ECW battle tactics queries for someone new to the era

[sultanbev]

For battles around the time of the English Civil War and just after, I have some queries:
As I understand it, generally units were a mix of a pike block and two lots of shot either side of the pikes. So when two opposing such units meet, what happens?

1) Do the opposing musket parts shoot each other or try to shoot the pike part? Or do they just shoot into the mass, the quality of the era's firearms not up to aiming that well?
2) Do the opposing pike blocks generally advance towards each other, or attempt to charge each others musket armed parts?
3) What happens to the musket armed parts of the unit as the two pike blocks clash?
4) Was there any advantage for a pike unit to receive an enemy pike charge/advance at the halt?
5) If one pike block had more men than another, do they keep roughly the same frontage but have more depth, or go for wider blocks of the same depth?
6) I have in my mind that some regiments had small companies of halbediers, that would nip out and attack the flank of the opposing regiment just as close combat started. Is that from another era (eg Swiss pikes?) or was it a thing of this time?

7) I understand that against cavalry the pike portion could form a circle and the musketeers literally hide under the pikes, not being able to fire but pretty safe from attacking cavalry. Is that about right?

[SJWi]

Sultanbev, an excellent set of questions.  As a long-time ECW gamer I found I couldn't answer definitively and so have checked various of my reference books. One by the veteran 17th century military historian Stuart Reid acknowledges that there is a dearth of information about "how" the units actually fought a battle, mainly only references to "such a unit destroyed or drove its opponent from the field"

Most gamers ( including myself)  obviously model our troops with the classic pike centre with flanking shotte as shown in contemporary oictures including the famous diagram of Naseby.  Base on chatting with fellow volunteers at the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon who are members of the Sealed Knot plus bits an pieces gleaned from my books I'll give the following views to your questions.
(1) They blast straight ahead .Accuracy isn't great and killing the bloke in front of you is as good as it gets.
(2)Given the battle line probably difficult to charge anywhere other than straight ahead....be that at pike of musketeers.
(3) A simpler answer and one regaled by my musketeer mates. Having fired a final shot the musketeers get stuck in using their upturned muskets as clubs. Whilst a well-equipped musketeer might have a short sword the musket was heavier and more lethal in hand-to-hand combat.
(4) I don't think so. From what I can gauge the "push of pike" was literally just that....and normally pretty ineffective.
(5) No idea.
(6) I haven't heard of "Companies of halberdiers" during the Civil War. I have heard of them during the late 15th and 16th centuries but during the Civil War the halberd has become more of a ceremonial weapon.
(7) From what I know that could happen. The musketeers could still fire but it would be individuals loading and firing rather than as an organised group.

I'd also make a more general comment about the Civil War .We tend to focus on the big, set piece battles but most fighting was almost "big skirmishes" or indeed what can de described as "raids" . Until the advent of the New Model army organisation and equipment could be very variable.  At some of these smaller battles the deployment of troops could be different to take advantage of terrain, so the classic pike and shotte layout might me a misnomer.  You hear of whole units of musketeers being formed called "commanded shotte" plus the ratio of pike;shotte declines duting the period of the Wars.

You have asked some great questions which I will now pose to my Sealed Knot mates who might know more!

             

[OB]

Cromwell used Halberdiers in Scotland to cope with the Highland Charge. He had them out in front of the regiment and wearing armour. It worked. Disrupted the impact I suppose. Cohesion too I guess. The lads who fought the Halberdiers would be the unit officers.

[SJWi]

OB, thanks for the info. My knowledge of Cromwell in Scotland isn't great but I plan to read more about it over the next few months. I have a few books already but  any you particularly recommend? 

[Hwiccee]

I would also note that we have little information of what exactly happened when units met and indeed parts of this is the subject of an ongoing academic debate. That said I think the key idea at this time is that the shot & pike are an integrated unit which act together & so the individual parts are difficult/impossible to target.

On your specific questions -

(1) Just straight ahead. As mentioned accuracy was not great and neither was drill or firing ranges. So trying to move musketeers around at the short ranges used would be a recipe for diaster.
(2) Again straight ahead but the enemy pikes would be a priority. In practice the units would line up because if your pikes are lined up to hit his muskets then the same is true the other way round & you are totally vulnerable.
(3) As SJWi says
(4) and (5) This is connected to the academic debate mentioned above - basically this is 'What actually happens when 2 pike groups clash" in ECW terms. The actually debate is more about Ancient 'Heavy Infantry", i.e. roman legions, pikes, hoplites.

So the answers to these are debateable and I think it is likely to vary depending on circumstances. I think generally that it takes higher morale to actually advance into contact than to just stand & so that higher morale might be an advantage. Also bear in mind that getting foot units to actual physical contact was fairly rare, most often one side or the other refused contact.

On the depth it was standard at this time for units to be in 6 ranks and I would have thought they usually stuck to this. But on occasion they could have varied this - when attacking down a narrow lane for example.
(6) As already mentioned actual groups of halberdiers weren't generally used.
(7) These kinds of defensive circles or squares were very rare on the battlefield and usually were only used when the battle was effectively over.

Forming circles/squares took a long time during this era and was suicidal if a threat was near - you are basically putting yourself into total disorder & making yourself an easy target for a lot longer than it take to be attacked. So forget the whole forming an emergency circles/square when charged or threatened by cavalry. It is far too late by then and doing this dates to Napoleonic times.

Instead these were formed when the rest of your army is defeated and the unit is now totally exposed. Most commonly because most of the rest of your army is now routed and you need to get off the battlefield or at least survive long enough to surrender. i.e. in effect the battle is over and in game you wouldn't normally both with this - the game would be over. The unit would use the time it might have while the enemy pursued the rest of the army to take the considerable time needed to form. Once formed there would be no real combat as the circle/square is going nowhere. Even if there is still some combat going on elsewhere the circle would just be 'screened' as it could be dealt with later. It was in effect a way of saying we are out of the combat but still dangerous enough to not be worth the bother to finish off - that can wait until later if the fighting continues or to negitiations. It was very common in the ECW for unit to negiotiate like this and agree to switch sides.

[frank xerox]

I dont think it was Cromwell who used halberdiers, I think it was the Covenant. They fought highlanders more often than Cromwell ever did after all.

[Mammoth miniatures]

Mike Duncan gives a good run down of the function of ECW armies in his revolutions podcast and makes a point to highlight how the make up and tactics of the armies changed over time, and also points out that it was very rare for any army in the war to ever be at full strength. Regiments were often going into battle with half the men they should have had on paper - this only really changes when parliament forms the NMA and recruitment becomes a bit easier.

The English forces at the time were also quite inexperienced, with only a few veterans having served on the continent. Many of the men and commanders were fresh to this whole "war" thing and so it's easy to imagine early encounters being little more than brawls in a haze of musket smoke.

[SJWi]

Frank, I believe you are correct as regards the Halberdiers. I've just dug out my copy of Stuart Reid's Osprey MAA "Scots Armies of the ECWs" and he says that when the Covenanter army was Re-modelled in 1647 each regiment had a units of 72 halberdiers equipped with back, breast and helmet. He further points out that during the Jacobite rebellion of 1689-92 many Scots Government units similarly deployed parties of halberdiers forward to break up the Highland charge, and speculates this was also the reason for the 1647 organisation in the light of the fighting vs Montrose.

[Captain Blood]

Well, if you are of the re-enactment fraternity, please forgive me for being sceptical - and I don't mean to be a knob about it (I've had years of practice) - but I fear that we ECW wargamers have long placed way too much store on the experiences and opinions of re-enactors.
Don't get me wrong, most re-enactors are dedicated recreators of living history, and spend a huge amount of time getting clothing, weapons, etc right - or as right as far as they are able to tell, anyway.
But when it comes to the historical battlefield experience and our modern perceptions of 'that's the way it was', I think re-enactment has quite a lot to answer for.
In short, the experience of being in a real, vicious battle where people are actually trying to kill you horribly, and you are trying whatever you can, in extremis, to kill them horribly, cannot be remotely realistically replicated by a jolly day out in the grounds of some stately home or other. Half a dozen blokes trotting about on superannuated nags waving their swords about in desultory fashion almost certainly does not represent the reality of cavalry tactics and combat of the era.

The 'push of pike' is particularly pernicious. If you're trying to kill someone with a pike, the damage, surely, is done at a distance with the pointy end - not in a heaving mass of men all with their pikes pointing to the sky, basically trying to shove each other backwards or over?
I'm reasonably confident that once up close and personal with an enemy you badly need to kill, (and who is terrifyingly trying to kill or maim you), you would take out your knife or short sword and stab the f*ck out of the man trying to do the same to you, rather than try to push him backwards or over. The heaving rugby scrum of the 'push of pike' so beloved of re-enactors, seems seriously improbable to me.

The whole point about pikes (forgive the pun) is that at 16 feet long, they're intended to work at a distance, to keep enemies away. Or, per the phalanxes of the classical world, to be so many ranks deep that they form an impenetrable forest of successive rows of sharp points that you just can't get through.

Anyway...

As far as halberds go, I suspect (again I don't know, and nobody knows for sure, but it seems plausible) that halberds, bills, cut down pikes, axes etc. would have been issued for close quarters work.
Having a third of your infantry as pikemen (including in the New Model Army, at least according to the on-paper establishment) is no help at all in street fighting or amongst the hedges and closes of villages and farms and over bridges and in churchyards or in sieges. As SJWi says, most encounters in the ECW were not the big set piece field battles we all know about. Most were down and dirty smaller scale actions - including a large number of sieges, great and small. In these circumstances, pikes would be an encumbrance and of no use at all. Seems reasonable to me that going into these sorts of encounters, you wouldn't leave your pikemen back in camp with nothing to do. You would arm them with whatever polearms and bladed weapons came to hand and throw them into the fray as assault infantry.

But yes, that said, I don't think there's much historical evidence from either eyewitness accounts of the big 'field battles', nor from the drill manuals, that organised companies of halberdiers had any place on the battlefield proper...

 

[OB]

OB, thanks for the info. My knowledge of Cromwell in Scotland isn't great but I plan to read more about it over the next few months. I have a few books already but  any you particularly recommend?

You are most welcome. It's been a few years since I researched Scotland and I cannot recall where I picked up the Halberdier note.

The last Scots book I bought was a Helion, "The Essential Agony" about Dunbar. I thought it good.

Before that I read 3 by the lad who wrote "Alistair Mac Colla and the West Highland Problem". Steven's? Anyhow, all very good.

Before that and currently still "The Poems of Iain Lom" Chief Bard of the McDonalds and pal to Montrose and Alistair Mc'. A mine of military information.

I hope that helps. If anything else occurs to me I'll post it here.

[v_lazy_dragon]

So, we know that some forces in the ECW had access to halberds/bills and 'half-pikes' in the baggage train - from memory, the baggage train records doesn't list enough to equip every pikeman with a shorter pole arm.

There are accounts of Bills being used in the fighting in and around Leigh and Wigan; and by both attackers and defenders during various sieges (Bristol as a named example?). We also have records of Royalist regiments being armed with Bills (and even Pollaxes) at various times in the wars due to a lack of pikes - and there's atleast one period woodcut showing Royalists with assorted polearms.
That said this seems to be either an adhoc affair for when pikes would be unwieldy or down to necessity of supply - not a dedicated 'assault unit'. I think that's an earlier 16th century deal, with Landsknecht 'dopplesoldiers' and the like. 

The TYW did sometimes see use 'assault units' to help break enemy pike blocks, but these seem to be sword and shield armed.  From memory in the TYW some regiments had a small number (20ish) of halberds to guard the colours, so it clearly wasn't down to a lack of availability   

[SJWi]

OB, thanks.  The main books I have are "Crown Covenant and Cromwell" by Stuart Reid and "Highland Warrior; Alasdair MacColla the the Civil Wars " by David Stevenson. I suspect the latter is long out of print, I got mine 2nd hand. 

[sultanbev]

Some great commentary here, thanks all, and keep it coming!

I must be getting the idea of the halbediers from different eras by the sound of it.

I do have The Battle of Benburb 1646 by Clive Hollick, which is an interesting and detailed read. The Irish it seemed actually preferred 50:50 pike:Shot ratio but their pikes were a foot longer.
 
There was the "European" style of fighting where the shot would only open fire at "pistole range" ie about 20 paces, and one report mentions an Irish advancing, the shot firing one volley from their front 3 ranks, then a second volley from the rear 3 ranks, then charge.

This leads to another question:
What I call evolving fire, but it might be called something else.
Where the front 1-3 ranks fire, then the ranks behind them move forward and fire whilst the original ranks reload, and so on, the unit in effect advancing slowly as it does so, maintaining a slow but steady fire. Or in the Irish case shown above, teo rapid volleys. It could also be done retiring by the front rank firing then turning around and retiring behind the next firing rank.

I know Ottoman Janissaries used this method for part of their existence at least, and Manchu Chinese right into the 19th century. So was it something everyone else did, or had dropped from favour by this time, or something/not something that occured in English regiments?
Hollick's book indicates there were European and Swedish ways of firing units, which implies the English did something else, unless regimental officers had had the overseas experience or training.

[SJWi]

Captain Blood, I assume you are referring to me when you mention the "re-enactment fraternity". No I'm not. It was back in the '80s that I ran around West Stow Anglo-Saxon village as an unarmoured 9th century Saxon peasant being hit by men with swords and axes.

In fairness the Sealed Knot guys I refer to do not think of themselves as "experimental archaeologists", fully realising that (a) their engagements are stage-managed (b) modern HSE rules preclude a lot of things and (c) compared to a true ECW battle the number of cavalry is miniscule. That said some of them are pretty well-read and have views worth listening to. I've also taken council from the Curator of the Cromwell Museum who is very knowledgeable about 17th century matters.

Their "synthesised" views on your questions are as follows;

(1) No-one believes they targetted any point of the enemy formation.  With all the noise and smoke blanketting the battlefield firing straight ahead is much easier!
(2) The Term "charge your pike" is a drill posture for infantry, to bring the pike into an offensive position. Units didn't charge as such as they would lose cohesion and the pike would be difficult to control
(3) One view is that Musketeers could fight sheltering beneath the pike, and I have been told to watch a Spanish film "Captain Alatrise, the Spanish Musketeer" about the TYW. But this is pretty conjectural.
(4) The concensus is that you would only recieve an attack stationary if meeting cavalry and brtacing your pike at 45 degrees. Re-enactors do this but never engage the cavalry for HSE reasons cited above.
(5) Halberds are still used but mainly in situations where pikes are a liability/not terribly effective such as defending a town wall or up close and personal in more difficult terrain.

However as I and others have said I don't think there is s definitive answer to any of your questions and anyone who says there is had better have some hard facts that elude most people!     


       

[Hwiccee]

This leads to another question:
What I call evolving fire, but it might be called something else.
Where the front 1-3 ranks fire, then the ranks behind them move forward and fire whilst the original ranks reload, and so on, the unit in effect advancing slowly as it does so, maintaining a slow but steady fire. Or in the Irish case shown above, teo rapid volleys. It could also be done retiring by the front rank firing then turning around and retiring behind the next firing rank.

I know Ottoman Janissaries used this method for part of their existence at least, and Manchu Chinese right into the 19th century. So was it something everyone else did, or had dropped from favour by this time, or something/not something that occured in English regiments?
Hollick's book indicates there were European and Swedish ways of firing units, which implies the English did something else, unless regimental officers had had the overseas experience or training.

This was the standard method of fire used across Europe at the time, in the ECW usually in 6 ranks. Tis was called 'Countermarching'. This was also commonly used by the Swedes and other Europeans. The first rank would fire and retire or it would fire and then the rear rank would move to the front. It is good if you want to have a fire fight.

The 'Swedish' style attack was just if you were going to assault the enemy or you were about to be assaulted by them. i.e. it was a large number of shots before contact or to prevent contact.