Part II

The Arrival of Gunpowder

In this part . . .

Guns and gunpowder spelled the end of the feudal era. They placed the knight on the same footing as the ordinary soldier and were capable of knocking holes in his castle walls. While guns and muskets continued to improve slowly, it took the better part of two centuries before the application of the new technology was complete. During this period, it might take all day to up draw up a line of battle, and by then it was time to go to bed.

While the Tudors were on the throne, the English tended to make more use of gunpowder at sea, but this changed in the middle of the seventeenth century when they had a civil war that dragged in the Welsh, Scots, and Irish as well. One of the war’s results was the founding of a regular army. Towards the end of the seventeenth century infantry tactics became much more straightforward as a result of a very simple invention - the bayonet.

Chapter 5

With Pike and Shot: Renaissance Warfare

In This Chapter

● Introducing gunpowder and guns

● Changing infantry tactics

● Revolutionary (and revolving) cavalry tactics

● Fighting at Flodden and against the Armada

Gunpowder changed forever the way men thought about war. No longer were the rich and powerful able to protect themselves with expensive custom-made armour, and no longer did the strong man have an advantage over his weaker opponent. In every sense gunpowder earned its reputation as the Great Leveller. It hastened the demise of the feudal system and was responsible for the formation of professional armies for the first time since the days of Rome (see Part I for earlier warfare).

After the Wars of the Roses (see Chapter 4), England wanted a period of settled government, which the Tudors provided and passed on. Compared to what had gone before, comparatively little military activity took place in Britain between the late fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. In general, the period was characterised by the need to come to terms with new technology and apply it successfully to the battlefield.

This chapter mostly deals with the development of the following types of soldier during this period (each is covered in more detail elsewhere in this chapter):

Infantry: Archers, pikemen, arquebusiers, musketeers, and, early in the period, billmen and halberdiers.

Cavalry: The last (and best armoured) of the medieval knights, alongside pistol-armed horsemen.

Artillery: Guns came into their own at this time, in various shapes and sizes.

Such were the complexities of the gunpowder revolution that forming a battle line became a very slow-motion affair in which artillery, pikemen, musketeers, and cavalry all had to be deployed to their best advantage, so the importance of the professional soldier increased by leaps and bounds.

Introducing Gunpowder Artillery

No one really knows who introduced gunpowder to Europe (from Asia) in a useable form - although the Mongols, who employed more tricks than a cartload of monkeys, used ‘thunderous noises and flashes of fire’ against the Hungarians in 1241. However, it certainly wasn’t until the end of the medieval period (c1500) that gunpowder really took off as a military tool in Europe. Prior to that, guns were considered noisy novelties rather than battle winners in their own right.

Two individuals are usually put forward as the fathers of European gunpowder, both of whom were men of the cloth. The first was a British friar named Roger Bacon, who lived between 1214 and 1294. His hobby was alchemy and he recorded his discoveries in code, probably to protect himself from the wrath of the Church. When his code was cracked in comparatively recent times it revealed the first known recipe for gunpowder. Just the same, it is hard to believe that Roger received a flash of inspiration one morning and managed to mix sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal together in the right proportions. Maybe it was an accident, maybe it was the result of long research, or maybe someone else had put him on the right track. The second candidate was a mysterious German monk called Berthold Schwarz (‘Bert Black’ to nonGerman speakers) who lived in Flanders a little later. We don’t know just how Berthold discovered the propellant capacity of the black powder. He did, however, manufacture what was recognisably a gun in 1313 and sent another one to England the following year. An illustrated manuscript of 1326 shows one similar to these, calling it a Vasi or Pot de Fer. It does indeed resemble a vase from which a large arrow is being shot while a man applies a red-hot iron to the touch-hole.

Early guns were almost as dangerous to their users as they were to the enemy. One of the most famous accidents resulted in the death of King James II of Scotland while he was besieging Roxburgh Castle in 1460. The chronicler of the event obviously wasn’t too keen on guns, and he wouldn’t have won prizes for his spelling:

While this prince, more curious nor became the Majestie of any Kinge, did stand near-hand where the Artytterie was discharged, his thigh-bone was dung in two by a piece of miss-framed gune that brake in the shuting, by which he was stricken to the ground and died hastily.

Henry VIII was enthusiastic about artillery and was one of the gun makers’ best customers. Whatever their type, his guns all had names like Wales, Cornwall, and Lancaster, and a matched set of 12 were named after Christ’s 12 apostles. In England, Sussex gun makers were considered to be among the best and their handiwork was put to good use against the Spanish Armada (see the later section, ‘Testing Out the New Ideas’).

Getting to grips with different types of gun

Many of the earliest guns were breech loaders, the shot and powder being loaded into the rear of the barrel. A major disadvantage of this was a back-blast of flame and gas, reducing the gun’s efficiency the longer it remained in action. Because of this, large-calibre siege guns were built as muzzle loaders, the powder and shot being loaded in through the front of the barrel in that order. Over time, muzzle loaders became the more commonplace of the two and were to remain so until the later nineteenth century.

Gunners were very practical people and were well aware that engaging targets in the interior of a town or castle or over the crest of a hill required a weapon capable of high-angle fire. This led to the introduction of the short-barrelled mortar in the sixteenth century, being joined in the seventeenth century by another high-angle weapon, the howitzer. The difference between the two was that while the mortar’s elevation was fixed and variations in range were obtained by adjusting the powder propellant charge, the howitzer’s charge was fixed and its elevation could be altered. Mortars and howitzers used explosive shells. These were extremely expensive to produce and consisted of a hollow sphere, the two halves of which were cast separately and then welded together. The shell was then filled with powder through a small hole into which a fuse was inserted. The burning fuse remained visible throughout the shell’s flight and was a useful guide to accuracy.

By 1600 the number of guns in service was rising dramatically. At this stage they were classified by size and given names such as culverin and cannon (see the following section, ‘What’s your gun called?’). It wasn’t until later, in the eighteenth Century, that more standardised gun classifications emerged, such as by the weight of the shot fired.

Ammunition developed slowly and in accordance with needs as they were perceived. Stone or iron balls were fine for battering holes in walls or putting down a rank or two of the enemy, but not a lot of use as a man killer at short range. The answer to this was langridge, a term for old bits of scrap iron, broken glass, and stones that spread out when fired and mowed down everything in its path, like a gigantic shotgun. This was later refined into grape shot (consisting of musket balls in a bag or net) and case or cannister shot (where a thin metal container replaced the bag).

What's your gun called?

Ordnance is the name given to anything that flings, shoots, or fires anything else. It persists to this day in the title of one of the Ministry of Defence’s most senior officers, the Master General of the Ordnance.

When the earliest guns were introduced they were classified by name rather than size and type. Some were named after mythical beasts or birds and some had names the explanation for which has long been lost. Table 5-1 lists some of the most common in use between the late fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, with their calibre (the internal width of the gun’s barrel) and the weight of shot they fired; it’s difficult to conceive of a system in greater need of standardisation!

Hiring in guns, gunners, and ammunition

Any good businessperson takes advantage of a gap in the market. When guns first appeared, their use in sieges and with field armies immediately presented an opportunity to make big money. Guns were extremely expensive and exchequers were reluctant to burden themselves with the cost of buying them, plus ammunition and gunpowder, and hiring specialists to fire and look after them, as well as teams of oxen or horses to get them to where they were needed. Realising this, smart entrepreneurs bought guns and everything that went with them on their own account, and hired them out at a whacking profit to sovereigns who were on the point of making war on someone.

The obvious disadvantage of this system was that if there was the slightest chance of the entrepreneur’s investment falling into the enemy’s hands, the last his customer would see of his rented guns was them disappearing over the horizon, albeit at the pace of the oxen towing them. What was more, contractors hired their guns to anyone who could pay, presenting a real threat to the state if they were leased to its internal enemies. Once this blinding flash of the obvious became apparent, the day of the independent contractor came to an end and possession of guns became a royal prerogative.

Henry VIII also established the first regular force of artillerymen in England by installing a paid Master Gunner and 12 Gunners at the Tower of London. This idea was later extended to all the principal towns and royal castles.

Upgrading the Infantry

At the end of the fifteenth century infantrymen were of several types - the archer, the billman, the halberdier, and the pikeman. The last three wore helmet, breast and back plates, and flexible thigh armour called tassets.

Most armies through this period had pikemen. However, the billman, the halberdier, and the archer were of less use on the Renaissance battlefield. The bill was a pole weapon with an edged blade at the top - watch a hedge-cutter at work and you see how easily a bill could sever a limb! The halberd was another pole weapon incorporating a spear head, an axe head, and a hook for yanking an enemy out of his ranks by the neck. Its end is simple to explain - it was too short to be as useful as a pike, and was not effective against firearms - and by the end of the sixteenth century its use was largely ceremonial. The demise of the longbow is more difficult to explain, and is covered in the very next section.

Waving goodbye to the longbow...

Though their days as a battle winner on their own had gone (the great victories of the longbow are discussed in Chapter 4), archers continued to form a major element of any English force, although they were gradually replaced by firearms.

Defenders of the longbow could claim, with some justice, that it had a much higher rate of fire and better accuracy than the new infantry firearms (see the following section for more on these), which remained the case as late as the middle of the nineteenth century. The arrow, however, was less effective against plate armour than it had been against chain mail, whereas the kinetic energy stored in a musket ball, which was far larger and heavier than a modern small-arms round, enabled it to penetrate plate with ease and knock over a man or a horse with its impact.

Firearms were expensive and the longbow remained in use, in declining numbers, for much of the sixteenth century. By 1595, however, its day was done and in that year the trained bands of archers, which formed a national reserve, received a Royal Ordinance instructing them to arm themselves with firearms.

. . . And saying hello to the arquebus

The introduction of a personal firearm, the arquebus, contributed to the demise of archers and halberdiers. This new weapon - resembling a cross between a musket and an old-fashioned pistol with a curved stock - started to be used in British armies around in the middle of the sixteenth century.

The arquebus was originally fired from a rest, but later versions were held against the chest and gripped with both hands, which seems as good a way as any to crack a rib or two. From the arquebus evolved the musket, weighing in at a hefty 11 kilograms (25 pounds), which most definitely required a firing rest. The method of firing the arquebus and the musket changed over time:

1. Early versions were fired by means of a slow match (a matchlock) (late fifteenth century).

2. Matchlocks gave way to wheel-lock mechanisms, incorporating a toothed wheel activated by a trigger (mid-sixteenth century).

3. Wheel-locks gave way to flintlock mechanisms, striking sparks into the priming pan when the trigger was activated (late sixteenth century).

Musketeers fought in ten-deep ranks. When the front rank fired their weapons they turned about and moved to the rear, and then went through the complex business of reloading as they made their way forward to become the front rank again. On their own, musketeers were terribly vulnerable to attack by cavalry, so infantry regiments were organised with a central block of pikemen and a wing of musketeers on either flank. If they were attacked, the musketeers sheltered under the long pikes. The Spanish perfected this type of integrated unit, known as tercios, and they were copied all over Europe. In the British Isles they were referred to as ‘pike and shot’, which sounds more like the name of a good pub.

Early in the seventeenth century the great Swedish warrior king Gustavus Adolphus introduced not only an improved musket weighing just 5 kilograms (11 pounds), which could be fired from the shoulder without a rest, but also one-piece cartridges incorporating powder charge and ball that reduced loading time and therefore increased the rate of fire. The proportion of musketeers to pikemen in a regiment increased and the musketeers’ ranks reduced from ten to seven. Armour also started to be abandoned, as its use against muskets was limited.

Riding Around in Circles: Cavalry

Faced with a tercio (see the previous section, ‘. . . And saying hello to the arquebus’), heavily armoured knights had a real problem, being simultaneously vulnerable to the fire of musketeers (which could pierce their plate armour) and kept beyond striking distance by massed pikes. The lance became an encumbrance and was discarded by the English at the end of the sixteenth century, and by the Scots 50 years later; the pistol seemed to offer a solution to horsemen.

Troopers were each equipped with two or three pistols and delivered their attacks at walking pace in ten-deep formations. The front rank discharged its pistols at point-blank range, then wheeled to the rear to reload and move forward by rotation, just like musketeers (see the previous section). This type of cavalry manoeuvre was known as the caracole. Only when gaps appeared in the enemy ranks did the troopers attempt to charge in with their swords.

When, some time during the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries, the pistol had been accepted as the principal cavalry weapon, an idiotic situation developed. Opposing cavalry units performed the caracole against each other, banging away at men and horses to little purpose beyond performing like a carousel ride. Naturally, the cavalry’s contribution during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was rarely decisive.

Tumbling walls: Fortifications

The medieval walls of castles and cities were far more vulnerable to cannon fire than they had been to the old stone-throwing siege engines, and they were rarely suitable for defence by artillery. As we see in Chapters 6 and 7, in the seventeenth century fortifications went underground and relied on artillery for their defence.

Henry VIII proved himself to be a little ahead of his time (the sixteenth century) by building a series of 19 coast defence forts from Gravesend on the Thames around the south coast to Pendennis in Cornwall. These forts were revolutionary because they were designed primarily with all-round defence by artillery in mind. The best examples consisted of a circular central keep with small semi-circular bastions attached, surrounding the same number of much larger, inter-connected semi-circular bastions. Each of these elements provided a gun platform with the powder magazines under cover. A wide ditch ringed the fort with a bare glacis (a gentle slope) beyond. Many remain in an excellent state of preservation today.

Gustavus Adolphus rationalised Renaissance cavalry tactics (see the previous section for his development of infantrymen). He returned to the principle that one of the cavalry’s most important functions was shock action (charging into the enemy mass to engage in hand-to-hand combat). His cavalry attacked in four ranks at a fast trot, later reduced to three. Having fired their pistols, the two leading ranks closed at once with the sword, followed by the remainder, who reserved their fire for the subsequent melee. The effect of this on the recipients, long used to the formalities of the caracole, was devastating.

Like the infantry, the cavalry abandoned much of its armour as superfluous. A few regiments, designated cuirassiers, retained a version of full armour as late as the 1640s, but by then most cavalrymen had reduced their protection to an open, lobster-tailed helmet, and breast and back plates only.

Testing Out the New Ideas

Little action took place between British armies and continental European ones during this era. The English lost Calais, their last remaining possession in mainland France, and Elizabeth I sent volunteers to fight alongside the Protestant Dutch in their struggle against Spain in the continental Wars of Religion. The aims of the Tudor monarchs throughout the sixteenth century were to provide strong central government, internal security, and continuity; despite this, violent religious disturbances occurred during the Reformation and a rebellion took place in Ulster during the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign.

With the possible exception of artillery, England’s virtual withdrawal from direct continental involvement meant that the country fell steadily behind in military methods, a process that continued well into the seventeenth century. Coupled with this, new weapons and tactics were not universally popular - many soldiers hated the new weapons and did not understand how they could be applied to battlefield tactics.

The Battle of Flodden, 1513

In 1513 King James IV of Scotland invaded England with a 25,000-strong army and 17 guns (remember, at this time the two countries were still very much separate). The Earl of Surrey met him with 20,000 men and 22 light guns. Surrey manoeuvred the Scots out of a strong position on Flodden Edge (in northeast England) by interposing his troops between them and the Scottish border. In the circumstances, James had little alternative but to mount an attack.

Flodden began with an artillery duel. The English served their guns the better and the Scots had the worst of the exchange. This was a bad beginning, but worse was to follow. The Scottish left wing defeated its opposite numbers, but was cut to pieces by the English cavalry when the Scots paused to plunder the dead. The Scottish centre and right wing also advanced to engage in a general melee. The right wing was defeated and as a result the Scottish centre was surrounded.

In close-quarter fighting, the English had a distinct advantage as they had recently adopted the halberd (see the section, ‘Upgrading the Infantry’ earlier in this chapter for more on this). The Scots, on the other hand, retained their traditional pikes, which were ineffective against the halberd.

The majority of Scots fighting stubbornly around their king were killed, as was King James himself, eight Scottish earls, and thirteen Scottish barons. Almost every one of Scotland’s noble families sustained the loss of one or more of its members. Total Scottish casualties amounted to 10,000 soldiers and all their artillery. Surrey’s army had 4000 men killed. The pipe lament Flowers of the Forest was composed to commemorate Scotland’s national tragedy, and remains in use with some Scottish regiments to this day.

The Spanish Armada, 1588

Philip II of Spain, angered by the ‘piratical’ activities of such English sea captains as Francis Drake as well as Elizabeth’s support for the Dutch protestants, assembled a huge invasion force to convey an army of Spanish veterans from the Low Countries to England. The Spanish Armada (fleet) contained some 90 fighting ships and a large number of transports, against which the English could oppose approximately 50 warships.

Although it was a naval battle, the defeat of the Spanish Armada was significant in that the English admirals and captains had long been of the opinion that their warships should fight as floating gun platforms, whereas the Spaniards continued to regard theirs as transport for boarding parties. Against this, if the Armada had managed to ferry the Duke of Parma’s veterans from the Low Countries to England, it is unlikely that, with the best will in the world, the English levies hastily assembled at Tilbury would have been able to stand against them for long.