The Firearm
Modern Infantry, however, knows not the pike, and may be said to have really originated when firearms were first carried by foot soldiers. Of these weapons the first was the arquebus (arc-bouche, or bow with a mouth), a short tube carried in a small log or stick, the stock (German for stick). The charge was fired from the breast by applying, to a hole called the vent, the lighted end of a match, or rope steeped in saltpetre so as to smoulder. In the fifteenth century we find the arquebus made longer, and of smaller bore, and the stock shaped so as to fire from the shoulder. It was then provided with a cock to hold the match, and bring it down at the side of the barrel on a pan filled with a priming of powder, which fired the charge through a side vent.
About 1520 the Spaniards began to make several improvements in the firearm. It was made of larger bore, and all were of uniform calibre, whence it was called a caliver. Being heavier, a forked rest was provided to fire from. About 1530 a lock, copied (like the shaped stock) from the crossbow, was added, so as to bring the cock and match sharply down on the pan. The perfected matchlock was called a musquet, and its use spread from Spain into Flanders, and thence through Europe in the sixteenth century. In the next century it was made lighter, which allowed the rest to be abolished.
The musket, as it was spelt later, then became the general firearm of the Infantryman or Musketeer, until replaced by the rifle in the nineteenth century.
Musketeers
At first, only a few picked men were armed with muskets, and were styled “the Shot.” They were employed to skirmish on the flanks of “the Pikes,” among whom they took refuge when attacked. But as their efficiency and fire power increased, Musketeers grew in importance and numbers, till the end of the sixteenth century, Maurice of Nassau had an equal number of soldiers termed “Shots” and “Pikes” in his Companies. Infantry had now asserted its superiority to Horsemen, who could neither break the central mass of Pikes, nor endure the fire of the Musketeers on the flanks.
Infantry under Maurice of Nassau
Maurice’s army represented the best organization of the period, and was the model followed fifty years later in the Parliamentary wars by his British allies in the Netherlands. His Companies and Regiments were not yet of fixed strength; they were organized on the same lines as the Landsknechts, but were formed of equal numbers of Pikemen and Musketeers. He introduced the division of the Company into three Sections, each under an Officer, with a Corporal, two Sergeants, and three Drummers. Maurice, owing to improved drill and discipline, was able to reduce the deep formations of his day to ten ranks, which was the least which would give continuous fire by the method then necessary, which consisted of each man retiring to the rear when he had fired, so as to get time for the slow operation of reloading.
Brigades
Maurice drew up his army for battle according to the old Swiss fashion in three lines, styled “van,” “battle,” and “rear,” and each line constituted a Brigade, a new, but as yet an indefinite, unit, composed of several Regiments. This is the first introduction of that term, which is derived from the Italian briga, French brigue (a quarrel), and means “a band of opposing combatants.”