A History of War in 100 Battles

by Richard Overy

  It may have been the novelty of the Swedish organization that prompted Tilly to destroy the Saxons first. Beginning in early afternoon, the cavalry on his left under Pappenheim assaulted the Swedish right, while the tercios lumbered forward and then turned right towards the Saxons. Tilly hoped to outflank the Swedes on both wings and crush the centre like a nutcracker. Pappenheim immediately discovered the strength of the new Swedish tactics. As he tried to outflank the line, Gustavus stretched it further with the reserves. The Imperial horse found that wherever they went they were met by a wall of musket and artillery fire, interspersed with violent sallies by the Swedish cavalry. On the other wing, however, the Saxons folded up; their cavalry was routed and the pyramid crushed. Johann Georg fled with his battered remnants from the field. What followed was decisive. Tilly ordered his tercios to turn and crush the exposed Swedish flank, but as they did so, the Swedish commander there, Field Marshal Gustav Horn, rapidly wheeled his entire force at right angles so that his 4,000 men now faced the 20,000 Imperial troops trying to manoeuvre into position. Firing with all his cannon and muskets, Horn ordered his foot and horse to charge the enemy. The tercios were clumsy on the move and were not yet ready to meet an assault; their numbers proved a handicap as they crushed together, unable to use their pikes effectively. Horn brought up reserves as planned from the second line and Gustavus sent reinforcements. The Swedish right had now routed Pappenheim and swung round to seize the Imperial guns, which were then fired on the disordered tercios. They fled in panic, and the elderly Tilly, wounded in the fray, joined the flight.

  The battle was an overwhelming vindication of the new tactics of the line developed by Gustavus Adolphus. There were 7,600 Imperial dead, 6,000 prisoners and a further 3,000 who surrendered when the Swedes caught up with them at Leipzig. Tilly lost an estimated two-thirds of his entire army. Swedish casualties amounted to 2,100. Emperor Ferdinand was so alarmed when news reached him that he contemplated flight from Vienna to Graz, or even Italy, but the Swedes did not invade his capital, making instead for Bavaria and the Rhineland to rest and replenish supplies. In hostile territory, the Swedes proved less disciplined than their king’s instructions suggested, committing regular atrocities against the local population. Gustavus and Tilly did not long survive their memorable duel. Tilly died of tetanus in April 1632 after he had been hit by a cannon ball. Gustavus Adolphus was killed at the Battle of Lützen in November 1632, shot in the shoulder, then in the back, and finally as he lay bloody and covered in mud, shot in the head. His flexible, combined-arms line survived for a while, but like all innovations, it was overtaken by the inevitable evolution of both battle tactics and technology.

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  No. 39 BATTLE OF NASEBY

  14 June 1645

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  The English Civil War between King Charles I and the forces of the English Parliament was in its third year when Parliament finally approved the creation of what was called the New Model Army, set up in an attempt to revive its flagging military fortunes. In truth there was not much that was new about it in terms of the tactics, technology or organization involved. The innovation was in the name. Instead of three separate Parliamentary armies, none of which could inflict a decisive defeat on royal forces, the New Model Army was given new leaders, a unitary organization and a fresh spirit.

  The decision to create a new army arose from the strategic stagnation on the Parliamentary side caused by the division of its forces and the many political and religious arguments that weakened its cause. Charles and his German generals, Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, were beginning to achieve a military advantage. In December 1644, the cumbersome twenty-five-strong Parliamentary ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’, which managed the war effort, agreed to establish a New Model Army which would unite the three separate armies in the field and create a solid force of 22,000 men (6,600 cavalry, 14,400 foot and 1,000 dragoons, or horse infantry), all to be raised from the Parliamentary counties in the east and south of England. To give the army some professional leadership, a Self-Denying Ordinance was introduced into Parliament, preventing Members of Parliament from also holding army command. The army was formally constituted on 27 January 1645, under the command of two men who had proved themselves able and resourceful officers: Sir Thomas Fairfax became commander-in-chief and Major General Philip Skippon commander of the infantry.

  Only after weeks of argument did the existing commanders consent to stand down and allow Fairfax to organize his new command. Extensive supplies and large bodies of men flowed in during the early spring, while Fairfax instituted tough discipline to reduce the number of desertions and to instil in the men a sense of purpose. Executions or beatings were introduced for looting or dereliction of duty, but at the same time more regular pay was instituted for the troops. Even then Parliament only gave Fairfax the right to command on his own behalf in June 1645, shortly before battle was joined; and only on 10 June was the MP Oliver Cromwell, who had managed to win exemption from the Self-Denying Ordinance, made Lieutenant Commander of Horse, in charge of the cavalry. Fairfax promoted men who had proven military worth, and Cromwell, as it turned out, was an inspired choice. With his troop of 900 ‘Ironsides’, well-trained and mounted men, Cromwell was to play a major part in the battle that unfolded in the middle of June.

  It was not clear where the first test of the New Model Army would take place. Both the king and Parliament continued to divide their forces to cope with local sieges or military crises, but in late May, confident that there was nothing about this New Model Army that could really threaten the royal forces, Charles and Rupert set out to seek battle. On 31 May, they captured and brutally sacked the Parliamentary city of Leicester and then moved south in force towards Northamptonshire. The royalist army failed to realize that Fairfax had now consolidated his scattered forces and was close by, near the small town of Naseby. The discovery was made on 13 June and the king and his commanders finally decided on a fight. The two armies closed towards each other and the following day drew up in battle order.

  There is still much dispute about the exact size of the forces opposed at Naseby. The royal army was somewhere between 9,000 and 12,000, consisting of infantry and two large forces of cavalry; Fairfax had perhaps between 15,000 and 17,000, divided into infantry, two cavalry wings (the left under General Henry Ireton; the right under Cromwell) and a force of 1,000 mounted dragoons under Colonel John Okey. After early morning manoeuvring, the armies faced each other from two low ridges north of Naseby, the Parliamentary army largely concealing itself from view by forming up below the brow of their ridge to hide its size and composition. The foot on both sides carried either long pikes or halberds, 4.5 to 5.5 metres (15 to 18 feet) in length, or heavy matchlock muskets, which a skilled musketeer could fire at the rate of one shot per minute, with mixed effect. Enemy foot soldiers were difficult to break with musket fire, but a cavalry charge could be disrupted as horses and men were hit by random balls. The cavalry on both sides had light armour, pistols and heavy swords. Artillery was present but played, it seems, almost no part in the fight. The New Model Army differed hardly at all from its adversary, though part of it may well have been better trained. What did distinguish it was the shift over the course of 1645 to the idea of merit as the qualification for command.

  The exact chronology of the battle differs in the many seventeenth-century accounts. Recent archaeological research suggests that Okey and his dragoons, concealed behind a hedge at right angles to the enemy, moved towards the royal army and opened fire on the right wing of the cavalry. Other accounts have the battle starting when Prince Rupert led his horse in a charge at Ireton on the Parliamentary left, throwing it into disorder until he was fired on by Okey’s musketeers. Rupert’s charge was pell-mell, taking him and his horsemen off the battlefield as far as Fairfax’s baggage train, where skirmishers seem to have held them at bay. The royal infantry then charged the Parliamentary centre, pushing it back towards the reserves, and the battle stood in the balance u
ntil Cromwell led his cavalry in a fierce charge against the horsemen on the royalist left, routing them comprehensively and then wheeling round to attack the royalist foot from the rear. Ireton’s men had regrouped to join Cromwell and between them and the Parliamentary infantry, roused to greater efforts by a bare-headed Fairfax at the thick of the fight, the royal army was crushed. Charles wanted to rally his reserves and charge into the mêlée but was restrained from risking almost certain death or capture. The remnants of the royal army fled north, away from the destruction, leaving an estimated 1,000 dead and 4,000 prisoners.

  The English general Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) is shown here in battle armour. Cromwell’s work in creating the New Model Army during the English Civil War contributed to the victory of Parliament over the king.

  The Parliamentary forces lost fewer than 700 dead, and gained all the king’s baggage, artillery and private papers. They also found hundreds of women, chiefly army wives and camp followers; assuming them to be prostitutes of the royal army, a hundred of them were slaughtered and others mutilated in the most savage episode of the day. The impact of Naseby was profound, and the king surrendered within a year. In the 1650s, Cromwell, who had distinguished himself at the battle as a tough and disciplined commander, became Protector of England. The New Model Army continued after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 in the guise of the Horse and Coldstream Guards.

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  No. 40 BATTLE OF POLTAVA

  28 June 1709

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  In late June 1709, a large Swedish army led by the ambitious young king Charles XII, which had swept into Russia to enjoy one victory after another, met its match at the hands of a Russian army under the command of the reforming tsar, Peter the Great. The victory went against the expectations of Europe, where the martial skills and courage of the Swedish forces enjoyed a formidable reputation. The Swedes had expected another victory against an enemy they always underrated. Peter, on the other hand, knew that he had to turn his unskilled peasant army into a real fighting force. The explanation for Russian victory lies in Peter’s use of mass artillery. Its success marked the opening of an age in which large guns came to dominate the battlefield.

  This painting of the Battle of Poltava in 1709 by Pierre-Denis Martin was commissioned by Tsar Peter the Great to mark his decisive victory over the Swedish Army of Charles XII. Russian success was brought about by the development of extensive and effective artillery fire.

  The battle came at the climax of the long conflict known as the Great Northern War. Tsarist Russia was the one remaining obstacle to Swedish domination of a large area of northeastern Europe. The Swedes began a major offensive in 1707, which took them on a long and bloody march across present-day Poland and Belarus, and into Ukraine. The Russian army refused to stand and face a major engagement and used harassing, guerrilla tactics to exact a persistent toll of Swedish forces. Charles wanted a major engagement because he was confident that in a pitched battle his disciplined troops would overwhelm the Russian masses. In May 1709, his forces arrived at the small town of Poltava in southern Ukraine, 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) away from the Swedish homeland. Here they laid siege and waited to see if the Russians would seek battle.

  Tsar Peter now moved his large army closer, crossing a river north of Poltava and, on 26 June, setting up a large fortified camp a few miles distant. His engineers began work on a system of fortified redoubts on the approach to the camp. Peter brought with him around 25,000 foot soldiers and 9,000 cavalry, with numerous Cossack irregulars in support. Above all, he had more than 100 pieces of artillery and large supplies of cannon balls, grenades and canisters – deadly projectiles of wood or iron containing scraps of metal, flint, lead shot or nails, capable of killing and maiming many soldiers at once. Russian artillery was reorganized to make it more flexible on the battlefield: cavalry units had their own mounted artillery to support them in action, while regimental commanders of infantry also had control over their own artillery, moving it around the battle to support their troops. Heavier artillery, capable of firing 10-kilogram (20-pound) or 20-kilogramme (40-pound) projectiles, was less mobile but could be concentrated to provide devastating long-range fire. Against this novel field of fire, the Swedes, whose king preferred his men to fight rapid, mobile contests, unburdened by artillery, were armed with just four three-pound guns and a few ammunition wagons.

  Battle was not yet inevitable, but having come so far, with dangers all around them, the Swedish leaders could see that they had to inflict a decisive defeat or be worn down piecemeal on the wide Ukrainian plain. Charles and his leading field marshal, Carl Gustav Rehnsköld, decided to move from Poltava under cover of night in four large columns, with the cavalry following, and fall on the Russians before they awoke. The plan was to sweep through the redoubts, with their dangerous guns, and then for the cavalry to destroy the Russian horse on the flank, while the infantry stormed and destroyed the Russian camp. The reality was a tactical disaster. At night the infantry found it difficult to form up in their units; they arrived late in front of the Russian redoubts, and then had to wait for both wings of cavalry, which had lost their way in the dark. A Russian scout spotted them in the murky dawn and the element of surprise was completely lost. Fire began to pour onto the Swedish army. Two soldiers next to the king were killed by a cannon ball. Charles had no alternative now but to order the advance. At 4 a.m., the blue and yellow army began to move.

  For the Swedes the situation went from bad to worse. The first two redoubts were stormed and their guns captured, though not spiked. The third redoubt was more sturdily built and had a deep ditch. Repeated efforts to storm it ended in failure and piles of Swedish corpses lay below the makeshift walls. Heavy gunfire cut gory swathes through the Swedish ranks. The Swedish left wing, under command of General Carl Gustav Roos, became stuck in the redoubts while the rest of the Swedish line skirted them and moved towards the Russian camp. As a result, one-third of the Swedish infantry lost contact with the rest. The Russians reoccupied the redoubts that had first been captured and turned the guns round to fire at the rear of Roos’s force. The Swedish left was surrounded and worn down. No quarter was given on either side. Roos finally negotiated surrender for himself and the handful of men left, a mere 390 out of the 2,600 men he had set out with.

  The rest of the Swedish right moved towards the Russian camp until they realized that the left wing was missing. Rehnsköld called a halt to wait for the remaining cavalry and infantry to reform, hoping that Roos would join them. After a long delay it was evident that one-third of the Swedish army had been lost. The Russians waiting in the camp were puzzled by Swedish inaction, but in the end Tsar Peter ordered them to form up and march out to engage with the enemy. They were sprinkled with holy water as they marched past their monarch, battalion after battalion, with artillery pieces in the gaps between them. Cavalry protected each flank and heavy guns stood behind them, ready to fire their lethal missiles over the Russian ranks. The Swedish infantry now numbered around 4,000 against 22,000 Russians. They were ordered forward into attack as the only method they knew. Russian grapeshot, canisters and balls opened up a terrible fusillade, smothering the battlefield with a smoky fog. The Swedish ranks thinned, but marched on. ‘It was like a heavy hail from Heaven,’ recalled one of the Swedish survivors; hundreds were mown down or mutilated by the hail. Somehow enough got through to begin to push the Russian tide back on the right of the line, but the Swedish cavalry, crushed behind the foot soldiers at the start of the advance, could not organize their units in time to support their front line. On the left, the weight of fire broke the Swedish line and soldiers began to panic. What had briefly looked like an unlikely Swedish victory now turned into a spectacular rout.

  The Swedish commanders swiftly lost control of the battlefield entirely, covered as it was by dense smoke and islands of disorganized resistance. The Russian elite cavalry, under the command of Prince Alexander Menshikov, swept round the faltering Swedish line and atta
cked it from the rear. The line split apart, the left running in disordered flight, the right increasingly isolated by a press of Russian infantry and horse. Those who were caught in the trap were slaughtered almost to a man, the Russian infantry scenting victory, eager to kill any survivors and loot their weapons and clothes. The battlefield descended into a terrible chaos, but it was the Swedish soldiers who lay dead and dying in heaps, stripped naked, torn apart by the almost 1,500 rounds fired by the Russian guns. The remnants of the Swedish army, grouped around the wounded figure of the king, staggered back to their base camp and the baggage train. Peter did not order a large-scale pursuit, which would have resulted in complete annihilation, but instead ordered a halt in order to celebrate a triumphant victory. The ragged remains of the army were allowed to move away to the south. Charles hoped to reach Ottoman territory, but the Russians caught up with him at the village of Perovolochna. The king managed to cross the river there and make good his escape, but the only senior Swedish commander left, the infantry general Adam Lewenhaupt, after consulting with his men, surrendered to Menshikov on 1 July. Except for 1,300 men, many wounded and sick, who left with the king, all the other Swedes went into captivity. Sweden’s army disappeared.

  At Poltava the Swedes lost half the army, killed, wounded or captured. The rest went into captivity three days later. The thousands of captured Swedes were kept prisoner and only slowly returned to Sweden, the last thirty-six years after the battle. Swedish power was broken permanently. The Russians lost just 1,345 on the battlefield. Thanks to the devastating effects of the massed artillery, the ‘primitive’ army of Russia had become a force to be reckoned with. Poltava marked the beginning of the long and painful ascent of the Russian superpower.