Orders of the day, Volume 33, No 2, April/May 2001

Within any group of rank-and-file soldiers one will invariably find a great range of abilities, and this applies as much to re-enactors as it does to the soldiers of history whom they seek to portray. At one end of the scale one has those whose knowledge, experience and overall ability is as great as any officer’s, indeed they may be reformado officers. At the other end of the scale are those who are very new to the business and still having trouble holding their pike or musket correctly. Then there are the majority somewhere in between.

The military writers of the 17th century recognised this scale of variation and the importance of having their most able soldiers in the key positions in any given military formation. To this end they devised what were known as ‘Tables of Dignity’ which marked out very precisely where each individual should be positioned according to their relative ability within their unit.

At first glance this nicety of ordering may be seen to be unnecessarily abstruse and complex. However a little study reveals a useful understanding of the thinking behind the period’s military formations and their tactical use, as well as a consistent and logical system. This was applied not only to the positions of rank-and-file soldiers, but also to the positioning of officers, both for a company alone and within a regiment or battalion, and for the positioning of companies within a regiment.

The smallest sub-unit into which rank-and-file soldiers were put was the file, a line of men carrying identical arms and standing one behind the other. The actual size of a file varied according to the particular military manual used or according to the experience and exigencies of the moment. Six seems to have become the norm during the Civil Wars, following Swedish practice, but eight or ten may have been used early on, following Dutch practice, and for at least one under-strength Scottish regiment, four was used. (Note the use of even numbers.)

Whatever the size of file used, the ordering of the four most senior positions within a file remained constant. The senior-most individual stood at the front, as the ‘file-leader’, to show a lead to the remaining members of his file. The second senior man, the ‘bringer-up’, was at the rear of the file, both in order to prevent the less reliable individuals from removing themselves from the body, and to act as a temporary file-leader should the unit need to face to the rear. The third position was that of the ‘rear half-file leader’, who would lead the rear half-file into the front rank should the unit double its front by rear half-files. The fourth position was the bringer-up of the front half-file.

In a file of four, these would be the complete file. With a file of six, No. 5 would slot in between 1 and 4, and No. 6 between 3 and 2. With a file of eight, Nos. 5 and 8 would slot in between 1 and 4, and Nos. 7 and 6 would go between 3 and 2.

With the SK’s limited numbers, 4 soldiers to a file would seem to be the logical choice. So this sequencing of up to eight may seem to be merely academic, yet the same sequencing is used for the ordering of files as is used for the ordering of individuals within a file, wherein the right hand is equated with the front, and the left-hand with the rear.

Take for example a division (of pike or musket) divided into two half-divisions consisting of 32 individuals formed into eight files of four. From the point of view of an officer facing the body, it would look like this:-

Notice that in each file the same relative order of 1 (5) (8) 4 3 (7) (6) 2 occurs, as it does within each rank. The positioning of No. 1 is self-evident, being the front right-hand marker of the whole division upon whom ultimately everyone else takes their dressing. The positioning of No. 2 is less obvious, but stems from the fact that there are a few occasions when a body actually dresses on the left-hand marker, such as when wheeling to the right when in line and when right-hand divisions are required to dress on the centre (pike division) of their battalion.

The importance of position No. 3 stems from the practice of dividing a division into two half-divisions for ease of marching through a confined space such as a narrow lane, in which case individual No. 3 effectively becomes the front right-hand marker of the second or left-hand half-division. Within such a body, positions Nos. 1, 2, 3 and possibly 4 would likely be held by individuals with the rank of corporal.

Should one have less than the 8 files illustrated above, one simply omits complete files by reverse order of seniority and the order of dignity is maintained. Should one have more than 8, then the 9th file fits in between 5 and 8, and the 10th between 7 and 6.

Thus to establish an order of dignity one can apply the following rules:

• Front is senior to rear.
• Right-hand is senior to left-hand.
• Outside edge is senior to middle, except that pike divisions, normally in the centre of a battalion, are senior to musket divisions, normally on the flanks, because pike is senior to musket.

These basic rules were applied throughout the ordering of military formations. Elton gives an example of the ordering of the officers in a company both in line of battle and in column of march. Thus position No. 1 (captain’s) is at the head of the entire company. Position No. 2 (lieutenant’s) is at the rear of the company. Position No. 3 (ensign’s) is at the head of the pike division, this being the senior division in the company. Position No. 4 (1st sergeant’s) is leading the second (or left-hand) musket division (the captain at the head of the entire company effectively also leads the first musket division). Positions can then be allocated to lead half-divisions by order of seniority until one runs out of sergeants.

A similar arrangement applies when a regiment combines its companies into larger divisions, although here all the command positions would be filled by commissioned officers. The sergeants could then fulfil their proper role of moving about their divisions as necessary to keep the men in their places or, on the march, again be used to lead half-divisions. The colonel would lead the entire regiment; the lieutenant-colonel would bring up its rear; and the captains would lead the divisions according to their seniority with the lieutenants in the rear of the divisions. The regimental major would have a similar roving brief for the entire regiment that the sergeants have for their individual divisions, hence that officer’s original title being ‘sergeant-major’.

Let us return once more to the individual soldiers in their files. Although one of the reasons for this order of dignity for the soldiers themselves - that of ensuring that raw and inexperienced men do not easily slip away from the ranks - hardly applies to re-enactors. Its other main purpose, that of allowing inexperienced soldiers to be led through the complexities of period drill by simply following their more experienced fellows, is still perfectly valid.

However, for re-enactors there are some other matters to be considered. When arranging a body of musketeers, for example, it is a good idea that one does not have entire ranks (or files, if firing by forlorn files) made up of non-firers. One might suppose that this would tend to occur, if one equated those inexperienced in drill with those who were non-firers. In my experience this tends not to be the case, and even if it were, one could judiciously place one or two inexperienced individuals in the junior positions in the front and rear ranks, so that some of the more experienced firers could go into the middle ranks.

Such a compromise as this might seem to go against the very precise ordering described above, but it does not really; for the whole purpose of the above system was to place people in precisely the appropriate position for their best use on the battlefield. One would be doing nothing more.

The very fact that the above system was the basis of 17th century military organisation is in itself sufficient reason to commend its adoption by military re-enactors of the 17th century, but there is also a very much more pertinent reason: it works. And it works for the very simple reason that each individual needs to concern himself only with following his file-leader (Can you play ‘Follow My Leader’?) and with his own position within his file, which only involves counting three other people. Most Knotters can count up to three. File-leaders may have to count up to eight or ten, but then it is because of this greater ability that they are file-leaders.

• 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