"Polish Rycerz / Hussars" Topic

I'm interested in doing a Later Polish medieval army for DBMM. I see from the army lists that after 1454 Rycerz can be replaced by hussars. I know these aren't the full blown winged hussars – but i'm struggling to make much sense of the transition given the very limited English sources available.
The best I can work out is that the Western style knights started to lighten their armour, possibly at the same time that Serbian hussars with large Balkan shields started to fight in closer order and they evolved into Renaissance hussars.
If anyone can confirm this or recommend good English sources i'd really appreciate this.
Also representing these on a table – i've been looking at the Vexillia and Q R Miniatures Poles – does anyone have any of these figures, are they compatible size wise?
Thanks.

I'd recommend getting your hands on the By Fire And Sword rulebook. Even if you aren't going to use the rules there is much information in there to be had about the period. If you are gaming the period then it really can't hurt.

link

You can get it from on military matters:

link

or from Sgt. Major here:

sgmm.biz/Rules_c_130.html

If you are in the states that is. For $80 USD odd it is a very good buy.

QR are a bit bigger than Vexilla

Sorry, but Western Style knights certainly did not lighten their armor. The period from 1480 to 1530 probably saw the best pre-modern armour of all. The cost, however, reduced the amount of Gensdarmes and led to the introduction of less armoured units, be it lighter versions of the Gensdarmes, mounted ranged units, "Reisige" as medium armed or the variations of the Stradiots, Hussars or Pandurs that were created in response to the raiding Osman Akinci.

Anyway, back to the Poles…

A pretty good depiction of them can be found on the contemporary depiction of the battle of Orsha 1514 (though that date stretches the "late medieval").

Painting:

Hussar detail:

A derivative work based on that painting:

Druzhinas page also has a ton of depictions of lighter cavalry of the period.

Thanks for this.
I have done a bit more research and briefly this seem to be what happened, or at least my interpretation -

1. During the Thirteen Years War the old noble levy refused to fight unless certain concessions were given.
2. This did happen, but they were defeated several times, resulting from 1454 in the increased use of better trained mercenaries
3. Following the end of the Thirteen Years War and the defeat of the Teutonic Knights the enemies of Poland changed, resulting imn changes in tactics. So they fought the lighter armed and equipped Tartars, Muscovites, Moldavians etc. rather than heavily armoured Western style knights.
4. Alongside this a significant increase in the poorer Slatchza provided a ready source of manpower.
5. The core of the army remained the heavy knight, but ther lesser gentry unable to afford the full plate of their richer cousins formed a lighter armoured contingent – possibly with just chainmail, or occasionally breast plate
6. At the end of the 1490's Serbian and Hungarian husars were receruited, the former unarmoured, the later partiaaly armoured, which supported the existing knights.
7. Eventually the light cavalry and the lesser armoured cavalry merged forming the pancerni and hussars so well know.
8. In 1500 the tax registers apparently list 5 hussar rotas, with numbers increasing steadily thereafter.
By 1527 husars formed about 50% of the standing army, causing Hetman Jan Tarnowski concern about the ability of his army to break the enemy due to falling number of armoured knights
9. However continued success saw knights numbers fall further as they moved into new husar units until they were almost gone by c. 1560/70.

Maybe not explained this very well in a short space, but that seems to be the gist of it. It is a shame there are not more English source books available – there seem to be a number by Marek Plewzzynski which cover the period in detail. Unfortunately I don't think Google Translate will cope with them very well.

On the Battle of Orsha painting there are a number of reviews which suggest this is heavily stylised and should be viewed as carefully constructed propaganda – that the Poles are all wearing court dress (including tournament style armour) whilst the Muscovites are not are are almost all fleeing. Also it is interesting to note there are no dead Poles.