Late Medieval/Renaissance Irish Cavalry

Hi again, and Happy New Year!

Another Irish Update! I've decided to expand on the mounted command base I put together a couple of months back by putting together a few bases of light cavalry, to give a full unit of eight for Never Mind the Billhooks' rules.

As with the command base, unfortunately it's pretty difficult to find figures to actually represent the Irish cavalry of the 15th and 16th centuries, so that meant it was time to go to the conversion table to put some together!

This post by Oli has been an absolute lifesaver in terms of the research involved and for design ideas, so I highly recommend checking it out! http://camisado1500s.blogspot.com/2018/02/irish-chieftan-and-noble-cavalry.html

Based on Oli's post, I decided to use two main visual references when planning out the figures, The Image of Irelande and the Book of the Burkes. In particular, plate 9 of The Image of Irelande shows a fight between Irish cavalry and their English counterparts:

This image has a few interesting features, where some of the Irish cavalry have some unusual segmented helmets, and almost all of them have large round shields, but they're being worn either on their chests or tied to their backs. The English cavalry in the same illustration also have their shields tied to their chests, so this might just be artistic license by the artist though

In the Book of the Burkes, there's also a helpful illustration of an Anglo-Irish cavalryman (which Oli also cites). This one is slightly different to the ones in The Image of Irelande where the cavalryman has a long shirt which extends past his mail, and a pointed bascinet-style helmet 

According to Seán Ó Domhnaill in Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Ireland, the Irish horse "were armed with headpeaces, shirtes of mayle or jackes, a sword, a skayne (a short-sword) and a speare."  Ó Domhnaill also confirms that the Irish cavalry did not use stirrups, used a unique type of saddle, and held their spears overarm to thrust. This supports the illustrations in the other sources, so I thought that gave a solid foundation to go from! 

So with that in mind, I needed to find figures which:

• (Mostly) had period-appropriate mail shirts
• Had overarm poses for their spears
• Could scale visually with the Perry War of the Roses range

In the end I settled on the Perry Norman sculpts, to make sure they scaled correctly, and thankfully they had a pack of overarm spear users too! Once that was settled, I trimmed down their mail shirts to be much shorter, in line with other 15th/16th century designs, and swapped their heads for Perry Irish ones

This base had a figure I based explicitly on the illustration in The Book of the Burkes, with the long white shirt, red leggings and pointed bascinet

And finally I wanted to have a go sculpting one of those odd segmented helmets on one of the figures, so I added one to the final base here

And finally here's a few pictures of the whole bunch together

Hopefully they've turned out ok! 

Richard de la Pole: The Last White Rose

Hi again!

This time, I've opted to go for the upper-bound time-wise of this project (before things get too Renaissance-y), with a command base to represent Richard de la Pole, or Richard IV, titular Duke of Suffolk and the last serious military contender for the House of York, before his death in the Battle of Pavia in 1525.

De La Pole (and his brothers) presented a fairly serious threat to the early Tudor regime, having a stronger claim to the throne than Henry VII. While the eldest brother died in 1487 at Stoke Field, and Richard's other elder brothers arrested and/or executed by the Tudors, Richard was able to flee to Europe, where he ended up being notably charismatic, winning over a number of highly influential figures in France, the Holy Roman Empire and Hungary to support his claim. Plans were made under both Louis XII and Francis I to support an invasion of England with Scottish support, and with rumblings of Yorkist sympathisers in England itself and the earls of Desmond and Kildare in Ireland happening as well, it's no surprise that the Tudors saw the pretender as a problem. Adding to their concerns, Richard de la Pole had become a seasoned battlefield commander during the start of the 16th century, leading forces of Landsknecht on behalf of France in Italy and Navarre, giving him vital experience that the earlier Yorkist pretenders definitely lacked!

First up on the base are a pair of retainers with halberds, to act as bodyguards for de la Pole. Desmond Seward in The Last White Rose mentions that during Richard's stay in Metz in the 1510s he retained a group of musicians and bodyguards in blue and grey livery, so I've used that as the basis for the colours on the livery jackets. I thought it was a bit unusual that unlike every other de la Pole Richard decided to opt for grey instead of yellow in his livery, but my guess is that it may be a deliberate call-back to his grandfather Richard Duke of York's blue and white livery during the War of the Roses. With that in mind, I've added a white rose to the chest of the livery jackets, to tie-in de la Pole to York, and as a pastiche of Henry Tudor's own retainers. Both retainers are based on Steel Fist standing dollies, with Perry Early-Tudor heads and medieval arms

Next up are the two standard bearers on the base (one for Richard de la Pole's personal arms, and the other for his livery banner). One standard bearer is an unmodified War of the Roses figure in older armour, while the other is a liveried retainer built using the same method as the two others

Also on the base is a knight, pointing out something on the horizon to Richard. I'm using him to represent an attaché from France or Foix to provide battlefield support for Richard, or alternatively an English exile, adventurer or opportunist who decided to throw in with de la Pole. The figure is one of the excellent Steel Fist Miniatures Italian Wars foot knights without any modifications

And finally, the pretender himself, Richard de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. Like the other knight, Richard is a Steel Fist Miniatures Italian Wars foot knight. I love the pose for this figure in particular for a commander, and Richard de la Pole seemed like an excellent excuse to use the figure!

I've painted de la Pole's jacket in his livery colours of blue and grey, and like with his retainers, I've given him a white rose livery badge (only larger!). I've not found any decisive evidence for any livery badges used by Richard, compared to his father, or older brother John, but I made the assumption that seeing as just about everyone among his contemporaries refers to him as the White Rose, that he must have some effective 'branding' and actively cultivated that association.

I decided the beardy head quite nicely captures the look of the portrait that shows up on Google when you search for Richard de la Pole (although, I think it may be actually of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon instead from what I've found!)

And finally, a couple of pictures of the command base on a grassy field

Hopefully they've turned out ok! The base was a lot of fun to put together and paint! Special thanks to Stuart for the advice with this one as well!

Mounted Irish Command

 Hi again!

Another Renaissance Irish update! This time I wanted to attempt some figures to represent some Irish commanders on horseback, particularly with Never Mind the Billhooks' Deluxe edition giving rules for Irish cavalry! 

Unfortunately finding miniatures to represent late-medieval/renaissance Irish cavalry and having them scale properly in 28mm with the Perry Irish range is pretty difficult! Which meant going in to this would need some thought about converting existing figures to look the part of both an Irish Earl and his mailed standard bearer

 
Choosing figures as bases to start the conversions was a bit of a task! I'm not hugely confident in my sculpting abilities, so I wanted to try to focus on a few key points to have the figures at least be visually recognisable without necessarily needing me to sculpt on large areas of mail or detailed clothes.

For the Earl, I visually based his appearance on the "Irish Chieftain" depicted in a few of the woodcuts in The Image of Irelande. It is worth pointing out that the book is very much a piece of Tudor English propaganda, intending to demonise the Irish and promote the English forces in Ireland, so it should be taken with a grain of salt! But in the absence of many other sources, it made for a good start

In these images, the chieftain has an interesting segmented helmet (with a plume), so that was something I definitely wanted to include. He's also wearing an interesting outfit, initially I thought it was some sort of brigandine or studded jack, but it seems to be more consistent with civilian doublets in other 16th century portraits rather than any kind of armour. Finally, as shown in the first image, the chief has a very impressive cloak (or brat), with a thick fur-like fringe, which was another definite requirement for me to include!

For the Brat, the Gaelic Attire Website provides a very useful explanation of its construction, and some great reproductions (which have made great reference images!). The fringes themselves appear to have been made of wool (occasionally styled to look like fur), and for the wealthy this would have been dyed in a variety of colours

With that in mind as a design direction, I decided to use one of the Perry Sudanese commanders as a base figure, given his pose, and his excellent cloak to make a base for the brat:

And from there, I gave him a head-swap for one of the Gallowglass figures to try and match the interesting helmet shown in the woodcuts, and added a plume to it. Then, with some filing down of the body and legs, I sculpted on a Tudor doublet and boots, and then added a fringe to the cloak to convert it into an Irish Brat

In terms of colours, I went with a copy of the Brat in Dürer's depiction of Gallowglass in the early 16th century, with the cloak itself being a deep red/maroon/pink, and the fringe being a bright yellow

 

The standard bearer was a bit of a simpler conversion, seeing as my design philosophy for him was more straightforward. I wanted him to essentially look like a mounted Gallowglass, so the rider was based on a Victrix Norman, with his head swapped for one of the Perry Gallowglass, and a The Assault Group targe added in place of the Norman shield. 

The horse was a little more involved, seeing as the Irish cavalry of the 16th century notably did not use stirrups or saddles, instead opting for what appears to be more of a cushion strapped to the horse. Given that information, I trimmed the saddle off of the horse, and used green stuff to sculpt on the quilted cushion (which helped mask the width difference between the Victrix legs and the Perry horse too!)

And finally to round off the whole base, I added an Irish wolfhound from Footsore Miniatures

Currently I only have flags for Kildare and Desmond put together, but the standard bearer's flags are detachable, so they can be easily swapped out for any other Gaelic or Anglo-Irish lords (once I get the flags made!)

And here's the Earl of Kildare riding alongside a band of kern

Hopefully they've turned out ok! The plan is to work on some cavalry to accompany the Earl on the field next!

Irish Kern with Bows

Hi again!

Another update and once again, we know 'em, we love 'em, it's more Kern! 

This time I've put together block of skirmishers with bows to act in support of the gallowglass and bonnachts, or independently to harass opponents in hit-and-run attacks!

The kern themselves are the usual mix of Perry and Antediluvian figures. I've included a few more drab léine compared to the bonnachts, given that these would be poorer soldiers, and unlikely to afford the fanciest saffron dye all the time

And here's the whole bunch together

And here's the block of skirmishers screening an advance for the charging Bonnachts

I hope they've come out ok! For a while I was debating whether to have them blocked in a more dense formation, to mirror the bows-and-bills of the other WotR forces, but eventually decided against it!

Irish Handgunners

Another Ireland update! 

This time I wanted to do a bit of experimenting, with both multi-basing figures, and with some different ways of painting the léine, so I decided to use a possibly slightly anachronistic unit of handgunners as test subjects!

Historically speaking, handguns were adopted fairly quickly and enthusiastically in Ireland, with many earls wasting no time in adopting gunpowder warfare towards the start of the 16th century. Although, despite this, we don't have any record for gunpowder weapons being used by the Irish contingent at Stoke, and not much to go on for Warbeck's insurrection with the earl of Desmond (although Cork was reported as using gunpowder weapons against Warbeck's forces!). For this project, the handgunners represent more of a 'late' (insofar as the first half of the 16th century can be called late!) period force, or a dip into alternate history, where France, Burgundy or the Empire decide to back up their investment in a Yorkist pretender by providing weaponry to the Irish forces as a pretty substantial force multiplier against the more conservatively equipped English. Plus the idea of an early Irish pike-and-shotte formation is a fun project, if nothing else!

Given how much yellow I've been painting with the Irish, I wanted to give the new yellow GW Contrast paints a spin, to see how those worked! They were very easy to apply, but I would say in this particular case I did need to use a few washes to bring down the yellow a bit, where it was approaching a very bright banana yellow rather than the warm saffron I was going for!

I also wanted to try and experiment a bit with conversions of the kern figures themselves. Seeing as the unit is fairly small I wanted to avoid obvious doubles, so I've included a few kern from other sets with weapon and hand swaps to diversify the bunch

This base is entirely unmodified Perry Irish handgunners

This base on the other hand is entirely weapon-swaps and conversions from the other Perry and Antediluvian kern sets

And the other two bases are a mix of the two

And here's a couple of pictures of the full band of skirmishers together

I'm quite happy with how they've turned out! Although, I'll probably be a little more sparing with the Contrast paints in future, just where there's so much pigment that some of the kern here ended up almost too yellow!

Sir Thomas Fitzgerald

Hi!

In this update, as sort of a first foray into multi-basing figures, as opposed to individually basing them, I wanted to put together a command base (thanks for the advice there, Stuart!).

The commander here is intended to be Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, who fought (and died) at Stoke Field in 1487, fighting on the Yorkist side there in command of the Iris
h contingent. I've left the figures themselves without any liveries, and the banner is interchangeable, so he could just as easily stand in for Silken Thomas in his rebellion against Henry VIII, or really any other Irish knight or lord in the late 15th or early 16th centuries!

Most of the figures on the base are straight from the Perry Irish command (although the one with the sword has a head-swap!), while the Gallowglass lurking behind Fitzgerald is from the Antediluvian Miniatures Dürer Galloglass set.

Fitzgerald himself is based on a Perry WotR standard bearer, with a plume added to his helmet, and a two-handed sword in place of a polearm, to fit more thematically with the rest of the Irish force. As a knight (or lord, depending on which Fitzgerald) with ties to England and the Pale, I wanted to set Fitzgerald apart from the other figures, so I decided to use an armoured figure as the base, but at the same time to show that he's still very much Irish (or Anglo-Irish, at least), he's wearing his yellow léine tucked under the armour.

I've also given Fitzgerald a beard, as part of making him a more 'generic' Irish commander. The beard itself is partly based on this portrait of Silken Thomas from the 16th century:

And here's Fitzgerald with all my Kern so far:

Hopefully they've turned out ok! 

Big Batch of Bonnachts

Hi again!

As part of my work on the Irish figures, I definitely got won over to the idea of multi-basing my figures, so I began the task of peeling off the old individual bases for my kern that I had done in late 2021 and grouping them together! 

As part of the rebasing I also wanted to bulk up my old bonnachts from twelve to twenty-four figures, and also redo the painting on some of the older léine that I weren't quite happy with with a year's worth of hindsight to them (and also having picked up a wet-palette in the meantime too!).

To keep things as varied as possible, I've tried to include as many head and weapon swaps as possible, including four with swords and shields to stretch out the number of close-combat figures available!

And also as part of the units I've added some to be a command base, with a piper and a standard bearer. The flag is interchangable, so the unit can be fielded with the flags of any Irish lords (although here I've used the flag for the Fitzgeralds of Kildare)

With the bases, the aim is to field the Bonnachts as either two blocks of 12, or a combined group of 24 (as a mirror to formations of bills in Never Mind the Billhooks)

And finally a 'scenic' shot of the whole bunch charging in a line

The inspiration for the figures here, including many of the headswaps, came from Stuart Mulligan's blog post here, which has an excellent writeup of the historical context and terminology around the clothing: https://stuartsworkbench.blogspot.com/2021/11/irish-kern.html

I've also used the idea of mixing different shades of yellow from the blog post to indicate different levels of quality of dye (and to avoid having everyone be wearing the same shade of yellow). So roughly half the unit have the brighter, bolder yellow, and a lot of the rear rank, and most of the duplicates, have a more faded mustard/ochre colour being used

The ionar (jackets) were a pretty fun opportunity to include some additional colours in the unit, on top of the yellow. I've taken some inspiration from this site (which sells reproduction clothing) in terms of the colours and patterning: http://www.gaelicattire.com/ionar.htm

I hope they've turned out ok! Focusing on the brighter, warmer yellows for the léine is definitely growing on me, with fewer of the drab ones in the mix!