More "Characters of Laarden", 1688

Yet more of the rather self-indulgent “Characters of Laarden” on the Blog, for your enjoyment today, painted in the first three months of 2020.

First up, we have Gerrit Vermuelen. Every town, regardless of scale and period, needs a rat-catcher, accompanied by a small but vicious dog.  He’s the sort of person you would never look too closely at if you saw him across the cobblestones of the Grote Markt.  A man from a class, or a world, beneath yours. Part of the background to the city in which you live, invisible to the eye in daylight and even less noticeable once the evening darkness falls. A man who can see very well, but who cannot be seen. Someone to know things, but not be known. What better background for a French spy?

Gerrit is an old sculpt from the famous Citadel C46 Villagers range. He’s been hanging around my spares box for half a lifetime, waiting for a moment to creep out of the shadows and get painted. He had a wonderful medieval-style head cap on, to which a middling-sized rat was clinging. 

I’ve updated his “look” to the seventeenth century by swapping his head for a Redoubt head with a large but stained and rat-claw-scratched floppy hat.  I think that updates him, to the late seventeenth century at least.

His character card was fun to do.  I faded his Character card, mirroring the tainted morality of his treacherous calling.

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For the second "Character", we move from the villainous to the virtuous - in the shape of the villagers of the Flemish hamlet of Sint Vaalben. This small, but strategically useful, Flemish village is on my list to scratch-build later this summer, mainly to give the villagers somewhere to defend!

The six villagers are Foundry 28mm figures, this time from the Foundry ECW range, equipped with wickedly sharp Bicorne Miniatures farm implements. I’ve no idea how I’ll use these figures. 

Maybe they will be surly, monosyllabic, unwelcoming locals from every traveller’s nightmare, blocking the road north to the Free-City of Laarden?  Or maybe they’ll be mercenary enough to see a handsome profit in supplying the highly-entitled French nobility with delicacies such as Hoetveld capons, Ghent eels and local woodland-reared wild boar?

Who knows, but here’s one of their many possible character cards for the “Characters of Laarden” collection....

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Visitors to this Blog will know that I enjoy trying to recreate the most disastrous episodes of late seventeenth century history.  What contemporaries called, somewhat picturesquely, the “shipwreck of our hopes”, being that time when an army starts to fragment, fracture, rout and melt away in clusters of soldiers straggling from the field of battle.  

I felt that a group of such Characters might make a good vignette.  So here’s a small collection of defiant, but defeated, Flemish stragglers.  They’re leaving the scene of one of the glorious defeats for the army of Laarden, trudging along the dusty summer roads of the Spanish Netherlands away from chasing French horse, dragoons and - Lord help them - Baron von Kroneberg’s rapacious “hussars”.

I had fun assembling the figures from a variety of manufacturers.  There's a mix of Dixon Miniatures, Perry Miniatures, Wargames Foundry, and Colonel Bills - a variety of defiant, wounded, straggling and fallen figures.  I made the battle-ragged standard out of some art paper, suitably cut with a scalpel, glued together with Bostik (a very rubbery contact adhesive which is perfect for fixing flags), and fixed in place with a PVA wash.  The stragglers are completing a task of heroic defiance, taking the regimental flag away to be repaired and re-embroidered by a Laarden seamstress.

Here's the Stragglers' collective collectible-card for the “Characters of Laarden” collection:

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One of the things I like about the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge - where these figures first appeared - is the chance to finish off older figures which have been lingering in a box for years.  These figures are from Reiver Castings, and I've wanted to do something with them for some time.  I had the idea of cutting them in half and painting them up as making a river crossing - or, in the case of the Laarden campaign of 1688, wading through a flooded inundation created by the increasingly desperate Laarden high command.

At this point, I should offer a huge “hat tip” to Barry Hilton, famed wargamer and member of the League of Augsberg.  Barry wrote a great article in Henry Hyde’s (most excellent) “Battlegames” magazine ‘back in the day’ (perhaps 2008) in which Barry carved his way through several figures in a like fashion to make a unit of Danish or Dutch soldiers for his Battle of the Boyne game at one of the big shows.  I loved the idea, and resolved to give it a go one day.  So, thanks Barry, and thanks Henry for publishing that article.  Inspiration - what comes around goes around, I hope!

I painted the suitably carved up figures as French enfants perdus, leading the line against the obdurate, stubborn Flemish defenders.  The Reiver castings looked slightly rough when I got them out of their long forgotten zip-locked bag.  The metal was fairly shiny, and the figures looked to be overly-lumpy.  I’ve had this experience with a lot of figures over the years.  It’s so tempting to just put such figures back in a box for another five years or so.  I always think its worth persevering, even if just for a figure or two - just to see how they look when undercoated.

And, once undercoated, the Reiver Castings started to look a lot better.  Their slightly exaggerated style of casting takes paint very nicely indeed, and I thought they looked - as castings - rather good from a distance.   They were also very reasonably priced - so a good result all round - perhaps the rest of the 15 figures I bought might find their way into a future Challenge. 

I also created a "Characters of Laarden" card - although identifying them more as a 'Nemesis of Laarden' might be more appropriate:

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In the seventeenth century, "Field Deputies" were Dutch civil representatives appointed to shadow important field commanders on campaign, ensuring - among other things - that the wishes of the Dutch Stadtholder and the States-General were represented in the councils of war.  In such positions, the Field Deputies could be a potential brake on aggressive action by allied commanders such as the Duke of Marlborough.

And here is the Laarden equivalent - two Field Deputies surveying the battlefield, no doubt concerned by any attempt from the commanders of the Laarden forces to counter-attack or challenge the opposing French army in open battle.  I rather rushed the painting of these figures, and I admit my mind was not really on the brushwork when I was painting them.

I painted them in the second week of March, 2020, just after I had started working from home in quarantine - which was a challenging time for all of us.  They were a welcome distraction from real-world concerns.  I tried to complete them in sombre tones of black, browns and grey.  As would, of course, befit gentlemen of probity, caution and (no doubt) property interests.  I imagined that the last thing the Field Deputies would welcome would be a destructive war, property damage, and expensive blockades.  More from these shadowy movers-and-shakers of seventeenth century Flanders in other Blog posts to come, later this year....

As for the figures, both Field Deputies are Old Glory 28mm figures, from the pirate range!  The accompanying grenadier is from Dixon Miniatures.  I swapped the head of one of the Field Deputies for a Bicorne head, making him look "more seventeenth century".   For these modest and conservative figures, no greenstuff, or fancy feathers needed to be added.

I picked up the gabions at Colours, last year.  I think they were pointed out by “Wargame, Soldiers and Strategy”-superstar Mark "Peaches" Backhouse.  I can't remember the manufacturer I bought the gabions from, but they painted up a treat.  The small drum, with accompanying campaigning map is, I think, from Wargames Foundry - rescued from an ECW command set.

And here's their Character card, placed with the other new cards, in the centre of the "Characters of Laarden" collection, so far.

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