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Extract
from 'Cromwell' on 17th Century Warfare, John Buchan
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"To
understand the practice of seventeenth-century armies we must
accustom our minds to a primitive and rudimentary technique.The
infantry had advanced in prestige since the fifteenth century,.......Its
weapons were the pike and the musket, and 1642 the proportion
of musketeers to pikemen was about two to one. The pike was
regarded as the more honourable weapon, and when a gentleman
served in the ranks he usually trailed a pike; the pikeman
too was the bigger and finer fellow and wore the heavier defensive
armour. His pike was eighteen feet long, and he also carried
a sword .....His value was in close hand-to-hand fighting,
and the issue was often decided by 'push of pike'. The musketeer
had no defensive armour, and no defensive arms against cavalry
except the clumsy 'Swedish feathers', five foot stakes which
he stuck in the ground before him. His weapon was still mainly
the matchlock; which fired a bullet weighing a little over
an ounce; his powder was made up in little cartouches of tin
or leather, which he carried in a bandolier worn over his
left shoulder. Everything about his equipment was cumbrous-the
heavy weapon, the coils of match which he had often to carry
lighted, and which were at the mercy of ill weather. Presently
the matchlock was replaced by the snaphance or flintlock,
for the cavalry, and for the foot companies which guarded
the artillery and ammunition. The musket was effective at
about 400 yards, but owing to patchy training there was little
real markmanship, except amongst royalist verderers and Gamekeepers.
.......At first the battle formation was ten deep, each rank
firing and then falling back to the rear to reload; but Gustav
had taught quicker loading, and had made the files six deep,
and this was now the formation generally adopted in England;
three deep was even used when it was necessary to prevent
outflanking. Also the Swedish custom of the 'salvee' was coming
in, by which the six ranks fired at once, a use adopted by
Montrose in Scotland and followed by the New Model. The usual
handling of infantry was that a 'forlorn hope' skirmished
ahead, fired, and fell back; the musketeers then delivered
their volleys and retired to the shelter of the pikemen, who
charged home. The pikemen were usually in the centre......The
destruction of the King's foot at Marston Moor lost him the
north, and the same disaster at Naseby meant the loss of England." |
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