Early modern warfare and the New Model Army c1500–c1700

From Longbows to Gunpowder: The Early Modern Battlefield

Between c1500 and c1700, English warfare changed shape almost completely. The longbowman who had decided Agincourt disappeared from the field. In his place came the musketeer and the pikeman, fighting in linked blocks known as pike-and-shot. By the 1640s, kings and Parliaments had also begun to keep small bodies of paid soldiers in arms permanently — the first English moves towards a standing army.

The reasons were technological as much as political. Slow but heavy matchlock firearms could punch through the plate armour that had once protected the mounted knight. Cannon, now reliable enough to bring onto the open field, broke up squares of foot soldiers from a distance. Fortifications had to be rebuilt as low, angled bastions to deflect shot rather than tall stone walls to repel ladders. By the end of the seventeenth century, war was fought by drilled blocks of paid soldiers — not by feudal hosts.

Pike-and-Shot: How the Formation Worked

A matchlock musket of 1640 took perhaps a minute to reload. While reloading, the musketeer was defenceless against any horseman who reached him. The answer was the pikeman: armed with a 16–18 foot pike, he stood in tight blocks beside the musketeers, ready to receive a cavalry charge as a hedgehog of points. Musketeers fired in volleys, then retired through gaps in the pike block to reload while a fresh rank stepped forward.

By 1645 a typical infantry regiment had two musketeers for every pikeman; this ratio would shift further towards muskets as the bayonet was introduced (after this period). Cavalry shifted from heavy lance-and-armour knights towards cuirassiers in three-quarter armour, armed with sword and pistols. Dragoons rode to the battlefield and dismounted to fight on foot — an early answer to the speed problem that would later become standard in European armies.

A Standing Army Begins to Emerge

For most of this period, English kings still raised armies the medieval way — through indentures, county trained bands and (when desperate) impressed levies. Henry VIII fielded large but temporary armies on French expeditions; Elizabeth I depended on the trained bands of each county for home defence. But two pressures pulled towards permanence. The first was the new technology — pikemen and musketeers needed long, drilled training to work together; you could not throw a peasant a musket and expect him to fire in volley. The second was the cost of fortifications and warships, which only a permanent administration could maintain.

After the Restoration of 1660, Charles II kept a small body of paid soldiers in arms — the original household regiments of the British army (the Coldstream Guards trace their unbroken lineage to the New Model Army through this transition). By 1700 the principle of a permanent professional army was established, even if Parliament still distrusted it and required an annual Mutiny Act to keep it legal.

Recruitment and Civilian Impact

Recruitment in this period was a tangle of methods. The county trained bands continued, with each shire required to keep a body of armed men ready for muster. Volunteers were attracted by signing-on bounties. Impressment — the forced enlistment of vagrants, debtors and the unwilling — supplied the rest. The English Civil War (1642–1651) saw both sides relying on volunteers at first and then on local conscription; Royalist commissions of array and Parliamentary militia ordinances summoned men in the thousands.

Civilians paid heavily. The right of free quarter was widely used by both sides — soldiers ate at the householder’s table, slept in his rooms and gave nothing in return except a paper IOU that might never be redeemed. Towns were sacked when they refused to surrender; armies on the march took horses, carts, fodder and food. Whole regions of the West Country and Yorkshire suffered repeated quarterings, and many smaller towns never fully recovered until after 1660.

The New Model Army — A Different Kind of Force

The New Model Army was created by Parliament in February 1645 to break the deadlock of the Civil War. Its design was radical for England: a single national army of 22,000 men, paid regularly, drilled to a uniform standard, and led by officers chosen for ability rather than inherited rank. The Self-Denying Ordinance forced most aristocratic commanders to resign; Sir Thomas Fairfax became Lord General, and Oliver Cromwell commanded the cavalry.

Cromwell’s cavalry, nicknamed the Ironsides, were drilled in a way Royalist horse were not: after charging an enemy formation, they rallied immediately and turned to charge again rather than chase fugitives off the field. Foot regiments practised regimental drill until the manoeuvres — loading, firing, advancing, retiring — were almost automatic. Pay was steady (when Parliament could find the money) and supply was organised through a national administration in London. The New Model was, in effect, England’s first standing army — even before the term was widely used.

Naseby, 14 June 1645

Three months after its creation, the New Model Army met the Royalist field army at Naseby in Northamptonshire. Charles I commanded around 7,500 men; Fairfax and Cromwell had roughly 14,000. The Royalist horse charged on the right wing under Prince Rupert and broke the Parliamentary cavalry — but instead of regrouping, Rupert’s cavalry rode off the field to plunder the Parliamentary baggage train.

On the other wing, Cromwell’s Ironsides defeated the Royalist horse and then turned in disciplined formation to attack the Royalist infantry from the flank. The Royalist foot, surrounded and outnumbered, broke. Charles I’s field army was effectively destroyed in an afternoon. Naseby ended Royalist hopes of winning the war by force; the king surrendered in 1646.