Wednesday 28 April 2021

Liegeois Civic Militia

 
As a by-product of my big Swiss project, I ended up with a lot of Perry plastic minis that didn't look quite right for the land of mountains and superior hard cheeses, either because they are wearing gambesons or carrying bucklers or in the wrong clothing colours. Some of these minis are superbly painted by the likes of David Imrie and Lionel Bechara. It occurred to me that I could conscript them into the Burgundian army as the numerous civic militias of the Low Countries cities, who wore uniforms and marched to war under the banners of their guilds. They served the Dukes of Burgundy (and later the Habsburgs) with considerable reluctance and inefficiency.

n.b. You can click on the images for a close-up.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the right flags. At this point Mats Elzinga very kindly stepped forward and volunteered to produce a set of flags for the guilds of the city of Liege. I have eight guilds represented here. They all wear red except for the Meuniers (appropriately, the Millers) who have a yellow and black clothing theme, based on their guild flag. A few guilds had blue themes, perhaps a future project.

I found his flags were so pretty that I needed to paint more units in order to be able to use them all, so Shaun McTague very kindly painted up another 40 or so minis, which I highlighted. My chum Ian Notter flocked them- a considerable undertaking as they are very densely based in blocks of 16 and it's very hard to get in amongst the feet. I added tufts and flowers.


And here they are, all together! There are 99 minis, in all. I'm not entirely sure what I'll use them for, yet- possibly to fight a projected French army, since I rather doubt that they fought the Swiss (at least under their guild flags). But I'm delighted to own them. There are at least three or four lists in the To the Strongest! Medieval Army List book that I could use them in. I have told Mats that if he produces more flags for other cities (Antwerp would be really nice) then I'll make up some more units.

A huge thank you to Mats and everyone else who helped. I gather Mats will be producing the flags commercially, at some stage, they are quite lovely and without them I wouldn't have persisted with the project.

12 comments:

Bedford said...

Superb looking stuff Simon!!

May I ask where you got the heraldic banners for the Guilds from please?

BigRedBat said...

Thanks- Mats Elzinga very kindly made them up for me. :-)

pancerni said...

Great looking units! The period is such fun to paint and game. Thanks for the photos.

David said...

Nice additions to the hordes!

Hendrid said...

Very nice looking Militia. Mats standards are very nice too. Great stuff.

fireymonkeyboy said...

That looks fantastic - what a mass of figures! High medieval is so tempting, between the mini ranges out there and posts like these.

Gonsalvo said...

They look wonderful, Simon. The bold, heraldic style flags are one of the big attractions of this era!

Millsy said...

Only you would have 99 matching minis "left over" from other projects. Pure gold!

DadExtraordinaire said...

Just stumbled on these and what beauties they are - them and the Burgundians, stunning sight of figures Simon :)

caveadsum1471 said...

Splendid looking force of extra troops! Lovely flags too!
Best Iain

Bedford said...

Well, you have done it now Simon! That is 16 Perry Swiss for the back ranks of a pike block cleaned up and primes ready for an undercoat as of last night! LOL

BigRedBat said...

Thanks all! Those Perry Swiss are very moreish. ;-)