"Imperial and Catholic League Armies of TYW" Topic

Even if there's lot of different opinions about the quality of those books, I've read the two Osprey volumes on Imperial Armies of Thirty Years War. The author says that the books cover only the Imperial armies of the Habsburg family and not the units of the Catholic League. I'd like to know the differences in organization and composition (maybe even some OOBs) between Imperial and Catholic League armies or any other information on the units of the Catholic League.

Here is a 1622 OOB to start with
link

Thank you for the OOB. What about the organization of the armies? It's the same for the two forces or there are some important differences?

Daniel. I had no idea Harqubuisers were in the same regiment with Cuirassiers! And from your blog it seems distinction was not even clear within the same company. Were they deployed in battle, within the same brigade as well? Not to hyjack this thread, but were cuirassiers (3/4 armour) of various equipment depolyed along side their lighter counter parts, that being cuirassiers of back and breast plate or buff coat only? And is it only false assumption to believe that only the most heavily armoured troops were in front, or in reality cavalry trotted, fired/charged with mixed equipped men in the front lines?

Thanks again,

ilodic.

Both the Imperial army and the army of the Catholic Leauge used the same basic organisation, 3000 man infantry regiments made up of 10 companies and 1000 man cavalry regiments also made up of 10 companies.

These basic organisations were then adapted as needed based on various factors. For example the number of companies would be diffrent from regiment to regiment and regiments were raised with diffrent ratios of pike to shot.

The greatest diffrence was to be found in the cavalry were Imperial regiments were usually made up of only one type of cavalry. (There were some exceptions to this)

The Leaugist regiments on the other hand were often 'mixed' units made of diffrent types of companies. Pappenheims regiment for example had 1 company of cuirassiers, 2 companies of croats and 4 companies of harquebusiers.

After the devastating losses the Leaugists suffered at Breitenfeld and the additional losses taken at the crossing of the Lech the surviving regiments were reformed on the Imperial pattern with units being either Cuirassiers or Harquebusiers. This process had probably already begun in the final years of the 1620's as Tilly disliked mixed units in general and harquebusiers units in particular but for finiacial reasons some units retained their mixed organisation.

Unit organisation was seldom "fixed", "old" companies could be disbanded, reformed or transfered to other regiments while new companies were raised for existing regiments. Some periods like 1621-1622 saw a lot of changes while periods were more placid with few changes. So one has to be carefull with assumptions about units being the same in 1625 as they were in 1625 and so on.

Ilodic,
All well organised armies aimed to have distinctive companies though some like Christian IV of Denmark deliberately recruited cuirassier companies that were a mix of 81 cuirassiers and 25 harquebusiers.

Cuirassiers and harquebusiers would deploy in separate unit in one of two styles. There was the Dutch style which used the company was the basic combat unit and the French/German style which massed several companies into a single squadron. All participants in the war knew how to use both styles and switched between them as needed.

The Danes with their mixed companies used the Dutch style in which the 81 cuirassiers fought as the main body of the company while the 25 harquebusiers skirmished in front or provided fire support from the flank.

The problem was finding the men, horses and equipment needed to outfit the companies properly and mantaining the discipline necessary at a level where the men did not simply discard unpopular heavy equipment once a unit was on campaign. The Archbishop of Colonge had a huge problem with the Cuirassier regiment he raised as the men threw away their heavy armour and only kept the helmets. As result they were even worse than harquebusiers as far as equipment and usefullness was concerned.

Commanders would try put their best mounted, experienced and most well equipped men in the front rank(s) if they had a shortage of them. The drawback of doing this was that these men bore the brunt of any casulties.

Hi Daniel, thanks again for your reply, very imformative as usual. I noticed something interesting about the number of cuirassiers and harquebuisers…they are both "perfect squares", which leads me to believe they were deployed in the following manor (taking harquebuisers, for example, as there is less to type, but this works for all perfect squares.)

The most obvious first:

H H H H H
H H H H H
H H H H H
H H H H H
H H H H H

or 5 rows of 5

Sucessive odd numbers, as in Alexander's (The Great) Companion Cavalry. A row of 1,3,5,7,and 9

A "Diamond" formation, e.g. Alexander's Thesselian Cavalry. A row of 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1

I have not seen anything definative, if you will, with regards to the geometric deployment of individual mounted soliders within the company, of central European cavalry during TYW. It would not surprise me if at least one of the above formations was correct, as Renaissance commanders often looked to antiquity for advise.

Sorry again Sergio if I am moving too far beyond your original post, if so, Daniel, please email me at ilodic@yahoo.com

Thanks again,

ilodic

Don't worry ilodic. All discussions related to the organization of the armies of the TYW are interesting and useful for me, so, keep going.

Thank you Daniel for your input!

IIodic,
The reliance on "Ancient" sources has always been exaggerated because historians look too much at the texts written by theorists like Machiavelli and not enough at the texts written by the men who actually commanded troops in action like Frundsberg. That said squares and "perfect squares" were indeed popular in the 16th Century, particulary with the Germans.

The formations used by 17th C cavalry are well documented thanks to surviving miltary texts, drawn order of battles and narrative sources. "Everyone" some sort of square formation which now had a fixed file depth rather than the depths of the files being set at the start of each battle.

The Dutch used files 5 deep as did the Danish Cuirassiers. The Germans favoured a 10 deep formation but when needed the half files were "doubled to the front" which reduced the depth to 5 deep. The Swedes fought 6 deep while the French used 6 or 8 deep.

During the 1630's cavalry formations did become more shallow. The Swedes adopted a 3 rank formation at Lützen 1632 and kept using it for the rest of the war. The Imperial cavalry formed up 4 or 5 ranks deep depending on the size of the squadron and so on. The deeper files were still used for movement, for example the Swedes moved 6 ranks deep as late as the 1670's but changed to 3 ranks for actual combat.

Daniel, thank you as always. So just to make certain, the two other formations I listed in my previous post were not used, but rather only variations of squares and rectangles?

ilodic.

Thanks for providing all this information!