Month: September 2020

At the 1651 Battle of Berestechko there were around 40,000 Pospolite Ruszenie or Noble Levy. So they represent a sizable part of the Polish army and need to be represented in my army. When deciding on which figures to use it quickly became apparent that no manufacturer has these troops in their Polish range.

In the Osprey series Polish armies 1569-1696 (1) on Page 7 it discusses the dress of Polish Pospolite Ruszenie. It mentions how Hungarian dress was dominant, but how it was also influenced by Turkish and Persian fashion. In general noble dress was extremely expensive.

I therefore decided to use a mixture of figures from the Assault Group range. I used Hungarian Light Horse, Hungarian Hussars, Croats and even a few Ottoman Akinjis to fill out the ranks. I selected figures that looked noble, with an emphasis on those with feathers and ornate trim. The result is units of figures that look as if they fit in with the period but are different from the Polish cossacks and Polish Pancerni. I am very happy how the mixture of figures turned out, it gives a very distinctive force and contrasts well with other units.

I have painted 5 units of 8 figures each with two additional figures for a command group, giving a total of 42 figures. I hope to complete the movement trays for these figures later in the month.

The flags were a combination of a pack from Adrians Wall and a pack from Battle Flags. I selected general polish style flags (with the cross) for all except the one on the command figures, which almost exactly matches a noble levy flag in the Osprey book. The command flag can be seen at the front in the image below.

A few additional pictures of the Noble Levy are shown below. I have also recently painted 33 Polish cossacks and these are just waiting for the flags to be added in the next few days. Once the flags are complete, I will post some pictures of them.

The Cossack Peasant horde was a common part of the the cossack army in the 1650 period. These troops were poorly trained and were generally not equipped with fire-arms. Instead they were equipped with swords and various farm implements.

For my army I have decided to have two cossack peasant hordes, each of about 28-30 figures on a 80mm x 200mm base. I feel that this number looks like a reasonable amount without going crazy. The total infantry for the army will be 96 regular cossacks, 48 mounted infantry and 56 cossack peasants. So roughly 25% of the army will be peasants.

This week I completed the first of the horde units. The figures are all from The Assault Group. I used a combination of their laborer figures and their half-pike figures, with a few figures from other packets. The main criteria for selection was that they did not have fire-arms.

For farm implements, I used a couple of the implements that came with the Assault Group figures, but mainly I used implements from Bicorne Miniatures. A photo of the implements is shown below and includes pitchforks, rakes, scythes, axes and hoes. They were very easy to attach to the TAG figures using a small drill and super glue.

Overall I was happy how the peasant horde turned out. It makes a good contrast with the rest of the fire-arm equipped cossacks. I tried to weather the farm implements by using rust powders on top of the natural steel paint. I am not sure how well this shows up in the photos.

I am also painting some Polish cavalry at the moment and they are getting very near completion. I have 40 Polish noble levy and 32 Polish cossacks on the paint bench. They should be finished within a week or two and I will post some photos when they are complete.