Early Hundred Years War English Archers

I have recently been going back to the early part of the war to start building out my English forces, which I’ve put together 3 sets of archers for. There are no plastics available for the early part of the war, so I’ve used a mixture of Claymore, Foundry and V&V to give me suitable variation. All the manufacturers are good, the only slight issue is with Foundry where the miniatures tend to be on the smaller side. An easy fix for this is simply sliding in a bit of plastic board underneath the miniatures to give them a bit of a height boost, so not a major issue. 

3 units of English archers

The variety of manufactures generally work well together.

A lot of the miniatures came with arrows stuck in the ground, which I would ideally liked to have removed. Often the arrows were too integral to the miniature to consider removing them, and there were too many with them for me to reject them all (miniatures aren’t cheap!). So I decided to roll with them, even though I understand this is a bit of a debateable point historically. 

 

Archers in various stages of prepping and loosing arrows.

 

Close up of one of the archers, in fairly typical gear for the era.

 

For the command basis I generally used a more armoured figure (this one is by V&V), they aren't representative of anyone in particular just leaders of the unit. Typically I've used simplified colour schems to set them apart, my command basis with individual leaders will typically be done seperately and will (if my brushwork is capable) have the relevant coat of arms.

 

Another command example

 

To give them a bit of a theme I’ve referred to the English Longbowman 1330 to 1515 book and their take on the Cheshire/Welsh archers used by Edward III and the Black Prince in their retinues. This involved them wearing a top green on the right and white on the left. I wanted to avoid making them too uniform, so I made one item of clothing (normally a top, but sometimes a hood) per miniature in the split green/white and then varied the rest. This gives some semblance of uniform without it appearing too prescribed. I’ve also tended to avoid having split padded jacks, and instead generally have shirts underneath in the split colour. This was mainly a stylistic choice to help bring more variety to the unit. I painted the red cross of St George onto most clothing/armour to help provide another layer of uniformity and help to tie the unit together. 

Rear view of the units hopefully you can see that they're relatively uniformed, whilst still retaining some variety.

 

These would be fine for Crecy to Poitiers kind of era and I’d probably use them even without Edward III or the Black Prince on the table. I know these would have largely exclusively been part of their retinues, but I can’t limit myself too much unless I go down the route of painting retinues of troops for each individual lord. I may do other units in colours for some of the major players like Sir John Chandos for example, but I can’t realistically cover every single one. 

The guys on the right are from a set Foundry do of walking archers which is really useful.

 

You can't really see it, but the guy in the middle of this pic has a beard. I didn't not want to use him as he's a nice miniature, but typically soldiers of the era aren't depicted with them.

 

I’ve got a couple of early Hundred War projects lined up in the immediate future and will likely then turn back to other eras of the war.

English and French late HYW casualties

For this post I’ve been working on some late casualty bases for my late HYW project. These will be used for wargaming when I eventually get around to doing that. 

All the casualties together

Doing smaller projects like this give me nice breaks in between working on larger units. So these and command bases are always little bits of fun that I give myself to do, which don’t require to much thinking.

These are infantry casualties and depict both French and English examples, with some generic ones thrown in for flexibility. The figures are a mix of Perry WoTR causalities mixed in with some of their carroccio figures (these can be found in their European Armies range), the latter with the praying figures can really help make some nice era appropriate vignettes. I’d like to take credit for this idea, but credit where credit’s due it came from my friend Oli over at Camisado.

A French infantryman contemplating where it all went wrong

 

The circular bases with counter are available from Warbases and are v handy for this sort of thing

 

Another French infantryman in the process of taking an arrow

 

English billmen mourning a lost comrade

An English man at arms helped off the field by a brother in arms, perhaps from his personal retinue?

I haven’t gone in for loads of blood and gore, which would invariably be more realistic, in so far as one can be with 28mm figures, so have opted for more muted depictions of fallen soldiers. Not that I’m afraid of grisly things, it’s more just modelling that kind of thing just doesn’t hold any interest for me.

A priest gives a man at arms his last rights

A priest going about his business giving spiritual sustenence to the fallen

A lightly armed infantryman who's luck had run out

I remember reading the book ‘Bloody Roses’ about a mass grave dug up from the battle of Towton. What struck me was some of the injuries people had survived, with people having significant facial wounds that healed and then gone back into soldiering. This was no less true in the HYW and I remember reading a depiction (I can’t recall where of the top of my head) of an examination of the skeleton of a known HYW war captain who’d fought over there permanently (as opposed to on campaign). He’d had healed fractures and missing front teeth and I rather suspect this was not uncommon amongst the permanent military forces stationed over in France. A tough life was a soldiers lot.

Late 100yw English in France

For the past few weeks/months I’ve been working on a new project, which is building a new late 100yw Castillion era force. 

The English Castillion era force as it currently stands, 2 x units of archers at the back with, men at arms and bill at the front.

 

The units from the rear.

I started with the English and as you can see I’ve built a unit of men at arms, billman and 2 x archers. Given the era I used some WOTR figures as they would be almost contemporaneous with the Castillion era. I think they could work reasonably well in the final decade, though some of the men at arms in more advanced armour may be a bit off. 

To mark them as English I’ve done many of them in St Georges crosses, the standard outfit for English expeditionary forces in the era. You’ll notice this wasn’t 100% with a few of them in unmarked padded jacks, brigandines etc, but for the most part most of them have them. You’ll note the commander of the men at arms is wearing sir Thomas Everinghams coat of arms. If I want other commanders for them I can build other specific command bases, but for the most part I’ll be using these in a Castillion only context so should be fine. 

Sir Thomas Everingham and command

 

Here you can see more of him, I've given him Sir John Talbots coat of arms here as he was his standard bearer (that and I couldn't find his specific flag).

I intend to add more bill and archer units, commands and build up a French force. These are my long-term plans anyway, my next immediate project is casualty bases to give myself a bit of a break. I’ll also likely get side tracked when I get other ideas for other eras in the 100yw, but over time I intend to build out forces for all the major eras (early, Agincourt and late), so that’s 3 eras with 2 respective armies for each one. I may even do a Scotch army eventually specifically for the battle of Verneuil (which I also realise would also necessitate Italian mounted men at arms), but all in good time as it were. 

I've assumed the billmen were generally more armoured than the archers, though this isn't universal. They're mostly equipped with bill, but there are a couple of spears and a halbeard somewhere.

 

 

Further detail of the bill unit. This is a good illustration of my painting abilities (see last para), the man at arms on the front left is pre my new tools and the rest are post. You can see they now have reasonable attempts at faces and eyes.

 

More bill. I'm reluctant to call it a bill unit, while the bill was certainly more common by this period I don't think they were arranged into units of billman like Total War would have you believe. I've seperated them here for wargame purposes, but in reality I don't know if there would be much distinction between them and men at arms in terms of how they were treated. 

The final bill unit. I like the mix of armour types in the perry Bill and Bow box, it allows for a lot of variation.

In terms of the battle itself it was a closer affair then I think a tertiary glance at it would indicate. The English actually defeated the French prior to the battle in a priory at St Florant, where the English force could have been led by Sir John Talbots standard bearer Sir Thomas Everingham, though information is scarce. After the French had retreated to their fortified artillery position, after a tough rearguard action, the English retreated back to the main force led by Talbot himself. It is here that Everingham (if we assume it is him) reported back to Talbot about the fortified camp he had witnessed. Talbot gave pause and was going to wait, but then heard a separate report from Castillion that the French force was retreating. Unfortunately despite Everingham's cautions Talbot elected to attack, which led to a bloody assault on the French position. 

English archers advancing.

Captain with a more heavily armoured colleague.

Being able to paint the faces more easily really helps me bring the figures to life.

The battle is detailed at length elsewhere, but suffice it to say that the English reached the French position in reasonable shape and we’re comprehensively engaged with them. Casualties mounted on both sides and while the English seemed to gain some advantage, they were ultimately undone by the intervention of a Breton cavalry force. This shattered the English line and they were routed, with Talbot himself and his son slain on the field. Thus ended Englands ambitions in France (with the exception of Calais). 

Lastly you may not be able to see given my poor camera work, but I’ve got myself some new painting aids that have really boosted my abilities. For along time I’ve been wondering to myself, how the heck so many painters paint with such lovely crisp detail be it pouches, knives, faces, eyes etc. Well I answered that question for myself when I got proper lighting that clamps to my painting desk. Suddenly the penny dropped and it showed me that I’d been almost using guesswork for a lot of my painting. Then I got myself a magnifying glass (which again fixes to my desk) and with that help my painting really tightened up. Now I can take on jobs which used to give me a headache with relative ease, and I can actually do faces pretty well where before I struggled. So I can only recommend investing in these tools, it really has improved my painting abilities significantly. If you’re a competent painter I really think it could elevate you to being pretty good, so check it out.

Final unit of archers

The captain of the unit confers with his subordinate.

Love the different armour types in this one.

Edward The Black Prince

For this post I’m only doing a small update. I’ve been busy with some non-history related painting, but with this out the way I can now concentrate on my principle painting love. I have got a new project in mind, so hopefully the next post will be a little more substantial.

For todays post I’m showing off my work on one of the new(ish) Claymore commands, this time Edward Woodstock more commonly known by his nickname the Black Prince. The interesting thing about this particular model is the use of the Crest on his helmet. From what I understand reading the Osprey book ‘The Armies of Crecy and Poitiers’ no one is sure if these were worn in battle, this is based on the fact they are not generally depicted in illustrations of battles from the period. I can understand the case for why not, they may have been impractical and added weight to a helmet hindering movement. That said I would have thought the wish to be more easily identifiable to your men combined with the shock value would have meant they were not unattractive to consider wearing. From what little I can gather it seems probably they were not worn, but as I said this is not certain. So while it is a little historically questionable, Claymore are not operating in the realms of complete fantasy, and given it made the model more interesting to paint I have no complaints.

It was overall a fun little job and while the Coat of Arms was tricky it made the overall outcome more satisfying.  The other two models represent part of his retinue, with simplified outfits corresponding to the basic colours of the Coat of Arms.

The Black Prince certainly ranks amongst the most impressive of the senior English nobility during the earlier period of the Hundred years war. He cut a fine career being present at Crecy, leading the army at Poitiers, commanding Chevauchees and a victory at Najera among much more besides. So quite the life even if it was cut short in his 40s by dysentery, denying England what would have no doubt been a fine king.

One of these days I’d like to visit Canterbury Cathedral to have a look at his effigy and the various artefacts of his that remain there (I think his jupon, gauntlets, helmet and shield are still there). So well worth a visit if you have a burning interest like me.   

The Black Prince, note the shield which uses transfers from Claymore by Little Big Men Studios and  Flag by Flags of War.

The Coat of Arms for the Black Prince would have mirrored those of the Kingdom, differenced by 3 points Argent (the white bar with three points), which were used to distinguish the English Prince from the King in Heraldic terms.