“No one is more terrible than the desperate” TPL for 1798

For some reason whenever I think of ’98, The Year of Liberty, The Year of The French or whatever soubriquet you want to use for the Rising of The United Irish Men I think of the Napoleonic Russian General Alexander Suvorov.  It’s not the above quote which is one of his and perfectly apt for ’98 but a much better known one “The bullet is a fool and the bayonet is wise” or in full

“The bullet is a fool and the bayonet is wise.  The bullet is a mad thing; only the bayonet knows what it’s about”.

Suvorov knew the limitations of the musketry of his day and that given enough determined men the bayonet would carry the day.  So far as I know Suvorov never lost a battle.  The connection, I suppose, is that from necessity the United Men also relied on the points of their weapons, for them the pike.

The pike men were mostly drilled and trained and now and then had some good quality skirmishing fire power.  Their initial foes, the Yeomanry and Militia were not very formidable troops.  Lord Cornwallis described the former as “A danger to everyone but the enemy” and the latter were mostly simply not prepared to fight against the United Men.  Later, good quality British and French troops turned up-but that’s for another time.

So, to The Pike Man’s Lament.  I think these rules will really work for the ’98 so with no further ado, here are my suggestions.

For the Pike Men use the Pike category and make most of them Veteran and add Wild Charge if you are so minded.  Two Veteran units and one plain might be a good choice.

For those with fire arms use Commanded Shot and if your United Men are lucky enough to contain men who were Wild Fowlers for a living make a unit of them Veteran.

You might consider a gun too, with old Napper Tandy to command it.

For the Yeomanry I’d go with Raw Gallopers.

The Militia should be Raw Shot with Close Order capability.

The Fencibles should be ordinary Shot with Close Order capability.

A gun should be added too.

In terms of proportions a majority of the United Men units should be Pike and for the Government Forces a majority should be Militia and Yeomanry.

You might well ask, if this is such a great idea why am I not doing it? And further- more where are the pics?

Unless Ian Kay fancies doing some more active* 15mm pike men figures I’m faced with a dilemma.  Khurasan have some great United Irishmen figures for ’98 but have yet to release them and Trent Miniatures have a very nice full range -but they are 28mm.  I turned my back on real biggies 4 decades ago, to re embrace them would be traumatic-I might like it too much.  So, no progress or pics yet-but I plan and wait.

* Ian fair play to him, has a small range of UI figures and some that’d do for the Militia but I find the United Men ones too static in their poses.