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Pieter B.
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 Posted: Fri 28 Feb, 2014 4:28 am Post subject: |
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| Jaroslav Kravcak wrote: | Well as far as sources go (I have rather amateur interest in it), memoirs of french from 16th century are great sources of information and examples.
As for Bayard, many great tales and information are in:
https://archive.org/details/TheRightJoyousAndPleasantHistoryOfSanPierreTerrailLaChevlieirDe
Its english translation, though there are some french versions and I find them better, even though my french is terrible. There are many example of skirmishes, depictions of sieges and mentions of men at arms fighting dismounted. There might be many good reasons for some, or many men at arms to dismount, youll certainly find a passage in this book, that I cannot exactly recollect now, where italian militia would block passage through the mountains and it was gained from them by bayard and others, that dismounted with pikes/lances in hand and dislodged their adversaries. There is also description of siege of Brescia, some time before battle of Ravenna in which dismounted gendarmes, along with bayard stormed the city, also mentioned is their use as armoured shields for arquebusiers. (this would be cca in february 1512)
Then there are many memoirs, also at the same site, in french, with some good informations about most illustrous battles of french gendarmes of that times. Examples are memoirs of du Bellay, Montluc, de Tavanes, de la Noue and others.
These are all sources free to download, its a shame most dont have easily accesible english translation.
Im most interested in french gendarmes as well and heavy cavalry of this period in general. Concerning the battle of Marignano, I see one more point about their charges, when you compare battles of Novara and Marignano, I see paralel to some point, french would be rather surprized by sudden attack at both instances, completely defeated first time, victorious second time. I see main difference in proper cavalry support. They might have tryed to charge against big uninterrupted Swiss blocks, it can be supported by literature, might get inside causing casualties, but Id say most of their work would be to keep swiss from completely ovewhelming their own infantry. These might have been routed several times at many places and certainly were giving ground to swiss advance, I can very well imagine most charges would be devastating to the swiss, if they were disrupted after sucesfully pushinf french infantry back, so they could ride among them in small groups, cut many of them down and forcing them to retreat from gained ground and back into dense mass, as I see it currently, without them, swiss would have rolled through french rather soon and would have won second great victory over french after Novara.
Just to add, it seems there are several examples of cavalry accomplishing much more than just getting 5 ranks deep into pikemen. There might be many untold examples, when such a feat would cause infantry to simply dissolve and break in panic and most of the good example of cavalry riding through unbroken infantry are against high quality enemy, like Swiss at Dreux, 1562, spanish/germans at Ceresole 1544 - in both cases there is a mention of gendarmes riding through whole formation. (more astonishing in second case, as Swiss at Dreux seem to only be 10 ranks deep), but they lack specific infarmations, especially how much damage they were able to cause (there would be more than 1000 Swiss dead and up to half of their number wounded at the battle of Dreux out of 5000-6000, but theres no way to tell how many of these would be due to firearms, also exact losses for huguenot gendarmes are nowhere to be found, I had no luck yet.), while casualties are ennumerated quite well (at least for the battle of Ceresole in several memoirs - Montluc, du Bellay, de la Noue) One thing is certain - in both cases infantry would outnumber gendarmes greatly (especially hommes d armes, proper gendarmes with full plate armour and barded horse - at least on paper, the rest being archers) and both sides would suffer casualties.
Best example for me, one from which Id say it can be extrapolated what even single warhorse among infantry was capable of is battle of Grandson in 1476 and Louis de Chatel-Guyon, that managed to leap into Swiss pike square on armoured horse and in few minutes kill 30 Swiss and get into its middle, finally being neutralized when trying to capture one of the flags, either alone, or with very few that got inside. This should be described in a letter of bernese captain to the city council, detailing the battle, for information about where to see it and read for yourself, you can try to contact chef de chambre, he mentions it here for example:
http://forums.armourarchive.org/phpBB3/viewto...se#p120875
I tend to believe, most men would simply turn before collision with infantry and only rarely at one or two spots several men might force their way inside and ram their way through, causing some casualties, or even panicking infantry and routing whole formation. They would generally be hundreds in strengh at most charging against thousands in dense formation and gunfire, so odds would be against them and most time, most of them wouldnt get anywhere close to the enemy, they might ride paralel to front of pikesquare, try to fence with their lances etc. to create the opening.
Somehow I dont really like the idea of whole line of horsemen either bowling over many rows of pikemen as one big wave, or the picture of hundreds of horse getting impaled on pikes in second, I believe most times there was no real contact at all with very few casualties , mostly from firearms and maybe artillery and rarely some horsemen might get inside and then it ended either catastrophically for infantry, being disorganized, broken and cut down, or riders passed wounding as much as they could and infantry simply closed lanes once again and reform, or riders were stopped and neutralized in the mass of infantry.
Its amazing, that best examples of what might have happened at the point of contact (especially how single horseman can be the cause of destruction of whole units of infantry) are from victorian era england and napoleonic wars, mostly british (like Khushab, Aliwal), others like mamluks against russian guard grenadiers square at Austerlitz, or french cavalry vs austrians at Dresden.
There are many good examples that might in the end show, that possibilities of what might have happened at contact are endless and there are no hard set rules to be extracted from it, it seems like it was allways a gamble. But its interesting to think about it. :-) |
Thanks for this detailed post, those memoirs are the stuff I was looking for. I am also grateful for the book on Bayard de Chevalier since there are so many I did not know which to chose.
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