Battle Studies - Colonel Ardant du Picq

[Felix]

The skill and valor of the Swiss was not a myth.

They were defeated by combined arms armies with arquebuses and artillery, fighting from fortifications. The tactics of pregunpowder warfare were different from gunpowder warfare.

That merely proved that technology changes warfare, which is no surprise. World War I showed the same lesson - that men, no matter how well trained or motivated, or in any numbers, could be broken by superior firepower, trenches, and artillery. This was shown all over the Western Front, and on the Isonzo as well.

Getting back to the title of this thread, the influence of du Picq on WW I was important and in part catastrophic. His emphasis on the importance of superior morale was combined with a long-standing notion that Frenchmen were better in attack than defense, and produced a pre-war doctrine that emphasized offensive tactics, at the same time that the machine gun and rapid-firing breechloading artillery with explosive shells made the battlefield far more dangerous. In the initial Battles of the Frontiers, the French army almost destroyed itself following its Plan 17, hurling men in the open against German technology.

[Mitra]

Skill and valour aren't a myth, invincibility yes: they emerge in a gap zone for the heavy infantry, so at the start the only model for heavy infantry is only the swiss square. They use a good numbers of marksmen and arquibusiers from the burgundian wars, but faced by a good combined force they aren't invincible, at Ponte di Crevola(1487) 5000 swiss are destroyed by a Lombard force of 3000 infantry 100 crossbowmen at horse and 120 lance, losing 2000 dead vs 100-200 italian dead.

The role of light firearms cannot been exaggerated, still in middle XVII century they are considered only a support weapon not decisive in battle as the pikes and the swords of cavalry.

The negative influence of Du Picq on WWI is a misunderstanding due to bad interpretation of his ideas:

COncept express from Du Picq are:

-mass attack vs the deadly power of modern weapons are suicidal, destroy the moral.
-use of skirmishers in attack the shoot best and more precise, they are not easy targets
-The moral effect depends from the material effect
- Not frontal attack, but use of moral effect of a strategic movement
- Reserve in formation for exploit the destructive effect of skirmishers units, with moral effect.

THis not coincide in nothing with the allied tactics or concepts in WWI, the best similitude are wit the german sturmtruppen of 1918, the only true successful tactic in WWI.

[Felix]

I never said invicibility.

I have said that the Swiss were the best shock infantry of their time, and used deep columns, and that is a completely different thing.

What I said from the beginning is that du Picq's work is not a historical survey, and that a complete condemnation of deep formations indicates that du Picq needs to be approached carefully. Du Picq does dismiss deep Greek formations as being a bad thing, without considering how they might provide some benefit; du Picq doesn't consider Swiss deep formations at all (as I recall).

[Mitra]

They are the only shock infantry troop of the period, before the tercio the landsneckt come to efficient level. They use deep columns for pratical and historical motivations, nothing better alternative was possible in renaissance period.
When faced by true linear formations at Breteinfeld the big squares demonstrate their limits.

Du Picq comdemns the idea that the mass of these formations has a own proper offensive strenght, and affirm correctly that smaller unit in multiples lines are a more efficient way to use the infantry. Du Picq book isn't a historical work but a study on the combat, moral and formations for applied this to training of modern forces. Phalanx versus legion is a example of two different typologies of use of men; the swiss dont fight nothing different tactic of heavy infantry, so they dont provide example for Du Picq.

[Felix]

"They are the only shock infantry troop of the period, before the tercio the landsneckt come to efficient level. "

You and I both know this is not true. There were many other types of foot soldier not using missile weapons in this period. None of them were effective enough to decide a battle, unlike the Swiss pikemen.

In the 14th century, there are many examples of shock infantry, starting with the Scots at Bannockburn and the Flemings at Coutrai; de Vries wrote a whole book about "Infantry Warfare in the Early 14th Century". The Hussites waged a long and successful war, using firearms and crossbows but also using flails, spears, and other hand-to-hand weapons.

In 14th century Castile, Nicolas Agrait says this (Journal of Medieval Military History, vol. 3):

"Although the gentes de pie or corps of infantry ... included specialists such as siege engineers, the main division within them was beween the peones or plain footsoldies, and ballesteros or crossbowmen. The peones were generally armed with shortened lances or spears ... Other weapons associated with the footsoldiers included knives and daggers, short swords, maces, hand axes, and guisarmes...."

Clifford Rogers, in the same volume, says this about a Breton/French force fighting the English in 1347 at Restellou (footnote 20):

"Historia Aurea (jones version) says 1,500 men-at-arms, and 2,000 crossbowmen, and 6,000 brigands (light infantry) and "tarasonum" and 30,000 infantry, Bretons and others. ... The figure of 30,000 is clearly a gross exaggeration." Obviously the chronicler thought there were a lot of infantry.

http://www2.let.uu.nl/Solis/anpt/ejos/pdf2/W04.PDF Wright, in discussing the Venetian defense of Nauplion, says the following of page 68:

"Finally, there were zagdari, Greek foot soldiers. They only appear twice in the dispacci ... Minio also mentions "men from the land on foot" (homini de la terra a piedi"): perhaps these were zagdari on good behaviour...

As was mentioned in Chapter One, Minio had the possibility of arming another 3,000- 4,000 men: Venetians, citizens, townsmen, Greeks, even villeins, as circumstances warranted.
There were weapons in the armoury for that purpose -- swords, crossbows, spears, javelins, and cudgels. At the time of the great Ottoman fleet movements in the summer of 1480, Minio gave out at least 500 spears at the call-up."

[Felix]

Furthermore, in England, the longbow was matched by the bill as the weapon of the footsoldier.

At Flodden, the Scots attacked in large pike blocks; the longbows were largely ineffective as the leading ranks of the Scots were dismounted noblemen, armoured in full plate. The Scottish attack was defeated by the English infantry, largely fighting with bills.

In 1547, even after the pike was in general use, an inventory of the Tower of London armoury showed 20,100 pikes, 6,700 bills, and 306 halberds (Phillips, The Anglo-Scots Wars, page 79).

And then there is Machiavelli's evidence in his Art of War.

It is well known he advocated a return to Roman style organization and some Roman tactics. He is ofted quoted about the effect of Spanish sword and shield fighters on pikemen at Ravenna - but you must remember that means the Spanish army had a substantial force of sword-and -shield infantrymen. These are in fact the descendants of the Peones which Alfonso XI was working with in the article I cited above.

Furthermore, Machiavelli's ideal army included a substantial portion of pikemen:

"FABRIZIO: I would take both the Roman arms and the German, and would want half to be armed as the Romans, and the other half as the Germans. For, if in six thousand infantry ((as I shall explain a little later)) I should have three thousand infantry with shields like the Romans, and two thousand pikes and a thousand gunners like the Germans, they would be enough for me; for I would place the pikes either in the front lines of the battle, or where I should fear the cavalry most; and of those with the shield and the sword, I would serve myself to back up the pikes and to win the engagement, as I will show you. So that I believe that an infantry so organized should surpass any other infantry today." Book Two

Of course, the Florentines did raise a substantial infantry force in 1512, which was defeated at Prato.

On the composition of the Burgundian armies, which did include substantial numbers of infantrymen (usually pikes): http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_armies_burg.html

[Mitra]

All the infantry you talks are or marksmen or adopted defensive or reactive tactics often combined with archers or cavalry attacks, rarely they take offensive alone, with alternate results. Only with the swiss the infantry becomes a true offensive forces, and for this their tactic was copied by other forces.

At Flodden the Scots use the swiss tactic imported by the French allied with instructor, but they lost cohesion because the terrain broken, the archers hit the ranks and the billmen enters in the gaps to finish the work.

THe spanish after Ravenna relegate the sword and bucklers to disturb role during the push of pikes, and gradually the tercios leave it completly.

Machiavelli's ideas are in part observations of his time situation but in part idealistic elaborations of classical works, not pratical in his time, like the Florentine militia a true failure a Prato