"Analyzing the Swedish Brigade" Topic

I have taken a good look at a picture of a swedish brigade that is available thanks to Daniel S on the following link:

picture

I'm a little curious about how many soldiers there was to be found in each block. The following is what I think after also checking out Ospreys "The Army of Gustavus Adolphus (1)" on pages 9 and 10 about company organisation:

On the brigade picture I read that it says that there are 16 companies. If excluding the formation on the bottom, which I take it is a completely different formation, I count 36 blocks of musketeers and 16 blocks of pikemen. In the osprey on page 10 it says that a company had 16 officers, 54 pikemen and 72 musketeers. The musketeers was drawn up in into three corporalships with four rots each.

My conlusion about the musketeers:
The musketeer blocks is each a coporalship 4 men wide and with the typical 6 men depth.

My conclusion about the pikemen:
Each block of pikemen should consist of all the pikemen from a company which gives us a block of 54 pikemen, 9 men wide and 6 men deep.

Problems with the above:
The geometry in the brigade picture doesn't make complete sense with the calculations above. On the picture two blocks of musketeers is as wide as a pikemen block. I would expect the two musketeers blocks to be wider because of the spaces between them and also since I expect the musketeers to take up more space than pikemen, but this is maybe wrong.

The biggest problem however I think is that the ratios of pike to shot varied and I don't know if the ratios for the companies given in osprey is the same as for the 16 companies on the brigade picture. I guess the brigade picture is for 16 full strength companies but maybe even the theoretical ideal on paper for the ratios varied but that I don't know.

What do you think, how many pikemen and musketeers should there be in each block?

Oops I just realised that the formation on the bottom belongs there. It should mainly or exclusively be the fourth squadron, if a sqaudron is made out of four companies. This just makes my other conlusions make more sense since we now have 16 company flags in the formation. I don't know though why the pikemen blocks in the fourth squadron is divided in smaller sub-units, marked with the dashed lines, than the ones on the top.

The number of blocks is then 48 blocks of musketeers and 16 blocks of pikemen (don't ask how I got it to 16 when excluding the ones on the bottom before). This makes sense because there is then 3 blocks of musketeers and 1 block of pikemen per company.

Sorry for not getting it right the first time. My question still stand though if it is correct with 4 rots of musketeers per block of musketeers and 9 rots of pikemen per block of pikemen.

Keep in mind that this drawing was made by hand so there are numerous diffrences built in. For example not all of the blue squares representing corpralships of musketeers are the same size and so on.

Like all 17th century formations the pikemen and musketeers start out using the same spacing, the diffrence is that in action the pikemen would assume close order when actually fighting. The frontage was set to provide all the space needed for the widest formation possible. That way the sub--uniots could move and manouver without risk of getting into disorder.

That is why both Basta as well as the Dutch instructions I have give the same frontage to a soldier regardless of wether he has a musket or pike in his hands.

The drawing shows a complete full strenght brigade with 4 squadrons so this one follows the regulation rations to the letter. Blue squares are "korpralskap" of musketeers while the pikemen are shown in the full 216 man blocks belonging to each squadron.
The 4th squadron is deployed in an alternate formation which is a remnant from the Dutch style tactics. (Simon Stevin drew a battalion just like this one)
The sub-units shown are the corporalships of pike (18 men each) which exist in the other 3 squadrons as well, the artist has just chosen/been instructed not drawn them.

In reality the brigade formation would be adapted to the circumstances. The two divisions of pikemen in each squadron were often understrenght for example in the TYW period for example. Musketeers could be detached even from the squadrons if there was a shortage of them.
picture shows 3 Swedish brigades in 1630. Not only have the commanded musketeers been deployed away from the brigades but the 4th squadron has been stripped of it's musketeers leaving only the pikemen in place.
When there was a shortage of pikemen the commanders would use all-musketeers squadrons as a substitute and so on.

The "blocks" of pikemen in the first 3 squadrons only show how the pikemen of each company was deployed. The actual combat organisation was diffrent.
Each company had 3 "korpralskap" of pikemen (3x18 men)and 3 "korpralskap" of musketeers (3x24 men). In combat these were organised as follows

Pikemen:
6 pikemen formed "rote" (file)
3 "rotar" made a "korpralskap" (18)
6 "korpralskap" formed a division (108)
Each squadron had two divisions of pikemen (216)

Musketeers
6 musketeers formed a "rote"
4 "rotar" made a "korpralskap" (24)
2 "korpralskap" made a platoon (48)
2 platoons made a division (96)
Each squadron had two divisions of musketeers (192)as well as 4 "korpralskap" of commanded musketeers.

The commanded musketeers had a diffrent organisation as each "korpralskap" had two additional officers, the fourier and the rüstmeister of each company assumed comand of the them in battle. They also lacked drummers which is perhaps one reason why they had two officers and the corporal.
There is no evidence of the brigades commanded musketeers beign formed into platoons & divisions.

In actual battle there was such a surplus of officers and drummers that the commanded shot detachments formed outside the brigades seem to have followed the corporalship-platoon-division organisation complete with drummers rather than the corporalships only organisation found inside the brigade.

Do you think that there in reality would be gaps between the corporalships or divisions of pike both when manouvering and when fighting or is it likely that the pike would try to keep a solid line with the neighbouring corporalships or divisions of pike when closing with the enemy?

I have been wondering a little bit about the function of the musketeers in the middle behind the pike. One thought that just sprang to mind is, could it be possible that one of the tasks those muskeeters had was to fill out the flanks and gaps of the pike lines if/when the pike formations started to get narrower close to the enemy? The gaps I'm talking about are those that should occur between the front line pike and those pike moving up from further behind in the "T-formation". I'm imagening that those small musketeer blocks was quite fast and mobile if needed.

There are not gaps between the corporalships of pikemen at any time. They did not need them, the musketeers have those gaps to allow for the musketeers to move back after they had fired. picture

An effective pike unit has to mantain a solid and well ordered formation, hence the pikemen of the squadron formed into a single body.

The middle musketeers are a remnant of the the older Swedish formations which included musketeers posted to fire into the flank of attacking troops. (I.e Polish cavalry)
picture
picture
You have the 6 basic formations of a Swedish squadron here:
picture

I wonder – was it this organized or was this all paper theory? I mean, once the blades were drawn and the shooting started, did all of supposed orchestrations truly come together or did it end up being just a suggestion?

On the flipside, I guess it seems reasonable to assume there was organization of this type, but every time I read about organization in such detail, I just get this feeling of "hmm."

I wonder if the standard bearers would walk in front of the pike when the formation was advancing and if so if they would somehow glide into the formation when going into contact with the enemy.

I also wonder how the officers leading a "korpalskap" of musketeers would position themselves. I'm guessing they would be standing in front of the musketeers and to the side out of the way of the firing. Is there any regulations or traditions regarding which side, left or right, that they would position themselves?

The flag was carried by a two man team, the Ensign and the "Förare", the later man carred the flag much, indeed most of the time. The Ensign's starting position was in front of the 1st rank while the "Förare" stood between ranks 3 and 4 with the flag. In action the Ensign would then move back and join the Förare who handed him the flag.

The Corporal was a musketeer himself and stood in the first rank of the first file to the right. Officers (Lieutenant & Sergeant in the Platoons, Rüstmeister & Fourier in the commanded musketeers) moved as needed to avoid standing in the line of fire. Lieutenants and Sergeants stood in front of the platoon, one man each on the left & right. The Fourier stood in front on the korpralskap while the Rüstmeister stood behind it.

When there was a shortage of men especially pike I've read that the number of companies that got combined went up. Would that mean that it wouldn't be unsual that the number of flags would go up, sometimes dramatically so? What about the number of officers leading in the front and from behind the formation? Would that number increase as well or would both the number of flags and the number of leading officers be kept fairly constant in the battlefield organization of the swedish brigades?

Augustus,
Combat is always, chaos, confusion and disorder, you put this kind of organization in place to reduce the disorderly effects of combat on a unit and to allow it to preform effectively in battle.

Considerable time in battle was spent reordering ranks and regrouping a unit after combat. That is why reserves were so important, particularly for the cavalry.

Tjaisse,
The number of flags could very well get much higher than the "offical" 12-16 as units kept their flags with the pikemen and kept using the flags even when companies were vastly understrenght. The one thing we do not know is how flags were handled by the all-musket units.

The number of officers was kept constant, the surplus officers either served as "reformadoes" (aka "Gentlemen pikemen" or commanded units of commanded muskteers. We know the later because there are records of captains (who were supposed to command the pike in battle) beign in charge of musketeers.

A basic problem we have is that Swedish brigade was in use for only a period of maximum 4 years and that the written records surviving regarding it's operations have significant gaps. Not only was much of it's operations taught by pratical instructions, spoken rather than written down but Gustavus own military papers have been almost lost to us. Between his daughter giving away documents as souveniers, the Royal Archives goign up in flames in 1697 and both the Örnehufvud and Kirstein documents going missing, the later lost as late as 1921 there is not muc in the king's own hand left. What we have are surviving originals, copies made at various times and the record left to us from other sources. So we know fairly well how a squadron acted and fought in the field but the coordination of the squadrons within a brigade is bit of a mystery.