French project...

[rodmillard]

OK, so inspired by (re)reading the 3 Musketeers, particularly the account of the seige of La Rochelle, I plan on building a 17th century french army using TYW Imperial models as a base. The Imperial Infantry set is specifically designed to be used as french infantry (and even comes with the appropriate banners), and even my meagre sculpting skills should be up to converting Count Tilly to serve as His Eminence the Cardinal de Paris, Duc Armand de Richelieu. But I have a few questions:

Does anyone know of a good historical account of the French campaigns - particularly the Huguenot Wars - and their uniforms? Osprey don't cover it AFAIK.

Any suggestions as to unit scale? The army at La Rochelle consisted of 15000 infantry, divided into approximately 20 Bataillons, but only 3 Esquadrons of cavalry (totalling 600 men) and 6 cannon. On the basis of infantry units of 800 and cavalry of 200, I would expect to build the army at 1:20 (which fits in nicely with the Warlord box sets, since it gives an infantry bataillon of 40 models and a cavalry esquadron of 10). Would that work? Assuming I don't go mad and try to paint up all 20 bataillons of infantry, that is...

Any suggestions of units or models to buy beyond the basic infantry boxes? Would the french army of this period have included cuirassiers, or should I stick to harquebusiers and regular pistol cavalry? Would the swordsmen be appropriate to a french army (possibly with hat/helmet swaps)?

Or should I just give up on the idea and collect scots

[mikeland]

Sounds like a really interesting project. I think either the imperialist or swedish infantry boxes would make a good starting point. I would also check out the Swedish cavalry, I think the commanded shot from this set might be a nice addition too (I think you can buy them separate On the webstore).

These guys are French TYW renactors:

http://guerrede30ans.unblog.fr/30-years-war/

[rodmillard]

Thanks Mike

I'm starting to think of doing both sides, and possibly going back to the earlier Huguenot wars (if the Pike & Shotte rules will support that?)

As far as La Rochelle goes, I now know that the french army did include Cuirassiers in this period - although I have no evidence for them actually being at La Rochelle, I think one pack of cuirassiers to 2 packs of swedish cavalry would make for a good balance in the cavalry force. Having read the 6 pages of discussion on the ECW board, I have also decided to use swordsmen: Dumas describes the beseigers as being issued shields which many of them refused to use due to the weight slowing them down (I can't dig out the exact quote as I don't have my copy of volume II handy), and while I wouldn't for a moment consider him an "historical" source, it seems entirely likely that a beseiging army would have used something to protect them from incoming shot/rocks/chamber pots!

The Huguenot side will, if anything, be more interesting to model - they were equipped by English blockade runners (although both the English armies that tried to relieve the town were turned back at sea), and had support from dutch mercenaries - that opens up almost the entire Warlord range, with the Irish Brigade and Clubmen sets being a good way to represent the citizens of a town under seige.