Arquebusiers.

Battle of Pavia 1525 by Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau.

It must be close on four possibly five years since I sat down to paint anything without a set of masts and a dolphin-spanker, but with my 'room' getting a much needed overhaul and other rooms in the house given over to figure and terrain storage whilst the refit comes together, space has become a premium with not a lot of it to rig model ships, and so I have kept my eye in, so to speak, with some other brush work for friends.

One such little project was to build a group of arquebusiers for my old pal Vince as part of his forces muster for a couple of games playing Pavia this year, which saw me constructing twelve of the little masterpieces from the Perry box of plastic WOTR mercenaries* rigged out with handguns, or arquebus.

*See Iain's comment below which reveals the proper identity of the make of figures, and also shows how many Renaissance figures I paint or have painted.

A musketeer from Jacob van Gheyn's Wapenhandelingen van Roers, Musquetten ende Spiessen, 1608

The term arquebus was applied to many different forms of firearms from the 15th to 17th centuries, but it originally referred to "a hand-gun with a hook-like projection or lug on its under surface, useful for steadying it against battlements or other objects when firing". These "hook guns" were in their earliest forms defensive weapons mounted on German city walls in the early 15th century. The addition of a shoulder stock, priming pan, and matchlock mechanism in the late 15th century turned the arquebus into a handheld firearm and also the first firearm equipped with a trigger.

I had a lot of fun messing about with these chaps, as I first had to refresh my skills at putting figures together and then turning to my 'Painting Journal' to choose some appropriate painting triads of colours for the various shades required for top, middle and highlight colours, followed by some back-to-basics in base painting and texturing with various grass and flower clump foliage along with static grass.

I should emphasise here the importance of keeping a journal, and if you don't do this already, emphasise the benefits of writing down what you do with your painting, and frankly any modelling that you find works well, and that you might end up doing again long after the project you're working on is finished, or as in this case just coming back to an old set of skills that are somewhat rusty.

Trust me, you will find things so much easier to reproduce a style of look for additions to a collection, or as in this case refreshing the memory over potential colour combinations for something new, if you have recorded the basic information previously. 

The Battle of Pavia, fought on February 24th, 1525 was the decisive military engagement of the war in Italy between King Francis I of France and the Habsburg emperor Charles V, commanding an army of around 28,00 men. 

The Battle of Pavia by Rupert Heller, circa 1529, National Museum, Stockholm.

The French army of around 25-28,000 men was virtually annihilated, losing some 8,000 killed, wounded or captured and Francis himself, commanding the French army, was left a prisoner of his archenemy, Charles, forcing him to conclude a peace agreement with the Hapsburgs that surrendered all French claims to Italy.

Francis led his armoured cavalry in a medieval-style charge with couched lances, as illustrated by Dalmau's picture of the battle that heads up this post, a questionable tactic in the new age of gunpowder; that saw his horsemen ride in front of his cannon, making it impossible for the artillery to fire on the enemy, all this whilst Francis’s Swiss mercenary pikemen showed no eagerness to fight, and forces under the Duke of Alençon failed to engage in the general confusion.

Spanish arquebusiers took a heavy toll on the French, the veteran Duke of Tremoille falling with a ball through the heart, whilst the imperial Landsknecht mercenaries, under Georg von Frundsberg, surrounded the renegade Black Band Landsknecht fighting for the French and annihilated them.

I really enjoyed this little excursion ashore and may well get back to some outstanding projects of my own in the not far distant future with the Romano-Dacians, AWI and Wars of the Roses collections calling to me, especially as they too are composed of sculpts from the Perry's and the equally marvellous Victrix ranges with all their lovely detail and character that fires up my enthusiasm to paint.

So as well as updating my Painting Journal with some combinations from this project, I have also been using the time away from ship construction to sit down and plan these outstanding projects with some ideas around armies, figures needed to complete these collections and some new rules I am keen to playtest once the new wargaming room is back up and running which will not be long now with all the decorating and electrics done and a new carpet going in this week.

In the mean time these chaps will be off to their new home at the weekend and I will next showcase a couple of new additions to my wargaming accessories designed to compliment my new look room.

More anon,

JJ