"...nothing but going hunting and dancing in ballets": French Commanders and Royal Favourites from 1688

"And victory, with little loss, doth play

Upon the dancing banners of the French"

King John, Act 2, Scene 1

During September last year, I painted up some of the command figures for my French army which will, eventually, take the Field against their Flemish and Spanish adversaries in the 1688 campaign for the (fictional, and deeply self-indulgent) Free-City of Laarden.

Command figures are, frankly, a bit of an indulgence.  They take up a disproportionate amount of space on the wargaming battlefield for the commanders concerned - who in the late seventeenth century rarely had a "staff" in a modern sense.  Commanders such as these might also be an eye-catching addition on the tabletop - but perhaps they distract from the more prosaic, and perhaps more professional, business of logistics, war finance and the physical geography of the battlefield.

But .... who cares, mes braves?  They're French, and fashionable, and ludicrously indulgent.  So here, on Roundwood's World, we're spending a Blog post concentrating on pink satin jackets and ostrich feathers.  Somehow, I doubt you'll surprised, dear readers.

In the centre of the above photograph is the personage of Louis de Crévant, Duke of Humières and Marshal of France.   De Crévant is a historical commander, who was granted the Marshal's baton in 1668 after the War of Devolution, and was one of the French commanders in the Nine Years War.  Prestigious, wealthy and well-connected, I thought he was an ideal choice for a tabletop commander - less well-known than his rival, the Duc de Luxembourg, but a valid historical commander for us to place into an alt-historical campaign.

As befitted any Marshal of France, de Crévant hailed from an impressive ancestral chateau (at Azay-le-Ferron, in the image below).  And tbelow is de Crévant's portrait - as aristocratic a portrait one can hope to find of any French commander, I'm sure you'll agree.

For the figures, I used Wargames Foundry command figures for all of the bases, with a Redoubt Miniatures lance for the standard (of the Gendarmerie) accompanying de Crévant.  I tried to stick to either the colours of the Gendarmerie for the troopers accompanying the commands, or the Royal livery - but in the end, I was carried away by the ease of painting more colourful clothing on a couple of the figures.

The standards are from GMB Designs, and they're printed with great clarity and a joy to use.  All I needed to do was glue them (with Bostik, a tack-y but flexible glue), and paint the edges to finish them off.  The finials are from Bicorne Miniatures, and the bases were from Warbases.

I particularly enjoyed converting and painting one of the brigade commanders. Adding a new arm, and reams of green-stuff lace, ribbons and feathers gets strangely addictive - as you might know from other Blog posts.  I intended the figure in pink to be a young, ambitious and arrogant chevalier - the Marquis of Rouen.  A fictional character to accompany de Crévant, but one who I thought looked the part and who I could have fun with in creating tabletop scenarios.  

While the Marquis de Rouen may be fictional, his pedigree is most definitely historical. As a historical aside, I enjoyed reading the list of court favourites of Louis XIII in just the years between 1614 and 1617.  These favourites are listed in Sharon Kettering's book "Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII", with Dr. Kettering stating that the King often engaged with several court favourites at once.  The list of the favourites' names is almost impossible to read without imagining rich velvets, excessive lace and the fine steel rapiers possessed by the highest level of the French nobility: Luynes, Bassompierre, Montpouillan, Courtenvaux, Le Rochefoucauld, La Rocheguyon, La Coudrelle, La Curée, Termes, Vitry and Liancourt.  

Those names were behind the type of character I was trying to create in the form of the Marquis de Rouen.  Dr. Kettering mentioned in her book that one of the favourites, the important duc de Luynes, was said, according to a contemporary, to have "thought of nothing but going hunting and dancing in ballets".  Typically French, I thought when reading that line.  

But the joke was on me.  Dr Kettering's brilliant book masterfully describes how important such activities were, alongside martial exploits, in the life of a royal favourite of the seventeenth century.  I'll try and review Dr Kettering's book in a future blog post - it's a great read if you enjoy fathoming out how royal politics worked in seventeenth century France.

So, they're indulgent, fashionable and French.... and (quite possibly) a stereotypical misrepresentation of the skill and forcefulness of the army of Louis XIV.

All I would say, in my defence, is that in the miniature wargames hobby, sometimes you just have to treat yourself!

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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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"The Portents of Laarden" for 2021

"And call them meteors, prodigies and signs,

Abortives, presages and tongues of heaven"

King John, Act 3, Scene 4

As mentioned in my last blog post, I promised to return to some rashly proposed ideas I placed on the blog around this time last year.  You might remember, I had mentioned that in 2020 you might, here on the Blog ....

• come face to face with the fearsome Gendarmerie of Le Roi Soleil;

• trudge along the muddy roads of Flanders with a group of straggling soldiers;

• witness the miracle of Sint Jacobus' golden fishing net;

• inhabit the shadows of a town in darkness with a man who cannot be seen;

• trade and negotiate for lucrative tulip contracts on the Laarden bourse;

• discover the strange secret of a Prince of the Blood.

So how did I do in realising these "Portents of Laarden"?

Well, as you can see, I managed to create half of the portents during 2020, admittedly an unusual year for all kinds of reasons unrelated to the hobby of miniature wargaming.

In the early days of the year, the unpleasant, treacherous character of Gerrit Vermuelen crept onto the Blog in his sly, habitual manner.  Gerrit, the ratcatcher and spy, is of course the man who "inhabits the shadows of a town in darkness", and like all of the Laarden underclass is a man who "cannot be seen".  "Portent" unlocked!

I also in the early part of last year, we "trudged along muddy Flanders roads with a group of straggling soldiers", retreating from another shipwreck of the Flemish armies in the Field.

Another "Portent" unlocked!

I has so much fun painting the group of Flemish stragglers that, in July last year, I painted a ghostly version of the group.

What's going on here?  Wait... these are not sensible historical miniatures!  Well, they are.... but.....  

They're miniatures, but painted as the wraiths from an empty battlefield.  I thought they were just something fun to paint.  It's been a long lockdown, dear Readers!  And they nicely book-end the more sensible, and useful, colourful Flemish stragglers to be used in our "sensible" historical wargames (.... and yes, I am coughing as I type this...).  

One thing I did find in painting the wraiths, is that painting ghosts is not quite as easy as it first seemed.  But I am sure that practice will make perfect...

Moving along from that distraction, last year I finally - at last - painted the French Gendarmerie so that you could "come face to face with the fearsome Gendarmerie of Le Roi Soleil".  And yes, they appeared a couple of months back with their fine swords and slightly bad dentistry to unlock another "Portent of Laarden" for 2020.  

So, what about the other three, as yet unfulfilled "Portents of Laarden"?  When will they ever be completed?  Will those strange portents come true?

I can promise you that they will eventually appear like comets in the sky.  Hopefully it'll be this year, or at least in the next 12 months.  So, keep watching the skies, dear Stargazers.  

And as you direct your telescopes to the Heavens, I've added three new "Portents of Laarden" for you to look out for, described in a cryptic style of which Nostradamus would be proud.

Eventually, dear Readers, you will at some point in the next 12 months, be able to:

• ride with Icarus;

• be horrified at a savage way of fighting; and

• witness the chaos of the Ship of Fools.

And, quite possibly, never again want to read your horoscopes.  

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The Last Stand of the Regiment de Louvigny, Flanders 1688

 

"Sound trumpets!  Let our Bloody colours wave!

And either victory, or else a grave!"

Henry VI, Part 3 (Act 2, scene 2)

Just about the final submission I painted for the eleventh Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge was a large single base featuring casualties and a dramatic last stand of the French Regiment de Louvigny from 1688.

I'd had this collection of figures on a single base in mind for a while.  You might remember that a few years back I did some 'flight' bases.  These were single stands of units in various stages of complete rout or terminal breakdown.  They were quite addictive to covert and paint.  Here's a section...

The idea behind these bases was to clearly reflect, on the wargames tabletop, the changed condition of battlefield units.  Instead of viable formations, a player would be faced with terminally damaged units. Or, as Sir James Turner, a veteran of the Thirty Years War would put it - "shipwracked" battalions.  

In the Thirty Years War rules I used for 2mm games a few years back, withdrawing terminally damaged units from the Field was important, as victory points were available to an opponent who could shatter such tempting targets.  

But with the last stand of Regiment de Louvigny, I wanted to take a different snapshot in time.  Here, I was trying to capture a stage between a viable regiment, and a shattered collection of soldiers.  I wanted to recreate the state of order being lost, but where the battalion is still fighting - a last stand, in essence.

I felt I only needed a single base.  The order would be lost, with the drill-book delineation of pike and shot broken down.  Men would be dead and wounded, but the colours would still be flaunting the sky.  Officers would still be leading.  Drums would still be heard above the chaos of battle.  The battalion would still have claws and teeth, although no one would know for how much longer.

What I had in mind was a single centrepiece for a large skirmish in which the "shipwrack" of a French battalion could (possibly) be rescued from Flemish, Imperial or Spanish enemy forces by a relieving friendly French brigade.  It would suit an evening's narrative wargaming, or perhaps be a smaller table in a day's gaming.

The small "slots" for two micro-dice are there to record casualties and cohesion.  As the regiment in its battered state is not really functioning as a working formation, there's no need to identify the pike and shot separately in any normal basing formation.  All that is now important is the remaining cohesion of the battalion as an entity - hence the dice marking that.  As the casualties, shock and chaos mount, so the dice can tick up, or down, depending on how you like to show such things.

So, rather than just a 'casualty base', I could use the Last Stand as a half-way house between functioning battalion and a mere marker for routed troops.  For that reason, it's about twice as large as the 'flight' bases in the photos at the start of this Blog post.

After deciding on the type of base I wanted, it was really just a case of deciding which figures I wanted.  I chose a blend of of pike and shot, officers and soldiers, a drummer, and a blend of dead, wounded and still-healthy troops.  

In retrospect, I should have done better in painting the standard, which looks a little too pristine for any 'last stand'.  And maybe the casualties could have been a bit more numerous.  But I didn't have long to prepare the stand at the end of Challenge XI and I'm hopeful it can pass muster on most tabletops.  

The perfect is, of course dear friends, the enemy of the tabletop-standard.

The Regiment de Louvingy is for my late seventeenth century 1688 Flanders collection, so I tried to make the figures fit with the other units and formations by adding green-stuff feathers, lace, ribbons and swapping the Officer's right arm from carrying a standard to more nobly raising his sword towards the Flemish and Spanish Enemies-of-his-Blood.  

I took the uniform of the Regiment de Louvigny from Mark Allen's fine book "Armies & Enemies of Louis XIV: Volume 1 - Western Europe 1688-1714" (published by Helion).  The real Regiment de Louvigny is a rather forgotten, anonymous regiment - so I felt it was time to bring its soldiers back to the grand stage of European warfare on the wargames table.

The figures are a mix of Dixon Miniatures and Wargames Foundry, with a Colonel Bill's casualty figure added at the front.  The splendid, and very versatile, gabions are from Frontline Wargaming.  The base is  a terrain base from Warbases, who also made the micro-dice slots.  The tufts are from WSS Scenics.

No one makes the standard for the Regiment de Louvigny - so I painted it myself.  And yes, from the angle below, it really still does look too pristine !

And because this is a submission featuring the ludicrousness of my fictional campaign for the Flemish Free-City of Laarden, in 1688, here's the Challenge XI Collectible Card for the "Last Stand of the Regiment de Louvigny" - another in my 2021 collection of the "Enemies and Adversaries of Laarden, 1688".  

I hope you enjoyed this post from Challenge XI.  There's more to come in this vein, but next time up, I'll have my crystal ball and scoresheet out, as we take a look at the "Portents of Laarden".  

Hope you can join me for that, dear readers!

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