Tudor Hagbutters (2)

Here we have a small complement of English arquebusiers,or 'hagbutters' as they were referred in contemporary documents. I intend to do another base of these at some point and that will be all as during the 1513 campaign the bulk of the shot was satisfied within the ranks of the Landsknecht mercenaries, there were a scattering of English shot but numbers were not really enough to make any real impact, the development of home grown shot being in its infancy.

However, they were there during the 1513 campaign and there are accounts of successful combined arms skirmishing using both arquebusiers and archers - particularly during the siege of Therouanne. The idea appears to be that the shot would give a powerful punch should an enemy get through the arrow storm. From this time onward throughout the Tudor period various experiments and proportions of shot to bow were used as dictated by the campaign theatre and /or availability.

I began some light conversion work on this unit a few months ago by adding some arquebusier paraphernalia to existing figures from the Perry mercenaries boxed set, you can see this initial progress here

Though use of English hagbutters in this campaign it is not stated (or missing) as to whom they were captained or which ward they were in so to that effect I have given them a Tudor livery flag. The source for this is a triptych woodcut illustrating the meeting of Henry & Maximilian to the backdrop of the allied army assembled and the battle of the spurs - the same woodcut used as the backdrop template for this blog, this was part of the 'der weiss konig' series of woodcuts which depicted the reign of Maximilian I.

From that I drew an outline and then painted it to completion on self adhesive paper, this was then attached to the pole and folded with final highlights then applied to the folds. I had the foresight to scan in the flag prior to adhesion to better show its design to you, the novelty of painting 8 Tudor roses quickly wore off so I felt my struggle had to be documented!

Stuart