Changing Tactics

This painting by Paulus van Hillagaert displays the Battle of Nieuwpoort during the Eighty Years' War for Dutch independence. It can also give the viewer a sense of what battles of the period might have been like. Note the large formations of pikemen mixed in along with the musket units, as well as the ships on the horizon.

This is a drill manual for musketeers to study the proper technique for loading, preparing, and firing their weapons. With the advent of firearms, new advances in line infantry tactics had to be invented in order to prevent accidents and increase unit efficiency. Manuals like these were the precursors for modern military drill exercises.

An engraving of camp made at Breda. The many camps and formations are quite clear, and from the formations and motion, it appears they are either getting ready to being the assault, or are making camp.

This painting is a rendition of Cardinal Richelieu standing at the ramparts of a besieged city. The large wooden spikes that feature here were meant to help turn away cavalry charges and disrupt enemy formations that tried to close in on the city.

This painting shows a Dutch warship firing its side cannons. New developments in cannons and shipbuilding made such large banks of cannons on the side of a ship possible, and military crews drilled extensively on firing technique and commands to ensure maximum damage to enemy combatants in naval engagements.

This sketch depicts the size of a major naval battle between British and Dutch forces during the first Anglo-Dutch war. Consider the difficulties of maneuvering a ship in similar conditions!

This is an artist's rendition of the Siege of Vienna, 1683. It shows the camp that surrounds the besieged city, the city's defensive emplacements, and the sheer number of units it took to siege the city.

    Advances in military technology spurred changes in tactics, as armies sought to react and exploit new capabilities presented by those changes. Firearms gave rise to pike and shot formations, and later to line infantry as firearms continued to develop. Fortification developments drew out sieges, as storming a city became a less viable option and besieging armies were increasingly forced to attempt to starve out the defenders or bombard them into submission. The increased armor-piercing capabilities of gunpowder weapons led to a decline in the use of heavy cavalry, who were replaced by light cavalry used to attack the flanks of an enemy formation. These changes in tactics and the frequency of warfare also led to institutional changes in how armies were raised and composed. Less and less were nobles responsible for bringing temporary warriors as a proportion of a king’s army to camp, as governments instituted more centralized means of drafting and training professional standing armies.

Historiography debate: A military revolution?

    The period of drastic changes in warfare in the 16^th and 17^th centuries was termed a “military revolution” by historian Michael Roberts in the 1950s. He proposed that the changes in tactics and the new technologies used in warfare led to changes in governments as they adapted so that they could draft and maintain modern armies. The concept was further expanded upon by other historians, who discussed the development of the trace italienne (the star fort system as described in those items) as a contributing factor to modern governmental cities and systems of urbanization. More recently, historians like Jeremy Black have criticized Roberts’ view as being misleading or simplistic. Particularly, Black has proposed that it was an increase in governmental power and control that allowed them to draft larger armies, and not the other way around. The debate has gone back and forth, but most historians now acknowledge that while technology played a role in the governmental changes of the Early Modern period, it was other institutional changes in control and command structures that caused many of the drastic changes in the European continent during this time.