7/17/2023 0 Comments Broken ranks militarySquares would be arranged in a checkerboard formation to minimise the risk of soldiers from one square accidentally shooting another. A square of 500 men in four ranks, such as those formed by Wellington's army at the Battle of Waterloo, was a tight formation less than 20 m long on any side. Its colours and commander were positioned in the centre, along with a reserve force to reinforce any side of the square that was weakened by attacks. Generally, a battalion, with about 500 to 1,000 men, was the smallest unit forming a square. The charge of the French Cuirassiers at the Battle of Waterloo against a British square.Īs used in the Napoleonic Wars, the formation was constituted as a hollow square or sometimes a rectangle, with each side composed of two or more ranks of soldiers armed with single-shot muskets or rifles with fixed bayonets. It later appeared as the pike square or tercio and was widely used in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The square was revived in the 14th century as the schiltron. The infantry square described by Nikephoros Phokas consisted of 12,000 men, who were deployed in 1000-man taxiarchies, which were separated by intervals wide enough to admit a dozen cavalrymen riding abreast to enter or leave the square. Cavalry would ride out of the square through gaps in lines to exploit opportunities for attack and retreat the same way if the situation turned against it. The infantry square, consisting of pikemen and archers, acted as a base of operations and refuge for cavalry by forming what was essentially a mobile fortified camp. The Byzantine Empire in the 9th to the 11th centuries used highly sophisticated combined arms tactics, based around hollow infantry square formation. Infantry squares were used in the siege of the nomads' mountain settlements near the Gobi region, where Han forces repelled nomad lancer attacks. ![]() The Han dynasty's mounted infantry forces used tactics effectively that involved highly mobile infantry square formations in conjunction with light cavalry in their many engagements against the primarily cavalry Xiongnu nomad armies in the 1st century AD. That is not to be confused with the testudo formation, which also resembled a square, but was used for protection against ranged weapons such as arrows and javelins. In particular, a large infantry square was used by the Roman legions at the Battle of Carrhae against Parthia, whose armies contained a large proportion of cavalry. ![]() The formation was described by Plutarch and used by the Ancient Romans it was developed from an earlier circular formation. With the development of modern firearms and the demise of cavalry, the square formation is now considered obsolete. By arranging the unit so that there was no undefended rear or flank, an infantry commander could organise an effective defense against cavalry attack. ![]() To deploy its weapons effectively, a traditional infantry unit would generally form a line but the line was vulnerable to more nimble cavalry, which could sweep around the end of the line, or burst through it, and then attack the undefended rear or simply sweep along the line attacking the individual footsoldiers successively. A depiction of a Napoleonic-era British infantry square at the Battle of Quatre Bras, Belgium, 1815.Īn infantry square, also known as a hollow square, was a historic close order formation used in combat by infantry units, usually when threatened with cavalry attack.
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