English Civil War Battle Tactics

Why did English Civil War battles look so basic?

 

The English Civil War battle tactics might seem basic and outright crazy. Marching up to the enemy in unmissable line of flesh. Well it actually wasn’t that dumb. If you split your forces it would mean you could deliver less fire power to a certain area. Think about it this way, if you have 100 soldiers and the enemy has a 100 soldiers and you split your forces into 10s and the enemy keeps his 100 together. You would end up fighting 10vs100 soldiers 10 times. More often then not the enemy with 100 soldiers you’d lose less then you with 10 soldiers. So it is important to keep your soldiers together to offer maximum fire power. Here is a video on the basics of English Civil War battle tactics.

https://youtu.be/HOX60Pr8vTg

This video was just to show a little bit more of a visual aspect to tactics.

I talked about flanking in the video and it was very effective tactic at allowing you to concentrate your fire power and leave the enemy scrabbling to reposition.

 

Overall I think the tactics were basic, but there wasn’t a better strategy that was available at the time.