Sir Ralph Hopton

or Baron Hopton of Stratton as he became known following his success in the hard fought battle in 1643.  Baron Hopton was one of the most faithful of King Charles I's commanders, and he achieved several great victories in his battles against his old friend, Sir William Waller.

Hopton was famously blown up by one of his own gunpowder wagons, by the apparent careless smoking habits of prisoners being transported.  The Clay Pipe seemed to be a great cause of spectacular demise in the gunpowder age!  Hopton survived this incident and went on to command the Royalist Western Army again.
For anyone wishing to read more about this great commander, then the link here:
http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/biog/hopton.htm
will provide plenty of information.

The figures are a good mixture of the finest of manufacturers of ECW figures.  Sir Ralph Hopton is one of the  excellent personality figures by Bicorne Miniatures.  The figure appears to be cast without moustache or beard, but the only portraits I have seen of him show Sir Ralph with a moustache and beard of the mid-17th Century style.  So I added these with some brushwork.

The staff officer is one from the set recently brought out by Renegade.  These are such useful figures and could be used as commanders in their own right.

The other senior officer is also from Bicorne Miniatures and is one from their King's Lifeguard of Horse set.

I have to say how much I enjoyed painting the command stands.  I find them very labour intensive as they are the figures who will always get the most scrutiny, but the result is always very satisfying.  Thankfully an army only needs a few senior commanders painted up!

Queen's Regiment of Horse - Colonel's Troop

Another unit of horse comes thundering on to my blog! This time it's the Queen's Regiment of Horse, another famed regiment from the English Civil War.

This regiment was formed in early 1643 when Queen Henrietta Maria returned from the continent having pawned the Crown Jewels for arms.  Arms and munitions for 10,000 men came back with her, along with many French volunteers.  As the Queen passed through the North of England, many volunteers joined her and new units were formed. The Queen's Regiment of Horse being one of them.  Many of the French volunteers thought this a suitably attractive regiment for them to join also.  The Colonel's colour is appropriately adorned with the Fleur de Lys.

The regiment was well manned with volunteers and was one of the larger regiments of Cavaliers, maintaining a good 7 troops of horse even into late 1644. The regiment fought at many of the famous battles including First Newbury and Second Newbury, Lostwithiel, Cheriton and Naseby.  Though before Naseby the regiment had declined in numbers to about 150 men (source: R.Giglio, www.ecwsa.org/histqueenslifeguardofhorse.html).

Because of the original large size of this Regiment, I formed two wargaming units for this regiment, thus each unit equates to about 3 troops at a scale of 1:20. Each of my units has got one flag, in this case the Colonel's colour for these 3 troops. It looks pleasing to the eye and seems to work, although in reality each troop of 60-70 men would have a flag each.  The second unit will be posted up soon, this unit will have a Captain's colour.  For Naseby and beyond I will just give one unit a different command stand and turn one half of the Regiment into a different unit.

I painted up most of this regiment about 10 years ago.  It orginally consisted of random different bags of Bicorne figures as I just wanted to paint each set up to see what they looked like.  As I bought more figures and produced 'proper' formed regiments, I was left with a unit of odds and sods of a slightly over-strength nature. I hadn't bothered to form them into a proper unit because of the lack of suitable rules for so many years (you know how it is, you buy a new set and play test them...but your are convinced sometimes that it's just your lack of experience with them when they don't play well...so you persist for years and then realise about a decade later that the rules were cack all along!).  Anyway with 'Pike and Shotte' turning out to be superb, this has given me the incentive...so these cavalrymen are odds and sods no more.  I have painted the command stands this month, freshly based them and given them the excellent flags by GMB.  This over-strength unit now holds its proper place in my Royalist army.

Pay day being yesterday, I have already placed another order to Bicorne Miniatures.  This time for more personalities.  It's quite fun doing research on historical commanders to decide what 'Command Rating' they should be given. Several extended lunchtimes at work this week have been spent on Wiki and such-like!