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TRENDS IN MILITARY HISTORY (learned from P&S): 1494-1645
The growing range and lethality of small arms, from the early matchlock arquebuses to flintlock infantry muskets
- Early arquebuses are short-range and attritional - requiring nearby shock troops to stiffen either offense or defense.
- Arquebuses transform into calivers and eventually muskets. The armor-piercing power of these heavier musket balls become so dominant that armor becomes useless for most troops.
- By the late Thirty Years War and English Civil War (ECW), muskets alone are capable of reaching out long distances (see dragoons) and inflicting murderous casualties. The greater “reach" of musket formations allows multiple units to concentrate fire from different angles. Sustained melee is becoming more and more rare as most formations are already wavering or shattered by firepower by the time they close to melee range.
The steady disappearance of the pike
- As cavalry shifted to pistols to stay safely beyond pike range, fewer and fewer pikemen were needed for protection. This created a cycle where yet more gunners were needed to maintain fire superiority over the new Reiters and to defeat opposing infantry units in direct firefights.
The decline and discarding of melee weapons.
- From Swiss halberdiers and German zweihanders with "cat gutters" slung from their waists to Parliamentary musketeers with a dagger in their boots. The cavalry similarly sees a steady transition from the lance & sword-equipped Stradiots and Archers d’Ordannance, to the pistol-armed Reiters to the Parliamentary horse with carbine and pistols. The Kuiraissiers and Swedish Horse are an interesting exception, returning the sword as a shock weapon, taken to its extreme with Rupert’s Royalist Cavaliers.
The decline and discarding of personal armor, first in infantry then later in the cavalry.
- From Italian War gendarmes and 3/4 armed Landsknechts pikemen to Parliamentary musketeers and horse, armor is increasingly discarded as diminishing protection isn’t worth the cost & weight.
The shift towards firepower as the decisive factor in infantry warfare.
- From the early battles against Swiss Keils and Landknechts with swirling skirmisher Arquebusiers trying to catch the fast-moving pike blocks and nibble them down at close range to the awesome power of Parliament’s Pike & Shot battalions just crumpling my Royalist infantry in a few turns of concentrated fire at Edgehill.
- The Swedish (& Parliamentary) combination of high numbers of musket infantry in shallow formations supplemented with regimental cannon creates awesome killing power even at maximum range.
The flattening and fragmentation of infantry formations.
- From the massive 4000 man Swiss and Landknecht Keils to the 2000 man tercios, onto the 500 man 6-rank Mauritian battalions and the 3-rank Swedish battalions, infantry flattens and divides into smaller units for articulation, greater resistance to cannon fire and focusing small arms firepower forwards (at cost to other directions).
The shift from generalized mass to directed firepower as the primary defense of infantry.
- From the 4000 men Early Tercio squares, invulnerable to attack from all directions (including flanks and rear) but presenting a lumbering Large artillery target, to the small Parliamentary Pike & Shot battalions with vulnerable flanks and rear. No longer large artillery targets and capable of shattering even heavy cavalry if can catch a target to their front.
The fall of the knight and the rise of the harquebusier “Horse".
- From the shocking impotence of gendarmes against the Swiss and Landsknecht keils to the ineffectual caracoles of the reiters, we see the rise of Kuraissiers and even faster and more maneuverable Swedish Horse as infantry formations flatten and their flanks and rear become vulnerable once again.
- But even heavy horse has to stay as light and mobile and possible to exploit opportunities and cross gaps before the new infantry formations can catch them and shatter them with massed long-range musket fire.
The replacement of the medieval line with the modern triplex acies.
- Last seen under Tilly at Breitenfeld, the single linear line of massive infantry blocks with cavalry wings is rendered obsolete by Maurice at Nieuwpoort in 1600 and then more influentially by Gustavus Adolphus. Smaller articulated battalions allow multiple lines with the same number of troops, providing ready reserves for infantry collapse or cavalry flanking and measurably improving the durability and resilience of the entire field force. Fighting the Parliamentarians & Scots at Marston Moor shows what a difficult puzzle the triplex acies presents to an opponent, particularly one relying on the old technique of winning the cavalry fight as the key to collapsing the infantry.
The growing power of dismounted infantry firing from cover.
- First seen at Arques with my Skirmishing Arquebusiers, hinted at with Detached Musketeers at Pilgrim-Loinz and now becoming a regular part of modern tactics with Dragoons at Nordlingen and Wittstock.
The rise of drill and the return of Roman discipline
- Drill is the key to Swiss success and adopted by the Landsknechts and Spanish tercios. Maurice takes a quantum leap forwards, consciously mimicking Roman methods with countermarch while integrating complex individual reloading drills. Gustavus takes this foundation of drill and institutes a level of discipline across his Swedish-German army, but even the best units of 1631 are not yet the highly disciplined and meticulously drilled regiments of Frederick’s line battalions.
