The wounded man in this set belongs to the strangest and most humane of the crusading orders. The Order of Saint Lazarus was founded in Jerusalem in the 1130s to care for lepers — and its knights were often lepers themselves. A Templar or Hospitaller who contracted the disease could not remain in his order, but he could take the green cross of Saint Lazarus and keep fighting, sick and disfigured, beside healthy brothers. These leper-knights went to war at Acre and Arsuf and were cut down in the catastrophe at La Forbie in 1244 — men who had already lost almost everything but their vows, and still rode out to fight.

King & Country stage a moment of mercy rather than combat: one knight, wounded and failing, held upright by a comrade who takes his weight and his sword-arm. The stricken man wears the white mantle and green cross of the Order of Saint Lazarus; the knight steadying him is named in the set as a Templar, though the red surcoat and white cross he actually wears are the war-dress of the Knights Hospitaller — a true Templar wore the reverse, a white mantle blazoned with a red cross. Whichever order he serves, the scene reads the same. Set it with the Teutonic flagbearer to gather the great military orders, or near Richard the Lionheart and the Crusader Priest of Jerusalem in a wider diorama — the retreat after a lost battle. Among the charging knights of the range, this quiet piece carries the heavier truth of the Crusades: their cost.

Model: MK213 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 2 figure set