Italian Wars infantry

The Italian Wars of 1494 to 1559, especially the earlier phases, have been of interest to me for several years.  Partly this is because of the way 'renaissance warfare' straddles the look and feel of the late medieval (the Hundred Years War) and early modern (the English Civil War) periods.  The other part is the possibility of very visually distinctive and varied forces, both in terms of armament and purpose and in terms of clothing fashions.  About a year ago, with our second subscription to the Old Glory Army running out, I began stockpiling a reserve 'lead mountain' of Italian Wars figures: pike men, arquebusiers, landsknechts, halberdiers, gendarmes, stradiots, genitors, mounted hand gunners and crossbowmen, and artillery crew.  To this I've added some select packs of Perry or Warlord figures to get figure-per-unit counts up to muster.

 

The first batch I completed was a unit of pike (12 figures) and a unit of arquebusiers (12).  More recently I completed a second batch of another 12 pike, 12 arquebusiers, and also 12 halberdiers plus a mounted commander (by Perry Miniatures).  These two batches (five units total) push the project into the "starting to look like something" zone. 

Next up is to work on some of the last unpainted English Civil War figures (another 24 cavalry, maybe some more pike men), but then it's probably a batch of Italian Wars mixed infantry and cavalry.