"Comparing 16th Century Small Arms Fire to the 17th Century" Topic

I'm curious what others think about the similarities and differences in small arms fire at the Battle of Ceresole in 1542 and the Battle of Lutzen (1632) almost hundred years later. I pick these two battles as proxies for the period. Would the volume and effectiveness of small arms fire be noticeably different if one could observe both battles? Are we talking about a slow incremental development of small arms over the roughly the hundred years or did something more radical occur in this period. I appreciate your thoughts.

Massivly diffrent, at Ceresole the majority of soldiers were armed for close combat only with pike or halberd among the infantry, lance and sidearms such as sword or mace among the cavalry. At Lutzen the majority of infantrymen were musketeers while the cavalry now made extensive use of firearms. The sheer difference in numbers create a much larger volume of fire.

The fire is also more efficient as the main firearm at Lützen was full-or demi-muskets that fired a heavier shot using a larger powder load, the use of musket rests would also have improved accuracy in the right hands. At Ceresole the typical firearm was an arquebus and 1540s arquebus often used fired smaller shot than say late 16th arquebus/calivers.

The Graz tests using actual 16th and 17th century firearms showed that arquebus caliber weapons had a sharp reduction in lethality past 40-50 paces while muskets only experienced the same reduction at about 150 paces. The high leathality zone for the arquebus only extended to about 15 paces while muskets had such a zone to about 50 paces. Of course neither weapon became harmless past these ranges but the poot ballistics of spherical shot meant that long range performance was rather erratic.

Thanks Daniel. Always appreciate your input. So there was a substantial qualitative and quantitative increase in small arms fire between the two battles. I wonder how the French or Imperialist forces at Ceresole would have faired against any army from the middle/later TYW?

I presume that the development towards higher proportions of small arms was the result of constant refinement in battle. On the other hand, I have read that TYW units were consistently and chronically short of pikemen and that surprisingly they required more training and discipline than musketeers. So the move towards more small arms in the 17th century may have been more pragmatic than ideal.

Not very well unless they could somehow close the distance rapidly and get to close combat. On a typical battlefield the firepower of most armies from 1618-1648 would have inflicted terrible losses on the deep formations use at Ceresoles. And the Ceresole armies would not even known how to defend against Reiter style cavalry. We can get a hint at how a battle could have developed by looking at Mühlberg 1547 link

Not obvious to me Daniel how slow firing muskets can put up the kind of fire you are suggesting. I looked at the battle of Muhlberg but unfortunately the level of detail is insufficient to provide clear examples of fire power dominating the battlefield (it obviously contributed to the Protestant defeat.)

It's not just muskets but the army wide improvement of firearms & artillery in everything from firing methods, to powder quality and how well the gunners understand ballistics.
You also have the fact that the Ceresole armies will be facing tactics they have no experience with, for example their standard anti-cavalry tactic of halting in order to make all-round defence possible would be the wrong choice against Cuirassiers & Arkebusiers, who would simply pour pistol & carbine fire into the massed ranks.

Muskets were not particularly slow firing when compared to battlefield speeds, 1 shot/minute would be possible for good professionals while other did 1 a shot every two minutes unless very badly trained & shaken. But it was realy the firing method used which set the rate of fire rather than the training of the men. As the Ceresole pike squares would have been moving 40-55 paces a minute (the higher speeds would likely lead to disorder in the ranks unless the formation halted to dress ranks) they would have been suffering from musketry for about 3 minutes. Add in some 20-25 minutes under artillery fire prior to that and you have some significant losses. At short range a unit like the Swedish brigade with it's supporting regimental cannon could deliver shattering firepower, that is one of the reasons why 3 Swedish brigades halted Tilly's much larger force at Breitenfeld.

40-55 paces a minute seems painfully slow to me. 90 paces a minute is a comfortable marching pace. Do you mean a Roman pace? Which is two steps.

I have used original 16th century sources and rounded the speeds down rather than up. None of the sources measure the speeds as X paces in a minute, rather they give the distanced covered in a certain time using this pace.
One example is this

In his "Kriegsordnung" Junghans von Olnitz described two paces for the the infantry. The "Common pace" in which the soldier took 3 paces to a beat of the drum and an unnamed higher pace in which there was 5 paces to a beat of the drum. In the first case the troops marched 1/4 of a German mile (1882 meters) in an hour. Using the higher pace the troops marched a comple German mile in 3 hours (7532 meters i.e 2510 meters an hour)

The slowe pace is barely 42 paces/minute, the faster just 56 paces/minutes.

Keep in mind that these paces were designed for being able to keep good order in a formation of men marching with 4-5 meter pikes, up to 3/4-armour and shoes with leather soles. (And military shoes did not have heels for a good part of the period.)

Thank you very much for the response. Running the numbers myself, I'm getting the same results, a very slow pace indeed.