Mercenary mounted crossbowmen

My band of Papal Condottieri now has a ranged attack, in the shape of six mounted crossbowmen, again from Perry plastic 28mm 1450-1500 Light Cavalry box.

Note that I have again used the red/white motif for the majority of these figures, although one of them is a nonconformist, in dress if not religion, seeing as there were no Protestants at the end of the 15th century. I have also given one rider a trumpet, but he does have a crossbow too. It is slung on the other side of his saddle. These will join the coustiliers as members of a lance, but will end up being fielded as a separate unit for Lion Rampant.

To break things up a bit, and to give me a break from painting horses, I am going to take a small diversion away from Renaissance Italy and work on some Peninsular War British line infantry next, but I am also making up a lot of Renaissance foot troops, which I will undercoat this weekend. There will be pikemen, crossbowmen, a few characters and some handgunners. All of these will be in some form of Papal red and white. After that, I intend to add some halberdiers and more crossbows, and possibly some more pikemen.  I am thinking that at least some of these will be wearing a different livery, to indicate that they represent troops hired by the Condottiero as additional muscle, but not as full-time members of the band. I am thinking that these will probably hail from Switzerland, and I am thinking about a black/yellow/red colour palette for these. I may yet change my mind, though.

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.