Enfilade (military)
As Enfilade , including conversion , a process in the fire fight of with is firearms equipped part of the infantry in the early modern period referred to. After the shot, the shooters walked around the outside of the formation in one or two rows (French en file ) and lined up behind it to reload. The process was used from around the end of the 16th century and developed into one of the most important forms of fighting for arquebusiers and musketeers well into the 17th century.
In this procedure, the riflemen lined up in closed rows up to ten men behind one another and up to ten men next to each other, the distance to the neighboring department was almost 2 m. The front men in the ranks walked a little bit forward at the start of the fight and fired their arquebuses or muskets . Then they marched outside through the alleys to the rear, while the second in sequence went into the firing position and everyone else moved up. Then the second lined up in the back and the third fired, and so on. When everyone had fired once, the first shooters normally had enough time to get their muzzle-loader ready to fire again.
Another form of the shooter change is the counter march (contremarche). With the same number of riflemen, the order of battle was much broader when using the counter march. The counter-march could also be used offensively for this, while the enfilade represented a steady slow decline in the overall formation.
So these ways of fighting apparently made constant fire possible. At the same time, however, the arrangement also increased the hit rate for enemy fire. A symmetrical setup results in a correspondingly high blood toll with loss of terrain (enfilade) or low gain in terrain (contremarche).
origin
The Enfilade was developed as part of the Nassau reforms by Johann the Middle of Nassau-Siegen and his cousin Prince Moritz of Orange around 1580. In doing so, they met the need to optimally utilize the low firepower of the muskets due to the long reloading process and to have shooters in the front who are always ready to fire. In his Observationes , Johann the Middle described the procedure in his own words as follows:
“With the wings it is kept in the following shape. The musketeers are negsted by the double soldiers (secured) because it is a heavy rifle and generally the best soldiers, but there is an alley between them and the guards that is left standing next to them, which is so far that they shot white limb, Swing through the same alley, reload and thus one link can replace the other. "
literature
- Georg Ortenburg: Weapons and the use of weapons in the age of the Landsknechte , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1984, ISBN 3-7637-5461-X
- Herbert Schwarz: Combat forms of infantry in Europe through 800 years , Munich 1977
- JW Wijn: Johann der Mittlere von Nassau-Siegen , in Werner Hahlweg (Hrsg.): Klassiker der Kriegskunst , Darmstadt 1960