The Three Musketeers - Captain de Tréville

Monsieur de Tréville, real name Jean-Armand du Peyrer, Comte de Troisville, was the respected captain of the musketeers guarding Louis XIII. A close adviser to the King, he is a man of great honour and integrity. He inspires loyalty in his men and gives it back without reserve. Possibly the embodiment of the musketeers' motto "One for all and all for one!".

Captain de Tréville flanked by the musketeers Aramis, Porthos and Athos

 

The Captain is a minor modification of the King and Country Gustavus Adolphus mini. It was chosen due to the colours of the model being a close match for the Musketeer uniform. It only needed a change of hair and the addition of the musketeer cross on the back of the cape. While I'm fine converting the cheaper Lemax figures myself, I wanted this model to be perfect, so I enlisted professional sculptor Ian Mountain, whom I had worked with before, to make the conversion. I then proceeded to paint it to match the rest of the figure. I wanted to give the impression of greying hair to his flowing locks to indicate his seniority. With the changes, he no longer looks obviously like Gustavus, at least to my eye.

"Sire, I have this urgent missive for you." - "What is it? Is Spain on the move again?"

 Frequent duels between musketeers and red guards were a regular point of contention between the Cardinal and the Captain.

"Your musketeers were caught duelling again!You must punish them!" - "I will look into it and give them their just deserts.

"I heard you disobeyed the prohibition of duelling again and fought the Cardinal's guards?" - "Yes, my captain, but..." - "Silence! I only want to hear one thing out of  you... Did you win?" - "We did, sir!" - "Good."

"This is d'Artagnan, captain. He's the one who bested and injured Monsieur de Jussac in single combat." - "No small feat. I hear you want to become a musketeer, boy?" - "More than anything, captain!" - "Well, at least you're a Gascon."

The Three Musketeers - King's Musketeer Faction Overview

The Musketeers of the Guard are the King's elite bodyguard during the 17th century. Their main duty is to protect the King, and by extension the Queen. They maintain an ongoing rivalry with Cardinal Richelieu's Red Guards, often ending in tavern brawls in the evenings or (illegal) duels at the light of dawn.

In this post I will try to keep a complete list of the figures in the "King's Musketeers" faction. It will be updated with new pictures as and when I add to the collection.

The collection so far...

1. The King, His Majesty Louis the XIII. Wearing his battlefield armour (his Musketeers make sure it doesn't see a lot of use).

Source: King and Country - PnM020x - King Charles I

2. Monsieur de Tréville, Captain of the Musketeers

3. The Three Musketeers and the country boy: Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan

Source: King and Country - PnM032 - The 3 Musketeers & D’Artagnan

Athos, aka le comte de la Fère

Porthos

Aramis

Charles d'Artagnan

4. More musketeers

Source: King and Country - PnM064 - The King's Duellists

5. Planchet

The Three Musketeers - Duel(s) at sunset

As stated in the introduction to the blog, this collection is, initially at least, going to be based around the excellent 3 Musketeers figures produced by King & Country. These figures come prepainted to quite a decent standard and are nominally in the 1/30 (or 60mm scale). In reality they are a bit bigger than that, more around 65mm scale, which only adds to the overall appearance.

Here we have the titular characters (Athos, Porthos, Aramis and d'Artagnan) witnessing a duel between a fellow musketeer and one of the Cardinal's red guards, under the watchful eye of King Louis himself (using an ECW King Charles as a stand-in), Cardinal Richelieu and his right hand the Count of Rochefort. Another Red Guard stands by, nervously fidgetting with his musket as the duel does not seem to be going well.

"Musketeer dog!"

"I'd retort, but it's enough insult to be a red guard!"

 

"... ok, I've got nothing"

Since the range doesn't have too many proper musketeer figures so far, I will be appropriating several of the ECW figures to take on the role of contemporary (to the musketeers) English. So far I've managed to acquire the following characters: a set of dueling cavaliers, a pointing artillery officer with sword, a lovely sergeant-at-arms with halberd and sword and a very characterful preacher with holy book and sword behind his back. The range also has a Witchfinder general, so I'm planning to make a Witchfinder faction, with the preacher as his second in command.

"Parlimant traitor!" - "Royalist pig!"

Here we have them all together (so far), with the King figure temporarily resuming his guise as King Charles for a duel between the chosen champions of France and England:

"For the honour of France!" - "For England!"

"En garde!"

"So... are we going to move or what?"