Gendarmerie de France, Laarden, 1688

"Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them

Printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth"

Henry V, Act 1, Prologue

"Liberated from the mud and the damp of a Flanders winter, on firm ground and in good weather, His Majesty's cavalry is unsurpassed.  Yet many things can conspire to thwart their time of Glory.  For the true art of fighting with cavaliers is not in using them, as much as deploying them where they cause the most distress to His Majesty's enemies."

From the letters and diaries of the Marquis de Montchevreuil, 

Grand Écuyer to His Highness The King of France, French Flanders, 1688

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Welcome back!!  It's been a while since I updated the Blog.  I've not been idle, though - rather, I've been preparing for, and participating in, the eleventh Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, which has run over the winter months from 20th December 2020 to 21 March - or, yesterday, in fact!

It's a seasonal mad-rush of chaotic brush-wielding, figure-preparing, terrain-making, plan-re-jigging and dozens of other miniature painting lunacies which has, for all of the Challengers, hallmarked the passing of the last few years.

Now that Challenge XI is completed, I wanted to post some of the figures I've been painting over the winter months, here on the Blog, for everyone to enjoy.  Or, for my fellow Challengers, to enjoy all over again.

I thought I'd start with two companies of the Gendarmerie de France - the Gendarmes d'Orleans and the Gendarmes de Berry.  The Gendarmerie were the inheritors of the mantle of France's aristocratic noble cavalry of the Hundred Years War and the Italian Wars of the sixteenth century.  By 1688, there were sixteen companies of Gendarmes which could be fielded by Louis XIV, comprising an elite cavalry brigade which could either be attached to the Royal Guard, the Maison du Roi, or deployed in their own right. 

Service as an officer in the Gendarmes was something of a status symbol for young French noblemen.  To have a noble family tree was a condition for all officers, and it was helpful for both sergeants and troopers to posses the sniff of nobility when applying to join a company.  One historian has written that service in the Gendarmerie was a "refuge of that part of the very numerous nobility that did not have enough [financial] means to buy or upkeep a regiment".  In other words, young noblemen, out to prove themselves, desperate for Glory, and prickly about their family provenance and standing.  Oh Lord, what can go wrong?

Oh, and these lads are all French.  

I mean, someone pass me the popcorn and watch the spectacle unfurl...

I can't wait to get the formations here onto the wargames table and watch the, near inevitable,  chaos ensue.  

I painted up the Gendarmes d'Orleans and the Gendarmes de Berry, using the colour prints from Rene Chatrand's volume "The Armies and Wars of the Sun King 1643-1715 (Volume 2: The Cavalry of Louis XIV)".  Rene writes at some length about the Gendarmerie (and his book is generally a great read about the Sun King's cavalry), noting their many battlefield triumphs and exemplary bravery.  

Other historians, such as Professor David Parrott give a more prosaic appraisal of how difficult the Gendarmerie could be for any general to control.  That gives a myriad of possibilities when deploying the Gendarmerie on the wargames table.  They might be the glittering nobility of France, fast, effective and much-feared.  Or they might be an uncontrollable, over-privileged collection of cavaliers who cause even more of a headache to the French High Command than to their enemies.  Best of all, I doubt the French player will ever be sure which Gendarmerie might turn up and take the Field.

The figures are 28mm cavalry form Wargames Foundry.  I added lots of green-stuff feathers on the hats, and green-stuff lace on almost every shoulder.  I swapped the Officers' arms for rather dashing sword arms and added some longer coats on a couple of the figures.  So, some conversion work, but not too much.

The flags are from GMB Designs, and the nice finials are from Flags of War (in a splendid fleur-de-lis and cravat fashion, as was accurate for 1688).

Painting noble officers for the late seventeenth century is always "an experience".  It's hard to go over the top.  On this occasion, I had some fun trying to paint in the officers' slightly dodgy teeth.  Being a nobleman, even in the Gendarmerie de France, didn't guarantee perfect dentistry, I'm sure!

Of course, being destined for service against the enemies of France in my ludicrously self-indulgent alt-historical campaign for the Free-City of Laarden in 1688, I created a Collectible Character Card for the Gendarmeries to add to the set for The Laarden Campaign, 1688.

You'll remember, dear Blog readers, that Collectible Cards for the Laarden Campaign are something I like to churn out prepare, working to the figure of 52 cards, plus a couple of jokers.  By my reckoning, I think I'm over halfway there, but there's still more to do on that front!

Eagle-eyed Blog readers will remember that I had planned to get the Gendarmerie painted last year.  Fear not, other things were painted instead.  I posted a list of things, in January 2020, of things I hoped to get done last year.  Notwithstanding the fact that 2020 was far from a normal year, I was hoping to give an account of how much of that got done in the next blog post or so.  So, stay tuned for that!

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