Early 100yw French Crossbowman

For a slight deviation of theme I’ve decided to go to an earlier part of the conflict and produce a unit of early French crossbowman. I want to eventually cover the whole conflict so will add to the earlier collection in time as well as doing later Castillion era figures when I eventually get around to it.

By early I mean these would be suitable I would say up until about the 1350s. Any later than that then the men at arms in the command would generally be more heavily armoured and the styles of armour and clothing too divergent for these to remain credible.

They are a mixture of Claymore Castings and Foundry, both for the crossbowmen and command. The Claymore in particular are excellent figures, were a joy to paint, and I can thoroughly recommend them for anyone interested in this period of the conflict.

It’s a shame the early part of the conflict isn’t as well covered as the later part in terms of miniatures. If anyone does a range it’s normally for the later period (though only Perry really cover this comprehensively and are the only manufacturer who offer good 28mm plastics so far as I’m aware). This is mainly because of Henry V (both the historical character and Shakespears trilogy) and Agincourt, which most people will have heard of and will make a beeline for in terms of miniatures. This is a shame because the earlier conflict had its great battles of course Crecy and Poitiers (the latter where the French King is captured!). But it also had ludicrous shenanigans in what is now Spain and Portugal, the absurd involvement of the King of Navarre and not to mention armies of Routiers marauding large portions of France and a host of other players. In short there’s a lot of material, but I suspect too niche for most manufactures to consider.  

The command mostly foundry, though the chap in full armour is Claymore. Note the great helm he's holding in his righthand, this would be placed on top of the skull cap he's currently wearing when he's to use it.

Mean looking crossbowman, I love the different styles of armour and the various bits of mail.

 

The kneeling crossbowman that come in the claymore packs are really useful. They help provide a bit of variety on the bases, and would be really useful with the pavise packs Claymore also do.

 

It may not be very visible, but I had a go at some striped hose here. While reasonably successful it did make it more time consuming to paint, so may think carefully about how many I do.

 

Rear of some of the characters including the command. The shield on the back of the character in the foreground is typical of the earlier periods of the war, by the later stages (roughly 1400 onwards) the armour was getting so advanced they were largely redundent. That said this wasn't universal with pavises still being used in large numbers as were bucklers, though the latter was used as a weapon and didn't have the same defensive function you would expect. Men at arms did also continue to use smaller shields called bouche, but this was getting increasingly uncommon.

The English Army

Well it's been a while since I've done a blog post and this is mainly due to me not doing much in the way of modelling lately for various reasons. To remedy this instead of waiting to finish off my current unit, which is taking a slightly different tack on my 100yw theme, I decided instead to do a retrospective look at my English force as it currently stands. 

It's still quite small, but I do have an equivalent force with the French as well, so I've not done too badly. These are all Perry Miniatures both plastic and metal and constitutes most of my current English force. There are several guns as well, but I'll do it all together another day.

There were no such things at this point as dedicated units of billman or such like, it was just a straight split between archers and men at arms. The English men at arms did of course have mounts, but would typically dismount in this period to fight. This may at first seems counter intuitive, but the English had worked out that a well defended infantry position could successfully defeat a seemingly superior force with Cavalry. This was demonstrated most famously at Agincourt, but was the same principle used in Crecy, Poitiers and Verneuil. When the English didn’t follow this doctrine or were unable to they suffered defeats as at Bauge and Patay.

It’s easy to see the English in this period as superior to the French, which in some ways they were, but this is a simplistic way of looking at it. Henry the V and in some ways Edward III were taking advantage of a country that either had serious political faultlines that could be used against it, or with Henry V France was in a state of outright civil war. It’s interesting that when the country unified  the tide against the English inevitably turned. This can be seen with Charles V in the earlier part of the war or post Orleans with Joan de Arc.

This is not to take away from the prowess that the English demonstrated in the above battles however, they did win out against often very superior armies so it was obviously a successful and novel tactic.  

The full English force - archers, men at arms in the centre and further mounted archers to the rear. There's also a mounted herald.

Close up of the English right, with archers and the herald in the rear.

Some of the men at arms. You'll notice that my Men at arms are done in the English style. There aren't many stylistic differences to what the French would have worn, but the Orle (a ring of crushed velvet around the helmet, as seen on the chap on the bottom right of the picture with the red polearm) for example was almost exclusively used by the English. They also tended to wear more plain or 'white armour', which would have typically been polished to a high shine at great expense (think 80% of the cost of the armour!).

The other men at arms, the banner is the Duke of Salisbury's in this instance.

The English left, which I've depicted as the Duke of Suffolk.

That will be it for now, next time I'll put my French up in their entirety if I haven't finished my current project.