Mercenary light lancers

My Condottieri band grows apace! 

The latest recruits are also mounted lancers, but less lavishly equipped than the gendarmes. These are the lighter riders that each lance (i.e a gendarme and his small retinue) contained. Variously known as sergeants, chevau-légers, coutiliers, "archers" (betraying their originals as mounted bowmen) and other names, these riders were less heavily equipped than the gendarmes (also known as Elmeti and  occasionally as Armigeri Veri in Italy) and were, in part, the originals of the later Reiters, Demi-lances and Argoulets of the 16th century.

Once again, red and white are the unifying colours of these troops, although I was keen to have a couple of the riders looking different, with the red.white component being minimal. Although not as heavily armoured as the gendarmes, these troops do have mail shirts and/or breastplates under their livery tunics and wear items of armour on their arms and legs.

I am rather pleased with how they have turned out. I was a bit worried while I was painting them, but once I'd given them a bit of a dry-brushing and inked them, they began to come together nicely.

Next, there will be mounted crossbowmen, and then I will resist painting any more mounted troops for as long as possible, because I really do not like painting horses at all. Having said that, though, I really do want to paint up a fully-armoured mounted leader with a standard bearer at some point.