Wurtenberg Horse: War of the Spanish Succession (Ramilies)

This is my representation of two squadrons of the cavalry regiment from Wurtenberg who fought as subsidy troops under Dutch pay as cavalry regiment RR23 for the province of Holland.

The great detail about this regiment is that we know what their guidon (standards) looked like; which is more than can be said for many from this period.

Wurtenberg (also Wurttemberg or Wirtemberg) was one of the most populous Duchies in the Holy Roman Empire with its capitol in the famous city of Stuttgart. At the time of the War of the Spanish Succession, Eberhard III was Duke and generally accounted an 'enlightened' governor. I say 'governor' as the Dukes power to rule was far from absolute as for generations the exercise of power was a compromise between the Dukes and their powerful Estates (Parliament). The Duchy was thoroughly Lutheran and hence their alignment with the protestant Dutch against the over-mighty French.

These two squadrons represent a resurrection of a long dormant army of mine. My WSS Dutch-Allied army hasn't seen action since the 1990s and all but four of these figures long pre-date my current painting competency and style.

To bring them more up-to-scratch, I applied a 50/50 strong tone Army Painter wash over the old paint job. All I had to do was brush the figures free of any dust by way of preparation as in those days I didn't even varnish my figures. They never saw that much action so the paint jobs were completely intact. A light dry-brushing of the highlighted coat colour and they were ready for a matt spray coat of artists varnish before metallic highlighting and they were good to go.

The extra four figures, including an additional trumpeter for the second squadron and a standard bearer were new additions from Ebore miniatures. These figures I painted in my traditional/personal style with washes and highlighting and what a joy to paint they were. I'm not going to comment further on the Ebor cavalry in this posting and will wax lyrical about them at a later date.

Perhaps I should have said before, the older figures are from Wargames Foundry if you didn't recognise them. They have been around for decades and you can still buy them.

I'm basing my cavalry for this army knee to knee as was the military doctrine and practice in the filed - the so called 'en muraille' or wall formation. Packed close together, the cavalry don't seem to have gone in much faster than a trot with the impact of a wave, intended to break up enemy formations not similarly formed. Given standard basing conventions and the need to save space on our table-tops pretty much all cavalry basing ends up knee to knee now I think about it.

It's been some years since I've completely finalised a unit with textures and scenic basing. I've got such a back-log of basing thanks to my posting overseas that I'm finding the task rather daunting. I employed commercially available tufts (can't remember where from now) and my usual dot method of low static grass mounds of different hues.

I hand crafted the guidon as is my practice. I have attempted to affect a fringe by pulling apart the edges prior to saturating in diluted PVA glue. The fringe was white and the images I have of the guidon show the white field delineated by a defined black line border from the fringe which suited me well. I don't often have fringes and will have to come up with a better alternative for future projects. The motto on the standard is not properly scribed by me but should read 'crescit sub pondere virtus' (Latin) translating to 'Virtue thrives under oppression.' Exact translation varies.

I have another two squadrons of old paint jobs to bolster with some extra Ebore figures before moving on to new cavalry units - of which I have over-purchased and will be painting many. My adversary is so far behind me in construction; however, that this will not be occupying too much of my time in the immediate future.