Hundred year wars

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Here are my Swiss and Burgundians that use the plastic and metal WOTR ranges.

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=42627.0

I actually like this range slightly more than the Agincourt figures.

[Charlie_]

From some people i heard that the plastic HYW are not as beautiful as their WOR?

I'd argue that the HYW plastics are much better quality sculpts, more realistic and natural looking with finer detail. However at the same time they I don't think they are as versatile / flexible - fine if you want to make things pretty much as they show on the back of the box, but there aren't so many options if you want to get more creative.
The WOTR sets have many, many more options, and not just because there are 5 sets instead of 3 - much more variety of poses, weapons, armour types and such.
They are both fantastic of course, and without a doubt the best quality medieval plastics on the market!

If i'm right i noticed when reading about the HYW that English had a lot of archers and less infantry? I want to make skirmish forces with everything present ( men-at-arms, missile troops, infantry and some cavalry)

The English armies featured LOTS of archers (longbowmen) to a much smaller proportion of men-at-arms. The archers fighting in France were professional soldiers though, and wouldn't be afraid to getting their hands dirty with swords and daggers in support of the men-at-arms!

When fighting in pitched battles, the English pretty much all fought dismounted as infantry, including the men-at-arms (which itself includes the knights and higher ranking aristocracy). Though of course all the men-at-arms and a certain proportion of the archers would have horses. Remember not every encounter was a big pitched battle in a field (in fact very few were). If you are looking for small scale skirmishes, you will have plenty of reasons to field your English mounted - raids, ambushes, etc....
And likewise the French men-at-arms dismounted as infantry. Though the popular idea of the HYW is the French relying on mounted knights, this was often not the case. They went for the full-on cavalry charge at Crecy... But at Poitiers, 10 years later, they attacked in three big infantry divisions, with some smaller (and unsuccessful) cavalry attacks on the wings. The same thing happened at Agincourt.
Point is, both English and French would feature both mounted and dismounted men-at-arms, and it's worth considering what sort of conflict you are actually trying to depict. Though it's fair to say the French men-at-arms would be more likely to be fielded as cavalry than the English.

If you want a roughly historically accurate mix of troop types, the English should basically have loads and loads of longbowmen, with a smaller (but still significant) number of heavily armoured men-at-arms (usually infantry). If you want lighter billmen / spearmen, a few could be used as to pad out either archers or men-at-arms (it's debatable if they were really a thing - at least they weren't ever mentioned as a separate unit type).

The French should be based around men-at-arms, either heavy infantry or heavy cavalry - a mix of both fully armoured knights and less well equipped retainers perhaps, but all fighting as one heavy mass. They in turn could be supported by units of lighter infantry - crossbowmen, spearmen, pavisiers.... also some handgunners, longbowmen, artillery and perhaps some pikemen if doing the 1449-1943 period.


Comparing the Agincourt period covered by the Perry 'Agincourt to Orleans' range (1415-1429), and the 'late' period (1449-1453) which could be covered by the Perry 'Wars Of The Roses' and 'European Armies' ranges....... The most noticeable difference is in armour, which changed quite a bit between these periods. The Agincourt period featured full plate armour, with bascinet or 'great bascinet' helms. A few decades later the plate armour had developed, was more sophisticated, and distinct different styles (for example Italian and German) were apparent. Different sorts of helmets had replaced the bascinets, most notably the sallet, armet and barbute helms.
As for weapons, in both periods men-at-arms had pretty much abandoned shields, and on foot usually fought with two-handed pole weapons - all sorts of names pop up, but the term 'pollaxe' pretty much covers them all. Mounted men-at-arms would use heavy lances, with short maces and warhammers as backup weapons. And of course they'd all have swords as side-arms.

Compare the 1415-1429 men-at-arms first (wearing bascinets), with the mid-to-late 15th century ones second (wearing sallets and one armet). Both are Perry metals, pics taken from their website. Another thing to notice is that the later into the century you go, the less likely knights were to wear surcoats/tabards/jupons bearing their heraldry. Which can mean the later period is less of a headache to paint!!!!!
You can also maybe see the polearms in the later period are a bit more sophisticated.


Which do you prefer the look of?

[gefreiter]

Thank you, very detailed info.

[Griefbringer]

I'd argue that the HYW plastics are much better quality sculpts, more realistic and natural looking with finer detail. However at the same time they I don't think they are as versatile / flexible - fine if you want to make things pretty much as they show on the back of the box, but there aren't so many options if you want to get more creative.
The WOTR sets have many, many more options, and not just because there are 5 sets instead of 3 - much more variety of poses, weapons, armour types and such.
They are both fantastic of course, and without a doubt the best quality medieval plastics on the market!

This summarises also my opinion very well.

Regarding the limited versatility of Agincourt to Orleans plastics, this may not be much of an issue if you are only making small skirmish forces for each side, as you can still get plenty of variety from the four different sprues in the English/French boxes. However, if trying to assemble larger forces the figures may start feeling a bit repetitive.

Regarding the composition of the English forces in France in 1420's, typical ratio for garrison forces was 1 man-at-arms to 3 archers.

[Arlequín]

If you want a roughly historically accurate mix of troop types, the English should basically have loads and loads of longbowmen, with a smaller (but still significant) number of heavily armoured men-at-arms (usually infantry). If you want lighter billmen / spearmen, a few could be used as to pad out either archers or men-at-arms (it's debatable if they were really a thing - at least they weren't ever mentioned as a separate unit type).

My opinion precisely. Many of the 'billmen' are more likely to have been the less well-off of the men at arms and the armed attendants of the high and mighty, and absorbed within the class of 'men at arms'; except in England itself. There they were the lowest strata of society, possessed little if any protection and only usually raised once the supply of archers had been exhausted. If you were calling up 'bills' (a term you will rarely encounter before the Tudor Era) you'd pretty much reached the point where you were scraping the barrel. An integral part of any English wargames army, without any (genuine) historical evidence to back their being there.

I think the style of armour works against the HYW figures, the coifs and what-have-yous prevent turning heads and of course there are only so many ways you can hold a spear or pole-arm naturally without it looking odd. The more articulate armour of the Later 15th Century allows more variation of poses and of course you can 'cut and shut' at plate armour joints.

[Charlie_]

If you were calling up 'bills' (a term you will rarely encounter before the Tudor Era) you'd pretty much reached the point where you were scraping the barrel.

Out of interest, do you have much info on billmen in the Tudor era? I'm led to believe that it saw bills become more common and the number of archers decrease over time. I've been led to believe the English army at Flodden (1513) was mostly made up of billmen, and the bill played a much more central role here than the bow.

I think the style of armour works against the HYW figures, the coifs and what-have-yous prevent turning heads and of course there are only so many ways you can hold a spear or pole-arm naturally without it looking odd.

I agree. In fact I'd go as far as say that is where my one criticism of the Perry plastics lies - the poses for two-handed polearms. The HYW french spear and axe arms are all a little off to me, and some of the poleaxe arms (from both ranges) don't quite seem like they are swinging them right (ie both hands close together low down on the shaft. And annoyingly half the bill arms in the WOTR range seem to be holding them the wrong way round.

[Arlequín]

Towards the end of this https://archive.org/stream/cu31924027939861/cu31924027939861_djvu.txt there is a complete list of the men or the types of men in some cases, that the Duke of Norfolk had indented, or would be able to levy to serve Richard III.

There are a also few Tudor muster rolls online here and there, but there are some issues with them.

First off some are only partial and so while you have details of what the wealthier people in the village had, there's often not a complete record of the guys in the sticks, who were typically the poorer folk in the community; the bills.

By the 1520s there's also a shift to using the muster as a means of identifying income, so as to levy a tax instead of a summons to serve. While some assessors did list arms and armour, others just listed the man and his income.

There also seems to have been a shift towards the Continental idea of grouping the poor together to make a minimum income group, rather than the older method of ignoring you if you earned less than £2. I think the Bridport Roll (not a muster btw) shows this with people (including women householders) contributing a pair of gauntlets and what have you; you might have four or five people kitting out a sixth as an archer for example.    

The point is that musters also only give you your potential manpower and you might only skim the cream off the top, which is the men that usually appear in indentures. I don't actually think that there were fewer archers, the issue of laws to encourage archery remain a thing well into Henry VIII's reign, but that armies got bigger. If you've got say 500 archers and 1,000 men with glaives, bills and spears etc available, you can have 100% archers as long as you only raise 500 men. Raise 750, 1,000 or 1500, then you will have no choice but to have increasing numbers of bills in the force. There's also the issue of pay too, 40 days 'free' service was a thing of the past.

I did have a link to a set of indentures for Henry VI's army of 1492, but I can only locate the notes I made from it. It was interesting because it did list men at arms (along with their 'custril'), demi-lancers, mounted archers, foot archers, bills and even halbardiers. For the most part the halbardiers especially and some of the bills, were literally token quantities of between two and a dozen at best, in bodies of anything up to a hundred or more archers. One or two had about 50% bills however but came from relatively 'poor' regions. What skews it all was that this was also a volunteer force and not a levied one, so it shows the type of soldier willing to sign-up.

Sadly drop box has finished with public links, but if you have drop box you can access the notes: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pm9768o47kpp2yj/1492%20Expedition.docx?dl=0    

Edit: Note that the 'men at arms' also have a custril with them on the original and that the leader ('Head') of the retinue is included in their number, so Lord Powys for example is that solitary man at arms. I'm pretty certain that this is the earliest I've ever seen 'demi-lancer' in a document.

[delbruck]

Perhaps most people already know this, but there is is sticky on force composition for the period of the War of the Roses.

[Zaheer]

I would prefer Perry to Front Rank, you have the plastics to stretch your budget and the style is more 'natural'  I would consider Black Tree Designs too though if yo haven't checked them out. Sign up to the site as they have frequent sales which make them quite cheap. And the figures are very nice and size up well with Perry.

[gefreiter]

Hello, if i would use the plastic WOR mounted men at arms from perry to make mounted knights/MAA and i remove the tassets and add some chain mail and use heads from the plastic agincourt range could they pass for the HYW? As the perry haven't yet talked or suggested for any HYW plastic cavalry, i think it won't be for the coming years?

[CaptainHaddonCollider]

I did something like that when I made my retinue, judge for yourself if it worked out: http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=91143.msg1125770#msg1125770

[gefreiter]

thanks

[CaptainHaddonCollider]

No problem. Notice, however, that I based mine off both the light cavalry sprue as well as the MAA sprue from the WOR range.