce a contingent with a 36cm frontage and depth. I like the idea of the square formation, which should be visually attractive, with flags and halbards in the centre.

These figures are my first ones to test out colours and style - I need to adopt a quicker-than-normal approach as this unit will be about 175 figures. I've decided to start with the rear ranks, where less painting detail should be required. Also as the only dedicated Perry Swiss figures available to date are the marching/walking figures. I've made a few minor modifications to these; a couple of headswops for plastic ones, adding a plume and bend, and helmets and a tankard hung from belts. I will add in plastic figures too, using the metal Swiss heads and do some head swops on the Swiss figures so that some have helmets (not every figure shown in the Berne Chronicles wears a turban!), but the rear ranks will overall be unarmoured. I'm optimistically hoping that the Perrys will produce some more Swiss figures by the time I need to move to the command bases and other ranks(!).

I've decided to paint them in small batches, largely of the same pose, using the same colour pallette. This will speed things up and I'll ensure that these figures don't get based next to each other, to avoid a uniform look. On which subject, I'm going to avoid the option of attiring my Swiss in cantonal colours. There is evidence that some Swiss Confederation towns issued clothing of specific colours; St Gallen sending it's troops to Grandson in red coats with Confederation white crosses attached. However, I'm pretty sure that this was not sufficiently widespread to create the types of 'uniforms' of later centuries. So I'm going to attempt to have red and black, representing Berne, more prevalent among coats and hose - hopefully to create an overall impression, with full cantonal colours being largely limited to captains, flagbearers and musicians.

Therefore, expect a few more 'work in progress' posts to be forthcoming for this pike bloc!

The Bear of Berne

I really should be getting on with the 'rank and file' of my Burgundian armies, but I've had this vignette in mind for some time now and so wanted to get it 'out my system' and to restart the blog with a more substantial piece.

The city of Berne has been associated with bears from the middle ages. The name Berne itself derives from the german for bear and it appears that the city's arms have carried a bear on them since around 1224. Bears have been kept in the city from 1441; the famous bear pits were built in 1513 and only closed as recently as 2009.

My scene imagines the Bernese contingent taking one of their bears on campaign. I have no historical reference for this occuring and it's probably highly unlikely as it would have been a very risky endeavour, both to the troops, local inhabitants and to the bear itself. The Swiss Chronicles of Berne show several illustrations of bears but all are mostly hunting scenes, as the european brown bear was still native to the Alpine slopes in the fifteenth century. One of my favourite illustrations from the chronicles is the anthropomorphism of the Berne city guard (shown below) preparing for duty, with the bears sporting ostrich plumed turbans and armed with halbards and handguns.

So here we have our very reluctant large bear, being cajouled and encouraged to move by his handlers from the temporary part-enclosure. The bear is a very old Citadel one from the 'Dwarf King's Court' boxset of the 1980s vintage, which has probably now had his third repaint. The handlers are all Perry European Armies range; the handler is a plastic with metal Swiss head - his sword cut down to a wooden stick. The musician and dog handler are metals, the former with the plastic arms holding the tambor from the 'Mercenaries' box added. The dogs should really be hounds, according to medieval illustrations, but have had to be irish wolfhound types, as I couldn't find any to fit in. The woman looking on and holding her apprehensive children is a Foundry model.

Perhaps Michael Perry will give us his own version of a Berne command group at some point (with or without a bear)?