From servant tartars to boyar sons

 

Interesting detail - servant tartars slowly merged with other feudal cavalry starting from the end of 16th century. For example, many tartars changed their religion to orthodox christian, and became usual muscovites of tartar origin - former servant tartars were registered as boyar sons. Many of the muscovite and later imperial russian noble families had their roots in tartar families that decided to serve tsar and changed their religion.

As tartars were good at archery, many of them continued to actively use bows as primary weapon till the end of the 17th century, when other boyar sons absolutely forgot how to use it.

Here I took a short break to paint and base some of my test prints: tartars and boyar sons.

Stay tuned, more to come!

Who are Servant Tartars

Let's have a short break and discuss - who were Servant Tartars and what role they played in muscovite armies.

In 16th century muscovite tsardom conquered territories of Kazan, Astrakhan and some Siberian Khanates with quite a large number of tartar population, living there. Local nobility was quickly integrated into the system of muscovite nobility - they could serve in tsar's military campaigns in the way similar to boyar sons. Later some other categories of tartar folk were allowed to serve - they received land, money and some other social bonuses.

Servant tartars were light cavalry fighting in traditional tartar style - with bow, saber and lasso. Only wealthiest tartar nobles had some form of protection like misiurka helmet or body armor.

My miniature set depicts them in the most common way - totally unarmored and thus well suited to represent any other tartar cavalry from Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Siberia or Crimea.

Release - Servant Tartars

Here comes the new set of 15mm miniatures - Servant Tartars.

This is probably my most versatile set, that you can use not only in 16-17 century wargames, but also in medieval and horse&musket era up to napoleonic to represent unarmored steppe warriors like mongols, tartars, kalmyks or bashkirs with a certain degree of historical inaccuracy. And in 16-17 centuries they can represent not only Servant Tartars of Muscovite tsardom, but also warriors of Crimean/Nogai/Siberian Khanates as well as Polish-Lithuanian tartars.

In the set you get 4 mounted figures on steppe horses, armed with bows, sabers and rope lassos. They wear no armor or helmets and don't have shields.

You can buy stl files in my shop, as usual.

Stay tuned, more to come!

Preview - Servant tartars

Take a look at the first miniature of the new set - Servant tartars.

These miniatures represent tartar units fighting for Muscovite tsardom or along rebellious cossack forces. 

Set will be extremely versatile and can be used to represent Crimean or Polish-Lithuanian tartars and can be used even in medieval and up to napoleonic times.

Stay tuned, more to come. And don't forget to visit my shop page!