Having already produced Almughavars in 28mm a few years ago, many of you signed up to our 300 Club to get us to make them in 15mm - and so here they are! Sculpted by Mike Broadbent, our new Almughavars will add some Spanish spice to your 15mm medieval armies and mercenary companies.
The Almughavars were originally Spanish mercenaries recruited from the rugged sheep-herding peoples of the Pyrenean Mountains. They were a common feature of the wars between the Christian and Muslim states of 13th Century Spain, and during the 14th Century they went on to ply their 'trade' eastwards across the Mediterranean - fighting in Sicily, Greece and Anatolia as part of the notorious Grand Company of Catalans.
Almughavars formed the core of the Catalan Company (by then recruited from all over Spain) that fought in the War of the Sicilian Vespers, and later (1302) moved on to the Aegean to fight the Turks in the service of the Byzantine Empire. The Catalans proved to be very good at fighting Turks. However, much to the frustration of their paymasters, they also proved adept at picking fights with other mercenary groups in the Byzantine army (who they saw as rivals), as well as generally swaggering around like they owned the place! With typical Byzantine intrigue, the imperial government in Constantinople contrived to assassinate their leader, Roger De Flor, at the height of his success, but this only inflamed the wrath of his followers, and the Byzantines were powerless to stop the vengeful Almughavars cutting a bloody swathe of looting and slaughter across Thrace and Thessaly as an expression of their displeasure.
The next adventure for the Almughavars came when the Company of Catalans was hired by Walter, Duke of Athens. He also initially benefited greatly from their fighting prowess, but he chose to dispense with their services without providing the expected financial remuneration, and so the Almughavars turned on his army, crushing it at the Battle of Kephissos (1311) and killing the Duke in the process. This left the Catalans in effective political control of Athens, which they retained until 1388.
Our figures depict 'typical' Almughavars, known for their wild appearance, with unkempt hair and beards, rough sheepskin jackets, leggings and soft caps. Shields and armour were apparently uncommon. A wide variety of weapons were carried including javelins, broad-bladed spears (often deliberately truncated for close-quarter fighting) and a short sword called a coutel. To reflect their irregular appearance, Mike has sculpted no less than 16 different figure variants of the basic infantry types. As time passed, the term "Almughavars" came to refer to a fairly cosmopolitan assortment of Spanish, Sicilians, Bulgars, Greeks and even Turks who joined their ranks, and being a mercenary band, there was undoubtedly a fusion of adopted styles as the they pursued their adventures across the Mediterranean and the Aegean. We would suggest that gamers can have fun mixing our figures with a few lightly armoured foot soldiers from other medieval ranges to give their units that authentic mercenary band look.
Here are the catalogue details for the new miniatures:
15mm ALMUGHAVARS (14th CENTURY)
Designed & sculpted by Mike Broadbent
Number in parenthesis denotes the number of variants. Variants are supplied randomly
300ALM01 - Almughavar Infantry (16)
300ALM02 - Almughavar Officer (1)
300ALM03 - Almughavar Hornist (1)
300ALM04 - Almughavar Standard Bearer (1)
All these miniatures can also be ordered in the U.K. from Fighting 15s, and in the U.S.A. from Eureka Miniatures U.S.A.