Cavaliers and Roundheads. Christopher Hibbert

three ranks, the troopers riding so close together that their knees were interlocked, and holding their fire until the crash, or just before the crash, of impact.

      Gustavus Adolphus himself had devised a drill for infantrymen to withstand these cavalry charges: they were to form up in three ranks, the first kneeling, the second crouching, the third standing, so that all could fire in the same instant, waiting until the last possible moment to do so, it being impossible for even the most skilled marksman to be sure of hitting his target at distances greater than sixty yards. After firing they were to retire quickly to reload, while another three ranks took their place. In the confusion of battle such drill, practised on the parade ground, was rarely performed satisfactorily. More often, once the infantrymen’s matchlocks had been discharged they lashed out with their swords or axes or the stocks of their firearms in the ensuing mêlée, inflicting as many savage wounds on horses and riders as they could until the survivors retreated from the field or rode away for another charge, disappearing into the sulphuric gunpowder smoke of the battlefield.

      Pikemen were drawn up closely packed in square, rectangular or circular ‘hedgehogs’, sometimes protected by ‘swines’ feathers’, stakes with metal tips driven into the ground at an angle of 45 degrees. If steady and well-trained, pikemen could be relied upon to resist a cavalry charge, since horses would shy or turn away from an apparently immovable and dangerous obstacle. But the sight of thundering, shouting troops of horse would unnerve all save the most resolute man; and once a ‘hedgehog’ had begun to waver it could rapidly disintegrate, and was more than likely to do so when the pikemen comprising it were also being engaged by enemy infantry. Often the two sides were so closely interlocked that it was scarcely possible to raise an arm in defence or attack; men mortally wounded remained upright in the crush; and brave men could be carried off willy-nilly in a surge of terror-stricken soldiers struggling to escape the conflict, as was to happen to both Sir Thomas Fairfax and the King in the days to come.