William Tell's Apple Shot

Early in the 14th century, Swiss legend has it that William Tell was made sport of when Albrecht Gessler, the Austian vogt (officer) of the Swiss principality of Uri, demanded that he shoot the apple resting on Tell's son's head.

Mosaic at the Swiss National Museum

This challenge originated from a situation in which Tell pointedly decided not to salute the authority of the Austrian crown as he entered the town of Altdorf (this being Gessler's hat sitting atop a pole placed alongside the road to town). 

Seeing this act of defiance, Tell and his son, Walter, were arrested by the town constables and presented to Gessler for judgement. The Tells were cruelly sentenced to death for William's temerity of not recognising the power of Switzerland's Austrian overlords. Nonetheless, Gessler, knowing Tell was a renown crossbowman, wanted to make nasty sport from his prisoner's expense, and so decreed that he would commute their execution if Tell could shoot the apple off the head of his son.

From Sebastian Munster's 'Cosmographia' (1554 edition)

The young Walter was tied against a tree, with an apple duly resting on his head.  William silently drew two crossbow bolts from his quiver, socketed one, took aim and deftly struck the apple from atop his son's head. Gessler was very impressed, but wondered why Tell had drawn two crossbow bolts when only one was needed.  Tell cooly looked at Gessler and said the second bolt was meant for him if he missed his first shot. 

William Tell's act of defiance has become part of Swiss legend and lore, being recognized as the first spark of the Swiss rebellion which led to the foundation of the later Swiss Confederacy.

The figure shown here, depicting 'Wilhelm von Tell' in victory, is from Lead Adventure Miniatures.  He was sculpted by Igor Karpov who has a very distinctive, characterful style, with lots of heavy detail to loose your brush in. While the William Tell story is from the medieval period, he's shown here in high Renaissance garb, with slashed sleeves and  wearing a tasseted, flutted breastplate. A great figure to paint.

Thanks for visiting. Have a great week everybody!

Curt

Italian Wars Swiss Pike from Bern, Appenzell and Solothurn

Yooray! Another unit added to my Italian Wars collection. This time out we have a mob of Swiss pikemen from the cantons of Bern, Appenzell and Solothurn. 

The majority of figures from this unit were commissioned from the very talented John over at Jacksarge Brushes & Battles. 

Usually I prefer to paint my own figures, but I wanted to get this collection to a playable state sooner rather than later, so I've enlisted some help from a few pals from around the globe to assist me in getting them done.  I've already blogged about Brendon's Spanish jinete light cavalry and Chris' Lucerne pike; well, later this year you will see some work from two other paint condottiere whom I'm very happy to have as friends. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag until they're all done and based-up - so more on that later.

As I enjoy doing the composition, banners and basework, I had John focus on painting the figures and I'd take care of the rest.

I actually received these figures around a year ago, but the Painting Challenge and other projects sidelined me from getting them properly based-up until this summer.

As you can clearly see John does beautiful work. I'm very, very pleased with them. 

These figures are Perry Dave Andrews sculpts from Wargames Foundry. While they are a little long-in-the-tooth I find that they are really lovely castings; nicely proportioned and conveying a wonderful sense of movement. 

To be honest after my Landsknecht pike I wasn't really keen on doing another formation in a charging pose as they are complete swine to base and take up about twice the space as a regular unit, but I couldn't help myself when I came across these models while browsing the WF catalogue. Oh well, I reason that these levelled-pike units can be used to denote veteran or particularly large-sized units so I'm okay with having a few in the collection. 

I painted up a few more models to help round-out the unit. There's a standard bearer buried in there that's mine, the horn player, the mounted hauptmann overseeing the lads and the poor landsknecht out in front, having a little lay-down.

The banners are from Pete's Flags

In this last shot you see the pikeblock being screened by a unit of Bernese halberdiers and led-in by their mascot, 'Daisy'.

Next Up: A couple of Big Guns for the Mechanicus.

Renaissance Swiss Drummer for a Work-in-Progress Command Stand

Hmm, the week seemed to have slipped away from me so I didn't get as much done as I wished. Nonetheless, I did manage to finish this Swiss drummer for an upcoming command stand for my Italian Wars collection. 

As you can see, this guy is a veritable riot of colour, but I think if you have the moxy to wear tights into battle then you're allowed to have a little creative sartorial expression as well.

Hopefully I can get the rest of the group done for next weekend.

Thanks for popping in and have a great week!

My Tribute to Peter - 'Max' the Reislaufer - Standard Bearer for the Canton of Uri

This Tribute figure is for my good friend Peter, who was our very entertaining and hard working Monday Minion.

Peter is a die-hard regular in our local gaming group. He's an Easterner, a stats prof and a bit of a loon, but I quite like him.  Both of us share a keen interest in the pike and shotte period, with our most recent diversion being the Italian Wars. To help fuel the furnace of industry, Peter and I had a spirited 'Renaissance Men' duel over this past Challenge where we managed to get a load of units completed for future tabletop mayhem. So in light of all this, I've decided to present as my tribute to Peter this figure representing a Swiss standard bearer from the canton of Uri. 

This is a 28mm model from Wargames Foundry's venerable Renaissance Swiss range. The model was originally armed with a partizan, but I extended the staff, and added a cantonal banner and a fancy finial to top it off. 

Much of the literature of the Uri Swiss have their ensigns wearing these whacky yellow-and-black bull getups. The uniform makes me laugh as it reminds me of the pajamas 'Max' wears in Maurice Sendak's 'Where the Wild Things Are'.  :)

'Let the Wild Rumpus Begin!!'

Whoops! ...and here's Max with the iconic Swiss white cross on his chest (I noticed that I missed it after the first batch of photos...)  

Thank you very much for all your help during the Challenge Peter. I think I can speak for all of us in saying that you and your Monday mob always started of our work-weeks with a smile. I hope this chap finds a good home amongst the ranks of your troops. 

Thanks again.

Curt

Entry #11 to AHPC VI - Two Mercenary Forces Spanning 500 Years, 1503 / 2003

Ever since the beginning of America's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, I've had a deep fascination regarding the debate surrounding Private Military Contractors (PMCs). 

I've read several books and journal articles on the subject and my own opinion is varied, but generally negative. On one hand I understand the shell game governments play when hiring military contractors. The use of PMCs allows governments to reduce their official military footprint while still providing themselves with a substantial force to utilize in a variety of situations. Nonetheless, the fact remains that PMCs are not soldiers of a nation state, but rather are beholden to their companies first, to their contracts second and everything else follows in varying degrees of importance. In many instances this pecking order has ended in tragedy, underlying the morally nebulous, and violent, world they work in. 

Of course, the most famous of these companies is Blackwater Worldwide which was created and owned by ex-SEAL, Erik Prince. I recently finished Prince's autobiography, 'Civilian Warriors' which puts forward his personal perspective on the PMC industry, and the media frenzy which besieged his company. While I am sympathetic to several aspects of his story, I did find it bemusing how Prince bobs and weaves with his argument that Private Military Contractors should not be equated with the pejorative term: 'Mercenary'.  Rather Prince believes that he and his industry should be considered no different than the 'dashing' soldiers-for-hire and privateers of history, much like Lafayette and James De Wolf. Soldiers-for-hire? Privateers? Mercenaries? To me, Prince is splitting hairs. All of these are cut from the same cloth. It's true that being defined as a mercenary currently denies a host of rights, both on and off the battlefield, but let's face it, for all intents and purposes PMC's ARE mercenaries - just the same as the Condottieri were in late medieval Italy and David Stirling's WatchGuardInternational was in the 1960s. The only difference is that PMCs of today have a corporate sophistication that a 16th century condottieri would find mind boggling.

Anyway, enough about all that. Let's talk about toy solders. :)  

What we have here are two groups of mercenaries, spanning 500 years, one from 1503 and the other from 2003.

First up are several contemporary contractors, or 'operators' in a mix of civilian and military gear. These are 28mm figures from Eureka Miniatures, sculpted by the very talented Kosta Heristanidis. I really like these models. They're well cast and have a great sense of animation. The other thing I really appreciate is that their weapons are slightly upscaled, giving them more of a presence (and sturdiness) that is lacking from some other modern ranges.

I've kept the palette fairly muted, only introducing a pop of colour here and there with cap, t-shirts and optics. Pretty straightforward stuff.

But if you want colour, we have it in spades with these Swiss mercenaries from the canton of Bern.  

First up is a command stand featuring a huge (no, really, I mean HUGE) brown bear. Bern has a bear as part of its heraldry, and apparently in one of the period manuscripts there is one depicted in battle, mauling some poor French sod. Being that it is a big wild animal I thought I'd add a doughty halberdier to help keep the beast moving in the right direction. The canton's banner is from Pete's Flags. It's a beautiful piece of work, being printed on tight-weave fabric, but I inadvertently rubbed away some of the inkjet transfer when I was working with it so I had to retouch a good bit of it with brush and paint. Nonetheless, I still quite like it and look forward to using more of his flags in the future.

This halberd unit started it's service last year as a group of twelve figures. At the time I chose to base them in threes on 40mm round bases, thinking we'd use them primarily for skirmishing rules such as 'Lion Rampant'. 

As things often turn out, we found that while 'Lion Rampant' was good fun, we actually preferred 'Pike and Shotte' for our Italian Wars fix. Subsequently, I found that the original twelve figures were a bit too weedy to be a respectable unit for P&S, so I decided to re-base the lot and add another four figures to bring it more up to snuff.

After my experiment with Simon's (aka BigRedBat) excellent irregular-edged bases for my crossbowmen, I decided to ask the good folks over at Warbases to make me a whole mob of them in various sizes. The single base shown here is roughly 180mm x 60mm, which is more than enough room to accommodate my existing 4 bases of halberdiers plus a few new additions. (I decided to be lazy and just glue them on the new base and shape the groundwork around them.)

Three new recuits for the unit...

 ...and this red-helmeted horn player (hornist?) was conscripted at the 11th hour to add a bit more mass and colour.

And here is a group shot of the redux halberdier, my recent crossbowmen and the 'Bear of Bern' command stand.

Thanks very much for persevering through this inordinately long post - I hope you have a great day!

From TamsinP: 15mm Swiss Halberdiers (144 points)

I'm getting a bit of deja vu here. Didn't we do this around a year ago? Nonetheless here we are on Christmas eve with a horde of Tamsin's Swiss demanding to be registered on the points chart. Really, who can deny them?

From Tamsin:

Is there any sight more certain to inspire terror in the hearts, minds and bladders of medieval Austrians, Burgundians, Italians, pretty much anybody in medieval Europe than a phalanx of Swiss halberdiers using both hands to wave their big choppers at you? 

What's that? Oh, yes, a phalanx of Swiss pikemen holding their huge poles with both hands and pointing them threateningly at you. I'll give you that one, but you'll just have to settle for these halberdiers as I won't be doing any more Swiss pikemen - 256 of the blighters is more than anyone can handle!

Figures are 15mm from Donnington Miniatures New Era range. These were very nice and quick to paint up (these took just 2 days to paint and base). The colours of all the cantons at Morat are represented here in this group.

Like I said, deja vu. That's 72 wee Swiss on the make - very impressive Tamsin. These lads along with the other 184 makes for a very impressive sight. Well done!

This unit of halberdiers will give Tamsin a very tidy 144 points. Great work Ms. P and Happy Christmas!