Doing an Empire/English Civil War Army -- Episode Three: The Infantry

Posted by Ranillon on 1. September 2010 00:52

Infantry in the English Civil War

Broadly speaking you can split the foot slogger of the time into two basic types -- pikemen and arquebusier, with the ideal ratio between the two being 1 to 2, respectively.

As their name implies Pikemen carried around long spears as much as sixteen feet long.  They worked and moved much like the Macedonian Phalanxes of old, but occupied a slightly different combat niche.  For one thing they typically did not go around in the heavy armor that, say, a Macedonian in the pay of Alexander the Great might have sported.  Nor was Pike often the "unit of decision" as it might have been in ancient times.  By the time of the English Civil War its primary duty was to protect the musketmen.

Such musketmen or arquebusier typically carried a heavy, stocky sort of early firearm called the matchlock.  It was the first practical weapon to have the standard "lock (triggering mechanism), stock, and barrel" of a gun.  That said, it was also a fairly primitive device that was difficult, even dangerous, to load and use.  The triggering mechanism required you to keep a section of burning match cord with you at all times, even while you were using gunpowder to arm the weapon.  Thus, premature detonation was always a real danger.  Even then the whole contraption was so awkward and heavy that even an excellent arquebusier could only get off about two shots a minute.  Tactics developed to increase effective firepower -- rows of musketeers six deep would be trained to fire, move to the back of the line as those in front took their turn, and be ready to fire once more when their turn came again.  This allowed for a somewhat constant rate of fire, but given that training was often iffy and gunpowder stores undependable the actual amount of firepower a unit of arquebusiers could produce in battle was quite variable.

Great example of firing a matchlock of the sort common in the English Civil Wars

This is where the pikeman came in -- to paraphrase Sun Tzu "A arquebusier at close range is an unarmed man."  Actually, technically speaking he wasn't as a prime reason why the matchlocks of the time were built so big was so that they could be used as clubs when necessary.  Nevertheless, facing down charging cavalry with just a big stick to defend yourself didn't make for good odds.  Far more effective in such a situation was a long pike with a lot of friends to help form a wall of razor-sharp edges.  Horses will not normally charge something so obviously deadly.  As a result a forest of pikes made for a good deterrent against cavalry looking to run over reloading harquebusiers. 

However, this also meant that the primary role of the pike wasn't per se to actually win a battle so much as to prevent your side from losing one.  This would have long term repercussions as the more muskets and firepower improved the more the poor pikeman discovered that he had mistakenly brought a long pointy stick to a gunfight. With the arrival of the bayonet and the growing difficulty of getting people to just stand there being shot at without an effective means of reply the pike all but disappeared from European armies over the next fifty years.  However, during the English Civil War its ability to defend arquebusier from cavalry remained vital.  And, to be fair, there were classic "push-of-pike" engagements at times, but they rarely decided the battle.

Beyond these two primary weapons others could be found on the ECW battlefield.  For the previous three centuries the bill -- a polearm with a nasty hook at one end -- had been the de facto national infantry weapon of England and could sometimes be found in the armies of the era.  Likewise, the longbow hadn't completely disappeared while in times of tight funding or desperation groups of men might resort to whatever marginally lethal weapon they could get their hands on.

The Actual Warlord ECW Infantry Miniatures

I have two basic examples of infantry units constructed using Warlord's ECW models -- pikeman and musketeers.

This is just a start to a group of pikemen.  I plan on using units of about twenty arranged 5x4 while their associated groups of musketeers will likewise be twenty men each, but 2x10.  The ECW rules allow the first two ranks to fire at the same time for one massive volley so it is actually worth it to line them up in more than a single row.

These fellows here are actually "firelocks" -- that is, they use the lighter and more accurate flinklock musket.  This was a relatively new technology being slowly introduced into the armies of the time.  Within the game they allow you to move and shoot without the customary -1 to hit.  They are also "special units" so I won't be taking more than one or two in a single army.  The rest of my musketeers will have to make do with a matchlock.  What's cool in terms of the models is that Warlord goes to the trouble to differentiating the two -- look closely and you see that the two types use different locks (ignition devices).

More to come...