Scots Covenanter Regiments of Foot- Victory Without Quarter

 

Lord Balfour of Burley's Regiment. What a memorable flag. Figures from Essex and QRF. Flags from Project Auldearn.  Balfour’s were frequently engaged. They took very heavy casualties at Aberdeen. A second newly raised Balfour Regiment may have been at Dunbar.

The Aberdeen Regiment with colours withdrawn for the immediate onset. Pikemen are advanced.  The arms of Aberdeen fly over the centre stand. The red and white saltires are my own notion. Flags from the internet. Figures mainly from Essex.

Red coats for Campbell of Lawers Regiment. If I recall right these coats were English issue from the time the Cromwellians and the Covenanters were on the same side in Ireland.  An experienced regiment that had seen much hard fighting there. Figures mainly from Essex and flags from Project Auldearn.

The Earl of Sutherlands Regiment of Foot. The figures are from Essex and QRF. The flags, they are fine, from Project Auldearn. Sir John Hurry, below, keeps an eye on things.

A good start I think. There are more to come. Initially I had thought to do 3 Campbell Regiments. Clan Campbell could turn out about 20,000 men. By comparison in times past the Armstrong Lord of Glenockie commanded 3,000 Lances. Clan peoples of significance, with a discrete legal and social structure.

Anyhow, I have revised my plan. I intend Campbell's Lowland Regiment and Campbell's (Pike and Shot) Highland Regiment. In addition I will do McKenzie of Seaforth's (Pike and Shot) Highland Regiment.

The (Pike and Shot) Highland Regiments are a bit of a challenge in 15mm. What with the absence of Highland pike men in that scale. Some ingenuity is required. Conversions in fact. I have already done this for the Royalist Montrose Highland (Pike and Shot) regiments that we will see next week.

I am minded to add the Earl of Lothian's Regiment of foot too. Availability of figures permitting.

If that all transpires I will have 8 Regiments of Covenanter Foot which I think will do nicely for Victory without quarter.

To this I will add two units of Dragoons. One done above and another to come.

Victory Without Quarter - Back to England

Recall we had 11 Regiments of English Foot to do. Today we have the 5th and 6th done. Above the green regiment. All Matchlock with flags from Ian KH at "This 28mm Life" blog. Thank you Ian KH.  

Parliamentary General Lord Manchester had a Green Regiment. Conversely the flag above might indicate a Royalist allegiance. Let's have a closer look.

Shall we try another Green Regiment? Why not. 

It occurs to me that in the heat of the game one Green Regiment's card might be mistaken for another. The wrong unit might act. How's that for the fog of war and the chaos of battle? Not the two above though, the flags are sufficiently different.

Next, the Blue Regiment. Both sides had Blue Regiments. In fact I already have a Blue Regiment of Essex figures that once rebased will join the throng.

How are we doing with the English Cavalry? Not bad at all. Mystery flags once again. I'm having no success in tracking the artist.

Here is Sir Richard Astley's Regiment of Horse at full strength, 2 squadrons.

Lord Carnarvon's Regiment of Horse. In intend to add a second squadron.

A unit of Essex figures.  The simple red standard with its red and white border was used by the regiments of both Francis Thomson and George Thomson. They fought for Parliament. . A real break I didn't want to be clipping and drilling cast on flags. 

Happy days.

Scots Regiments of Horse-Victory Without Quarter

 

Last week we considered mission creep. This week we see it. Lord Leven's Regiment of Horse in two squadrons.  From Essex, in miniature that is.

The original first squadron here. Flags on this page by Wargames Designs.

Sir John Brown's Regiment of Horse, first squadron. Full strength below. Figures from Essex.

Next Irvine's Lancers, Borderers who turned out for Montrose. The Border Clans had been pretty much destroyed by James 1st of England, 6th of Scotland. Their society was still in a state of flux during the Civil Wars. Note, your left to right Peter Pig, FK15 and Naismith.

The Gordon Horse next. From Matchlock. I might give them a second squadron. I think Matchlock got the look right.

Ogilvy's Horse. A single squadron for these lads I think. Second from the left an Essex figure. Matchlock for the rest.

QRF Lancers below. These are small figures that might do as youths in a wider mix.

I was interested to read that in the fighting before Dunbar the Scots Lancers gave Cromwell's Ironside Cavalry a hard time of it. We must look at lances again sometime.

QRF Dragoons. I very much like these figures. I have enough to do another unit.  You may think I should have cut the guidon to a swallow tail shape. I did wonder, but the white is patterned and so part of the flag.

Next two command figures, Brigadiers in fact. 

The first is FK15's Sir John Hurry. Sir John got about in the War of Three Kingdoms Fighting for Royalists and Covenanters. It is a nice little figure and I nearly made him the centre of a General's stand.

Another Commander from the same stable. Stylish and evocative alas I have no idea who he is supposed to be.

One of the lads on LAF enquired if a Scottish Supplement was available for Victory Without Quarter? Not to my knowledge but we can have a go at producing one in the interim.

We will be south of Berwick again next week

Victory Without Quarter Mission Creep

 

There are words for it. “Mission Creep” for the military and “Project Drift” for civic ventures. That tells us it is something humans do. So it is no surprise to find that I’m painting Scots units when I intended to major in English ones.

It could be worse. I have five English Regiments of Foot done and three squadrons of Horse. Also I have done a One Man and His Dog by way of command. 

Here he is.

 

He (Rupert of the Palatinate) is a Frei Korps 15mm miniature bought just before the Deluge. Next White Coats with red flags, yellow flags and white flags.

All Matchlock 15mm, or nearly so.

Note each company (base if you like, stand even) has its own flag. I feel this is period feel stuff and I like the look of it. 

Apparently standard practice was colours front on encountering the enemy for the first time. Then colours to the rear before the fighting began. I need to credit the fellow gamer and blogger who made these fine flags. Investigation will follow.

Let’s horse around starting with Cuirassiers with a black flag.

 

Next red flag horse. It is too small to see but the flag ridicules a notorious cuckold on the opposing side.

The blue flag boys have a nice white heraldic device. They are also getting a second squadron.

All the Horse are Matchlock 15mm.

A moments pause for the Dead. These are important as a tracking device in Victory Without Quarter. Many more of these to come.

Caledonia here we come. First the Strathbogie Regiment. The flags are from the magnificent Project Auldearn.

Some Highlanders from QRF as was. The great thing about Highlanders is by substituting flags they can represent any Clan Host. Below we see QRF, original FK15 and Peter Pig. Mix and match.

 

Now the latest Cards. Sealant has yet to be applied. I'm waiting until I have the set.

I am enjoying this project a great deal. Bigly in fact. I’m enjoying it bigly and you cannot say better than that.

A “Victory Without Quarter” Story

 

A long time ago I read books about the ECW and of course the non "E" Civil Wars . I even bought the odd edition of ECW Notes and Queries. Of real knowledge of the ECW I had not so much. The last stand of the Whitecoats, the massacre of the  women and children,mistaken for Irish. Fierce Cornish Regiments made an impression. 

Battles at Corbridge and Newburn too. The Scots put a gun in the Church tower there. That puzzled me until I learned of Frame guns. Two centuries ago quarrying in Millfield nearby disturbed a mass grave of the Scots dead slain at Newburn.  A Scots victory.  The English slain would have been buried on the other side of the River Tyne.

Little vignettes of courage and desperation. That’s about it.

All the same I downloaded and printed Clarence Harrison’s Victory Without Quarter rules for the period. It looked good and looked even better when the rules for Highlanders appeared. I’m currently interested in English Battles. Though an attempt at recreating Dunbar has real appeal. 

Regular Readers know I’m much given to the League of Augsburg style of gaming and Clarence is a key collaborator of Barry Hilton. I happily knew what I was in for.

I had very few painted figures, English that is. I do have Covenanters, Highlanders and Irish in good supply. Where were my English to come from? For some years I have been collecting Matchlock figures from eBay. The idea was a future 30 Years War Project. I must have saved a fortune. Also the figures obtained were cast when the moulds were young.

Today I counted. I have 10 regiments  (18 figures each) of Foot and 8 (12 figures, 2 squadrons each) of Horse.  It looks as though we are in business.

Now I have to paint them. Looking at the cast on flag poles of the standard bearers I can see this is going to be a little flag project. Fine, 3 flags a unit then. 

I also need to make some cards in order to play the game. I will show them here as they are done done. Unit Cards require painted figures as the front image. Naturally, it will take a while to complete the set. When that is done I will spray the whole deck with sealant. That's ink jet print sealant. There are, I have learned, sealants galore. They may not all be for the likes of us.

Oh, and casualty markers too. Ditto.

Anyhow, we are off and you see my progress on the page. Having sat in King Charlie's Chair (not the current Charlie) I'm beginning with the Marquis of Newcastle's White Coats- a Brigade no less.

Shakos and Bayonets 1798 -The United Men

 

We had an earlier look at the United Irishmen and suggested some Shakos and Bayonets unit statistics. Today we can look at our units to date. 

For convenience I'm using a blanket set of statistics. In reality after the first few victories even those initially too timid to Rise turned up for duty. Such men would not be trained as the United Irishmen were. Something for later I think. 

Above, four units of pike men each with a scattering of muskets. I do wish I had bought another four cavalry men. Ah well.

Our first two units with their officers. The mounted fellows might be the Irish Republicans returned from France. They were ardent revolutionaries and mostly Protestant. The rank and file except in Ulster were mainly Catholic. The "People of No Property" as Wolfe Tone said. The combination of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter accounts for their designation as the United Irishmen. This is the period when green becomes the Irish national colour. It had appeared earlier of course in the flags of the the Confederation of Kilkenny. This time it envisaged no foreign allegiance.  As the song has it " I joined the United Men to fight for the Green."

Our second two units. I had thought to provide one unit with a Father Murphy figure by way of period flavour. In keeping with the instruction of the Catholic Hierarchy Father Murphy evinced no sympathy for the Revolutionaries. That changed when the Yeomanry burned down his chapel. With the heather blazing he called his parish to arms. One to ponder.

I think I can manage to put together another 12 figure unit of Pike Men. A more singular unit is the men of Shelmalier with their long barrel guns. Their function is clear they operated as skirmishing marksmen. Obtaining suitable figures is beyond me. I'm substituting these musket armed lads from Chariot and Lancashire Games archive range. True 15mm and excellent.

Of course the above unit only vaguely resembles the actual men of Shelmalier. No long barrel guns. The Revolutionary Phrygian/Liberty caps are not attested in Ireland so far as I know. 

The French Revolutionaries seem to have adopted it as it was worn by by Roman Freedmen. A sartorial "Slave No More" if you like. British cartoonists of the period loved the image of a monkey faced man in a Liberty Cap as visual shorthand for the United Men. So that is a sort of period connection. Likewise the striped trousers could only have been obtained from French allies.

The figures themselves are very nice. Two from Chariot and three from Lancashire Games Archive Vendee range. 

That's it. I'm grateful to Ian Kay at Irregular Miniatures for making the '98 Range above.  I'm frustrated by John at Khurasan for not releasing his '98 Range below. 

John let us see the first 15mm samples. 

A species of cruelty really.