The History of the British Army. J. W. Fortescue
of pikes had proved fatal to the lumbering unwieldy Teuton.
1522.
1525.
Still more remarkable was the rapid development of the power of musketry in Spanish hands. At Bicocca the Marquis Pescayra met the attack of a gigantic Swiss battalion by drawing up a number of small squares or squadrons of Spanish arquebusiers in front of his own battalion of pikes. His instructions were that not a shot should be fired without orders, a fact that points to early excellence in what is now called fire-discipline, but that each front rank should fire a volley by word of command and having done so should file away to the rear to reload, leaving the remaining ranks to do the like in succession. The results of this manœuvre were disastrous to the Swiss; and this ingenious method of maintaining a continuous fire of musketry was the law in Europe for the next century and a half. In fact, if it were necessary to fix an arbitrary date for the first really effective use of small fire-arms in the battlefield the day of Bicocca might well be selected. But we must not fail to note concurrently the drill and discipline which made Pescayra's evolution possible. Three years later, at the famous battle of Pavia, this same skilful soldier attempted a still bolder innovation with his arquebusiers, and with astonishing success. Being threatened with a charge of French heavy cavalry (men-at-arms) he deployed fifteen hundred of his marksmen in skirmishing order before his front, who, taking advantage of every shelter and moving always with great nimbleness and activity, maintained a galling fire as the cavalry advanced, and finally, taking refuge under the pikes of the battalions which were drawn up in their support, smashed the unfortunate French as effectively as the English archers at Creçy. In truth, the effect of this daring experiment on military minds in Europe was hardly less than that of Creçy itself. Henry, Duke of Guise,[69] an excellent soldier, was so much struck by its success that he showed how the principle might be indefinitely extended and find ultimate shape, as many years later it did, in the formation of distinct corps of light-infantry. His own attempt to organise such a body in France was however a failure, and the Spanish arquebusiers long held their own as the first in Europe, a proud position which they had most worthily gained.
The remarkable prowess of the Spanish infantry soon made it popular with the nation. The cavalry, in the palmy days of chivalry the most gorgeous in Europe, lost its attraction for the young nobles, who enrolled themselves as private soldiers in the ranks of the foot, and carried pike and arquebus with the meanest of the people. Charles the Fifth himself once shouldered a piece, and marched, like Maximilian, in the ranks, until ordered by the commander-in-chief[70] of his own appointment not to expose himself to unnecessary danger, when like a good soldier he at once obeyed orders. And this leads us to another eminent feature of the Spaniards, the excellence of their discipline. English and French contemporary writers[71] agreed that they owed their victories to nothing else but obedience and good order, for that they were not in themselves remarkable as a fighting people. "I am persuaded," says Roger Williams, "that ten thousand of our nation would beat thirty thousand of theirs out of the field, excepting some three thousand [the choicest of the army] that are in the Low Countries." Gonsalvo was the man who had laid the foundation of this discipline, and it was worthily maintained by his successors. Charles the Fifth went so far in his respect for it as always to salute the gallows whenever he happened to pass them. And yet there are no signs of extraordinary brutality in the Spanish army, but on the contrary most remarkable tokens of good fellowship between officers and men, and of healthy esprit de corps. There was a system of comradeship which was the envy of all Europe. The two officers of each company, the captain and ensign,[72] would each take to themselves and entertain from three to six comrades from the young nobles who served in the ranks; sergeants would also take one or two such comrades, and the privates formed little messes among themselves in like manner, with the result, unique in those days, that fighting and brawling were unknown in a Spanish camp. Quite as striking was the pride which the old soldiers took in themselves and their profession. It is recorded that a party of Spanish recruits, who had arrived at Naples, ragged, slovenly, and unkempt, and were staring about them in a clownish and unsoldierly fashion, were at once taken in hand by the old soldiers, who lent them good clothes, made them tidy, and taught them proper manners.[73]
For the rest the Spaniards originated a system which, though it now seems obvious enough, was in those days a new thing. It consisted simply in the maintenance of a nucleus, or as we should now call it a depôt, of trained men sufficiently numerous to teach recruits their duty. All recruits were trained in the garrisons at home, and from thence passed into the ranks of the regiment wherein they were needed; and every draft so disposed of was immediately replaced by an equal number of new recruits. When it is remembered that, according to the ideas of the time, seven thousand trained infantry and three thousand cavalry were judged sufficient to leaven an army of fifty thousand men, the strength which her system of recruiting gave to Spain is not easily exaggerated. The trained regiments of Spanish infantry were but four, and their united strength did not exceed seven thousand men, but their ranks were always full. The number of companies into which they were distributed was uncertain, and the strength of the companies themselves varied from one hundred and fifty to three hundred men, a curious defect in the most perfect organisation of the time. Lastly, the Spanish regiments were known by the name of tercios,[74] a term with which the reader must not quarrel, as he will encounter it on the battlefield of Naseby.
1475.
1567.
Not less remarkable than their forwardness in organisation and discipline was the ready quickness of the Spaniard in the improvement of fire-arms. The primitive hand-gun, as I have already said, differed little except in size from the smaller cannon of the time. It consisted simply of a barrel with a vent at the top, and though indeed attached to a wooden stock had no lock of any description. Hand-guns were often made so short that they could be held even by a mounted man with one hand and fired with the other. Match-cord or tinder for purposes of firing the charge by the vent was already in full use. The next step was to increase the length of the barrel and support it on a forked rest, a plan introduced by the Spaniards at Charles the Fifth's invasion of the Milanese in 1521. Ten years later a vast stride was made by the substitution of a pan at the side of the barrel for a vent at the top, and by the addition of a grip to the stock to hold the match-cord, which was brought in contact with the pan by pressing a trigger. In a word, the barrel was fitted with a lock. An extremely ingenious Italian in the French service, Filippo Strozzi, then took the improvement of fire-arms in hand, copying however, as always, from the Spanish model. The bore of the harquebus (for the primitive German hakenbuchse had by this time found its permanent corrupted form) was by him enlarged to bear a heavier charge and carry a larger bullet; and so perfect was the workmanship of the Milanese gunsmiths whom he employed that he succeeded in killing a man at four hundred and a horse at five hundred paces. The stock being long and the recoil very severe, men suffered not a little from bruises and contusions with this weapon; but its efficiency was proved. Strozzi also introduced another Spanish improvement, namely the practice of making all his arquebuses of one bore, which, though it now sounds obvious enough, waited for some years to find general acceptance in Europe. Hence the weapons were known as arquebuses of calibre, which phrase in England was soon shortened simply to calivers. These however were arms of small bore:[75] it was, as usual, the Spaniards who were the first to arm their infantry with muskets[76] of large calibre. Alva was the man who introduced them, and the rebels of the Low Countries the first who felt their power. It needed but the substitution of a flint-lock for a match, and the abolition of the rest, to turn this weapon into Brown Bess, never so famous in English hands as in the battlefields of Alva's home. Bandoliers and cartridges had long been known to the Spaniards, and even to the French[77] before the middle of the sixteenth century, so that the general progress in arms and equipment was rapid.
But the weapons had hardly been improved for infantry before cavalry also began to crave for them. The simplest method of course was to place pike and arquebus in the hands of mounted men and turn them into mounted infantry, which was duly done in the French army by Piero Strozzi in 1543, and has earned him the title of the father of dragoons.[78] But still earlier in the century there had grown up in Germany a new kind of cavalry, called by the simple name of Reiters, which had perfected the smaller fire-arms, the petronel[79] and the pistol, and had finally adopted the latter for its principal weapon. The result was an important revolution in the whole tactics of cavalry.