[Gordon Frye]

Lafayette is right about the Cavalry actions at Ravenna and Ceresole, in which French Gendarmerie companies cut their way completely through the German pike lines to pop out the opposite side. Not without loss of course, but still, they did it. And what is not so widly known is that the Huguenot Gendarmerie under the Prince of Condé repeated the action, only this time against the Swiss at the Battle of Dreux in 1562, which was quite an achievement. What was considered remarkable at the time was not that the Huguenots could do such a thing, but that the Swiss formation did not collapse as a result of it.

If you go back to some very early battles of the Swiss, especially those against the Italians, there were definitely instances of the Italian Men-at-Arms dismounting in order to combat the Swiss on foot, so there is no question that it was done. But the French of the 16th Century just didn't do things that way. And seemingly, they were correct in that, since their companies of gendarmes remained the primary offensive component of French armies, be they Catholic or Protestant, for the remainder of that century, and remained an effective and efficient arm at that.

One thing to remember about 15th through early 19th Century firearms: they were almost exclusively using spherical projectiles, which have a terrible ballistic coefficient, and while blackpowder can propel them initially in supersonic velocities, they rapidly loose that velocity and quickly become ineffective against armour. Few period writers thought that an armoured man was in much danger at over a hundred yards (meters) unless the shooter was using a very heavy musket of the Spanish variety, and they were pretty uncommon even in large infantry formations. (Sir Phillip Sydney, the Elizabethan courtier and poet, owed his death at the skirmish at Warnfeld outside of Zutphen in 1587 to having lent his cuisses to Sir William Pelham in the rush of arming. A musket ball, which contemporaries felt should have been deflected by armour, instead shattered his thigh-bone and lead to his death) A body of heavy horse needed only to stay several hundred yards away from their proposed target to be relatively immune to their fire, and would only be exposed to it during the charge, and it's doubtful that any 16th Century musketeer could get off more than two shots at best in the time it takes a horse to charge 200 yards. And "Shotte" had not yet learned the "Swedish Salvee" to send as much lead as possible downrange in the least amount of time. Thus the necessity of hordes of pikemen to protect the musketeers from inihilation. Armour for man and horse was still a pretty effective defense against the infantry weapons of the period.

(That being said, it doesn't mean that a the Gendarmerie was invincible, nor always particularly effective. Just that they were considered a necessary component of every effective Western European army of the day, and more often than not the primary means for a general to bring offensive violence against his enemy.)

Allons!

Gordon

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Saying that "infantry defines battle" would be a gross simplification of 16th-century warfare. As in all other ages, the military theorists and commanders of 16th-century Europe understood the concept of combined arms to one degree or another and applied it according to the relative strengths and weaknesses of their troops. The French relied on their mounted Ordonnance companies as well as the Swiss pike blocks and designed their tactical paradigm around the cooperation of these two arms. Later on, the Wars of Religion fragmented their military establishment and the Huguenot side in particular was forced to adapt various foreign tactical devices in order to face the entrenched might of the Catholics and their loyal companies. It is worth remarking that some of the most notable Huguenot victories--particularly Henri IV's victories--were won in the cavalry encounters.

The Dutch, too, often regarded as the people who created the dominant infantry paradigm for much of the late 16th and the 17th centuries, did not seem to have ever really fielded all-infantry forces. And of the few occasions that they dared face their Imperial/Spanish enemies in open battle, one of the most remarkable was the battle of Turnhout--again won with cavalry!

What about the Imperials themselves? The name of Gottfried von Pappenheim ought to ring a bell even if he was a 17th-century general. And one thing that the Imperials excelled at was covering their flanks and lines of communication with light cavalry like Croats, Italians, and some Spaniards.

It would be good to remember that 16th-century warfare was heavily influenced by Neoclassical thinking, and one of the things that frequently came up in 16th-century military discourses was the Macedonian tactics of pinning the enemy down with infantry in the center while the cavalry defeated their counterparts on the wings, and then swinging the victorious cavalry in to smash the enemy's engaged infantry in the flank. Many battles--not the least Ceresole--seem to have planned out with a version of this tactical idea in mind.

[Gordon Frye]

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Ahh. Combined arms. And Marignano--I just love that battle because it's so damned bloody, what with all those cannonballs plowing into massed Swiss formations....

BTW, actually the French artillery seems to have deteriorated in the second half of the 18th century--although it was a general deterioration in teh army as a whole rather than just the artillery because the officer corps became too rigidly defined and stratified. Imagine a system where an officer candidate has to prove the purity of his noble descent.

Of course, Gribeauval, Carnot, and Napoleon totally reversed that trend, and French artillery actually remained superior from then on until the first decades of the 20th century. Does the 75mm rifled cannon ring a bell?

[Gordon Frye]

[Rodolfo Martínez]

i think i haven´t pointed my question properly. About ïnfantry defines battle¨during the renaissance, i mean that cavalry lost it´s ¨mythic¨ power against infantry soldiers, an army should be balanced in the way that cavalry should work as a single unit with infantry, i mean, we have phalanx like formations of swiss pikemen, that, despite of being too far from the original greek one, it is a very effective formation against cavalry. Of course, i would not totally rely the victory to my muskets(neighter to my knights or pikemen alone), but artillery is a powerful weapon to deal with.

Count Carmagnola sent 6000 knights and a few troops against 18000 swiss, (I don´t remember wich battle was, for the next i´ll bring more details). They charged against the swiss but they were repelled causing Carmagnola a great lose of knights. After it, he ordered his knights to reorder and dismount allowing them to break the swiss formation and killing almost all swiss with exception or around 1000 who surrendered.


Anyway, having seen your helpful answers about Knights and Gendarmes, i would be glad to know if other countries, like Italy, Belgium and Hungary used this system of fully armored ¨knights¨ during XVI Century, and if they had special names.

Thanks.

[Gordon Frye]

Rodolfo;

I think that the only other "country" (hard to use that name exactly, since it was part of the Duchy of Burgundy, rather than a nation-state) that used the same system of "Companies of Ordnance" (compagnies d'ordonnance) would have been modern Belgium and Netherlands, and the system was copied directly from the French. It was started by Charles the Bold around 1470 or so, and continued to at least the end of the 16th Century. I'm not sure exactly when it became extinct, probably about the same time as the French versions did during the 30 Years War.

Per Hungary, up until the Battle of Mohács in 1526, it was a feudal host which was formed at the king's command. After that, there weren't enough men-at-arms in Hungary to do much of anything with. (Russ Mitchell can give you lots more detail on this than I ever could, though, so perhaps he'll chime in.)

The Italians had pretty well integrated their system of condottieri, with large companies of Heavy Horse being hired on by various city-states, into their method of warfare. I don't know exactly the system of patronage that was used, but it was well established certainly, and quite effective in pulling together large numbers of skilled horsemen fully equipped for the combat of the day. Such companies lasted well into the middle of the 16th Century, in the pay of either the Spanish/Germans or the French, and were even to be seen north of the Alps on occasion, though they tended to be rather roughly handled by the French whenever they crossed lances.

I hope this helps some,

Cheers!

Gordon

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Hm. The Burgundians? Weren't their Ordinances eventually absorbed into the Spanish/Imperial military organization in the end? Maximilian got the Burgundian inheritance after all--including the armies--and from him it eventually descended to Charles V. They also seem to have made much greater use of foreign mercenary cavalry than the French in the 16th century, so their Ordonnance-derivatives did not get as much spotlight as the French ones did. The lack of opportunities to gain battlefield experience probably made them wilt away a bit faster, with many of the men probably drifting away into the service of other employers.

BTW, Carmagnola was a 15th-century commander, not a 16th-century one, and the tactical milieu of the Italian Wars was significantly different from that of Carmagnola's day. An Italian Wars army, for example, would generally have been much larger than one found a century earlier--and consisted of a larger number of contingents from a larger number of different nations, split into a larger number of specialist roles.

[Rodolfo Martínez]

[Gordon Frye]

Lafayette;

Yes, the Burgundian compagnies d'ordonannce were absorbed into the Habsburg fold, and became the primary Heavy Cavalry for the Spanish Crown's Army of Flanders during the 80-Years War.

Rodolfo;

The Italians kept up their Heavy Cavalry through the 16th Century, though I'm not certain as to in what numbers. The Pope loaned out several companies of Italian Heavy Cavalry to the French Crown during the Wars of Religion in the 1560's and '70's, as did the Spanish Crown of some of their Burgundian compagnies d'ordonannce. Spain had a small number of Heavy Horse during this time, but it was mostly held in reserve in Iberia. Some numbers were sent to Italy during the Italian Wars, though never nearly as many as the French, nor were they ever as high a percentage of the field force. They usually constituted about 10% of any Spanish Cavalry contingent in those wars, as I understand it.

By the middle of the 16th Century, most armies were forced to purchase the services of German Reiter/Pistolier Heavy Cavalry to fill out their numbers, and they constituted a large percentage of French (both Catholic and Protestant), Spanish, English (Henry VIII's "Enterprise of Boulogne") and Dutch armies of the period.

Cheers!

Gordon

[Rodolfo Martínez]

I was told that condottieri stoped in 1550, They transformed into a more nationalized cavalry instead of mercenary ones?, or we are talking about different Italian heavy cavalry?.
I´ve heard about those german horsemen who used to charge while shooting their wheellock pistol like a cowboy-knight hybrid instead of wielding a lance becouse they said that in that time it was a miracle to kill someone with a lance.
About Italian heavy cavalry, did they still used poleaxes during XVI century?

I was browsing Del Tin web, and excuse me if i´m a bit recurrent, but as i like two handers, i´m also interested in their wielders. As i´ve seen that german zweihanders and flamberges are dopplesoldner mercenary´s weapons, i want to know who used the following two handers, both italian ones, if condottieri as dismounted weapon, or who. Thanks, and again excuse me for my recurrence in that subject.

[Gordon Frye]

Rodolfo;

I'm not sure if the Papal Italian Heavy Horse would have exactly qualified as "condottieri", but they were definitely descended from them, and must have still existed in some numbers. They just weren't as much in evidence as the focus of most fighting had shifted North after the 1540's, as the Habsburgs consolidated their holdings in Italy. As far as I am aware, by the 16th Century virtually all Heavy Cavalry had abandoned the notion of dismounting for any sort of combat, and the fully armoured cavalrymen carried lance, with a mace or war hammer slung from the saddle, and wore a sword as last resort. No poleaxes.

Per the Reiters or Pistoliers, there are lots of threads here on myArmoury that deal with them in some detail. Just do a search, and I'm sure you'll be well illuminated (if not overwhelmed) by the information available. Same with the zweihander schwerts.

Cheers!

Gordon

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Not long ago (though before I joined) there was a long debate about the subject of who used the zweihanders, where, when, how, and for what purpose in the myArmoury forums, and it was rife with valuable information about both statistics, techniques, and historical accounts/pictorial representations of the weapon. I'd really suggest you to do a search for it. As for the Reiters, I helped edit this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiter so I can attest that it's not all that bad, except that I'd dearly like to insert more information about famous battles involving the reiters--especially from the Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years' War.

As for dismounting cavalry, the late 15th century also saw a great improvement in the quality of drill and discipline among European heavy cavalry formations as a whole, and the 16th century amply proved their vastly increased effectiveness so they felt less need to dismount. Not surprisingly, some of the nations with less accomplished cavalry forces--Sweden in particular--were still known for occasionally dismounting their heavy cavalry forces. I've said before that sometimes the heavy cavalrymen did fight dismounted in the 16th century but when they were dismounted, they started out dismounted and remained dismounted throughout the battle. No dismounting or remounting during the course of the battle the way the men-at-arms often did in previous centuries.

(If I'm allowed to make a very broad generalization, the consensus is that heavy cavalry generally dismounted when they felt they did not have the power to face their immediate opponents with a strong confidence of victory. The English in the Hundred Years' War, for example, dismounted because they had fewer men-at-arms and what few they had were generally unnerved by the Frenchmen's reputation in mounted encounters. And the example you made of Carmagnola makes it clear that he had tried and failed to face his opponents with a mounted charge before he ordered his men to dismount--much in the way that another Italian commander did in the battle of Arbedo (1422). 16th-century cavalry were generally better drilled, better disciplined, and more confident in facing their enemies, even if this confidence was sometimes misplaced.

It's a very broad and oversimplified generalization, though. The developments were not equal (or even equivalent) everywhere.)

BTW, wasn't there some mention of Hungary? Matthias Corvinus--the king Matyas, son of Janos Hunyadi--did enact some reforms in the late 15th century that established a well-trained and disciplined "Black Army" containing both Hungarian and mercenary regulars. This was largely a continuation and extension of his father's efforts to improve the kingdom's military forces. His successors, though, did not seem to have maintained it very well, and by the time of Mohacs it had largely deteriorated, the disciplined mercenaries gone to find employment with more obliging sovereigns. And after Mohacs it was history. But, as a matter of fact, the Hungarians seem to have retained "knightly" terms like armigeri and caballarii in the military documents they made in Latin. I'm not sure about the significance of this retention, though, since the terms did not seem to have been used in a consistent and easily definable manner.

Argh! Will somebody please call Velimir Vuksic!

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Ah. While we're at it, I'm banging my head on the wall because I forgot to link to this old but totally excellent thread:

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=4373

Read it. Reread it. It's fun to read.

[Rodolfo Martínez]

[Gordon Frye]

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Well, Rodolfo, perhaps what we need is a clarification of the precise point of your question so that we can give better answers as well. What I see from the most recent state of the question is that you were wondering about what kind of weapon the gendarmes/heavy cavalrymen would have carried when fighting dismounted in the 16th century. Is that correct?

In that case, the answer would be that they certainly used whatever came to hand. The better-prepared might have used poleaxes like their predecessors in the 15th century; the ones who fell or extricated themselves from their fallen horse would have taken the thing closet to hand--i.e. the sword hanging on their belt. Whether this sword was a longsword or a one-handed arming sword would have been largely a matter of preference, I think, and like Gordon mentioned there is actually no solid and incontrovertible dividing line between the two. Mind that even the shorter arming sword could usually be used in a two-handed grip as well by handling the pommel. The illustrations in Richards's posts are a case in point. I wouldn't really say those swords were hand-and-a-half swords, but considering the length of their blades and grips I agree with him that those swords are reasonably suited to hand-and-a-half use.

Even the complex-hilted broadsowrds could sometimes be used in two hands. Jacques Callot illustrated some 17th-century cavalrymen wielding their swords this way in battle--on horseback, no less!

So, if you're trying to reconstruct the armor of a 16th-century man-at-arms, whether for fiction, for a history paper, or for planning a set of arms and armor to buy/make, you'd be best served by listing the complete ensemble first. Only then would the arms and armor buffs on these forums would be able to judge what looks off, strange, or wrong, if any.

Now about the Italian sword. I thought it was a zweihander at first because the picture was incomplete and I didn't see much taper in the blade. It would have been much better if you had provided a photograph of the whole sword, because a photograph of only the hilt and upper blade like that can hide a number of important details.

And, of course, saying that a sword is not a zweihander because it's Italian would be weird because the zweihander / bidenhander is not a term used strictly for German swords. The actual shape, length, and conformation of the sword is more important than the language of the naming term--which is why I'd still prefer to see a picture of the whole sword rather than just the upper parts.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Ah. Mea culpa. Considering the length of blade, hilt, and cross alike, those swords you linked to are zweihanders--Italian zweihanders. Like I said, the term is not restricted to swords of German manufacture or in German use. After all, many of the zweihander-toting Landsknechts fought in the Italian Wars, and it would be almost impossible to suppose that there was entirely no cross-fertilization between the two in terms of arms and armor.

BTW, I nearly forgot that we should also take account of the estoc. If it was still in widespread use among the Polish husaria in the 17th century (and even the Hungarian light hussars around the same time), it's not impossible that it also lasted for some time in the armament of the mounted elites in Western Europe.

[Rodolfo Martínez]

[Kel Rekuta]