Happy Chappy's Jaunt to Burgundy! - (12/11, P.10 - 1420s Foot Knights)

[bluewillow]

Superb investigation on the archers well done

Cheers
Matt

[HappyChappy439]

Hi again!

Bit of a gap since my last update! It's been a pretty hectic couple of months!

I've been spending most of May and June working on getting a big force of horse (of course!) for Charles, the Count of Charolais during the Battle of Montlhéry, before he had gotten his nickname. Turns out painting all these horses took a pretty long time! Most of them are straight builds of either Perry plastic/metal Men-at-Arms, with plumes added from the Perry Swiss heads, and green-stuff straps sculpted onto each of their breastplates (very much inspired by Simon's Je-Lay-Emprins blog) to set them apart as obviously 'Burgundian'

There's a lot of images in this post, as a heads up!








And for the banners in the unit, I decided to put four together (mostly for symmetry), so here's my explanation for each one:

The first one is Charles' own heraldic banner, with his coat of arms as Count of Charolais


Incidentally, the Valois-Burgundy coat of arms is fiddly to paint! I like to think I've improved since I made a try with Antoine's version last year though!



The second flag is Charles' personal standard, I've based it on the description given in Jean de Haynin's Mèmoires:

"L'estandart du comte de Charrolois estoit tout de soye my-parti de noir et de violet, à un bel brancage l'un parmy l'autre.

(Which I'm assuming translates to "The standard of the Count of Charolais was black and violet, with beautiful branches(?), one over the other" )

I've not found a concrete depiction of the standard itself, so I've decided to base it on a later standard which also features linked branches:



And then I stuck a cross of St. Andrew on it, just to make it more 'Burgundian'

Unfortunately, I couldn't get an angle on it where the lighting didn't reflect off of the flag itself, so it's slightly obscured here sorry!



The other two banners are more 'territorial' ones. On the left is the yellow lion on a red background for the County of Charolais (all the examples I found had the lion facing backwards, which I thought was a bit unusual!). While on the right is the unmodified banner of the 'old' Duchy of Burgundy, I don't know if there's any actual historical basis for this being carried into Montlhéry, but it does feature fairly often in manuscripts describing the battle, I assume it's just a visual shorthand for "These are the Burgundians!" rather than necessarily an accurate inventory of banners, but it's a nice simple banner to paint so I included it!





And here's Charles himself, he's just a straight paint-up of the Perry figure, I've given him purple and black livery to go along with his personal colours as the count (rather than the red he's normally shown wearing), but kept the plumes as blue/white to tie in with Duke Philip's own colours



And here's a family photo of the Valois-Burgundy personalities I've put together, Duke John, Duke Philip, Count Charles and Antoine, the Grand Bastard




Mixed in with the unit I wanted to include a few of the chroniclers and historians who wrote about Montlhéry themselves and fought alongside the Duke in the battle, seeing as I'd used their writing when putting together my Burgundians I figured (hah) I'd include representations of the writers themselves!

From left to right we have Philippe de Commynes, Olivier de la Marche and Jean de Haynin





And here's just a few shots of the rows of men-at-arms themselves





Let me know how they've turned out!

[AKULA]

Impressive looking force   

I don’t know what it is about plastic horses, but I find it harder to get motivated for building them, than building a dozen foot figures...I just need to be in the right frame of mind, so I’m envious whenever I see such a great host assembled and painted so well.

The banners (and plumes) really round them off.

[Charlie_]

Fantastic! They've turned out really well.

That Charles the Bold figure is a really good sculpt.... it's the one you get free when you order 3 boxes of mounted men-at-arms isn't? I am sorely tempted to buy the boxes just for the figure, and the same with the light cavalry boxes for the mounted burgundian officer.... I mean, I'm sure I'll get round to needing 3 more boxes of each over the next few years, it's just buying them all at once just to get a couple of metal sculpts might be a bit crazy!

Can I ask what colours you used for the horse of the standard bearer with the black and purple flag? I'd like to try that colour out myself...

As for the 'old burgundy' flag, I'm planning to use it for my own post-1477 burgundians for the same reason. Even though it technically is just for the french Duchy itself, not the County or any other burgundian territories, I think it was used for whomever held the title 'Duke of Burgundy'. (I've seen it once or twice in artwork used by Maximilian - even though he (or his son Philip) held the title Duke of Burgundy, they didn't actually hold the Duchy itself, which had reverted back to France. Yet I think the flag was still used. I'd be interested to hear more on this though, or see any sort of artwork that depicts it...)

[AKULA]

That Charles the Bold figure is a really good sculpt.... it's the one you get free when you order 3 boxes of mounted men-at-arms isn't? I am sorely tempted to buy the boxes just for the figure

Ditto...he has “Lannister” written all over him 

[HappyChappy439]

Thanks both!

That Charles the Bold figure is a really good sculpt.... it's the one you get free when you order 3 boxes of mounted men-at-arms isn't?

Yup! That's the one! Though the casting was a bit...slightly melted, as a heads up!

Can I ask what colours you used for the horse of the standard bearer with the black and purple flag? I'd like to try that colour out myself...

So I've limited myself to just GW colours for the horses, and just used this guide (it used to be on an instagram post, but it looks like that's private now, but GW have posted it):

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/04/16/send-in-the-cavalry-a-guide-to-painting-horse-breedsfw-homepage-post-4/

The horse for that particular standard bearer uses just the "Tan" palette in the guide there, but with Agrax Earthshade instead of Seraphim Sepia

I don’t know what it is about plastic horses, but I find it harder to get motivated for building them, than building a dozen foot figures...I just need to be in the right frame of mind

Definitely agree there! Though it's odd, with the plastic horses I tend to find trouble getting the motivation, but with metal ones I'm usually too nervous about the paint chipping off because of the larger surface area!

[bluewillow]

Great stuff, it is interesting to see the change of the swallow tailed banners, I recently read and count of a captured personal banner that had nothing to do with his armorial colours.

Cheers
Matt

[Atheling]

Very impressive stuff 

[HappyChappy439]

Hi again,

Quick mini-update this time, just because these guys are taking quite a bit longer than I thought they would (and procrastination is a powerful powerful thing!)

I've made a bit more progress on Charles, Comte De Charolais' archer bodyguard, and filled out the first rank of the block of 24 I'm planning



Deciding on a banner to give them took quite a while, seeing as most of the available ones are a tad too late for Montlhéry, either being in the ducal Blue/White, or having an M, alluding to Charles' marriage to Margaret of York (rather than Isabella of Bourbon), so I made do with essentially just doing a big version of the livery badge! Hopefully it's turned out ok!



Another 16 to go! 

[Charlie_]

Nice work!
So are you also working on some opponents for these Burgundians?

[Atheling]

They look excellent! 

Montlhery?

[HappyChappy439]

Thanks both!

Montlhery?

Yup! I'm going off of Jean de Haynin and Philippe de Commynes' accounts of the battle, so I think after I've finished off Charles' 'battle' I'll probably add another for the Count of St. Pol's vanguard to round out the bunch!

So are you also working on some opponents for these Burgundians?

I hadn't planned on it (yet) but I could definitely get some more generic levies put together which could be swapped between forces depending on the situation, and then throw in a few Francs-Archers for Louis XI!

Though, to be honest, your Burgundian Succession posts have given me some ideas to branch out into some of the personalities there as well! I've been thinking it might be fun to put together someone to represent the Count of Ravenstein, considering after Mary of Burgundy, he's one of the top claimants for the Duchy, which could lead to some interesting scenarios! (Plus, his livery colours were a carbon copy of Charles' own blue/white, which is definitely convenient!)

[HappyChappy439]

Hi again!

Another bit of a diversion from Montlhéry, back to 1411 and John the Fearless' campaigns against the Armagnacs!

Way back in February I painted up some test figures for Duke John's "Archers du Corps" to act as his bodyguard both on the battlefield and during his day-to-day (though, in-reality the Archers du Corps functioned more as a sort of secret-service for the Duke as well, being spies and envoys as well as bodyguards). I've finally finished the rest of the unit, so here's an update with the rest of the lads!

To avoid double-posting the research and reasoning, here's the link to the earlier post, with the reference images in, if you wanted to read how I came to the conclusion for the colours, badges and equipment for the archers! https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=116321.msg1543953#msg1543953





Most of the unit have the tri-colour Black-white-green that gets described in Jean de Noident's "Memoires Pour Servir A L'histoire De France Et De Bourgogne," but I wanted to vary it up a little, with some solid-green houppelandes, both with the shoulder 'stripes' described by the Chamberlain. The back-right and front-left of the unit show the striped-sleeves, while the back-left and front-second-from-right are wearing plain solid houppelandes

Each of the archers has the ducal badge of the 'Rabot' on his chest, to show allegiance to the Duke, and the Burgundian faction at-large (as opposed to the Duke of Orléans' rod/bend)



And each of the archers (aside from the striped-sleeved ones) also has the "Bundle of Arrows" described by the Chamberlain as being part of the 'uniform' of the ducal archers



I thought it was interesting that for an Agincourt-era force, the ducal archers actually do have a defined livery, badge and colours, I've not been able to find any other cases of this happening that early in the 15th century (in the region)! At least, not among the French/English side of things!

Seeing as these are the duke's personal guard, I decided to give them his armorial banner, rather than the standard with his emblem (as on his command base), but both are described as being in the field between 1405 and 1419, so either would be valid in this case!



And finally here's the duke and his guard together



Let me know how they've turned out! I really enjoyed doing the research to put these ones together, there's not really any contemporary visual depiction of the Burgundian ducal guard, so going through text descriptions was a lot of fun!

(Also incidentally, I think I need to get some new lights, my current ones seem to be getting dim on me!)

[Captain Blood]

Those are excellent 
Lovely.
I particularly like the use of the shouty head from the Salute freebie archer 

[AKULA]

Those are excellent 
Lovely.
I particularly like the use of the shouty head from the Salute freebie archer 

As Richard said, excellent work (also good spot on the shouty archer).

I also really like the command base...am guessing it’s for a particular set of rules?