At the beginning of the war many musketeers carried a forked stick or rest to help support the musket an aid accuracy, but these were soon abandoned. As the war went on the matchlock was increasingly replaced by the more reliable ‘firelock’ or flintlock musket, which used a piece of flint striking a steel in the mechanism to create sparks, igniting the priming charge.Ī musket could hit and kill a person at up to 300 yards but was inaccurate at anything over 50 yards, hence musketeers being gathered together to fire in massed volleys to create a hail of lead that was bound to hit an opponent. The musket most commonly used was the matchlock, which was fired by touching off a priming charge with a piece of burning slow-match cord. Musketeers were armed with a musket, a simple firearm around 4.5 feet (1.4 metres) in length which fired a lead musket ball weighing about 2/3 oz (18g) using a gunpowder charge. They were formed into blocks of men that could present a forest of pikes to an opponent, ‘charged’ or levelled against the face against other infantry, or more importantly form a hedgehog of pikes or ‘schiltron’ which musketeers could crouch and shelter under to defend against a cavalry charge. They were armed with a short sword for hand-to-hand fighting, and a pike, a spear 16 to 18 feet (4.7 – 5.5 metres) in length, made of ash with an iron spear head. As it was quite cumbersome, this was rapidly abandoned, and for much of the war most pikemen would have little more than a helmet to protect them. For most of the war there would be two musketeers for every pikeman, and by its end the New Model Army perhaps had a ratio of 3 or 4 musketeers to a pikeman.Īt the beginning of the war many pikemen were equipped with armour, usually a back and breastplate and often thigh plates or ‘tassets’. Infantry regiments usually had two types of soldier: pikemen and musketeers. In battle, each regiment would be formed up with a block of pikemen in the centre and equal bodies of musketeers on either flank. In reality, with a lack of recruits, most regiments were between 400 – 600 men. Infantrymen were organised in regiments commanded by a colonel, with each regiment sub-divided into ten or twelve companies of 100 men, each with its own flag or colour. The Cromwell Museum displays examples of the sorts of equipment carried by soldiers during the English Civil War, some from our own collections and others kindly loaned to us by the Royal Armouries. ![]() Others figures such as Oliver Cromwell had little or no experience at the start of the war and had to learn by experience. Some senior officers on both sides, such as Prince Rupert or Sir Thomas Fairfax, had gained prior military experience in the Thirty Years’ War on the Continent. ![]() As the wars went on, both sides introduced conscription, which was extremely unpopular and many men deserted. As such, both Royalists and Parliamentarians had to ask for volunteers to fill their armies, though many noblemen who raised regiments forced their tenants and servants to join up. Every county had a local militia or ‘Trained Bands’ that could be called up in time of war, but many of these split between the different sides. The last time that the country had experienced anything close to a full scale war had been the threat of the Spanish Armada 70 years before. There were no permanent armies in Britain when the English Civil War started in 1642.
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