Great, stone castles with towers, moats, drawbridges and battlements, have always been one of the key images which come to mind when people think of Medieval Europe. As children, we often dreamt about living in a castle, with its grand halls, dark passageways, cozy chambers and spooky dungeons, but many of us forget that the primary purpose of a castle was to serve as a defensive fortress and as such, they were probably not the nicest places to live in. So, what were they like?

The First Castles.

The first castles that appeared at the end of the Dark Ages are very different in appearance to what most people percieve a castle to be. This is largely because they were made of wood, instead of stone. What…Yes, wood, not stone. Wood. ‘Why?’ you ask? Well, because wood was more plentiful, it was easier to work with and easier to transport. The first kind of castle was known as the ‘motte and bailey’ castle. But what is a ‘motte’ and a ‘bailey’? They were the two key components of early castle-design. The ‘motte’ was the mound or hill upon which the castle keep was constructed. The ‘bailey’ was the walled-in plateau that existed at the bottom of the motte. Within this walled bailey, civilians and soldiers could live in relative safety, with houses, shops and other necessities safely protected by the wall built around their village.

A motte and bailey castle. The motte is the hill on the right, with the keep on top. The bailey is the walled in village at the bottom

When a motte-and-bailey castle was attacked, civilians fled from the bailey, across a wooden bridge which spanned a ditch or moat, and up the side of the motte, to the keep at the top. Defending soldiers would attempt to defend the bailey first, shooting arrows at enemy soldiers gathered outside the bailey walls. Should the bailey be breeched, defenders would retreat across the bridge (destroying it as they went), and up the sides of the motte. Attackers would be forced to go into the ditch or across the moat in order to climb the motte. This put them at a disadvantage, as the defenders, higher up, could shoot them down with bows and arrows.

While the motte-and-bailey castle was effective against small-scale attacks, it was easily overrun by larger groups of enemies. It was soon evident that something more permanent was needed if people desired a safe place to retreat to, in times of warfare.

Stone Castles.

The weaknesses of the motte-and-bailey castle must’ve been evident to their constructors pretty early-on in castle-building history, because while there were hundreds of these, easy-to-build castles all over the place, they didn’t last very long. Indeed, by 1068, the first stone castles started being built in Britain. Wood was cheap, wood was easy to build with, it was easy to transport…but it was susceptable to fire and water. Fire burned away at the wooden walls, and rainwater could rot the wood until it was too weak to be used in making practical defensive walls. Stone, on the other hand, was heavier, harder to cut, harder to transport, but it was a hell of a lot stronger than wood, for rather obvious reasons. The oldest surviving stone castle in Great Britain, Chepstow Castle, was the one built in 1068, and it is the oldest stone castle still surviving in Britain.

Chepstow Castle in Wales, the oldest surviving stone castle in Great Britain.

Now that castles were becoming larger and grander and above all – permanent structures – more care and thought started being put into how they were designed and constructed. We mustn’t forget that a castle’s main purpose was to serve as a defensive fort in times of warfare. So, how was a castle built to make it easily defendable?

Stone Castles – Defensive Features and How Castles were Defended.

1. The Moat.

Every castle has to have a moat! How could you not have a castle without a moat? They’re so wonderful in all their…moaty goodness! Seriously, though, not all castles had moats, it was fact of life, unfortunately. While a moat could make a castle incredibly easy to defend, the truth is that they were not easy to construct. Most moats were shovelled out by hand, or builders surveying the land took advantage of natural depressions or gullies in the landscape, such as building near a dry riverbed. Diverting a nearby river to flood low-lying land, or simply having the depression fill up with water over time, was how most moats were constructed or filled.

Once they were there, however, a moat made a castle ridiculously easy to defend. In a day and age when most people couldn’t swim, attacking a castle which had beautiful, moatside views from its windows, was nearly impossible. To get across, you’d have to row over in a boat, keeping your back to the defenders, who could shoot you between the shoulderblades with arrows. And once you got to the castle walls, you still had to get over them. And certainly by the time you arrived at the castle, the defenders would have hauled up the drawbridge at the gatehouse, which was the only practical way in. It’s no wonder that people loved building castles with moats so much, they made the structures themselves so much easier to defend.

But like I said, not all castles had moats. And if it didn’t have a moat, how else did you protect your castle?

2. The Curtain Wall.

The curtain wall was a massive, defensive wall built around the keep (the main castle building). Curtain walls were truly enormous; they could be up to twenty feet thick and twice as high as they were wide. Most curtain walls had wide walkways along the tops of them, so that defending soldiers could stand up there and shoot down at the advancing enemy, or pour or drop stuff down on them to kill them.

3. Battlements.

Another famous castle design-feature…battlements! The purpose of battlements was to provide protection to defending soldiers who were up on the curtain-wall walkways, shooting or throwing things down at the enemy. Battlements are actually made up of two distinct features: Merlons and Crenels. The ‘merlon’ is the big chunk of stone on the battlements which you could take cover behind. The crenels were the gaps between these stones through which you could shoot at the enemy. Some merlons had special holes built into them, called loopholes or arrow-slits. These enabled defending crossbowmen to shoot their crossbow-bolts through the merlons into the enemy hordes below, while remaining perfectly safe behind a big stone block while shooting through a hole with an outside diameter of a beer-mug. Arrow-slits and loopholes were often conically-shaped so that they allowed the defender a wide field of fire, but presented the attacking enemy with only a tiny hole to shoot at.

4. The Gatehouse.

A Curtain Wall is only as strong as its weakest gatehouse. The gate is the weak-point in any defensive wall, so medieval architects built these entranceways to be as easily defendable as possible, with multiple gates, doors and other features which made them strong, easy to defend and hard to attack.

The first defensive element was the gate itself, a massive, wooden door, usually bolted shut with massive wooden beams to brace the door and to prevent easy entry. The bracing that the heavy wooden bolts provided, made it hard for battering-rams to smash the door down. They also absorbed some of the shock from the ramming.

If the door was broken, there were still plenty of other defensive features in a gatehouse. Most gatehouses would also have a gate (usually two of them) called a portcullis. A portcullis is a lattice gate made of wood and usually strengthened with strips of iron and nails. They were opened by raising them on pulleys and winches, and closed by dropping them down. The metal strips hammered onto the wooden gates made them fireproof, but it also added much-needed strength to the gate, without compromising its weight. When a gate might have to be raised or lowered quickly, it was important that it was made as light as possible.

The latticework in the portcullis’s construction meant that defending soldiers had holes in the gate through which they could shoot at the enemy, but, like with the arrow-slits in the battlements, enemies couldn’t shoot back. Gatehouses usually had two portcullises, one behind the other. The first reason for this is rather obvious – to provide for greater security. The second reason is perhaps not so obvious.

A closed portcullis

A common tactic in siege warfare was to open the gates to the castle and practically welcome the enemy inside. This was an old trick, but it was one that was deployed often, and when you read what happens next, you’ll see why defenders loved doing it so much.

In the event of the main door being smashed open by a battering ram, enemy soldiers would charge into the gatehouse. All doors leading into the entranceway would be locked from the inside, so that the enemy soldiers would be huddled in the ‘tunnel’ produced by the gatehouse’s wide walls and roof. Once enough soldiers had entered the gatehouse, the first portcullis was quickly dropped down, trapping the men between the first and second portcullis.

If you go into a medieval castle today and pass under the gatehouse, take a look upwards. You might see several large holes in the ceiling of the entranceway. They’re not building-mistakes…these are called ‘murder-holes’, and their name directly reflects their purpose.

Murder-Holes in the ceiling of a castle gatehouse

Once the enemy soldiers were trapped between the two portcullises, defenders in the upper levels of the gatehouse would pour things through the murder-holes, to kill the closely-packed soldiers below. It could be heavy rocks, scalding hot sand or cauldrons of boiling water. Contrary to popular belief, oil, which was a scarce commodity in Medieval Europe, was not poured through the murder-holes. It was so valuable that even though it could be heated so hot that it would flash-fry the trapped intruders like a bunch of chicken-wings, it was too valuable a resource to waste during a siege.

5. Towers.

Despite what fairy-tales and movies might give us to believe, towers were used for much more than just locking up fair maidens for tall, strapping knights to rescue. During a siege, a castle tower could be used to signal to approaching allies or reinforcements outside the castle, or it could be used as a command-post, from which superiors could direct their defending soldiers to various parts of the castle, if they saw the enemy army approaching. They also provided execellent vantage-points for shooting at enemy soldiers far below. Towers were often built with clockwise-spiralling staircases, this was so that the defender had the advantage when going up the stairs. A defender would be backing up the stairs, with his sword in his right-hand, with his body protected by the stairway’s central column. The attacker would have his sword-swings blocked by the column and he would have to expose more of his body to the defender, in order to get a decent thrust, which put him at a disadvantage.

6. Castle Grounds.

Really elaborate castles, called ‘concentric’ castles, started being built in the 1200s. These were real masterpieces. Castles within castles. A concentric castle consisted of numerous curtain walls (usually two or three), and a large, central keep. The outer curtain-wall was lower than the inner curtain-wall so that defenders further back, could shoot arrows or bolts over the heads of their fellow soldiers into the grounds outside the castle. Also, the ground between the two walls, should the outer wall be breeched, could be turned into a massive killing-field. Enemy soldiers, with nowhere to hide and duck for cover, would be massacred by defending archers, who shot at them from both walls.

Continued from Part I, above.

Attacking a Castle.

Considering that castles were so vast, intimidating and well-defended, how did invading armies ever hope to break into them and win a siege? They used siege-engines.

A siege-engine is a massive machine used to bust your way into a castle. There were four main siege engines:

Battering-Ram.

From Medieval.Castles.org.

The battering-ram was used to beat down the castle door. A ram could be anything. Really simple rams were just massive logs carried by dozens of men, who would slam it constantly into a castle door in the hopes that it would splinter and break open. If this proved ineffective, invaders could use a more effective ram, which was housed inside a wheeled, wooden frame. This type of ram was massive, usually made of wood or stone. It was slung up on rope slings suspended inside the wooden frame. The frame had wheels to make it more manuverable and the rope slings made the ram easier to move and smash against the door. These more advanced battering-rams could also have rooves (made of wood or animal-hide) above them, to protect the soldiers manning the battering-ram, from things either fired or thrown on them from defenders on the walltops above.

Trebuchet.

Pronounced ‘Tre-buh-shay’, this siege-engine worked by a system of counterweights. Mounted in a wheeled, wooden frame, the trebuchet consisted of a long, wooden arm. At one end of the arm was a heavy counterweight. At the other end, was a rope net. The projectile (say, a boulder) was put into the net, and a securing rope was released. The heavy counterweight swung down, bringing the arm up, which rotated on a pivot. The momentum fired the projectile either against, or over the castle wall, destroying everything in its path.

Catapault.

Everyone knows what a catapault is. A big siege engine which flings things at the enemy. These worked by winding back the catapault arm and putting the projectile in metal bowl or basket at the end of the catapault arm. The projectile might be a boulder, several rocks or even the carcass of a dead animal, in a form of medieval biological warfare. In one siege battle, the corpses of people who had died from the Black Death, were catapaulted over a city wall, in the hopes that the defenders would catch the plague and die a horrible death. At the right time, a securing rope or pin was either untied or released, and the catapault fired its projectile either at, or over the castle wall.

Siege Tower.

The siege tower was an enormous, wooden tower on wheels. They were loaded with soldiers, and then pushed up against the walls of castles. To prevent siege towers from getting close to a castle, architects tried to build their castles on hills, where siege-towers would be useless. But if a tower did get right up to a castle wall, a ramp at the top of the tower was lowered onto the wall and enemy soldiers charged off the tower and onto the top of the curtain wall.

Examples of all four of these siege engines in action, can be seen in the Battle of Minas Tirith, in the final “Lord of the Rings” trilogy installment: ‘The Return of the King’.

Other ways of getting into a Castle.

Undermining.

Today, if someone has ‘undermined’ you, it means that they’ve done something which has rendered all your actions or precautions useless. 800 years ago, undermining was actually a way to break into a castle.

First of all: Undermining is not tunneling to get under the walls and into the castle grounds. No. Undermining was a bit more complex than just digging under the wall to get out the other side. This is how it worked:

Soldiers burrowed a tunnel under a castle wall or tower. Having dug the tunnel underneath (which would be shored up with wood), soldiers got out of there, while filling in the tunnel with more wood as they left. Once they were out, they set the wood on fire. Once all the wood inside the tunnel had burnt to ash, what was supposed to happen was that the tunnel collapsed. Once this had taken place, the structural integrity of the tower or wall burrowed under, would have been severely weakened. The lack of a proper foundation meant that the wall or tower could collapse when the tunnel did, which gave intruders a way into the castle.

The Petard.

The petard isn’t really a siege engine, but it was something which attackers did use to try and gain entrance to a castle. A petard is a type of bomb, which came into being in the 16th century with the rise of gunpowder in the 1500s. It was an explosive-device made of iron and wood. The iron part was shaped like a bucket, and this was filled with gunpowder. Once it was full of powder, the wooden backing-board was fastened over the top, to stop the powder spilling out. Once the petard was made, it was given to the unfortunate petardier’s assistant (a petardier is the man who makes the petards), who would have to take it and run across the field to the enemy castle gates and fasten this contraption onto it.

A petardier’s assistant running away after having lit the fuse on the petard.

Once it was fastened on, a match-cord fuse was shoved into a small touch-hole in the side of the petard’s iron gunpowder-container, and was then lit. The petardier then tried to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. Petards were incredibly dangerous and they could blow up without warning. Assuming everything went to plan, the fuse burnt into the petard, it set off the approximately ten pounds of gunpowder inside the petard, which blasted a hole in the castle door. If the poor petardier’s assistant didn’t make it away in time (assuming he made it to the door at all, because musketeers would be shooting at him the whole time), he could be blown up along with his bomb. It is from this rather dangerous explosive device, that we get the phrase “hoist by his own petard”, which means to be caught up in the results of your own foul deeds. Of course, 400 years ago, a petardier’s assistant was literally hoist (that is, thrown into the air), by the explosion of his own petard if he didn’t get away in time.

The End of a Siege.

A siege ended when either the attacking enemy was dead or too exhausted to carry on, meaning that the castle had either held out against its enemies, or had successfully repelled an invasion, or when the defenders inside the castle were dead, when the enemy outside had successfully breeched the castle’s defenses.

If you’ve ever watched movies such as ‘The Patriot’, with Mel Gibson, or any movies made about battles of the American Revolutionary War or the Napoleonic wars, you may have noticed that 200 years ago, army officers didn’t seem to have many brains. How could they expect to win a battle if all they did was line up their men in rows, facing the enemy, creating nothing but a big, fat target for enemy soldiers to shoot at?

On the surface, watching a reenactment of an 18th or 19th century battle, such as those which would’ve been fought during the American War of Independence, the War of 1812 or the Napoleonic wars of the 1810s, looks like a bloody waste of time. All they’re doing is shooting at each other until everyone’s dead. How the hell did one side ever expect to win against another?

The Weapons.

To understand how and why battles back then were fought the way they were, you had to understand the types of weapons that these battles were fought with. Back in the 1700s and the early 1800s, the main infantry weapon was a firearm known as the flintlock musket. The musket is easy to use, but it’s slow to reload and is generally inaccurate beyond a few dozen yards. At 100 yards, you had a 50/50 chance of hitting the target which you were aiming at. One rather telling quote about the inaccuracy of muskets goes:

“I do maintain and will prove, that no man was ever killed at 200 yards, by a common musket, by the person who aimed at him.”

– Col. George Hanger (1814).

Flintlock musket, the type of infantry firearm that predominated wars from the mid 1600s until the mid 1800s.

How a Musket was Loaded.

The flintlock musket is a ridiculously simple weapon to use. A child of ten could do it. The flintlock musket was loaded in the following manner:

1. Hammer to Half-Cock.

You pulled the hammer (containing the flint-stone which gives the weapon its name), to half-cock.

2. Open Frizzen.

The frizzen is the lid and steel plate which closes over the flash-pan. Opening the frizzen gave you access to the pan.

3. Prime.

You ‘primed’ or filled the flash-pan with powder.

4. Close Frizzen.

You closed the frizzen to stop the powder falling out.

5. Cast About.

You cast the musket about, that is, you swung it around so that the muzzle was nice and close to you. Having cast it about, you poured more powder down the muzzle, followed by the musket-ball and a scrunched up piece of paper, known as the wad. The wad was there to stop the musket-ball rolling out (remember, these guns are smoothbore. Things fall out just as easily as they go in).

6. Draw Ramrod.

You drew out the ramrod from the sling underneath your musket. You rammed the wadding, bullet and gunpowder right down to the back of the barrel, so that it was next to the flashpan and frizzen. You then removed the ramrod and replaced it under the musket.

7. Hammer to Full Cock.

You pulled the hammer to full cock. You were now ready to fire. At your own will, or on command, you lowered the musket, took aim, and fired. This seven-step loading process seems like a lot of work, but it could actually be done pretty quickly. In the 1700s, a well-trained British redcoat was expected to be able to do this entire operation four times in a minute, purely by feel. Usually the rate of fire was three shots a minute, but especially well-trained armies, such as the Russian and British Armies, could get off four, or even five shots a minute, which means doing that entire loading procedure in just twelve seconds.

Musket or Rifle?

While the rifle was more accurate, the musket remained the weapon of choice for infantry for several decades. In the opening years of the American Civil War, some soldiers still preferred muskets over rifles. Why?

1. Muskets are quicker to load.

A musket is a smoothbore weapon. This means that the inside of the gun-barrel is as smooth as the outside of the barrel. This means that when you shoot the gun, the ball doesn’t always come out straight. It bounces and zings and ricochets around inside the barrel due to the windage (gap between bullet & barrel), before spitting out the end and heading off into only God-knows-where. The fact that muskets were muzzle-loading weapons, however, meant that if they were smoothbore, bullets and other important components (like wadding and gunpowder), went down the barrel quicker. By comparison, a rifle, with its rifling (spirals carved into the inside of the barrel), was slower to load. The ball had a very snug fit inside a rifle-barrel, and this made the rifle slower to load. When a split second in battle can mean the difference between life and death, you don’t wanna be caught up loading your gun in an inopportune moment.

2. Muskets can be mass-produced.

Because muskets were such simple weapons, they were easy to mass-produce. Calibres and sizes varied, but the basic design never changed. Because of this, it was possible for a gunsmith to turn out dozens, hundreds, thousands of muskets at once. Rifles, on the other hand, were usually custom-made pieces, and no two rifles back in the 18th century were the same. Because rifles were so much harder to make than muskets, muskets again, won out over their more accurate opponent.

3. Bayonets.

A bayonet is a long, thin, sharp, steel knife which fits onto the end of a gun-barrel. In modern combat of the 21st century, the bayonet is a last-ditch, close-quarters combat-weapon. 200 years ago, the bayonet was used in what were called ‘bayonet charges’. During battle, an army officer would shout out the order: ‘level bayonets!’ or words to that effect, and then bellow out, ‘charge!’, upon which, probably 2000 soldiers would charge at the enemy with two thousand long, sharp, pointy things in front of them. Being sliced or spiked by a bayonet was not pretty, and a bayonet charge was a magnificent form of psychological warfare on the enemy.

Bayonets are detatchable knives. They can be pulled off the gun, or they can be put back on. In the 1700s, bayonets were called ‘socket-bayonets’. Meaning that the end closest to the musket-barrel had a loop of metal (the socket), which fitted around the musket-barrel and slid into place, nice and securely. Because muskets were mass-produced, fashioning a similarly-sized bayonet was pretty easy. Rifles, being custom-made, meant that they all had to have custom-made bayonets, which took up too much time and money.

So, despite their inaccuracy, muskets were the desired weapon of the day.

The Tactics.

Although they were faster loading, easier to produce and came with nice, shiny accessories which could turn the enemy into a kebab, muskets were still…inaccurate. To compensate for this, tacticians in battle sent out their troops en-masse, in rows (ranks), to maximise firepower, when shooting at the enemy. Before the invention of the machine-gun, this was really the only way to ensure accurate, high rates of intense firepower.

The most common tactical formation during wars involving muskets was the ‘Line’. It’s exactly what it sounds like; soldiers formed lines (ranks), one behind the other, and marched off into battle. The line allowed as many soldiers as possible to fire at once, inflicting the most injuries as possible upon the enemy. Sometimes, the front rank of soliders would kneel, with the rear rank standing over them. This way, they could deliver double the amount of firepower from the same amount of space.

Another common infantry formation was the ‘Square’, also called the Infantry Square. This formation was commonly utilised against cavalry charges. Once a square had been formed, it meant that several ranks of soldiers could deliver devastating fire in four directions, capable of destroying enemy cavalry as it came galloping towards them. Usually, the soldiers would wait until the cavalry was very close (within a few yards), before opening fire. When horses and their riders crashed to the ground, they started forming a wall of dead bodies which other riders would either have to leap over (exposing themselves to fire), or which they would crash into, again, exposing themselves to fire.

This article is continued in Part II, below.

Part II of my two-part article on land-battles during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

How Battles were Fought.

If two armies were going to do battle, for example, back in the 1770s during the American Revolution, it usually played out like this:

Soldiers formed ranks and lines. They would march out into the battlefield, shoulder to shoulder, holding their muskets against their shoulders. When they had reached a good spot, officers ordered their soldiers to halt. When the enemy had also stopped marching, an officer would yell out three orders:

1. “Make Ready!”

The order to ‘make ready’, meant that you were expected to take a firm grip on your musket, in preparation for firing.

2. “Take Aim!”, or alternatively, “Present Arms!”

The order to ‘take aim’ meant that all muskets dropped from their previously vertical position to a horizontal position, ready to be fired. Now was also the time you sought out your target. A similar order, ‘present arms’ meant that you were to present (prepare) your weapon for firing, by bringing it down, ready to shoot.

3. “Fire!”

Rather obvious. On this order, you pulled the trigger. One musket going off isn’t that impressive. But imagine 100, 200, 500 or even a thousand muskets going off at once. The noise was deafeningly loud and the amount of smoke produced by the burning blackpowder could leave you standing in a haze of your own gunsmoke.

Here comes the confusing part, which most people, quite understandably, are at a loss to rationalise.

Once you fired, you stood there like a headless chicken, waiting for the enemy to fire back at you and kill you. During this time, you were probably reloading your musket. Meanwhile, about 20 yards away, another guy with a musket is about to blow your flipping brains out! Once he’d fired, if you were still alive, you and your chums brought your muskets to bear again, and fired back. This went back and forth, like two thousand men playing a deadly game of lead tennis. Given that the majority of battles were fought like this, how the hell did anyone expect to win?

Here come your two supporting wings of the army, to help you fly to glory. Cavalry and Artillery.

The point of warfare in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and even as far back as the 17th century, was to break the enemy’s line. Once the line was broken, you could charge ahead into the disrupted enemy soldiers and hack them to pieces, winning the battle, claiming the land, and advancing your army to victory! So, how did you break the lines?

Usually, you just shot at each other until one line broke, but as you might have guessed, this was slow, tedious and a terrible waste of both ammunition and manpower. To rectify this, officers would call on their artillery to dispatch the enemy to an early grave. Artillery (cannons and mortars), would shoot cannonballs into the enemy lines to try and break them. Most people think that you shot explosives into the enemy lines, the explosives blew up, and the line was broken. No. No, no, no, no, no. That is not what happened.

Most cannons fired roundshot (see ‘Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail, pt II’ for cannon ammo), big black cannonballs. These balls were designed to smash their way through the enemy lines like wrecking-balls, ripping off limbs, kicking up soil and smoke to blind the enemy, and to cause mass confusion. Don’t forget that soldiers often stood shoulder to shoulder, which made them ideal targets for cannons and their wide variety of ammunition. With enough artillery, you could disrupt the lines bad enough that you then moved onto your next attack, either a cavalry charge or a bayonet charge. The other popular kind of ammunition was case-shot, which turned your cannons into massive shotguns. Caseshot was devastating to closely-packed infantry. Sometimes, you fired double-case or double-canister, which sent twice the amount of musket-balls at the enemy, ripping them apart. Occasionally, you would use explosive shells, but this wasn’t done as frequently as you might think.

After you and the enemy had exchanged a few hundred rounds of lead at each other, it was time to really break the enemy’s lines. After bombarding them with artillery and depending on the situation, you either ordered your officers to charge, at which all your soldiers lowered their muskets and bayonets, and charged at the enemy, spearing them and cutting them up, or you sent in your cavalry, which galloped in, swords swinging and slashing, outrunning the fleeing enemy soldiers and slicing their heads off. With the enemy lines broken, you could charge ahead and win the battle. The title of this article, to ‘hold the line’, comes from battles such as these. The order to ‘hold the line’ (which today, means to persevere and hold out against all odds), meant that all soldiers were to reform their ranks and lines, so as to form a solid wall of soldiers, capable of fending off the enemy.

Winning a Battle.

Making sure your side won in battle was a tricky thing to do. There wasn’t much that you could do about artillery except try and dodge the cannonballs. Against cavalry, you could try and form an infantry-square and mow down the horses as they charged at you, or you could try and knock them out with your own artillery. Often, picking a good battlefield was a big factor in whether you won or lost. Even today, it’s an important factor in warfare. If you intended to be successful, you usually picked a battlefield that was sloped or hilly, and put your army on the high-points such as at the top of a ridge or hill. This meant that you could see further, your artillery could shoot further, enemy cavalry charges had to fight their way uphill, and you could sit pretty and shoot at the enemy while it struggled uphill towards you with bayonet charges.

Changing Tactics.

Tactics like these lasted a surprisingly long time. From the Medieval Period, starting with archers, through the English Civil War, using matchlock muskets, through the American Revolution, using flintlock muskets, through the American Civil War, using caplock rifles. In fact, tactics such as these lasted right up until the early 1910s with the coming of the First World War. Unfortunately by that time, the machine-gun had arrived, and was capable of ripping apart soldiers who marched in closed ranks into battle, which meant new tactics had to be devised…