THE GLORIOUS WINGED HUSSARFinished this commission, and I’m pretty dang happy with how it came
THE GLORIOUS WINGED HUSSARFinished this commission, and I’m pretty dang happy with how it came out! Backgrounds never were my strong suit, but the details came out nicely! as promised, the guy who commissioned this wrote a quick blurb about the hussars for you! I’ll put it under a cut. So in the 1500s and 1600s Poland was a lot bigger than it is today, controlling most of modern Belarus and Ukraine. However, Poland was surrounded by bigger, scarier nations: Prussia, Russia, Austria, Sweden (yes, the Swedes were badass and had an empire at one point) and the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In these two centuries, Poland managed to not only hold out against these nations but kick the crap out of them on the battlefield (they occupied Moscow at one point). Their secret was their elite cavalry, the Winged Hussars. These guys rode the biggest and fastest horses available, carried 6 meter (20 foot) long lances designed to impale multiple opponents in one charge, and wore armor thick enough to deflect bullets. There is no good research that I could find on the purpose of their namesake wings, but the best theory I have heard is that they looked badass and scared the shit out of their enemies. At any rate, the Hussars were certainly effective, as they regularly won battles against opponents outnumbering them 5:1 or more. Oh, and they also carried out the largest cavalry charge in history at the 1683 Siege of Vienna, a battle so epic it inspired Tolkien’s depiction of Helm’s Deep. More info on the Siege, and some great images of the Hussars in action, can be found in the album below https://m.imgur.com/gallery/PRwvG -- source link
#digital art#comission#winged hussar