Richard Gorringe.

Introduction

Another year, another DBA army. This time it’s the Komnenan Byzantines 1071AD to 1204AD. (Book IV, Army 1) in preparation for the Crusades campaign being run within the club by the DBA players.

Background

The First Crusade was prompted, inadvertently, by a letter from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I to Pope Urban II asking for help against the infidel Turkish Hordes. In 1071 the Byzantine army had suffered one of the worst defeats in medieval history at Manzikert. Alexios I’s letter to Pope Urban II, written in 1095, was probably a request for mercenary or regular soldiers to stiffen what was left of the army. Instead it unleashed a movement that would change the Middle East and even sack Byzantium itself.

One can imagine the Byzantine army in the aftermath of Manzikert as being comparable to the German army of 1919; defeated, dispirited and its core of trained and experienced soldiers gone. The loss cost the Byzantines large areas of recruiting territory in Anatolia and Turkey and forced them to rely, more than usual, on mercenaries. What remained of the regular army was demoralised and of low quality.

On The Table

On the face of it, this army has the tools to deal effectively with all of its historical opponents. Light Horse and Bows to take on enemy Knights. Bows, Cavalry and Light Horse are effective against enemy Light Horse. Cavalry is also handy against enemy Spear, as it is not vulnerable to a Destroyed If Beaten result. The opportunity is also there to damage enemy heavy foot with Knights supported with Cavalry.

It all sounds promising, but in reality, it is a difficult army to utilise effectively without above average PIP rolling and a fairly inert opponent. The impression of a disjointed army is reinforced with the realization that you have many element types, but perhaps not enough of any one type. So far its only on-table results have been virtual repeats of Manzikert, even without the duplicitous Sub-General. Hopefully with practice, I’ll be able to throw back the barbarian hordes and keep the Crusaders under control as well.

The Army in DBA

Whilst DBA does not take troop quality into consideration, apart from the classification of the troop types themselves, the DBA list gives a sense of a disjointed army such as might be obtained by scraping together whatever troops are available plus some regular mercenaries. The list gives options for a Cavalry or Knight General, reflecting Anna Komnena’s account of her father’s prowess plus one account of an over-enthusiastic general. There are compulsory Cavalry and Light Horse and options for Bow, Spear, Auxilia and Skirmishers. The compulsory Blade element represents the famous axe-armed Varangian Guard, at this time mostly English. Later on, the Byzantines attempted to emulate the tactics of the Frankish Knights, so the hapless Byzantine Cavalry gets upgraded to Knights.

Figures

A search on the Internet, plus a visit to the Fanaticus website, revealed that there are few specific Komnenan Byzantine figures available. In particular, my preferred source, Eureka Miniatures did not have figures that were specific to this period. However, Eureka did have Byzantine figures from earlier periods. Museum Miniatures had Early Byzantines and Irregular did Maurikian and Nikephorian Byzantines.

The distinguishing feature of the Byzantines of the 10th to 12th Centuries was the introduction of the kite shield. It is even believed that this was invented by the Byzantines as a response to Turkish horse archery and transported by Frankish mercenaries serving in the Byzantine army back to Europe where it is most famously seen in the Bayeaux tapestry.

The Museum Miniatures Early Byzantines are nice figure except that they have round shields. I had visions of cutting and green-stuffing a dozen figures to make kite shields, but then read in ‘Armies and Enemies of the Crusades’ that several sources make reference to Byzantines having round shields in this period, kite shields being in use, but not universal. So that solved that problem; Museum Miniatures with round shields it was! The A&E series is of course quite old, so there may well be more recent research that dismisses this view, but the reference was good enough for me. It’s a DBA army after all, not a history PhD.

Painting

I painted the army using my usual techniques. I use Games Workshop black primer and undercoat, then mostly Games Workshop colours. The Byzantines are in uniform and on unarmoured horses. I used Chainmail for the mail armour of the cavalry to give a fairly bright finish and the darker Boltgun Metal for the armour of the Frankish knights, designed to give the impression that the Byzantine armour is of superior quality to that of the Franks. I paint horses using a drybrush of Dark Flesh over the black undercoat, then a wash of Flesh Wash or Brown Wash. This gives a very good finish for horse flesh.

The centrepiece of the army is the Army Standard, known as The Lady of Blanchernae. This is a deeply religious icon depicting Mary holding the infant Jesus, described and illustrated in several sources and associated with the Byzantine army from the 11th to the 13th centuries. Richard Bradley kindly forwarded me some Internet sites that provide in-scale standards that can be downloaded, cut out and used directly, but I took the decision early on to have a go at painting the standard. I used the coloured downloadable standard as a model upon which to base my own painting effort using the metal from a Coke can.

I used the nutritional information panel on the Coke can to get a nice regular square shape, cutting this out and gluing it to a wire standard which a friend kindly soldered together for me. This was then sprayed black along with the rest of the figure and painted by hand.

The other part of any Byzantine army that demands attention is the shields. These were highly decorative and uniform, shield design being possibly a distinguishing feature of different regiments, has it had been in the Roman army. I found that painting a solid circle is easier than painting concentric rings. Once I had mastered this technique, I was able to complete the shields for the different troops fairly quickly.

I am currently pondering what to make as a distinctive camp for the Byzantines. The impression of them as degenerate Romans lends itself to a palisaded arrangement, perhaps with some hint of poor discipline such as camp followers or lazy Byzantine soldiers. As this is mostly an army on the defensive, I am also considering a suitable Built Up Area, perhaps a Greek influenced medieval town for them to defend, which is much less vulnerable to attack than a camp.