The History of the British Army. J. W. Fortescue
a line of his own. He began by reducing the depth of the ranks from the bottomless profundity of the Reiters to three or at most four; and though he still opened his attack with the pistol and so far adhered to missile tactics he to a considerable extent combined with them the action by shock. As in the infantry, it was Pescayra's system that he wished to supersede. The Reiters, as we know by the testimony of many eye-witnesses, were often so anxious to go to the rear and reload that they fired their pistols at absurd ranges, sometimes indeed hardly waiting to fire before they turned about. Unable to apply to cavalry the system which he had adopted for the infantry, and failing in common with all his contemporaries to grasp the principle that, since a horse has four legs and a man two, the evolutions of horse and foot must be fundamentally different, Gustavus none the less determined that his cuirassiers should at all events come to close quarters with their enemy. He therefore trained them not to fire till they could see the white of their opponents' eyes, and having fired to strike in with the sword.
Hence he has the credit, which is not wholly undeserved, of having restored shock-action, and is said to have made his cavalry charge at the gallop; but the first statement is misleading, and the second in the face of contemporary accounts incredible. In the first place, the sword is a singularly ineffective weapon against mailed men, and a true restorer of shock-action would almost certainly have reverted to the lance. In the second place, mounted men who open their attack with pistols will infallibly check their horses at the moment of firing in order to ensure greater accuracy of aim. Lastly, Gustavus's favourite plan for the attack of cavalry was to intersperse his squadrons with platoons of musketeers, which advanced with them within close range[149] and fired a volley into the enemy's horse. This preliminary over, the cuirassiers advanced, fired their pistols, fell in with the sword, and retired; by which time the musketeers had reloaded and were ready with another volley. Close range of the musket of those days would not have allowed space for a body of horse to gather way for a shock-attack in the modern sense, and it is therefore more than doubtful whether the Swedish squadrons charged at higher speed than the trot. Gustavus's system was in fact simply a revival of Edward the First's at Falkirk, which had already been developed with great success by Pescayra at Pavia. Nevertheless, by reducing the depth of squadrons and insisting that his men should come to close quarters, Gustavus unquestionably did very much for the improvement of cavalry.[150]
Most remarkable of all were his reforms in the matter of artillery. Profoundly impressed by the power of field-guns he spared no effort to make them lighter and more mobile, so as to be at once easily manœuvred and capable of transport in larger numbers. Here again Maurice had been before him, not without success, but Gustavus possessed in the person of a Scotch gentleman, Sir Alexander Hamilton, an artillerist of wider views than lay to the hand of the great Dutch soldier. Hamilton's first experiment was to make leathern guns,[151] strengthened by hoops of metal and with apparently a core of tin, which could easily be carried on a pony's back or stacked away by the dozen in a waggon. Gustavus used them frequently in his earlier campaigns but discarded them at latest after the battle of Breitenfeld, finding that their life did not extend beyond ten or a dozen rounds. He then fell back on light two-pounders and four-pounders, which required few horses for draught, and could be loaded and fired by a skilful crew more rapidly even than a musket. A few such guns were attached to each regiment and called regimental pieces; and very effective they were presently found to be.
Further, Gustavus was a consummate engineer, as fond of the spade as Maurice himself, and a past master of field-fortification. On stepping ashore in Germany he first fell on his knees and prayed, and then picking up a spade began to dig with his own hands. This, it may here be mentioned once for all, was the one point in his system which the Scots could not endure; they always grumbled when called upon to use the spade, and in spite of the King's occasional reproaches, always made less progress with field-works in a given time than any other corps in the army.
Lastly, to turn to broader principles, the great innovation of Gustavus, visible in all his reforms, was to match mobility against the old system of weight. He never massed his troops in unwieldy bodies, but distributed them in smaller and more flexible divisions, allowing plenty of space for facility of manœuvre. His order of battle was that which was customary in his time, consisting of two lines with infantry in the centre and cavalry on the flanks; but he always allowed three hundred yards of distance between the first and second line, and erected the practice of keeping a reserve, which had been intermittently observed for centuries, into an established principle. Again, he carefully studied the effective combination of the three arms with a thoroughness unknown since the days of Zizca, supplying artillery to his infantry, and supporting impartially horse with foot and foot with horse. Finally, as the backbone of all, he enforced with a strictness that had never been seen before him the observance of discipline.
1631.
Such was the Army and such the General to which Mackay's regiment now joined itself. In June 1630 it embarked for Germany as part of the thirteen thousand men which formed the Swedish army, half of the companies at Elfsknaben, the remainder under Munro at Pillau. The latter detachment was wrecked off Rügenwalde, which was held by the Imperialists, and lost everything; but having made shift to obtain arms calmly attacked the Imperial garrison and captured the town—as daring a feat of arms as ever was done by Scotsmen. After several small engagements Monro rejoined his headquarters at Stettin, and in January 1631 Gustavus, who boasted with justice that his army was as effective for a winter's as for a summer's campaign, invaded Brandenburg and marched for the Oder. The Scotch were organised into the famous Scots Brigade, consisting of four picked regiments—Hepburn's, Mackay's, Stargate's, and Lumsden's, the whole under the command of Sir John Hepburn.
May.
We must pass over the operations in Brandenburg, where the Scots Brigade distinguished itself repeatedly, and come forthwith to Saxony, whither Gustavus had been called from the Oder by Tilly's advance upon Magdeburg. Arriving too late to save the unhappy city he entrenched himself at Werben, at the junction of the Elbe and the Havel, and gave the world a first notable example of his skill as an engineer. Tilly, having lost six thousand men in the vain attempt to storm the entrenchments, invaded Saxony, whither Gustavus at once followed him and offered him battle on the plain of Leipsic.
On the 7th of September Tilly took up his position facing north, on a low line of heights running from the village of Breitenfeld on the west to that of Seehausen on the east. His army was drawn up in a single line. On each wing as usual was posted the cavalry, seven regiments under Pappenheim on the left, seven more under Furstenburg on the right, all drawn up in the dense columns beloved of Charles the Fifth. In the centre was Tilly himself, with eighteen regiments of infantry, his famous Walloons among them, massed together in the old heavy Spanish formation. On the heights above him were his guns. The whole force numbered forty thousand men, and their General was a man who, though seventy years of age, had never lost a battle.
Sept. 7.
On the other side the armies of Gustavus and of his allies the Saxons were drawn up in two lines. On the left were the Saxons, fourteen thousand strong, and on the right, with which alone we need concern ourselves, the Swedes. In touch with the Saxon right, the Swedish left under Field-Marshal Horn was made up, both in the first and second lines, of six regiments of horse, with four platoons of musketeers between each regiment. The right wing under Gustavus himself was similarly composed. In the centre the first line was made up of four half brigades of foot, supported by a regiment of cavalry and eight platoons of Scots; and the second line of three brigades, of which Hepburn's was one. In rear of both lines was a reserve of cavalry, and in the extreme rear a further reserve, the first ever seen, of artillery.
The battle opened as usual with a duel of artillery, which was continued from noon till half-past two, the Swedish guns, more numerous and better served than Tilly's, firing three shots to the enemy's one. Then Pappenheim, on Tilly's left, lost patience, and setting his cavalry in motion without orders came down upon the Swedish right. He was met by biting volleys from the platoons of musketeers and charges from the cuirassiers at their side; his men shrank from the fire, and edging leftward across the front of Gustavus's wing swept down towards its rear. General Bauer, in command of the reserve cavalry of the first line, at once moved out and broke into them; and the whole Swedish right coming into action drove back Pappenheim's horse, after a hard struggle, in disorder. Gustavus