Buckingham & Hagbutters complete

Here we have the results of a couple of units which I have been working on for a while, both largely due to them each having a fair amount of conversion work, or rather, I bought some green stuff and wanted to play with it!

First up is the second unit of arquebusiers or hagbutters as they were known in England. Every figure of this unit has had a degree of conversion work, be it green stuff or adding bits. You can see the initial progress and some more information on the drummer here and info regarding initial conversion work on the other figures here.

The number of English hagbutters in the army of 1513 was quite small, I have represented this as two units;

The use of arquebusiers was beginning to develop into a combined arms effort at this time, there are records describing skirmishing during the siege of Therouanne which state that the longbowmen would give 'galling' fire at first then massed fire and then the shot would add a punch once in range. I can't imagine having to face that. Records from this, later campaigns and Flodden do generally describe the archer fire as being a little less effective than in previous times, this could be down to the number used, armour of the opponent or the experience of the user - at this time there would only have been a few veteran yeomen in the ranks.

Needless to say an arrow storm with a shot punch followed by the wrong end of a bill is a relatively unique element of the English army and if well led and organised as they were in this campaign their effect would have been deadly. Add pike into the affair and I daresay you have a perfect combined arms unit.

Sadly almost all of the pike in the army of 1513 was provided for in the hire of Landsknechts, or Almains as they were known to the English and they didn't really take up this idea; they refused to be commanded by English captains, had rather vicious brawls with their allies (at one point turning their artillery on them) and would generally not co-operate.

Here are a couple of shots of this combined arms;

Lastly, here we have Edward Stafford charging across the field with his standard bearer. This was another labour of love being quite some time in the making, you can view previous progress here.

Again, each figure has had some conversion work; I'm getting quite adept at sculpting cavalry boots now!

Stafford's standard proved quite difficult to research and this is my best educated guess at its appearance,it is based upon a description which mentions the swan and various mention of his favour for the knot symbol.

I also took some inspiration from his castle at Thornbury which he built from 1511-14, it is rich with swan and knot devices which rather sealed my guess.

Another point of note for this post is that I have taken the time to learn more about my camera and invested in a decent tripod and a remote switch. It's early days and hopefully I'll get a bit better. Here's a couple of shots playing upon Stafford's Yorkist sympathies;

So there we go, I've had a bit of a busy period and milked it as much as I could - it's still going too :)

All the best

Stuart