Early Enlightenment Warfare and the line of batttle, - "the cabinet war"

To speak generally, the wars before Napoleon will be "cabinet wars." Wars small enough to fit into a cabinet. They are paid for by the limited treasury of individual kings, and the soldiers will therefore be professionally trained and limited in number and guided by "the rules of war." The goals and targets will be limited. Civilians,their farms, and other means of production were not to be harmed as they were during the Thirty Years War. Prisoners could be paroled or exchanged after the war or even after the battle.

Earlier, the arquebus has replaced bows and arrows as the long range weapon of the line of battle because their shots could penetrate plate armor. Pikemen protected arquebusiers from melee combat in the same way that spearmen used to protect the archers.

But now the technology of firearms has advanced to where the arquebus has given way to the smooth bore musket. The musket has a longer range, more accuracy, a higher rate of fire, and is easier to manufacture and train with. This leads to the infantry line of arquebusiers and pikemen giving away to an infantry line consisting solely of musketeers. Men armed with muskets. (For melee work, the musketeers will put a plug or socket bayonet on the business end of their musket, converting it into an effective spear).

But while muskets are more accurate than arquebuses, they are not that much more accurate. To do enough harm to break an enemy line, a lot of musketeers have to stand together in a straight line and fire at the same time in order to create a shotgun effect.

And sometimes, even that is not enough. So the opposing lines will begin to move towards each other in an exacting sequence of shouldering arms, moving some paces forward, loading the musket, firing, and then shouldering arms again and etc. If neither line has broken yet, and the lines are close enough for an infantry charge, then the bayonets will be fixed and the charge commenced. The charge would then engage and hold the enemy line until an attack on the flanks or rear could be mounted by the cavalry, and the breaking of the line accomplished.

As before, an enemy line that broke and routed would be harried by the victorious side's cavalry. So the cavalry was again usually placed on the flanks of the line of battle.

But now the cavalry has something next to it in the line of battle that's not infantry - artillery. Cannon batteries would be placed on the flanks of the infantry with the cavalry next to them. The cannons where there to "lend dignity to what might otherwise be a vulgar brawl" (Fredrick the Great.) At long range, their round shot balls of iron would cut though the infantry line and thus possibly induce it to break. At close range, grapeshot (small balls of iron, pieces of metal, etc) would be used to stop a infantry bayonet charge with what amounted to blast from a giant shotgun.

Besides protecting the line's flanks and attacking the enemy's, the cavalry was now given the additional job of riding at a angle from the enemy cannons and then attacking them from the flank or rear - and also the job of protecting its own cannons from the enemy's cavalry.

In a cabinet war, only a few battles would be needed to decide an issue. Like a gentlemen, an enemy king conceded to defeat when his army was routed from the field. Since this was a considered a war between kings, only a king's army participated and received harm. The means of production that produced the army was not harmed, as the defeated king would simply concede and go somewhere else.

Eventually, these cabinet wars became so ritualized that they were almost like chess matches - except that men still died. You could win a war by simply routing an enemy king's army a few times, or capturing a city - even an very unimportant city that had nothing to do with means of production. Sometimes the symbolism was enough to force an enemy king to concede. This is cabinet war.