[Alain D.]

I'm wondering how arquebusiers were used in battles and in which battles they played a significant role. I've heard about their use at the Battle of Pavia, but what about earlier battles? What sorts of tactics were used by early arquebusiers (guerrilla, volleys, ect...)? I'm most interested in the role of the early arquebuses in French and German history.

Thanks

-Alain

[Mark Hanna]

Read Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe by Bert S Hall,

it is all about early arqubusers and battles they were in.

Mark

[Alain D.]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into that.

-Alain

[Ben P.]

Actually at Pavia they were musketeers at that time the musket weighed about as much as modern Barret 50. Caliber Sniper Rifle they took positions in the trees and so the men-at-arms were unable to reach them and kill them so you get what is basically a repeat of Agincourt with gunpowder.

As Mark said Bert S. Halls work contains a ton of info on gunpowder weapons and their use and performance and such in that era he also very nicely debunks several myths about Agincourt and the like

As for use they were usually deployed behind the pike it was a given that in open ground men with guns without the pikes would be destroyed

I would also reccomend Charles W.C Oman's Art of War in the Sixteenth Century while it was published in 1937 it still holds its own against more modern scholarship and Oman seems to avoid the myths of his time (I.E Knights rode draft horses)

[Stefan P]

Thanks Alain D for bringin up the subject and Thanks Mark Hanna and Ben P for your answers. I immediately ordered "Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe" from a Internet bookshop.

[Ben P.]

If you like I could give you a internet bookshop that sells books in excellent condition at pretty cheap prices as well

[Matthew Fedele]

This site is focused on documented 1630 maneuvers, but does a good job of explaining "pike and shot" tactics with animation:
http://syler.com/Breitenfeld/

From what I've gathered over the years, and please feel free to correct and/or expand. Pike squares had "sleeves of shotte" which had columns (files) of arquebusers on both sides of the pike square. They could hide there under the cover of 16' pikes if cavalry charged. We never found much evidence that these tactics evolved much from the Germans that adopted them in the early 1500s with the exception of more shot was added. By Grimmelshausen's time (30 years war) he mentioned, "He never saw a pikeman kill anyone." To him it seems the pikes were just there to keep the cavalry at bay.

[Alain D.]

Thanks for the info guys, very much appreciated.

-Alain

[Ben P.]

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Unfortunately, Barry Siler's site on Breitenfeld--excellent as it is--probably doesn't have that much useful information regarding the tactics and techniques of arquebusiers from the first half of the 16th century. There was an enormous degree of tactical change and development between Pavia and Breitenfeld, not the least of which was the greater concentration of firearms and their more efficient use in the later armies.

(BTW, Pavia wasn't an Agincourt. At Agincourt the French were dismounted except for two small contingents on mounted men-at-arms, whereas at Pavia the French gendarmes were mounted and ran into the musketeers' ambush as they were pursuing a large bunch of Imperials--landsknechts, if I'm not mistaken--that they had charged and broken earlier. The defeat of the French cavalry and the capture of the king at Pavia was also only a part of the larger battle, which was basically fought as a number of simultaneous confused engagements.)

As for references, I don't know how accurate Oman's volume on 16th-century warfare is, but I'd put my money on Bert Hall's book first. Even that one is probably already several years out of date compared to the newest scholarship today, but still much better than starting with a century-old work that may still contains a fair number of misconceptions that have been debunked later. I certainly wouldn't recommend Oman's volume on medieval warfare (which I've read) as an introductory work for a beginner to the field of medieval European military history!

[Ben P.]

[Lafayette C Curtis]

And I wasn't conflating the two either--just pointing out that the badly outdated nature of Oman's work and medieval warfare (and while we're at it, his theory of line vs. column combat in the Napoleonic Wars volume, too) doesn't make me feel optimistic about the accuracy of the volume on 16th-century warfare. Go with Bert Hall first, I say.