The Army of Montrose Part 2

The Army of Montrose: and so it begins...

But first some housekeeping (so to speak). 

My armies have custom casualty markers from Warbases with suitable messages around the rim of the markers - Parliament's have "for God and Parliament", the King's have "pro Deo Rege et Patria", the Covenanters "Couenant for Religion King and Kingdomes", and  clubmen "Repel all plunderers!". After much deliberation a number of slogans were thought up, but nothing really leapt out at me. "To Win or Lose It All", a line from Montrose's poetry was the leading contender for quite some time, until I started researching flags. Then I saw the slogan on the Strathbogie Regimental flag "for God the King against all traitouris". A few characters longer than any of my other slogans, would it fit? Thankfully Warbases tested it out and it fits! Ladies and gentlemen - we have a winner.

Flags were always going to be a bit of an issue. The True Informer describes the Irish Brigade flags, but not which flag belonged to which regiment. So I have picked three of the six or so known flags at random. They will be alloted to regiments randomly, rather than historically. Fortunately the Strathbogie Regimental colour is recorded, as is Montrose's lifeguard's cornet. Sadly nothing for the Gordon Horse - a bit of conjecture needed here. Stuart at Maverick Models was, as always, very patient with my incessant emails and flags are now sorted.

To begin with I am looking at four 'regiments' of highlanders, mostly armed with swords and muskets, with a few Lochaber axes thrown in for good measure. Highlanders will not be carrying flags, and will resemble my commanded shot units, consisting of 24 men. The odd lowland officer, or headswapped English officer will be thrown in for good measure, as will the occasional wounded highlander. Highland units will have a dead highlander on their casualty markers.

The new pack of 'highlanders with muskets' 

The Strathbogie Regiment will be represented as lowlanders, with pike and wings of shot. They will have the dead Marty Pellow figure, from the Highland casualty pack, upon their casualty markers. I may expand the Lowlanders in Montrose's Army by adding some commanded shot from the Aberdeen Militia, or Montrose's 1650 regiment (mainly because they have a really good flag). These lowland troops will be added at a later date.

First attempt at 'tartan' - enlarged pictures are very unforgiving.
They look okay in their natural true-15mm sizing

The Irish brigade is often portrayed as Hebridean exiles from the MacDonald Clan; however, a surviving roll of the Brigade's officers shows that the majority were in fact Irish men from Ulster and Connaught (with some Anglo-Irish Catholics from the Pale thrown in for good measure). The jury is still out on how they were armed: you will see many arguing that they didn't carry pikes, being solely armed with muskets (however there are contemporary references to the brigade having pikes), others argue that they had pikes but not long pikes, they had traditional Irish half pikes. 

I'm going for my standard regiment of foot look with pikes and muskets. No 'traditional' Irish half pikes as I think they would look really incongruous next to my other regiments, plus there are almost as many contemporary references to them having long pikes as those saying they had half pikes. I'm utilising Irish pike and musket with  a handful of Scots (Highland and Lowland) mixed in. I'm going for two Irish regiments to begin with, but will eventually add a third.

As Montrose didn't really have any cavalry, I'm going to add just two units at some point - one of harquebusiers (with lots of headswaps to make them look more Scottish a bit like these), and one of lancers. 

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