Seed-drill

For anyone who commands a body of soldiers on an SK battlefield, whether this consists of a small division at a mini-muster or a full strength brigade at a major muster, the first matter to be dealt with is to get them formed up in some manner to march them to the battlefield. The prior matter of getting one's soldiers to the point of muster is dealt with by the simple expedient of issuing a form-up time and expecting our modern day soldiers to possess watches. So 10 to 15 minutes before the allotted time, pikemen can be seen donning back & breasts, musketeers are pulling on bandoleers, and there, more or less at the allotted time, is a body of soldiers quietly waiting to be organised.

Marching Along

As the march is invariably along tracks or roads designed to accommodate modern vehicular traffic, whether these are the tracks through the campsite or along one carriageway of a public road, the formation commonly adopted is that of the column - one car's width wide. This usually consists of two, three or four files of indefinite length. This formation can last for half an hour or more as the column marches along, waits awhile, marches a little more, waits some more, and then eventually arrives on the battlefield.

After quite a bit of leisurely marching and waiting, the arrival on the battlefield can be quite a hurried affair as flustered staff officers encourage the unit to quickly take up a particular position whilst all around is activity - cannons firing, horses charging, standards flourishing. This new position and new formation is commonly achieved by the simple expedient of facing the column to the left or right as required, thus turning the two, three or four files of indefinite length into two, three or four ranks of indefinite length.

Reform! (and Confusion)

In the battle sooner or later, and commonly it is sooner, the unit becomes unformed and the job now for its officers and sergeants is to get it back into some sort of order. This they attempt to do by shouting 'Reform! Reform!' at the tops of their voices. Unfortunately, the poor soldiers to whom they are shouting are individually faced with a problem. They each have three options: 1. Are they expected to reform in their original position, that of the march, in which they spent a leisurely half an hour getting to know behind whom they stood? 2. Are they expected to reform behind the person behind whom they stood when the body changed its facing and whom (amidst all the activity) they little noticed? 3. Or are they expected to form-up afresh, disregarding both these earlier formations and simply attempt to find their own new place? The matter has not been explained to them.

With various soldiers attempting to reform in various ways the result is invariably an unedifying spectacle of muddle and confusion and an increase in the level of shouting - 'Reform! Sort yourselves out! Come on! Reform!' - as if a lack of officers’ vocal volume were indeed the problem. They might as well talk to the trees.

A familiar picture? So how does one establish a well ordered unit? - Let us consider the 17th century.

Order

The purpose of a 17th century army, as with armies of earlier and later periods, was to fight the enemy. Thus the most important formation for any unit of the period would be the formation it would adopt when engaged in fighting, that is to say its battlefield formation. Thus it would be sensible for this to be the basic formation - the ‘default’ option, to use the modern vernacular. Making this the ‘form-up' formation would make it easier for it to be the 'reform' formation during a battle, as amidst the peace of the campsite each individual would have the leisure to familiarise themselves with their position. This would apply equally to SK units as to 17th century ones.

Now for all but the very smallest of units, the battlefield formation cannot be used to march along a modern track or road, because it is too wide. Assuming a depth of four persons, that is four soldiers to each file giving four ranks, one might assume that the easiest course would be to convert the line into column by simply facing it to right or left (as is currently common practise). But this would not do, for the old problem would persist, especially if the facing manoeuvre on the battlefield did not convert them to their original formation but caused them effectively to face the other way (a 'right-face' from line to column would need a 'left-face' later to return it to its original position; another 'right-face' would mean the original file-leaders would be at the rear), giving the poor soldiers four possible options!

Sub-divisions

The way around this problem is simply to divide the battlefield formation into segments narrow enough to pass along the appropriate tracks and roads. These segments might be divisions, half-divisions or any other clearly delineated part of the whole unit. This is what

happened in the 17th century. Of course they had it easier than us. They did not worry about oncoming traffic (it got out of the way!), and along some drove roads they could march 10 or 15 files abreast, so that entire regimental divisions each of 60 to 100 men could march in formation, but even with segments of only three or four files abreast, the principle is the same.

The important thing is that for each individual pikeman or musketeer, whether they are forming-up, marching along or being positioned on the battlefield, there is only one person behind whom they find themselves, so when it comes to reforming there is only one person behind whom they should position themselves. Each soldier is always in the same file, to which they have been designated for that day, and each file is led by an experienced soldier. Reforming in the midst of the battlefield becomes very simple for individual soldiers and officers and sergeants find less need to buy throat lozenges.

Forming up 17th century style

Consider the 17th century once more. As soldiers lacked watches, and given that there may have been no set form-up times anyway, they were summoned by the sound of the drum. Thus it follows that the first soldiers to take up their positions would have been the drummers. The pikemen and musketeers would have formed up upon the drummers - who were, of course, experienced soldiers and regarded as NCOS. Each officer would have had his own individual designated role which would reflect their position in relation to their particular unit - COs to the front, 2 I/Cs to the rear, whether for regiments, divisions, companies or whatever.

The right hand segment of the battlefield line would always lead the unit into the column of march followed by that immediately to its left and so on, and in going from column back into line the leading segment would always be the right hand end of the line, the one following it going to its left and so on. In this fashion, a unit going from line into column and back into line always maintains the same formation.

This ease of management on the battlefield is readily achieved by spending an extra 5 or 10 minutes and a little bit of effort during form-up, when there is normally much more time and leisure to organise such matters than amidst the confusion of the battlefield.

So remember: careful preparation, planting your pikemen and musketeers in the correct positions, will invariably give you nice straight rows out on the field.

• Handy Hints from the Infantrie Garden - No.1 - Good Groundwork
• Handy Hints from the Infantrie Garden - No.2 - Tables of Dignity
• Handy Hints from the Infantrie Garden - No.3 - Giving Orders
• Handy Hints from the Infantrie Garden - No.5 - Keeping Your Distance
• Handy Hints from the Infantrie Garden - No.6 - Wheeling and Countermarching