Notorious Captains™

Company Center Lances

A Condottiere’s Company would be divided into several 50 or 100 lance squadrons. Their bands were largely of cavalry, and their principal soldier was the relatively unassailable man-at-arms or gendarme.

The Center Mercenary Lances of a Notorious Captain™

Condottierii bands could include infantry of various sorts sometimes being half the strength of most Italian states’ field armies in the late 15th Century. Most of these infantry were missile-men, armed with early handguns or later with arquebus, or with crossbows, even longbows.

Hired troops are expensive troops and the Company was careful to preserve those soldiers. The Patron and the Company Captain realized the Company needed to be kept on campaign, in the field; preferably some other one’s field for plunder and pillage was the order of the day. Loyalty sometimes turned on the choicest gold or good chances of rich plunder, where greener pastures were likely as not to be over on the other side at any moment, then as now, money talks.

Personal Banner of Notorious Captain™ Gerhard von Reichart

Light cavalry in the form of Stradiotti, artillery, and pikes, round out the other troop types. It was a tumultuous time involving the interests of the French, the Spanish, the Pope, Italian city-states and on-going military innovation. The next big thing that might prove the tipping point to secure the Italian peninsula for Bourbon, Hapsburg, or the Holy See, all others played the Great Game for a place at the table, whether minor instigator or Imperial potentate.

Free-Companies, contract soldiers, Condottierii, Grand Companies lead by Captains from a variety of countries flourished, which seems an oxymoron, to flourish amid war, but nonetheless it was so. This is the inspiration for building armies of this era and likewise representing these Notorious Captains™ on the gaming table.

Gerhard von Reichart’s personal banner was crafted using MS Paint program, so it was not so ‘involved’ a process.