Empress or TAG or Perry?

[Codsticker]

Very helpful Stavka- although my interest is the ECW the differences between soldiers on the continent and on the Isles is interesting.

[Costanzo]

Great work Stavka!

[redzed]

Sorry for the lengthy post, it's a pet subject of mine!

don't be, that's a real quality post 

add a bit more and submit to one of the magazines.

[Sparrow]

Nice one Stavka

[chema1986]

My "Spanish" army (in reality a core of Spanish tercios with a goodly number of allied units from the Low Countries, Italy, Germany and even one of Irish) consists of a mix of figures.  I mainly use Bicorne, Renegade, Horcata and Warlord (but not their plastics- there's something about them that looks odd to me). 

There are some height differences, but I can live with it so long as I don't place the tallest next to the shortest on the bases.  Anyway when looking down on a unit on the tabletop, as opposed to comparing two figures held at eye level, I find it's seldom noticeable, especially given a unifying paint scheme.

You asked about late-TYW miniature ranges- there aren't any, although many companies do continental mercenaries for the ECW which can work. For late-TYW foot, many ECW figures can (and have to, given the lack of a dedicated range) pass muster.  Although with some caveats, depending on how much a stickler for accuracy you are.

What follows is relevant for the later, "French" phase of the TYW, which is where my own interest lies (particularly from Honnecourt, 1642 to Lens, 1648). Note that the armies of Gustavus Adolphus, Wallenstein and Tilly would have markedly different clothing styles; if it’s that time period you want to do, you’re best off with more appropriate miniatures from First Corps, TAG, or Emil Horky’s excellent range. 

I'm no expert; but from what I have been able to find out, it seems that European military fashion saw a higher percentage of floppy hats in a regiment than you would likely find in the British Isles, and with generally wider brims and taller crowns. 



The following two images are from Snayers' painting of the Battle of Honnecourt, and was likely painted not too many years after the battle was fought.



Note the chap with the eastern-style fur-lined cap. Not nearly as common as the wide-brimmed hat, but going by the art these seem to have been found in all continental armies, increasingly so the further east the army.



http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=47416

What you don’t want are a lot of knitted Monmouth caps and monteroes (I go with maybe one or two in about 30 at most, and would only include them in armies such as the Spanish and Dutch. Nowhere east of the Rhine).

Unless you are doing the French, who could sometimes be seen wearing a similar hat to the montero, but with more plumage, called a boukinhan (spelling seems to vary). Redoubt does a nice one- on those rare occasions it has been properly cast.

In general though, French TYW armies had a distinctive appearance with all their ribbons and frippery, and unfortunately are very poorly served by figure manufacturers.

When I decided to do a late TYW Spanish and allied army, I already had a lot of Bicorne/ Renegade ECW figures in monteroes and knitted caps.  Waste not, want not, so I ended up replacing all the caps with floppy hats; some using spare heads from Redoubt and Bicorne, but most I made myself from epoxy putty. 

While I had the putty out I gave a number of them various tatty capes and cloaks, which besides from hiding a multitude of sins and conversion work, seem to have been quite common going from the contemporary art.  With practice it was easier than it sounds, and fun to do.






But if starting out it would be a lot easier just to get miniatures in floppy hats from the get-go.

As a general rule for the TYW German/ Imperialist armies, it’s a good idea to use as many figures wearing cassocks as you can get your hands on, as they often appear in period paintings. The Warlord veteran musketeers in ragged clothing and cassocks are ideal for this, although I discarded the flatter hats and replaced them with ones that had taller crowns.




From about the mid-1640’s onwards, breeches were becoming more tubular than was the case earlier, and cravattes were beginning to replace the earlier falling neck collars. There are a few miniatures out there wearing these, but there's not much that can be done to fix this. However, it was a trend coming in very late in the wars, and fortunately for me the Spanish tended to dress more conservatively than the ever-fashion-conscious French, anyway.

In general, body armour was being lightened; but from paintings it seems that more was worn on the continent than in the ECW.  How much of this may have been due to artistic licence or convention, I have no idea.

Cavalry is a whole different matter; the 3/4 armed cuirassier was less common than earlier, being steadily replaced with harquebusier-style equipment, buffcoat and corselet. 




I don’t know of any company who makes the lightened style of cuirassier armour typically worn on the continent during the 1640’s as seen above, and it’s not an easy thing to convert.

As has been previously mentioned, the three-barred pot must have been extremely rare, if it was seen at all, outside the British Isles. Never say never, but for the TYW I certainly haven't come across any representations of it in period art.

For those few remaining regiments of 3/4 armoured cuirassiers, I will be replacing most of the fully enclosed helmets with heads in floppy hats.

Bicorne do cavalry wearing “Dutch” coats and cassocks, which are very good for representing the common-and-garden, more lightly-equipped unarmoured horse from about the mid-1640’s. The helmets are fine, being in the continental style, as are the wide-brimmed hats (which, worn over an iron skull cap, would have predominated as the years went on). 




But again the monteroes have to go; I clipped mine off and again replaced them with a large floppy hat from epoxy putty.

Sorry for the lengthy post, it's a pet subject of mine!

Absolutely super post, thanks for the info, from what I have read in my Spanish sources,  I agree with your statements.  I may add, that in the very late Franco-Spanish war, in 1650's you may find more British style equipment, as lots of English troops fought in both sides. I also recommend some Northstar 1672 figures, specially cavalry with buff coat and breastplate for battes like Barcelona 1652, Reconquest of Dunkirk 1652, Pavia 1655, Valenciennes 1656 or Dunes 1658.

Cheers

[Paul Richardson]

Stavka: great post. I suspect that earlier in the TYW musketeers in combat are more likely to have worn helmets than later in the war. I read somewhere that when fighting in Germany Gustavus had his Swedish musketeers equipped with helmets.

[Parrot]

On the Assault Group website, some Germans are listed as just musketeers, while some are listed as musketeers with boot-hose.  Was one style more imperial and the other protestant, or is it just more diversity in dress for the same army?

[Arthur]

Boot-hose was supposedly more common among German troops and would have been worn by protestant and catholic troops alike. You'll find the greatest difference between both iterations of TAG musketeers is the sculpting style : Nick Collier seems to have felt he could do better than his original figures and decided to re-sculpt his four German musketeer packs in a slightly different style (rightly so IMHO, as I feel his musketeers in boot-hose are superior figures). 

Re the issue of musketeers wearing helmets, it appears to have been an increasingly rare practice by the early 1630's, the Swedes being the notable exception in that regard. Gustavus Adolphus insisted on his musketeers being issued with helmets rather than hats, though they probably received some sort of Monmouth-type soft cap for off-duty wear as well. How long that state of affairs lasted is anyone's guess, especially when logistics became totally chaotic after Gustavus' death and Swedish commanders struggled to keep their men fed and clothed.   

[huevans]

My understanding from gents who know far more than me is that there was a period in the 30 YW in the late 1630's which featured a lot of small skirmishing and few major battles. During that period, ALL participants started to shed armour. Cuirassiers ceased to be anything more than generic horse in buff coats and (maybe) breast and back. And musketeers became unarmoured.

[Arthur]

And musketeers became unarmoured.

Surely you mean pikemen ?

The late 1630's coincided with the so-called French phase of the war. There were still plenty of battles but the armies fighting them were not quite the same as before. The French fought the Spanish forces in Italy and Flanders with varying fortunes and the Swedes still had an army in the field in Germany under Banèr (and later Tortensson), while Bernard of Saxe-Weimar commanded troops in his dual capacity as a general in the service of France and as general-in-chief of the Heilbronn League military forces. There was no shortage of battles and sieges in the late 1630's, so it wasn't all skirmishes and petite guerre but armies tended to be smaller and more mobile, especially in Germany. This was primarily because many areas were too exhausted to support large bodies of men, a situation which forced commanders to move quickly from one region to the next in search of new sources of supplies.

Re the gradual lightening of cavalry, this is something Rob explained in his exhaustive post about : the distinction between cuirassiers and arquebusiers became increasingly nominal and by the early 1640's, most mounted troops except dragoons were simply referred to as Reiter (i.e  horsemen in German). As far as pikemen were concerned, there is a distinct possibility that full pikeman gear was not worn in its entirety long before that. The fact that a full stand of armour was issued does not necessarily mean everything was actually worn in the field and some pikemen probably began to lighten their load long before the late 1630's. We also know from surviving regimental returns that some infantry units had fewer pikemen than they should have theoretically fielded (on his Kriegsbuch blog, Daniel Staberg quotes a period account of the arrival of the Duke of Holstein's imperial regiment in Stettin: the column consisted of 1361 musketeers for only 327 pikemen) .

The first item of kit to be discarded was almost invariably the tassets, which were considered cumbersome and unwieldy. By the 1640's, many pikemen made do with a helmet (which was still considered useful and sensible protection) and either a corselet or a single breastplate. Some pikemen did discard body armour entirely however, although this is something that is difficult to quantify precisely.   

[Ragnar]

Excellent thread: following.