Pendraken New Releases for May

Pendraken have announced their new releases for May. This time it's more figures for their excellent League of Augsburg range. I'm more and more impressed by the quality of Pendrakens 10mm figures. The amount of detail is better than you find on some 15mm figures and when you combine this with the price it makes it hard to justify going for 15mm instead.

League of Augsburg
LOA12 - Flintlock firing line
LOA13 - Matchlock firing line
LOA14 - Grenadiers, fur hats, advancing
LOA15 - Grenadiers, cloth caps, standing
LOA16 - Scythemen

For those of you not familiar with the League of Augsburg here is the info on it from Wikipedia.

The League of Augsburg (also known as the Grand Alliance) was a European coalition, consisting (at various times) of Austria, Bavaria, Brandenburg, the Dutch Republic, England, the Holy Roman Empire, Ireland, the Palatinate of the Rhine, Portugal, Savoy, Saxony, Scotland, Spain and Sweden. The organization, which was founded in 1686 as the League of Augsburg, was known as the "Grand Alliance" after England joined the League (in 1689). It was originally formed in an attempt to halt Louis XIV of France's expansions.

The League was officially formed by Emperor Leopold I, acting upon the advice of William III of Orange. The primary reason for the League's creation was to defend the Palatinate from France. This organization fought the War of the Grand Alliance against France from 1688 to 1697.

The Alliance was twice installed. Between 1689 and 1698 it fought the Nine Years War against France. After the Treaty of Den Haag signed on September 7, 1701 it went into a second phase as the Alliance of the War of Spanish Succession. The War ended following the Tory political victory in 1710 in Britain which led to the Peace of Utrecht — the peace with France which granted Spain's crown to the French candidate but divided Spain's external territories. In Spain the war continued until it was decided by the Siege of Barcelona, on September 11, 1714.

The Grand Alliance gained enormous cultural and political importance as an example of a possible European union supported by (most of) the German territories, Britain and the Netherlands as well as by many French intellectuals dissatisfied with the absolutist rule of Louis XIV, the eviction of the Huguenots in 1685 and the union of Catholicism and the French crown at home.

The end of the Grand Alliance was due primarily to a growing dissatisfaction amongst the British populace having to finance the wars abroad. The balance of power doctrine eventually resulted, however, from the wars Britain proved able both to begin and to end on its own terms. The Grand Alliance (and wars fought by the Alliance) also contributed to a new sense of how wars would be fought in the future. The death toll of the most important battles and sieges was enormous[peacock term], yet none of the three wars fought from 1689-1721 led to a repeat of the atrocities of the Great German war (Thirty Years' War) fought in the early seventeenth century. Instead, the generals of the Grand Alliance became heroes of a Europe "civilized even when at war" - an ideal which would last, with some exceptions, to the early days of the First World War.