My 1798 Irish Rebellion companies for 'Rebels and Patriots'

These are my 28mm 1798 Irish Rebellion companies for Rebels and Patriots. I’ve been buying them from North Star using my monthly Wargames Illustrated discount. All the figures are Trent Miniatures. They have great character and required only minimal cleaning up.

United Irishmen. The units are a mixture of pikemen and gunmen. The skirmishers (bottom left) are Shelmaliers. The command figures (bottom centre) will be put into one of the pike units. The remaining figures (bottom right) are spares for different configurations.

There are no silly cast pikes but no open hands either, so the hands had to be drilled. I started with a pin vice but the metal was quite hard so I dug out my old modelling drill and upgraded the power unit from 9v to 12v.

It’s some time since I’ve used this so I had to decide on technique:

1. Start the hole with a pin vice hand drill which is more controllable than the electric drill. Once the hole is started you can get a purchase with the latter. If going through two hands, start each one with the pin vice.

2. Don’t just drill. It will jam. Keep pulling it out and pushing it back in again. This doesn't seem to happen with the pin vice.

3. Avoid letting the drill slip under a finger nail - it's uncomfortable and may cause delay.

The figures came with sharp wire pikes. I shortened these to 60mm to represent Irish half-pikes.

Irish Militia etc comprising two units of Line Infantry (centre row), Grenadiers (bottom left),  Light Infantry (bottom right), Yeoman Cavalry (at the back) and Artillery. The mounted Captain (next to the gun) replaces an ordinary figure in whichever unit he is put with.

The Crown troops required a lot less work. Many of the Militia (and Rebels) came with separate heads. This provides good variation for the Rebels but less so for the Militia. The Militia heads can be angled a little differently, but only up to a point.

In search of the Shelmalier guns of 1798

What's the news, what's the news, oh my bold Shelmalier,
With your long barrelled gun of the sea?

Eighteenth Century Irish fouling piece (from contemporary auction listing).

Shelmalier or Shelmaliere is an area in County Wexford, and the farmers of east Shelmalier were accustomed to shooting wild fowl. In the 1798 Rebellion the Shelmalier men were renowned for their marksmanship, but what exactly were their "long guns" so celebrated in prose and song?

Somebody has probably written a history of the Shelmaliers, but if so I haven't so far been able to find it. Rather more information is available on hunting pieces in America. These were widely spread amongst civilians and could be used to shoot solid shot (for deer or to fend off Native Americans) or bird shot (for the general hunting of small game).

Superficially they resembled muskets or, more particularly, Kentucky Long Rifles and they were manufactured from the same components. But they weren't rifled. They were essentially long-barrelled smoothbore shotguns. They were not as robust as military muskets and they were not designed to support bayonets.

I don't know if any of the 28mm Trent Miniatures have long guns. It's not essential as there would have been a lot of variation and maybe not all fouling pieces were actually longer than muskets. I was just interested to track this down.

'Rebels and Patriots' for 1798?

The latest and last set of Rampant rules - Rebels and Patriots - is due out in January 2019 and will fill the gap in the Rampant range between The Pikeman’s Lament and The Men Who Would Be Kings. The rules have been written by Michael Leck and Daniel Mersey.

Osprey wanted the rules to be focused on North America for commercial reasons, but they should be perfectly applicable beyond. One possibility amongst many hundreds is the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in which I have had a long-standing interest, especially since watching the TV mini-series The Year of the French which was shown in the 80s. I go back a long way!

At one point I started collecting 15mm figures for this conflict with the intention of using the Maurice rules, but it would have meant doing another mass army and the rules weren't really suited to pitching a predominantly pike army against musketmen.

So I was quite excited by the prospect of a Rampant set for the horse-and-musket period which would once again allow me to satisfy an historical interest with a relatively small game. I had assumed/hoped that R&P would have some type of 'charging infantry' that would accomodate Irish pikemen but from what I can tell the 'Natives' type in R&P is essentially a shooting type.

At first this put me off and I was wondering about creating a custom unit type or maybe using The Pikeman's Lament instead. However, it is possible to increase Aggression and make Natives Poor Shooters. This would represent a small number of firearms mixed in with the pike in addition to the firearms otherwise fielded by skirmishers, so I think I should be OK after all.

Trent Miniatures (currently available from North Star) do a good range of 28mm figures specifically for this conflict, so I've already begun to use my £5-a-month Wargames Illustrated credit to (slowly) accumulate forces.

Croppy Boys: Trent Miniatures 28mm Irish insurgent pikemen.