How did infantry warfare in the late 17th century in Europe exactly play out? Think of the Nine Years War (1688 to 1697), the Northern War of 1655–1660 or the Austro-Turkish War of 1663–1664. I know that it is still nominally considered to be pike & shot warfare but I've also read that the number of pikemen decreased significantly in the late 17th century. So how did assaults work when the musketeers had no bayonet and there were only a few pikemen around? As far as I've read plug bayonets became common only in the late 1660s and socket bayonets began to arise in the late 1680s. So did the musketeers just use their swords or their muskets as clubs? And how did they defend themselves from cavalry when there were fewer pikemen around?
>>64977056https://kabinettskriege.blogspot.com/2018/03/swedish-ga-pa-tactics-during-great.htmlGreat blog for the whole era, and this will get you into the paradigm shift occurring at the time.
>>64977505Thx but you must have misread my post, as the swedish caroleans are slightly beyond the time period I was asking about.
>>64977056Swords in most cases
>>64978788Was there a specific way how the musketeer would defend himself against cavalry with only a sword?
>>64977056>>64978850Pikemen numbers decreased specifically because plug bayonets became widely adopted.The moment musketeers regularly started getting issued bayonets, pikemen numbers suddenly plummeted, it wasn't a gradual decrease. Ex. one year your army might have 60-65k musketeers and 35-40k pikemen, and the next year you'd have 90k musketeers with plug bayonets, and only 10k pikemen.
>>64978920Even before the (gradual) introduction of the plug bayonet in the late 1660s did the number of pikemen decrease. French infantry regiments during the 30 Years War consisted of 40% pikes and 60% shot. In 1653 a royal order decreased the number of pikemen further to 30%. Similar ratios were present in the swedish, dutch and german armies as well.
