Marshal Vauban by Falkner James;

Author:Falkner, James;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1133270
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Limited
Published: 2013-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Muller went on to say that, since Vauban devoted so much thought to a rational way of attacking fortresses, and his views carried such weight in military circles, such attacks were both unnecessary and rare:

His chief study being always to preserve the troops as much as possible [...] if the garrison is strong, and commanded by a governor who knows his business, it would be imprudent to make such an attack.

Unfortunately, history would amply demonstrate that for all the Marshal’s teaching on the subject, impatient generals, or those with time treading hard on their heels, would go on attacking in this way, often with success but not infrequently meeting bloody failure.

The fertile imagination of Vauban was not confined to devising cunning ways to attack or to defend fortresses. He had become increasingly unconvinced of the effectiveness of infantry armed with pikes, when opposed by those armed with a preponderance of matchlock, and later, more efficient flintlock muskets. Many others expressed the same interest and concern, of course, with the conservative camp by and large wishing to stay with the tried and tested weapon, the pike, and to save the expense of a mass re-equipping of armies with expensive muskets. Even so, the ratio of pikemen to musketeers had been falling for many years, and this trend accelerated as the greater efficiency and effectiveness of the flintlock over the much more cumbersome matchlock had become evident. Once musketeers could be depended upon to build up a sufficiently devastating volume of fire, aided by the platoon firing technique which was increasingly widely adopted in all armies (but only slowly by the French), the argument was at an end. ‘I am not an advocate of the pike,’ Vauban wrote, ‘for more than twelve years I have railed against them.’29 The day of the pike was clearly coming to an end. Even so, French ministers, concerned at ever-growing costs, were reluctant to go one step further and change from the matchlocks to flintlock muskets. Their soldiers showed their clear preference by hurrying to pick up the fallen flintlocks of the enemies on the battlefield, at places such as Steinkirk in 1692, while throwing away their own matchlocks.

A persistent concern was the vulnerability of infantry in the open to any sudden charge of massed cavalry. This was a strong argument for the retention of the pike, but the pikemen could in other circumstances be slaughtered by well-drilled musketeers standing off and out of reach of pike thrusts. Still, once the musket, whether matchlock or flintlock, was discharged, the infantry were once again vulnerable to cavalry attack, and so the pike appeared to show its value again. The plug bayonet was developed, but this was really just a dagger whose wooden handle was stuck into the end of the musket barrel to make a rather inferior and short quasi-pike for defence against horsemen. The plug bayonet, once fitted, also prevented the musket from being fired, and so was unsatisfactory, even when used with care. The solution

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