Research
MethodsWorks Cited
Infantry
Introduction
Infantry CommandsPike
PosturesAnalysis
Conclusions
Equipment
Investigation into commands for weapons postures and drill maneuvers constitutes one of the principle areas of research for the SRS. Our goal has been to assemble in one location a set of commands representative of those used in the last two decades of the 16th century through the middle of the 17th century. As such, these commands should be appropriate for those reenacting the late Renaissance period, the 30 Years War, and the English Civil War.
To collect this information, ten different primary source documents from the years 1597 through 1638 have been reviewed (although the edition of William Barriffe's work examined here was published in 1661, it was first published in 1635 with virtually identical content). Additional texts are available to our research team and will be reviewed as time allows.
It must be admitted, that prior to 1597, we can find no evidence of concise commands, of any sort, as represented in these pages. Many military treatises were written during the 16th century describing a variety of aspects of contemporary warfare, but apparently the idea to set down actual commands into a training manual did not occur to them. The credit for this idea must go to Johann II van Nassau. His hand written list of actual commands is the earliest that we can document, and gives us a slim, but solid, toehold in the Elizabethan era.
Over the 64 year period (extending to the 1661 edition of Barriffe) covered in our review, there was a high degree of similarity in the contents of the texts. This is less surprising when you understand that Renaissance military studies, largely begun by Niccolo Machiavelli, spawned a renewed interest in classic Greek and Roman military techniques. Late 16th century military theorists such as Sir Clement Edmondes and John Bingham undertook translations of original Greek and Roman texts, and the basic elements of Greek and Roman drill techniques are quite evident in 16-17th century manuals.
Despite these similarities, however, our research suggests that the concept that a single uniform manner of conducting drill did not actually exist. Several authors mention, in fact, that variations were common, and many commanders employed their own methods.
Although the similarities in commands were readily apparent, the idea behind reviewing many texts was to ascertain if there were significant differences. If one work had stood out as the most complete and typical we might have chosen to just use it as our model alone. This is what Research Associate Barry Siler has done for his animated website highlighting the work of Colonel William Barriffe. In Barry's case this is completely appropriate, since that was the expressed goal of his project. For the general SRS review, however, we have found that, in spite of the fact that there is much in common among all the reviewed texts, there is a high degree of irregularity within the work of any single author.
For this reason the recommended commands which have resulted from our review are occasionally composites of several different sources, and sometimes have been modified or "corrected" to comply with rules which an author himself has set down, but failed to follow. In many ways the SRS commands are more internally consistent and predictable than any one of the primary sources which inspired them. In the context of the SRS, it is particularly is crucial to be able to issue a command with predictability and consistency. Here we may surpass our forbearers, for no single source which we have visited can be described as entirely predictable or consistent. In this sense we must assume the role of the field commander who has chosen his preferred method, and sticks with it.
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