Commanding a medieval army was mostly done before the fighting began. Once the lines met, a general had little way to steer the melee: he could not shout across a battlefield, and the signals he did have — the banner that marked where he stood, the trumpets, horns and drums that called men to form, advance or fall back — were swallowed by dust, noise and the enemy's own din. So a commander led by being seen and heard while he still could, and then by example, fighting where his men could watch him. It is one reason medieval battles killed so many leaders: to command was to stand out in front, helmet in hand until the last moment, voice raised over the coming storm — the exact instant this figure is caught in.

He is an officer of the Order of Saint Lazarus, in the white surcoat and green cross of the leper-knights whose story is told alongside the Templar and the Lazarene. Here he is mid-command, helm tucked under one arm, the other hand raised, calling the order in over the noise. Build the command group his words would have run through — the banner of the Teutonic flagbearer and the beat of the Medieval Drummer, the two signals that carried a commander's will across a field he could no longer cross. In a diorama he anchors a command stand behind the line — or leads his small, valiant order into the disaster at La Forbie in 1244, where the Lazarists were all but wiped out.

Model: MK199 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set