Alternative Huns?

[Ade G]

I have bought a job-lot of Essex 15mm Hun LC but already have Hun armies in 6 and 25mm and wonder what other armies/peoples they may be used for? Other than short tunics and boots, fur-trimmed and "phrygian" caps the figures have some distinctive features like shaven heads and topknots. They also sport <gulp> stirrups. I do like to be as accurate as possible with my armies and wonder if a colourful paint job might shift them into the more Eastern realms? Early Bulgars are out BTW as I am currently converting my 25mm into this for ADLG.

[aligern]

How about Avars!  or perhaps Hungarians?
Roy

[Ade G]

How about Avars!  or perhaps Hungarians?
Roy

The Bulgar subjects of Avars sounds an idea.
They have the look of wilder Turkmen so might push them into the Syrian/Selkuk realms...

[aligern]

My concern with any if the later steppe peoples is that they would be wearing long kaftans. Thinking of the illustrations in Heath they would match to Burta, though that only makes them a sub group in perhaps a Khazar force?
Roy

[Swampster]

The length of the jackets on the Essex Huns looks okay compared to the Bulgars' coats in the Byzantine pictures. A bit of frogging on the chest would add to the effect. The round fur-brimmed hat also fits, though the phrygian caps may be rather old-fashioned. The trousers are also a bit baggier then the Byzantines showed.

[Ade G]

My concern with any if the later steppe peoples is that they would be wearing long kaftans. Thinking of the illustrations in Heath they would match to Burta, though that only makes them a sub group in perhaps a Khazar force?
Roy

Yep - I looked at Heath last night and much longer.
The Khazar idea is a starter though ;-)

[Ade G]

The length of the jackets on the Essex Huns looks okay compared to the Bulgars' coats in the Byzantine pictures. A bit of frogging on the chest would add to the effect. The round fur-brimmed hat also fits, though the phrygian caps may be rather old-fashioned. The trousers are also a bit baggier then the Byzantines showed.

A bit of frogging is fine between consenting Bulgars...

[Duncan Head]

There are wall-paintings showing the Wuhuan with shaved heads, apparently; and the Wei shu says they "all go bald-headed". However they more or less disappear in the 3rd century AD, whereas stirrups are first firmly attested in the early 4th...

[Dave Beatty]

Dare I say Napoleonic Bashkirs and Kalmucks?

[aligern]

Oooh I think they would beec  kaftans.
I've always thought it interesting that , say five centuries before , their ancestors would have been formidable, by 1812 the French just laugh at the Siberians. Maybe they have lost the art, or perhaps a bit of massed musketry is deadly to them at a longer range than their bows are effective?
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

I've always thought it interesting that , say five centuries before , their ancestors would have been formidable, by 1812 the French just laugh at the Siberians. Maybe they have lost the art, or perhaps a bit of massed musketry is deadly to them at a longer range than their bows are effective?

The trend was already evident when Scots musketeers in Ivan IV's service blasted holes in the Golden Horde's ranks and morale.  Curiously, the musket, for all its slow-firing inaccuracy, always seems to have won out over the bow, whether in Russia, Japan, the New World or even Merrie England.  Exactly why is something of a mystery when one looks at effective ranges and rates of missile discharge, but it nevertheless happened.

[aligern]

The obvious answer is that the musket was way more effective than is credited. I don't know whom to credit for this, but I recall reading that even handguns were quite useful and not merely the hollow club and bang stick they are portrayed as. We have been seduced by studies that show the inaccuracy of smoothbore firearms, but if you are prepared to get really close it would make them much more deadly. At 100 yards a volkey might cause few casualties, at thirty it could be a world of difference.
Re gunsa against horse archers I suspect tgat, rather like crossbows, guns kill horses and Kalmucks do not fancy walking hone, whereas arrows hurt horses and the horse can likely take a coupke of hits before it has to be withdrawn.
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

Re guns against horse archers I suspect that, rather like crossbows, guns kill horses and Kalmucks do not fancy walking hone, whereas arrows hurt horses and the horse can likely take a couple of hits before it has to be withdrawn.

That may well be the reason: guns of c.AD 1480 fired a fairly heavy ball which was intended to make short work of armour at battle ranges; it would not have been kind to a horse - or for that matter to a man, the effects presumably particularly impressing a culture accustomed to narrow penetrating wounds and occasional slashes.

[Mick Hession]

I read recently (maybe in The Mongol Way of War, which l reviewed for Slingshot) that early firearms were inferior to the bow (greatly outranged, and their better armour penetration was pointless against lightly armoured opponents) so archery continued to predominate among societies that bordered the steppes. Further west, firearm technology improved and it was only when guns had reached a sufficient level of maturity (around the later 16th century) that they were adopted extensively by the nomads' neighbours.

Cheers
Mick

 

[aligern]

What convinced me otherwise was Yermak's campaign in Siberia.  The illustrated chronicle shows many pictures of Yermak's Cossacks with arquebus and polearms  defeating the Chuvash and other nomads.  It appears that the guns were hugely effective in driving off larger forces of horse bow and spear cavalry.  The key is to stop the cavalry charging in, by either using polearms or waggons .  Its rather like that scene in Kagemusha where fences protect the arquebusiers.
Interestingly Moslem horse stay away from Frankish crossbowmen on the Damietta campaign and One imagines its the same reason.   Babur does the same in India , protecting his arquebusiers  with wagons.   It may be that the essence of Hussite and other wagon forts is using the tactical defensive to create a situation in which the handguns are protected from hand to hand and can shoot into a mass of opponents.

Roy

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