Renaissance Armies.....and rules

[freddy326]

any recommendations for which guns and figures to use as artillery?

[Leon]

We could mix and match some guns from the ECW range with crews from the early 16th C. range?  That should do it, until we pester the designer for some Elizabethan artillery!   

[FierceKitty]

Then while reloading guns the gamer can exclaim "Once more into the breech".
   Sorry. Couldn't resist it.

[Aart Brouwer]

You could try Maximilian! a DBA type game for the Renaissance and are available as a PDF from Blackhat miniatures for about £6.  They use 24 element sized armies as a basic force but two or three forces can be easily linked for a bigger game.  Bases are 40mm frontages and 15/20mm for foot and 30mm for mounted although as long as the two sides are basicaly the same it doesn't realy matter.

My own favourite period would be the Thirty Years War and that isn't covered by Maximilian! Besides, I have a particular issue with every Renaissance rulebook I have seen so far. It's the melee or hand-to-hand combat I don't like.

My point of contention is that historical formations of the 17th century were all developed for a reason and the rules don't take those into account.

Take for instance the late Tercio. Reduced to a wargaming format of 8 stands of pikes and muskets and 1 stand of (regimental) artillery it would look more or less like this on your wargaming table:



The late Tercio had grown out of the early huge (3000+) formation with the horns, but it hadn't lost its bite; it was big and unwieldy but also well-organised and sustained by great skill, excellent weaponry and a unique esprit de corps (The Spanish army was the first professional army of the modern age). As you can see from my basing sketch above, the stands should afford a player to reconstitute the historical maneuvers of a late Tercio. Pike and musket did change place in the formation if the occasion (such as an enemy charge) called for it. This particular basing also allows for stand removal to mark a unit's losses.

In case of a frontal charge by enemy horse for instance, the pikes would be ordered to the front, with the muskets intermingling as they tried to get their shot in (and Spanish musketeers certainly did). The formation would then look like this:



Or maybe like this:



In which case the charging enemy horse would suffer the full brunt of the Spanish pikes, the muskets hiding among them and the artillery out front. Any losses would be taken out of its front rank as well, through the removal of one of more pike stands. And if this same formation that is already engaged in melee at its front were to be charged from the flank or rear as well, its musketeers would be unprotected and suffer great losses. Sadly none of the Renaissance rules I know takes this aspect into account. Units are treated as static formations with generic qualities.

Another pet peeve of mine concerns charging. At least FOG(R) does a reasonable job in that it allows for enemy units to charge each other and melee with each other obliquely. The first stand of the charging unit that touches the enemy formation halts, after which every other stand in the charging unit with sufficient movement allowance moves forward until it, too, touches an enemy stand. Alas, FOG(R) does not stipulate that the touching enemy stands then fight each other; instead, the ensuing melee is treated generically. In reality it made all the difference whether pikes were charging enemy pikes, or enemy muskets, or an enemy regimental artillery battery.

I realise that the depth of game mechanics which I require is pathological. Forgive an old man his ramblings.  

However, I do have a ruleset of my own that takes these issues into account. It's only 3 pages long. Go figure. No blahblah, no eye-candy, no superfluous detail.

Cheers,
Aart

[DanJ]

Hi Aart,

Maximillian was originally designed for the inter-state wars of the Italian Renaissance through to the arrival of the great powers in Italy, the mid 17th century was and is well outside my “comfort zone” as far knowing enough to confidently write rules for and I personally don't think of it as being Renaissance at all. 

However taking your points, 4 pike and 4 musket for a for a late tercio feels a bit weedy, and while the game is intended for a quick result using 24 elements a better evening’s sport is to play a 72 element game with a main general and two subs.  In this case I’d build my tercios with 8 pike and 8 musket units.  I’d also consider using the option on page 43 of basing at least some muskets on 2x2 bases which although not as good at shooting allow them to fill in corners of pike formations, achieving a look similar to many contemporary prints.

The point about the pike and shot when charged by cavalry is valid and Maximillian allows muskets in front of pikes to receive a +2 from supporting pikes, in addition to the +1 for missile foot in first round of close combat.   This represents shot falling back into the pike for support.  This results in the combat being fought at a starting factor of 5 each and sudden death for the looser, not good odds or the best use of gendarmes, while lighter cavalry fare even worse.  I’ve seen massed Gendarmes charge tercio type formations and even if they win the initial melee they generally loose horribly in later rounds as weight of numbers prevail.  Of course some lucky incidents occur when gendarmes trample all before them but they stand out because they are rare.

If cavalry charge massed pike, with or without shot involved the cavalry deserve a kicking, unless they can get onto an exposed flank…

If a unit is charged in the flank it has a combat factor of 0 and the attackers fight ALL the stands in contact albeit as a possible lesser factor as it may not be in full base to base contact (see below).  If a unit looses a combat and can’t make way for some reason i.e. it’s in combat or has friends in the way which can’t make way it will be destroyed in all circumstance.

If units can’t line up neatly for some reason (contacting the flanks of more than one unit, lack of movement, oblique angles etc.) then the combat is fought as normal but both sides have a -1 applied to the die rolls.

[Aart Brouwer]

However taking your points, 4 pike and 4 musket for a for a late tercio feels a bit weedy, and while the game is intended for a quick result using 24 elements a better evening’s sport is to play a 72 element game with a main general and two subs.

Hold your horses, my friend. I didn't say I would field only 1 late Tercio. And I wouldn't charge my cavalry straight into a pike line. Both were merely meant as examples.

My system certainly allows for large armies. At Lützen for instance the Imperial army's central front consisted of five Tercio's in line. Using my 3x3cm basing and my formation as shown in the diagram above, a Tercio would have a 12cm frontage. Five Tercio's in line, with minimal intervals of 4cm, would constitute a front line of 76cm. Not weedy at all, certainly not if you consider the rest of the set-up: a second line of three Tercio's, interspersed with cavalry, a 'forlorn hope' detachment of musketeers out front, heavy artillery batteries on the right flank, plus two sizeable cavalry wings. All in all you would have 1,5 yards of good solid fun for one or more commanders (with some time on their hands).

In short, my criterium for a ruleset is this: does it reward the known historic formations? If it does, it's a good ruleset. If it doesn't, well..

Could you tell me if (and how) some of these formations would work in Maximilian!? I already stipulated the late Tercio's advantages. Another historic formation would be the Swedish Brigade. In my system it would look like this:



Would the Maximilian! rules 'work' for these formations. Or rather: would the formations 'work' under those rules?

I will certainly look into the Maximilian! combat system, it seems to have interesting possibilities. Thanks for your post, I love this sort of discussion.

Cheers,
Aart

[DanJ]

Hi Aart,

Sorry, I thought you were familiar with Maximilian and had missed some points, Maxililian should favour historic formations and deployments but it might not be able to model armies of the mid 17th century.  I also meant that in a 24 element Maximilian game fielding 4 elements and calling it a tercio doesn’t seem to do the original justice, the rules are more fun and work better with the larger number of elements.

I’m much more familiar with the earlier periods and that’s what Maximilian is designed for, I think there could be a fundamental difference in concept between the way pikes, shot and artillery worked in the early period and the way they functioned in the mid 17th century and Maximillian probably can’t work with these differences.

I’m not sure about the formations you depict, they wouldn’t work very well in Maximilian as the rules currently stand, shooters can’t fire through Pikes so putting the muskets behind the pikes wouldn’t work. However putting them in front allows the pikes to support the shooters so if I was fielding a unit of 8 pike and 8 shot I’d have the pikes 2 deep with 6 elements of shooters in front, manouvering as a single unit and with a couple of shooters thrown out in from as skirmishers.

The inclusion of artillery wouldn’t work as artillery moves very slowly in Maximilian and can’t be supported so would be a weak link in a pike/shooter unit.  I’d place the artillery out on a flank.

I'll try and do some more "research" on the net and come up with an answer.

I don’t know about the Swedish Brigade, it looks odd, I presume the enemy is at the top of the diagram, if so the artillery looks very exposed, the pikes behind the artillery don’t look like they would be able to do much while the next two units of muskets wouldn’t be able to fire.  The remainder of the rear line would be ok to fight or shoot but I’d use a simpler linear formation however this is probably due to ignorance.

[Aart Brouwer]

I don’t know about the Swedish Brigade, it looks odd, I presume the enemy is at the top of the diagram, if so the artillery looks very exposed, the pikes behind the artillery don’t look like they would be able to do much while the next two units of muskets wouldn’t be able to fire.  The remainder of the rear line would be ok to fight or shoot but I’d use a simpler linear formation however this is probably due to ignorance.

Don't worry, ignorance is the mother of all invention. 

The funny thing is that we are all more or less ignorant here. When it comes to TYW maneuvering and combat we know about as little as we do about, say, early Saxon war bands. We know quite a bit about weapons drill, command, administrative organisation and overall strategy in the first half of the 17th century, but preciously little about the actual functioning of units or formations on the battlefield. As the acclaimed amateur historian and Osprey-author Richard Brezezinski puts it: 'The military systems of the day remain poorly understood (Lützen 1632, Climax of the Thirty Years War, Osprey, 2008, 3rd print).

As for my diagram of a Swedish Brigade, the unit is indeed facing north as it were.

Light or medium artillery (most often 12- and 3-pdrs) would be installed out front in all battles of the period, for the simple reason that overhead firing was too risky. Only heavy guns could fire overhead with any sort of result, therefore they were emplaced in separate, suitable spots, usually on the flanks and on hill-tops,and preferably well entrenched. The Imperial battery at Lützen being a case in point.                                               

The strength of the Swedish Brigade was its capacity to fight independently. As put by William Watts, later chaplain to Prince Rupert, who travelled extensively in Germany at the time and interviewed officers who took part in the war, in the paper The Swedish Intelligencer: 'Every part of it consisted of several Maniples and small bodyes of men; of which if anyone were overthrowne, there was nothing so much hurt done, as when one of Tilly's greater battaglons were broken.'

Gustavus' ideas were shaped during his wars with Poland and the confrontation with the superior Polish cavalry which he had come to fear. His Brigade was meant to withstand attacks from all sides, particularly cavalry charges in the flanks. For the same reason Gustavus introduced 'commanded musketeers', units of shot that supported the cavalry flanks. At Lützen the Swedes even added light artillery to these musket units to make their cavalry wings even more formidable. Sweden wasn't big on cavalry and had few or no cuirassiers, hence the need for compensation in the form of extra firepower on the wings.

The flexibility of the system was proven at Breitenfeldt, where the first line of Brigades pinned down the Imperials in the centre and the second line then moved obliquely to the left and flanked the Imperial infantry. This flanking movement would have been impossible with the Mauritian system or any other system in which units were dependent on adjacent units to form a collective, sustainable front line.

Cheers,
Aart

[Aart Brouwer]

Here is a cut-out of an engraving from the most important primary source, the Theatrum Europaeanum, in which the Swedish Brigade formation is clearly shown:



Belagerung von Landshut, 1634

Cheers,
Aart

[DanJ]

Now that is just plain weird, I can understand the pike formations and the musketeers on the flanks are logical, but all those muskets in the mddle  what function did they fulfil and how did they do it?

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

No one knows. Really it's to support the units to either flank by delivering Enfilade fire. It's in the drill books but was it ever used ?

IanS

[Aart Brouwer]

No one knows.

Well there you go. Most of all that was 'poorly understood' as Brzezinski wrote.

We can only make educated guesses. For instance based on the fact that around 1630 pikemen weren't considered very effective anymore and that during campaigns many pikemen threw away their pikes. Formations were known to fire away at close quarters for hours before they engaged in hand-to-hand, and even then musketeers would often lead the charge using their musket butts and rapiers.

However I suppose that until the advent of the bayonet pikes were really useful against enemy horse. We know that Gustavus was keen on anti-cav measures for reasons mentioned earlier. And I suppose that in the heat of battle the Brigades would often be engaged on several sides at once, firing away on one flank and fighting hand-to-hand, maybe even in push of pike, on another. In that case the disposition becomes more logical.

The thing is, these formations were carefully crafted on paper and then trained in many hours of drilling for a reason. It is not for us to question Gustavus'  sanity because the Swedish Brigade somehow looks odd to us. Instead we should bracket our own (pre)conceptions and take it for granted that these formations served a purpose.

Mind you, units didn't keep their initial formation throughout a battle. Look at my diagram of the late Tercio again. TIMUR's blog recently quoted a contemporeous description of just such a unit, an Imperial Walloon Tercio, leading the attack in the battle of White Mountain (1620):

Le premier bataillon de la main droite, qui était un peu plus avancé que l’autre, était composé de vallons des régiments du comte et de don Guillerme de Verdugues, ayant deux pelotons de mousquetaires posés trois piques (15 à 20 mètres) devant, l’un pour attaquer la batterie de l’ennemi et l’autre la demi-lune, avec aux ailes droites la cavalerie vallone de Gaucier  (Gaucher)et de Valestein (Waldstein), coupée en divers escadrons, pour leur faire épaule. [...] Et comme ils firent primes lors leurs décharges et qu’ils passèrent encore avant la tête baissée, les Bohémois en prirent l’épouvante et commencèrent à reculer, en sorte que le peloton droit gagna le croissant, et la gauche la batterie. (…)

My translation:

"The first battallon on the right hand side, whcih was a bit advanced compared to the other, was composed of Walloons from the regiments of the count and of don Guillermo de Verduga, having two platoons of musketeers placed three pikes (15 to 20 yards) out front, one to attack the battery of the enemy and the other the half-moon, with on their right hand wing the Walloon cavalry of Gaucher and of Wallenstein, divided into several squadrons, to lend them support. [...] And since they were the first to discharge (their muskets) and then pressed on with their heads between their shoulders, the Bohemians were struckwithfear and began to retreat, in such a way that the right platoon conquered the croissant, and the left one the battery."

So in this case two sections of shot were placed in front of the main body to lead the attack. In contemporary sources there are quite a few  such instances where platoons left the initial formation during battle, in order to get a particular result. And I think we can safely assume that Gustavus' platoons often changed places in the formation or even changed formation entirely for the same purpose.

Cheers,
Aart

[DanJ]

It is not for us to question Gustavus'  sanity because the Swedish Brigade somehow looks odd to us

I disagree, we should question the source of something which appears to fly in the face of military logic.  If your primary offensive arm is the musket then logic of putting a third of your musketeers in a position where they can’t fire and probably can't see the enemy should be questioned.

Such questioning could lead to more research, and a better understanding of how the unit would function and from that how a battle was fought.  However at the moment I’d question the validity of this as a “primary source”, it might be an important source from the period and a contemporary document but who wrote the document and when?  Also the wood cut was probably made by someone who hadn’t seen the formation, highly skilled artisans tended to stay away from battlefields), as such he was most likely working either from the text or from a verbal description, hopefully from someone not too far removed from the actual formation, so the representation may have some inaccuracies.  It may also be a theoretical or parade ground formation a good idea on paper but one which wouldn't survive long on the battlefield when things must out of necessity be kept as simple as possible.

From Aart’s posts and other reading what is clear is that by the mid 17th century the pike was no longer a major offensive weapon.  Gone are the days of the Swiss and Lanskneckts, of massed pikes rolling all before them in a bloody mincing machine but even in the “good old days”, the pike was only part of the offensive solution, after the initial clash the melee would deteriorate into a bloody scum with halberdiers and swordsmen getting involved while the pikemen would swap their pikes for close melee weapons.

If we except that the weapon, the pike, remained the same, then change must have been in the soldiers and and/or the pike’s perceived role on the battlefield.  By the mid 17th century the primary offensive weapon was the musket, which given how inaccurate and inefficient they were is hard to believe but muskets have two huge advantages as offensive weapon, they make a lot of noise and smoke.  This makes them seem like an effective weapon to those involved and by loading and firing the individual is “doing his duty” even though not much damage is done to the enemy.  Eventually one side would gain some sort of moral ascendancy and the opposition would run.

This helps explain early musketeers blazing away with little effect but eventually winning by charging and using their muskets as clubs.  It also helps explain the slow but steady development of fire discipline from the mid 17th to early 19th century, the 200 years when the flintlock musket held sway. 

Incidentally the clash of the French Column against the British Line in the Napoleonic era exemplifies this in a somewhat simplified and stereotypical manner, the British emphasised fire disciple while the French relied on the weight of a column which advanced rapidly to minimise casualties and break the opponents line.

But to return to the matter in hand, the Swedish Brigade, if I was attempting to reproduce something like the woodcut and make it work from a rules perspective I’d not use Maximilian as it’s modelled on a different era when with different concepts, I’d write a specific “pike and shot” set of rules instead, so has anyone bought the new “Pike and Shotte” set from Warlord yet?

[Aart Brouwer]

I disagree, we should question the source of something which appears to fly in the face of military logic.  If your primary offensive arm is the musket then logic of putting a third of your musketeers in a position where they can’t fire and probably can't see the enemy should be questioned.

The point is that the ranks of pikes protects the musketeers from enemy musket fire. You see, the Swedes under Gustavus used to march up to the enemy and fire a three-rank volly (the famous 'Swedish vollee') into them from 5-7 yards distance, then attack them hand to hand. In order to preserve as many muskets as psoosible for the vollee, they needed the better protected pikemen as a screen. There's you logic.

Cheers,
Aart

[Aart Brouwer]

I found a website that presents most of what I wrote above in a compact and visually attractive form. Like all literature on the subject it is not the last word, but it does describe the versatility of the Swedish Brigade and illustrates it rather handsomely with a moving diagram.

Battle of Breitenfeld, Swedish Brigade

Cheers,
Aart