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The northern battle draws from holdings in the northeast region of France as well as holdings in Belgium that at this time were connected with the French crown.

Childeric des Vosges is my personae in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and these are my arms in the society. (Azure, a cross gules fimbriated, in canton a fleur-de-lys, all with a bordure Or.) I am rather proud of those arms and fancy them as being rather handsome, although they almost did not turn out this way. Arms in the SCA frequently had a hard time getting approved in those days because they needed to be sufficiently distinguishable from the arms of all members past and present. (I am not current on the contemporary situation in the SCA, although I suspect it is similar.) My proposal would be rejected because it was too similar to one device, changed, then found to be too similar to a different device, and so on. After several rounds ending in rejection, I had vowed that if my latest proposal wasn’t accepted, I would scrap the whole idea and redesign something new involving a dragon. (A dragon! What was I thinking!?) Fortunately for all involved, the device shown was accepted. I believe the last change I had to make was that I had wanted three fleurs-de-lys in the upper left corner (“in canton” in heraldese), but the heralds thought this would make that corner look too much like it was from the old royal French arms (a field of yellow fleurs-de-lys on a blue background) which would be presumptious on my part. They made me change it to a single fleurs-de-lys (again, thank you!), the whole device ending up as a relatively simple and classic design.

The arms for the House of Small are those that can be found on a plaque found in my parent’s house of the Small crest. The family motto is supposedly ‘Ratione non Ira’ (Reason, not Rage), which seems wildly out of place for a member of the Medieval French army. Now, I know very well how authentic these family coats-of-arms tend to be (that is, not bloody much), but following my Prime Directive of army composition - “It’s my army and I can damn well do what I want!” - I included it anyway. Since the Small family came from England, it is somewhat out of place. Just somewhat. But I reason that this knight is rather well disposed toward the French (very true in my father’s case since my mom is French) and perhaps chooses to, say, defend the store of wine in those fights that take place against the English. (My father is very fond of a good bottle of wine - so this too is within character.)

You may notice that the shade of yellow is different between the mounted and unmounted figures. Originally I used Hansa Yellow Light (a liquid acrylic paint manufactured by Golden Artist Colors), but later tried Hansa Yellow Medium and thought the result looked much better. In a rare display of some quality approaching sanity, I declined to break down and re-paint all the units that used the lighter yellow.

The town and Seigneurie of Crevecoeur is located about fifty miles due north of Paris. The last lord that I could track down was one Jean, lord of Crevecoeur and Alleux, son of William “Sans-Terre” (without land), lord of Dendermonde and Crevecoeur. The holding seems to have previously been associated with the lords of Flanders.

The Castellany of Encre is about seventy-five miles north of Paris and is now associated with the town of Albert.

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