Husaria - Building a Polish army for the 1620s

This time I’ve been working on another command base for my Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.  This will be the overall commander for the battle of Dirschau, 1627, Stanisław Koniecpolski.

At this time the Commonwealth had two overall army commanders, appointed by the Sejm (the Commomnwealth parliament of nobles). The most senior was the Crown Grand Hetman, and the junior post was the Field Hetman. In 1627 the Crown Grand Hetman position was vacant, and Stanisław Koniecpolski was the Field Hetman (he was promoted to Crown Grand Hetman in 1632). He had risen quickly to this exalted rank and was also a very experienced general.

TAG produce a great looking Hetman figure, holding a ceremonial mace or ‘bulawa’, that was a symbol of a Hetman’s position. I used this figure to represent Koniecpolski. I painted him to mainly match the outfit in this portrait, although I jazzed up his zupan (long, top coat) a bit.

To accompany Stanisław Koniecpolski I thought of including a standard bearer on the command base. I have done this on other command bases before, especially when the historical general I’m representing has a known personal standard. I hadn’t seen this mentioned for Polish generals but was lucky enough to get a question answered by the super helpful, Michał Paradowski, the author of the recently released Despite Destruction, Misery and Privations. Michał explained that Polish generals in this period did not use flags, but the Hetman in command of the army would have a ‘Hetman’s Sign’ or ‘znak hetmański’ (see Wikipedia description here link.) This was only used by the overall, senior Hetman commanding in a campaign.

Above are a a couple of exerts from 19th century paintings that suggest what the Hetman’s sign might have looked like. These are the best I had to go on as I haven’t been able to find any more details of what exactly made up the Hetman’s sign. The sign is shown as a long spear or lance, featuring a small ‘wing’ of feathers, and a small disc below this. There may be streamers attached to the disc. Some pictures show a small sphere on the lance point, similar to what is used for some flags’ staves. (It seems that later on in this period the feathered wing was replaced with a horse-hair tail.)

I’ve not seen a Hetman’s Sign produced by a figure manufacturer yet. Based on the limited information the sign seemed fairly straightforward to scratch build. I decided to use a hussar lance as the basis for my Hetman’s sign. To make the disc I used a small piece of green stuff and moulded this on to the lance. For the feathers I used an off-cut from a hussar wing that seemed to match the illustrations above. This was filed to fit, and then super glued to the lance between the disc and the point. I then used some paper to make the streamers and glued these on to the lance just above the disc. Finally I glued a small bead to the lance point. I then painted up the model sign, with plenty of gold adornments.

The finished Hetman’s Sign will make a nice distinctive addition to Koniecpolski’s base.

To accompany Koniecpolski, and a mounted figure carrying his Hetman’s sign, I have included another mounted kettle-drummer, this time from TAG. I went for very dark coats for Koniecpolski’s followers to match his cloak colour, and this hopefully helps the great man stand out more in his bright red zupan. With items of debris to add to this base in a similar way to the previous base I was done.

With two command bases done I can be sure that I’ll have generals ready to lead my Polish-Lithuanian forces to battle. I’ll need at least one more command base at some point, so I will need to think of some more ideas for suitable figures.

The next items on the painting table for the Poles are a step down in the hierarchy from the mighty Husaria and noble commanders. Next up is some Foreign Infantry, and I’ll be using figures from a manufacturer that is completely new to me.