Richard's reputation as a soldier rests less on grand cavalry charges than on one desperate day of defence. On 5 August 1192 — the last battle of the Third Crusade — he relieved besieged Jaffa with barely fifty knights and a few thousand Genoese and Pisan crossbowmen, wading ashore from his galleys. Badly outnumbered by Saladin's horsemen, he anchored his line with spearmen who knelt and braced their shields and spear-butts in the sand while crossbowmen worked in pairs behind them, one shooting as the other reloaded. The Ayyubid cavalry charged again and again and each time veered off the hedge of points — until Richard, with only a dozen or so mounted men, led the counter-charge that broke them.

This mounted figure shows Richard with his sword raised, mailed beneath a white surcoat marked with a red cross, on a warhorse caparisoned in red with the three gold lions of England; King & Country modeled the pose on Baron Carlo Marochetti's Victorian bronze outside the Palace of Westminster. Set him beside the foot version of Richard the Lionheart, face him off against his adversary Saladin for a Jaffa or Arsuf diorama, or rank him with the Templars who fought in the same campaign. Placed behind a diorama line of kneeling spearmen, he becomes the counter-charge itself.

Model: MK173 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set