"Where would the ensigns stand?" Topic

So, according to my reading ECW foote regiments were made up of companies, where each company had its own flag.

I haven't been able to find a definitive answer, but I'm assuming that companies were a mix of musketeers and pikemen (vs. all shotte or all pike).

That means that companies would be split on the battlefield when the regiment was in a standard line formation (i.e., pikes in the middle, with a sleeve of musketeers on either flank).

So my question is, would the ensigns stay with the pike, with the shotte, or a mix of both?

Thanks

John H.

Generally they were in with the pikes. Companies were a mix, not all the same size, the same P:M ratio or in the same coloured coats. Not all regiments had eight or ten companies and many companies must have only been about 20 – 30 men.

Regiments were an organisation element only not a battlefield formation. Soldiers considered themselves a member of a company first, then a member of a regiment.

Musketeers could be drawn off to form separate bodies and a big regiment might split into two battalia or a battalia might be formed from several very small regiments. In the later war Oxford Royalist army there were a lot of reformadoes within the ranks.

The later war Oxford army had its regiments (both horse and foot) organised into semi-permanent brigades. Each infantry brigade/tertia formed three battalia and the brigade might have as many as twelve regiments of foot in it. That could have been made up of about 80 or so different companies of foot.

The notion of regiments in matching uniforms forming up on the battlefield might be how gamers like their model armies to look but generally this wasn't the case in reality. It definitely wasn't the reality with the Oxford army. With many regiments forming a battalia there would have been a mix of colours (flags) as well and there were possibly quite a lot of them relative to the numbers of troops.

With the ECW you're probably better off discarding any pre-conceived notions of uniformity rather than trying to back-peddle, say, Napoleonic concepts of organisation and appearance into the C17th

In the Osprey book on the English Civil War, there is a picture of a document showing a company of infantry and how to drill it. The company was raised with both pike and shot. Occasionally I believe, some units of dedicated shot were raised, but cannot find documentary evidence of this.

In pictures of battles, convention placed the colours in the centre of the pike block.

The Kings army marched on the early part of the Cropredy campaign with 1,000 commanded shot. You'll find lots of references to bodies of shot drawn off for particular purposes. The period had a lot of 'making it up on the day' to suit the circumstance. It's also a period of evolution with the musket becoming ever more prevalent.

By 1644/5 the main Royalist army almost certainly had an abundance of firearms – I know the usual view is they were short of weapons but not all sources necessarily support that concept. For example, the Royalist baggage train taken at Naseby had wagons and wagons loaded with muskets. We know this as it's detailed in an NMA paper. So either lots of musketeers were converted to pikemen for duty on the day in open terrain (plausible) or the army had an abundance of spare weaponry, equally plausible IMHO.

Timmo, you don't get many mentions of 'pike men' or 'musketeers', which I think gives credence to your notion of converting musketeers into pike men- its plausible that the rank and file were 'multi-tasked'.

The surplus arms and munitions could also be for equipping new recruits that joined the army on the march.

There' a lot of great info in the above posts – thanks!

The later war Oxford army had its regiments (both horse and foot) organised into semi-permanent brigades. Each infantry brigade/tertia formed three battalia and the brigade might have as many as twelve regiments of foot in it. That could have been made up of about 80 or so different companies of foot.

Based on what little information is known about the Oxford Army, it is just possible that some attempt was made to co-ordinate coat colours (or issue the same colour to units of each tercio). Each of the three tercios – Blagge's, Lisle's and Astley's – initially had 9 regiments, with 60-64 companies (no known number for Astley's); this gave tercios of anywhere from 1900-2400 men.

* Blagge's seems to have had 5 red-coated and 4 grey-coated units (the latter all being from the Northern Army).

* Lisle's had at least 7, but possibly all 9, regiments in blue coats with red being a possible alternative for 2 of them.

* Astley's (which was mainly drawn from Hopton's army) had 3 yellow- and 3 white-coated units, all of which could simply be variations on un-dyed cloth which had been common in Hopton's army; the coats of the other 3 units were blue, red and unknown.

It is just possible that the confusion over which coat colour a unit had, may be from the issue of new coats in successive years (eg a "blue" regiment in 1643-44 might have become a "red" regiment in 1644-45). However, we know for sure that red or blue were the two main colours issued to the Oxford Army, so the confusion is more likely caused be a lack of record as to which of those colours some units were given, but it had to be one or t'other. It is also noteworthy that there is almost complete certainty with units which had coats of other colours (ie grey, white or yellow).

Thanks everyone for not only answering my question but also all the additional information.

A question on the same subject

The colour poles are about 8ft long, why do ALL the contemporary installations away show them poking out over the pike (16ft)?

Are the colours fitted to pike and the Ensign uses his colour pole as a half pike and commands the pike division of his company ?