Barbara Donagan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199285181
- eISBN:
- 9780191713668
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199285181.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter discusses weapons used in the English civil war. Civil war armies used a transitional mixture of firearms and ‘muscle-powered weapons’ ranging from heavy artillery to clubs. Even the bow ...
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This chapter discusses weapons used in the English civil war. Civil war armies used a transitional mixture of firearms and ‘muscle-powered weapons’ ranging from heavy artillery to clubs. Even the bow and arrow marginally survived this time, although these seem to have been most useful as a means of sending propaganda messages in and out of besieged strongholds. Officers carried pistols and swords, as did the cavalry, and royalist cavalry sometimes added a small pole-axe; dragoons — mounted foot soldiers on inferior horses — usually carried firelock muskets or carbines as well as swords; and foot regiments were composed of musketeers (normally with less advanced matchlock muskets) and pikemen, both of whom also carried swords. Homely weapons played a larger part early in the war than they did after it had settled down and supplies and logistics had improved.Less
This chapter discusses weapons used in the English civil war. Civil war armies used a transitional mixture of firearms and ‘muscle-powered weapons’ ranging from heavy artillery to clubs. Even the bow and arrow marginally survived this time, although these seem to have been most useful as a means of sending propaganda messages in and out of besieged strongholds. Officers carried pistols and swords, as did the cavalry, and royalist cavalry sometimes added a small pole-axe; dragoons — mounted foot soldiers on inferior horses — usually carried firelock muskets or carbines as well as swords; and foot regiments were composed of musketeers (normally with less advanced matchlock muskets) and pikemen, both of whom also carried swords. Homely weapons played a larger part early in the war than they did after it had settled down and supplies and logistics had improved.
