Before his time, fire-arms had been used only for skirmishing
service; he commenced to use them in line. This reform was, however,
only foreshadowed, as it were, by the Dutch General; it was reserved
for Gustavus Adolphus to complete it. While he was executing a series
of military operations such as the world had not beheld since the days
of Caesar, he was also creating a movable artillery, and giving to the
fire of his infantry an efficacy which had not been attained before.
For the heavy machines of war which were drawn by oxen to the field
of battle, and which remained there motionless and paralyzed by the
slightest movements of the contending armies, he substituted light
cannon drawn by horses and following up all the manoeuvres of either
cavalry or foot. He had found the infantry formed in dense battalions.
His system arranged it in long continuous lines in which each rank
of musketeers was sustained by several ranks of pikemen, so that his
array, thus distributed, should present to the enemy a front bristling
with steel, while, at the same time, it could cover a large space of
ground with its discharge of lead. Attentive to all kinds of detail,
he also gave his soldiers the cartouch-box and knapsack instead of
the cumbersome apparatus to which they had been accustomed.
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