Trozo de Extremadura: 28mm Late XVIIc Spanish cavalry

Hello mates,

Some months ago, I wanted to expand my late XVII c. Spanish army more quickly than normal, so, while I was painting more Fantasy stuff or other projects, I commissioned Artmaster Studio to paint some miniatures for me.  The decided unit was a cavalry "trozo".

A trozo is a cavalry regiment, In Spain cavalry was organized in trozos, and in Flanders and Milan, in tercios, so you can find tercios of cavalry and trozos of cavalry in the Spanish army, although you can find regiments too! German or mercenary cavalry kept their regimental organization.

The selected unit is Trozo of Extremadura, as you can see on next picture, there were two trozos, the old and the new one.

Mine is Extremadura viejo,  by the way, the image come from the wonderful book "The Spanish armies of the League of Augsburg War" by Boeri, Palau  and Mirecki, which has an smaller volume translated into Spanish, with some new illustrations...

The Trozo of Extremadura was raised in 1659,  in Badajoz area, his first commander was  in order to fight in Portugal, in their long independence war (1640-1668) there the unit took part in the conquest of Olivenza and later in the siege of Juromenha in 1662, but  next year suffered heavy loses in Ameixial. It continued to fight until 1668. The following year it was transferred to Catalonia, where it fought bravely during Franco Dutch War and League of Augsburg War, participating in the battle of the river Ter (1694), in the fights of the Coll de Fornich (1695), Riudarenas (1696), and in the action of San Celoni (1697). As a veteran unit, it fought the French with success. The Spanish cavalry of the second half of the century, was arguably better than their French counterparts, and the allies knew it, Spanish cavalry was an important part of the allied field army during Franco Dutch war, and later in the League of Augsburg war, although in inferior numbers. 

The importance of the cavalry for Spain, increased after the defeats at Rocroi (1643) and Lens (1648), where the poor performance of the cavalry in Spanish service (German, Lorraine, Alsatian, Flemish or Spanish), doomed the infantry, whose performance was excellent, so a lot of reorganization and care was put on the cavalry and dragoons from 1650 onwards.

The miniatures are from Front Rank, as you may notice, I love this range and half of my collection is Front Rank, lovely figures. And Toby, from Artmaster Studio did a great job on them. The miniatures were based by me, as well as the flag, which is partially hand painted, from a modified cavalry flag from the same book.

Cheers!