I can't recall the source, but remember reading how the British had trouble opening the ammunition boxes which were fastened by screws, and apparently no screwdrivers were available.

I regard this piece well done. Perhaps some reference should be make to the film "Zulu Dawn" which seems masterfully done.

-Bob

I am editing "The Battle of Nordlingen 1634" Why does Wiki take me to this location instead?

Like Wiki's piece on the Battle of Nordlingen 1634, this needs a great deal of fine-tuning and editing. The description of tactics simply made me wince.

I would suggest the original contributor take in some of the information in Michael Roberts' history on Gustavus Adolphus to learn more about the tactics and both Roberts and Cecily V. Wedgwood's "Thirty Years War" account of Breitenfeld. For a concise summary, Lynn Montross' "War Through the Ages" is better than what I see here.

One thing I cannot begin to stress is the vulnerability of the caracole to shock cavalry. Having learned some bitter lessons from the Poles, most of Gustavus' cavalry were trained in this fashion. which was to charge and fight at close combat with the saber. My impression is that Pappenheim's forces attempted to caracole on the Swedish right and found themselves mauled by the musketeer companies attached to the cavalry there, and later, after having been weakened, were charged.

Heavy infantry? Please... no such thing. Just pikemen and musketeers.

I would also suggest some commentary regarding the Swedes use of a prepared cartridge which accounts for why their musketmen fired at a rate of three to one.

Good luck.

The more I review this piece, the more I wince. Not that the original contributor failed to describe the battle reasonably, but it lacks a concise quality.

As anyone familiar with the battle knows, there were four phases:

1. The opening cannonade

2a. The Rout of the Saxons followed by Horn's rear-to-flank maneuver of the second line which reestablished the Swedish left. 2b. Papenheim's cavalry assaults on the Swedish right.

3. The repulse of both Papenheim and the tercio attacks on the left.

4. The Swedish counter-attack on the right which routed Papenheim and seized the imperial guns.

This is the framework which should be focused on for a description of the battle.

The original contributor fails to mention the chief reason for Swedish entry into the conflict which was an Imperialist naval build-up on the Baltic. But I'll further add, the introductory paragraphs strike me as lengthy and a bit extraneous.

The Swedish three-pounder gun was considered unreliable. It was the four-pounder which became the standard light artillery piece used in support of Swedish battalions. This is a minor point, but I bring it up to demonstrate one of many inaccuracies.

Within the section entitled "Gustav's Plans" there is no discussion of such. The statement that the French had gone through several decades of war is lacking. He is referring, of course, to the religious civil war with the Huguenots (French Calvinists). Sweden's wars during the early reign of Gustavus were fought outside Sweden and did not cause significant damage. On the other hand, France was unable to enter the Thirty Years War until seventeen years after its outbreak, and even then, they were not fully ready.

There's the citation for Wedgwood's book, "The Thirty Years War". The original publisher was Random House, not Book of the Month Club, and the original publishing date is 1938, not 1995.

I have read Parker's book on The Thirty Years War which is not as good as Wedgwood. For an understanding of tactics, Michael Roberts' book on Gustavus Adolphus is without peer.

In the Nordlingen piece, the original contributor remarked that the Spanish tercio could hold its own against the school of warfare pioneered by Maurice of Orange (of the Dutch Netherlands) and adopted by the Swedes.

I left this alone, but find it absolutely dubious. The tercio was essentially a massive pike formation of 900 men, with four small squares of musketeers of 150 men each aligned at the corners. It was slow and inflexible. Most of all, its firepower paled by comparison with Swedish formations which fired and reloaded three times as fast due to a prepared cartridge. Bear in mind, only the two front blocks of musketeers in a tercio could fire. The two rear blocks could not shoot without hitting their own. So during a battle, the tercio was capable of bringing only 300 musketmen into play.

If I recall Michael Roberts correctly, a Swedish battalion consisted of 216 pikemen in the center, flanked on each side by two blocks of musketeers, each numbering 96 men each. Therefore, a Swedish batallion could bring 192 musketeers into play by itself.

A Swedish brigade typically consisted of three battalions, totaling some 1224 men, not including attached units. If we take the battalion musketeer total and multiply by three, that means a Swedish brigade lined up 576 musketeers to the tercio's 300. And the Swedish muskets fired three times as fast, which equates to a volume of fire that is 5 2/3 greater overall. This is a withering advantage in an open field battle, and we have yet to add in the light Swedish four-pounder guns.

This is the reason Wallenstein relied on digging his men in and conducting defensive battles. Fighting the Swedes in the open was suicide.

The Habsburg victory at Nordlingen was no vindication of the tercio. Rather, it was a combination of patient defense and Protestant bad luck. The Habsburg counterattack which swept the field did not go into action until late in the day and only after the opposing left dangerously weakened itself.

It is also noteworthy that Bernard was able to hold off the entire 33,000-man Habsburg force on his own for most of the battle with a far smaller group of men.

With this in mind, I have little doubt if Ferdinand and the Cardinal-Infante had dared launch an early frontal assault against the undivided Protestant forces, they would have fared very badly. Precisely why they took up a defensive stance for much of the battle.

In summary, the tercio was still no match for the Swedish brigade. Nordlingen was an atypical battle and therefore not a valid model upon which to judge the merits of the tercio.

This piece still strikes me as way too lengthy due to excessive detail.

The starting point should be the end of the Battle of Smolensk and Hitler's decision to postpone the attack on Moscow (covered). This delayed "Typhoon" for six weeks. Some discussion of the pros and cons of that decision are worth mentioning. With the launching of "Typhoon" on September 30, the Germans broke through and wiped out five Soviet armies, creating a huge hole in front of Moscow. But shortly thereafter, the fall period of Russian rain set in, turning the roads and open spaces into quagmires. For the next month, the German forces were reduced to a crawl. Not until November 15th when frost hardened the ground were they able to continue. The breathing space gave the Soviet forces time to replace their losses and organize new lines of defense. As the weather turned colder, the unprepared Germans suffered from frostbite and vehicle breakdowns. A state of exhaustion set in for the Wehrmacht, followed by a general Soviet counteroffensive which pushed the enemy back.

The above emphasizes the main points.

What the reader doesn't need is a flood of minutiae such as the Soviet counter-attack at Mtsensk or their bombing attacks in front of Moscow.

It should be possible to reduce this piece to half or less its current length.