1513 Valois French

 

Humans repeat behaviour. Consequently it comes as no surprise to find I have two French Renaissance Armies. One is in “heroic” 15mm scale. It has Venexia and Blue Moon figures. It is intended for the Great Italian Wars. Shortly I will turn my attention to it, for Gonzalo!

The other French array is older and smaller. Here we find Minifigs, Essex and QRF. Mostly anyhow. That one is today’s subject. It is intended for 1513'ish, to fight the English. The latter in the form of an augmented version of my English Flodden army. What fun awaits. 

By the way, I took out Ian Heath's Foundry Book on the period. He notes that for pikemen the English relied on Landsknecht pike. Colourful. I have painted a small unit of English arquebusiers too. Mostly they hired in firearms, Spanish and Italians featured.

Back to France. Let’s have a look at what we have.

Stradiots from QRF. Betimes the English hired these fellows too. Stradiots had fought the Turks. Not a drink of water. Maybe they had the edge on the Border Horse? Or, perhaps it was just to deny them to the French? Stradiots were handy with the mace. They liked to stun.

 

Archer Cavalry from Minifigs led by a Gladiator standard bearer. The latter has had his hand successfully drilled. I’m not getting better at drilling. It’s just he has a massive hand that would be hard to snap. He is on an Essex horse. Pleasing enough, I think. The flag is one of the free ones from Lancashire Games.

Archer Cavalry sans bow. That happened. Archer sometimes just meant a soldier. These are from Donnington. 

QRF Landsknechts. These will do for either English or French Armies. 

I need to paint another 4 pike men for this unit. Nice little figures.

QRF Swiss, because I have them. Right period, wrong theatre.

I wanted some Franc Archers pike units. The Franc Archers ratio was usually one third pike, two thirds crossbows. Unlike the Gascons these crossbow men seem to have formed up. I need a couple of units like that.

I thought I might do specific noble's contingents. 

Antoine de Crequy and Bernard/Berault Stuart because I have the flags. Actually Stuart was smiting away in Italy at the time. De Crequy though was about.

I have also got a flag for Blaise Montluc and I might do another unit for him. I enjoy reading Montluc. As with Bernal Diaz he reads like a modern to me. Translations of course. 

Adventuriers from lots of manufacturers. 

Above from Essex.

Arquebusiers above Essex and QRF. Below from Khurasan.

I'll show this Army again when it is finished. Likewise with the English one. 

I should say most of what you see was painted a long time ago. A few additions and re-basing did the trick.

This brings us to Lion Rampant and what I think of as Lion Mulligan. That being Stuart Mulligan's Lion Rampant version for 1513 and there abouts. Between what is on Stuart's Army Royal blog and the magazine article I think I have it. I want to try it out as he seems to get interesting games.

Once I have done that I want to try it again with Montluc's (and other contemporaries) thoughts on arquebus v bow as an adjustment. I'm just curious to see how it might work.

Also my Flodden rules can easily accommodate 1513 in France and I will be doing just that.

A final thought. I had not intended doing this when I listed this year's projects. Yet, here we are. A nice aspect of the hobby. Sometimes we surprise ourselves.