A Turkish Grand Parade.

 During the lockdown I've taken to reading several books at once. Well obviously not all together but you know what I mean. One is Charles Oman's classic The Art of War in the Middle Ages, part three which concerns the renaissance period. I have always been fascinated by the Turkish invasions of the West and the heroic battles to try and stop Islam taking over the Hapsburg empire.

 One battle in particular has always interested me and thats the Battle of Mohacs where basically the Kingdom of Hungary was overrun following the defeat of the Christian army. During the lock-down I have been adding various small units of Akinji and Azabs to my collection to build it into a decent sized army. Today I couldn't help myself and decided to have a bit of a parade of the Turkish army as it would have possibly been at their victory at Mohacs.

 Sometimes one needs to see your toy soldiers en masse and just enjoy the spectacle of colour. I had forgotten just how nice the army was and would love to take credit for the beautiful painting of the vast majority of the figures, sadly I cant as they were  lovingly painted by my nemesis John Reidy who put a lot of effort into the units.

 These were painted by master painter and all round good egg; Tony Runkee. They are Artizan Spahis.

 So sorry for the ego thing, but I needed to actually see what I had in the army and decide if I needed to paint some more units.I think I have enough and can stop planning more.Now I just need to find some suitable hussar figures to use for the Hungarians and perhaps locate some peasant types to fill out the odd crossbow blocks.

 At Mohacs the Turks chained their guns together to make things even more difficult for the Hungarians. Unfortunately the heroic charge by the knights failed to reach the hill where the guns were ensconced.

 The vast majority of the figures is Hinchliffe with a smattering of Mini Figs and Campaign Miniatures.