Using Perry Foot Knights 1450-1500 for Pomerania

 

 

My overview of Perry kits viable for my beloved late 15th century Pomeranians continues with this box that I bought quite a while ago, when I was already planning some Turnip miniatures, but knew nothing of epic highs and lows (mostly lows, though) of the Pomeranian Cow War of 1469 and related conflicts.

 

References

These are the same as for my last post: three paintings, with one from the actual Duchy of Pomerania and two from nearby Gdańsk.

There are a few non-pictorial sources for Pomerania too, and for Poland and Germany we also have quite a lot -- from papers on archaeology and mercenary rosters collected in the books by Tadeusz Grabarczyk, to a very nice early 16th century painting of the Battle of Orsha depicting foot mercenary pikemen in action (see below, courtesy of Wikipedia). In these posts, I'm focusing on iconography, however -- because it's nice to say, "these minis look just like the painting!".

(Hey, finally some horse armour! As an aside, if I wanted to build mounted men at arms from the Orsha painting from the mounted Perry kit from the last week, I'd use a one-piece horse armour, plumed horse heads with plumes removed, and about any torso to be resculped into the shape of a Maximillian plate. Anyway, it's not a perfect fit; some things changed in armour design between 1450-1500 and 1530.)

Heads

 

1. A round-topped half-visored sallet. Very close to the shape in my references. It's in.

2. The rondels (?) at the sides of this sallet give it a unique look that reminds me of sci-fi art. I really like it. It also doesn't resemble anything from my references... except one terribly pixelated helmet seen in the background. So, maybe?

3. An Italian (or maybe Burgundian?) -style sallet with a separate brow plate. Not in references.

4. Cheek projections are unlike anything in my references. It's one of the cases where I'm not sure if it's a sallet or a barbuta.

5. An armet. Not the worst choice for the Orsha painting reconstruction, but not featured in Pomeranian paintings.

6. I had a very similar, albeit plumed, sallet in the Mounted kit. It's great.

7. An armet. Orsha, Italy (I think?), Turnip, not Pomerania, though.

8. A plumed sallet with a bevor identical to the one from the Mounted kit. Again, it's great.

9. A uniquely-shaped half-visor with no eye slit (instead, the wearer sees through the gap between the visor and the rest of the helmet). I don't really see anything like that in my references.

10. A kettlehat with eye slits. There are a few kettlehats in my sources (it seems) but they're mostly painted from behind. Apparently eye slits were a German thing. It seems good enough.

11 is a helmet with a crown. No armed princes or kings in my references, and the pointed top is decidedly English. Even if I wanted to build the Duke of Pomerania, I'd like to do some resculpting, probably.

12. A bare head. Yeah, I guess.

(there's also one more head in a decorated Italian sallet on the command sprue I lost in the edit. Not very Pomeranian.)

Bodies

1. Looks pretty and Italian. Not really in my references.

2. Looks like a very good match for the praying knight in the Siewert Granzin epitaph. It's great!

3. Livery-covered. It's out.

4. It has this weird featureless breastplate that keeps you guessing if it's steel or fabric. Breastplates in my references seem more textured.

5. Not as perfect as no. 2, but still with a nice Gothic feel, quite close to the paintings. It's in.

6. Livery-covered. Out.

7. Livery-covered again, out again.

8. Livery-covered. O... I mean actually in. A great fit if I'd like to build someone based on the Polish herald from the Siege of Malbork painting.

Arms

There's a lot, but it's actually quite easy.

Robed shoulders are out, since nobody's wearing livery.

Short two-handed weapons are out: in the paintings you either wield a long polearm, or a sword.

Swords and the sole dagger are fine.

(One could spend a while contemplating pauldron shapes, but let's just trust mr. Antoni Chodyński on this one, who in his article published in Acta Archaeologica Lodziensia (2001, "The significance of the lost painting "The siege of Malbork in 1460" from Dwór Artusa in the study of the arms and armour of the close of the fifteenth century") identifies the pauldrons in the Siege of Malbork as Italian-style. If Italian style is fine, and German style is fine because of geographic proximity, let's just say all pauldrons are good.)

In conclusion

Foot Knights 1450-1500 were designed with the War of the Roses in mind, in which knights would frequently fight dismounted. In and around Pomerania (so in Poland, Holy Roman Empire, and in the State of the Teutonic Order), while you would get infantry-focused battles every now and then, cavalry was still in vogue. So this kit could be a good fit either for one of the few Pomeranian battles where heavy cavalry fought dismounted (a siege of Szadzko or Kołobrzeg, perhaps, or camp defence) -- or for heavily armoured foot spearmen / pikemen ("kopijnicy", literally "lancers", but I think a better translation could be simply "men-at-arms") who were becoming increasingly common among Polish mercenary infantry as the 15th century drew to a close. 

It's a neat source of helmets and swords, and a somewhat sparse source of armoured bodies. If that was Warhammer, I wouldn't buy a whole box to use just 13 out of 38 models (that's how many torsos in the box match the reference art). But it's historicals, the minis are cheap, my painting process is slow, and what doesn't go to Pomerania can go to Turnip or be given out to friends. Things are nice.