La Journee

Just a quick post to promote Darrell Hindley's new blog.
http://lajourney-bedford.blogspot.com/

Darrell and I are planning to put on a demo game in 2011, for the battle of Verneuil, Bedford's victory of 1424 using some of the figures that I've been posting here and Darrell's started a blog covering both the historical side as well as showing his great figures that he's painting for the game.
The title of the blog relates to the arranged battle site and date that was agreed between Bedford's Anglo-Norman forces and Alencon's Armagnacs. I'm sure he'll explain more on that in subsequent posts.

It promises to be great blog to follow.

New Contingents

And Lo, in the month of July, in the year of our Lord 2010, royal warrants were issued to the Count of Wymborn to raise goodly men of war, both spears and bows, to assist our noble king Henry in his rightous claim to the crown and lands of France....

...or to put it in other words, I was extremely fortunate earlier this summer to have the opportunity of purchasing the HYW collection of Oliver James. Oliver has posted many of his excellent figures on Steve Dean's Painting Forum; they include many conversions, handpainted flags and his own designed and cast figures, all painted to the highest standard of detail. His plans are now to extend his designing work and move into a WotR collection, so I'm now in the position of intergrating these and complete my English and French armies using Oliver's figures, supplemented by my own.

Shown above are the remainder of the core English bases, 3 men at arms and 6 longbowmen. All are Oliver's figures and flags with the exception of the musician and six of the bowmen (the conversions that I did in July); a flag is to be added to the bowmen - I'm awaiting 'Battle Flag' to make some later HYW sheets very soon. Oliver had based his figures individually on mdf, which I've carefully managed to cut at about half of the depth with a small hacksaw, retaining his basework and then landscaped into my usual basing approach - grout & pva mix, sand and stones - for my 50mm square basing.

I will therefore be 'pulling stumps' on the English comprising of 10 men at arms and 28 longbowmen bases. I'll still be adding some vignettes, baggage, casualty markers and other extras.

Carcassonne

I always try to combine my hols with some historical or military sightseeing, if there is any opportunity. So this year we left our holiday venue early one morning to drive the 90 minutes west to Carcassonne in the Languedoc region.

Carcassonne is a rare example of what would have been a common sight in the medieval world, a fortified town, complete with inner fortress and outer barbican in this case. It's military promimence came to the fore in the crusades against the heretical cathars of the region in 13th century, at one point being administered by Simon de Montford. It's position then was effectively to control the borders of medieval France and Spain. It consists of complete double-walled fortifications with 53 towers in all.

However all is not what it appears. After the fortication fell into disuse, it was extensively restored in the 19th century by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, who infamously restored other French medieval buildings. Consequently much of the upper ramparts and walls are not original, but it is the overall impression of the place that is impressive and the closest representation of a walled town you may witness (without using CGI technology).

What struck me most were the walls where the wooden pallisading has been restored - this IMHO truly reflects what 15th century walled defenses would have been like, rather than the raw stone walls that we see on most castles - be they actual or on a wargames table - and reminds me that I must add them to mine, when the time comes for a HYW castle.

I also managed to paint a dozen more figures, although the finished quality was poorer than expected - a very warm climate for your holiday is what you wish for of course, but it plays havoc with painting al fresco when your acrylics are literally drying on the brush!!