1:72 Turkish heavy infantry 17th century

Ottoman heavy infantry and its firearms

In the seventeenth century the army of the Sublime Porte rested on standing paid corps, which differed from the feudal levy in their training, their discipline and in the fact that they had their weapons from the state. The set represents their better-armed part, that is the men meant for holding a breach and for fighting at close quarters, where speed was not enough.

The headgear sets the corps apart from one another. The infantry of the standing units wore a tall felt cap with a strip of cloth hanging down the back, while elsewhere a turban wound around a low cap appears. In heavy equipment a metal helmet is added, with a sliding nasal bar, a mail aventail at the neck and tubes for plumes, a shape not worn anywhere else in Europe.

The protection of the body is mixed. The basis remains a mail shirt into which rectangular plates are woven in the chest area, together with banded plate pieces around the torso and forearm guards. Over all this reaches a long kaftan. In the left hand there tends to be a round shield wound from spirally coiled reed covered with silk: it was surprisingly light and yet it cushioned the cut of a saber flexibly.

In the armament two epochs stand side by side. The matchlock musket with its long barrel was the pride of the standing corps, and it was fired kneeling as well as standing without a supporting rest, because the Ottoman pieces were lighter than the European ones. It is completed by a saber with a curved blade, an axe on a long haft, a mace and a short knife carried horizontally behind the belt. The castings in the reduction of 1:72 suit siege scenes in Hungary and scenes from the fighting for the fortresses on the Danube.