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The art of war has remained in its essentials the same in all ages, but the science of war has in the last two centuries moved far from the beggarly elements which we must now consider. To understand the practice of seventeenth century armies we must accustom our minds to a primitive and rudimentary technique.

The infantry had advanced in prestige since the fifteenth century, but since it had no bayonet and only an indifferent gun it had not yet become the “queen of battles,” and was usually ranked at about one-fifth of the fighting value of cavalry. Its weapons were the pike and the musket, and in 1642 the proportion of musketeers to pikemen was about two to one. The pike was regarded as the more honourable weapon, and when a gentleman served in the ranks he usually trailed 1642 a pike; the pikeman too was the bigger and finer fellow and wore the heavier defensive armour. His pike was eighteen feet long, and he also carried a sword which was rarely much use to him. His value was in close hand-to-hand fighting, and the issue was often decided by “push of pike.” The musketeer had no defensive armour, and no defensive arms against cavalry except the clumsy “Swedish feathers,” five-foot stakes which he stuck in the ground before him. His weapon was still mainly the matchlock, which fired a bullet weighing a little over an ounce; his powder was made up in little cartouches of tin or leather, which he carried in a bandolier worn over his left shoulder. Everything about his equipment was cumbrous—the heavy weapon, the coils of match which he had often to carry lighted, and which were at the mercy of ill weather. Presently the matchlock was replaced by the snaphance or flintlock, for the cavalry, and for the foot companies which guarded the artillery and ammunition. The musket was effective at about 400 yards, but owing to the patchy training there was little real markmanship, except among the royalist verderers and gamekeepers.

The drill was complicated, and badly learned. At first the battle formation was ten deep, each rank firing and then falling back to the rear to reload; but Gustavus had taught quicker loading, and had made the files six deep, and this was now the formation generally adopted in England; three deep was even used when it was necessary to prevent outflanking. Also the Swedish custom of the “salvee” was coming in, by which the six ranks fired at once,^[151] a use adopted by Montrose in Scotland and followed by the New Model. The usual handling of infantry was that a “forlorn hope” skirmished ahead, fired, and fell back; the musketeers then delivered their volleys and retired to the shelter of the pikemen, who charged home. The pikemen were usually in the centre. If cavalry attacked and the foot had no hedges or ditches to shelter them, the only chance was CAVALRY 1642 to do as the London trained bands did at Newbury—form square, with the musketeers under the cover of the pikes. The marching power of the foot was poor, for even the light-armed musketeer must have carried at least double the modern weight, and at the best they may have done twelve miles a day. Nevertheless for all its handicaps the infantry was a vital arm, for without it sieges and occupations and campaigns in broken country were impossible. The destruction of the king’s foot at Marston Moor lost him the north, and the same disaster at Naseby meant the loss of England.

The cavalry was usually one-half the strength of the foot, and was regarded as the superior arm, the pay of the trooper being three times that of an infantryman. It was especially a gentleman’s service, since every man of reasonable estate was at home in the saddle.^[152] The old heavy cavalry was going out of fashion, and was being replaced by the harquebusiers, who carried pistols, carbine and sword, and by the more lightly armed dragoons, who were the equivalent of the modern mounted infantry, and wore a light helmet, a light cuirass, or even an ordinary padded buff coat. The light horse did all the reconnoitring, outpost, and covering work of an army. Gustavus’s practice in the handling of cavalry was slowly coming in: that is, three deep instead of the old five, fire reserved, and a charge home; Rupert and Montrose were pioneers in the change and Oliver soon followed. The king had at the start a notable advantage on this side. He was indeed more short of armour and arms than the parliament, for it was long before he got “backs and breasts” for all troopers and a sufficiency of carbines, but he had more and better horses, better horsemasters, and in the gentry accustomed to hawk and hunt far better horsemen.

The other services may be briefly summarized. 1642 Artillery, which was to play an important part in the war, was only just emerging from the Middle Ages.^[153] The field gun ranged from the culverin, which fired a ball of nearly twenty pounds, had an extreme range of about 2000 paces, and required eight horses to move it, to the little three-pounder called the “drake.” It was no light task to load a heavy piece, for the powder was carried loose in a barrel. Explosions were frequent, and this was why the guard for the guns had to be men with flintlocks and not matchlocks.... Pay on both sides was small and irregular, and habitually in arrears. The commissariat was provided either by quartering soldiers on the country or by requisitioning supplies at scheduled prices. Dress was at first anything that a commanding officer fancied, and it was necessary to have distinguishing badges; red coats came in with the New Model. Tents were little used by either side, troops being billeted in villages or bivouacking in the open air.... There was a multitude of flags, every company of foot and troop of horse having its standard. When battle was joined there was cheering and shouting, unlike the Swedes and Scots who fought in silence.... The intelligence department was in the hands of the scoutmaster-general, but intelligence methods were rudimentary. Nothing is more curious in the war than the ignorance of both sides about the doings of the other, so that Essex stumbled on the king, and Hopton on Waller, and battle seemed to be joined by the merest accident.

At first there was little discipline on either side. Nehemiah Wharton, sergeant in Brooke’s regiment in the parliament army, has left us a description of the march of the Londoners westward in the first month of the war,^[154] and it reveals a state of chaos among those troops who might have been expected to be the most orderly. “Our soldiers generally manifested their dislike to our lieutenant-colonel, who is a goddam blade THE HIGH COMMAND 1642 and doubtless hatched in hell, and we all desire that either the Parliament would depose him, or God convert him, or the devil fetch him away quick.” Slowly things improved, as both sides issued “articles of war,” the disciplinary ordinances which they proposed to administer. The Englishman is naturally insubordinate and even at the best discipline was lax; both sides, for example, were arrant poachers, and carried along with them a collection of hounds. Each accused the other of vices, of which Sir Philip Warwick perhaps gives a fair summary in his quotation from a royalist soldier: “In our army we have the sins of men, drinking and wenching, but in yours you have those of devils, spiritual pride and rebellion.” Both sides had chaplains and observed the ordinances of religion. Rupert had a service before Marston Moor, while on the parliament side there was an almost continuous preachment. But after Edgehill most of the puritan ministers went home, and their place was taken by volunteers, those sectaries who were soon to control the army and rule the destinies of England.