Soldiers of Fortune: The Regiment de Kinský, 1688

"Serve I the first, I shall not be repaid;

Serve I the second, I harvest but hate.

Tricked I will be, if I serve still another,

Serve I the fourth, my conscience will bother.

I know the hero whom we'd serve without pay;

The one who permits us to steal our own way"

A tavern song, sung in Bohemian, in "The Harvest Goose", Laarden, 1688*

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Among the various Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge entries I prepared earlier this year, I been painting a German mercenary regiment for my late seventeenth century project centred around the fictional Free-Flemish City of Laarden.  I wanted a unit of German mercenaries who could easily take to the field on either side - Flemish, or French - and who knows, perhaps be of dubious loyalty to both, or either.

Casting the net to find for mercenary formations in the seventeenth century is not hard. There's a good choice of formations from the Thirty Years War, the Fronde, the Northern Wars and further to the East. 

I came across the name of Count Wilhelm Kinski, a colleague of Albrecht Wallenstein, the great Imperial military enterpriser and general in the Thirty Years War. Kinski - also spelled as Vilém Kinský or Vchynský - was a Bohemian soldier of fortune whose landed property passed to more reliable Hapsburg supporters after Wallenstein's murder in 1634.

I've also come across a reference to a regiment of Kinský serving in France in the Fronde in the 1650s, perhaps some distant relation. So, following a theme, I thought it was not unreasonable to place a regiment of the same name in late seventeenth century Flanders, as Bohemian "children of fortune" following the drum.

These 25mm figures are a real mix.  I used Dixon Miniatures and Wargames Foundry for the soldiers.  The camp followers are from Midlam Miniatures and Colonel Bill's.  The cat and the dog (also following the drum, or the food) are from Warbases, and the barrels of beer and apples are from Hovels.  The basket of bread is from Irregular Miniatures (and has finally found a base after about 30 years in the spares box).

I struggled with finding good standards for German regiments which did not feature an Imperial Hapsburg eagle.  Most of the German regiments in the Northern Wars between Denmark and Sweden seem to have adopted standards similar to one of the Northern belligerents, rather than something more personal to the colonel of the regiment.  

I did come across a couple of standards which featured a pair of duelling knights on horseback, and used that design for the centre-piece of the standards, which I painted myself.  

I tried to go for standards which looked sufficiently 'German', but which could also reasonably pass for use in either a French or Flemish or Imperial army in the period.  I wanted to get the most use on the wargames table for these "children of fortune" - from Laarden to Tuscany, and from the Palatinate to Muscovy, so to speak.

As befits professional soldiers of fortune, I didn't bother with lots of green-stuff lace, feathers and ribbons.  Such affectations are not for true masters of their craft - we can leave that to the French cavalry, or maybe faux-French-fashion-following Flemish cavaliers (#forthcoming, dear readers).  I thought that the beer barrels we possibly more in keeping with the mercenary lifestyle these 'gentlemen' would have enjoyed.

I fluffed up the bases a bit with tufts from WWS Scenics (which are very nice), and some static grass.  I tried to get the 3mm bases (from Warbases) to be as neutral as possible, so went for a burnt umber tone for the edging, instead of black.

And or all the collectors out there, here's the Collectible Character Card for the "Enemies and Allies of Laarden, 1688: The Challenge XI Collection", for Count Kinský and his "children of fortune'.

If you see them in the Grote Markt at Laarden, dear friends, just trust me. Walk the other way...

(*  I should mention that the chilling Bohemian song isn't mine.  The verses are from a Strasburg-published text from 1650, which I took from page 472 of Fritz Redlich's "The German Military Enterpriser and His Workforce" (1964).  Dr. Redlich's famous book has everything you'd ever want to know about sixteenth and seventeenth century mercenaries, and is very much recommended if you can find a copy.)

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