These developments can be placed under two categories, the rise of infantry power and the dominance that foot soldiers came to exercise on the battlefield, and the simultaneous emergence of artillery and its impact on fortification design. In the 1470s, the creation of disciplined infantry formations based on the old Roman and Greek phalanx was then developed by Cordoba and Pescara. The result of this new accession of infantry was Hapsburg domination of warfare in the 1520s leading up to c1530.
Artillery briefly completely changed the face of warfare. Mediaeval warfare, dominated by castle defence and siege warfare, was now replaced with open conflict as the power of the cannon rendered defences obsolete. For the first time in recent history, the military advantage lay with generals in fighting offensive campaigns. The Hapsburg-Valois wars then became a war of movement, with success lying in bold offensives and spectacular battles. This lasted until 1530 with the arrival of a new form of defence system. As soon as the power of artillery was shown, engineers set about developing new defences to withstand siege cannon. This ultimately led to the concept of the trace italienne, and the effectiveness of these defences led to the advantage returning to the defender and as such open warfare was brought to an abrupt end. From 1530 onwards commanders were again locked in a static warfare dominated by sieges and counter sieges.
Initially artillery favoured the offensive. Field artillery was effective at both Ravenna in 1512 and Mariganano in 1515, though it was not mobile enough for real development on the battlefield thereafter. Their limited accuracy, their slow rates of fire and above all their relative immobility combined to restrict their use severely except for a preliminary bombardment. It was the French who realised that an army with mobile guns on the battlefield would enjoy an enormous advantage. They took batteries of guns called culverins into Italy in 1494. During their victory at Ravenna in 1512, they bombarded the Spanish for 2 hours and then at Marignano in a 2 day battle they used a battery of 70 to rake the Spanish and Swiss phalanxes from distance, and then manoeuvred to maintain an enfilading fire that annihilated Spanish forces and gave control of Milan to Francis.
It was different with siege artillery in that curtain defences simply could not withstand it. Guns could be concentrated to fire at a small area of wall and literally batter it down. Siege cannons transformed siege warfare because there was no defensive wall they could not smash. A massive advantage had been given to the besieger, and not surprisingly, kings rushed to expand their stocks. In the Spanish armies, the number of cannons grew from 16 in 1480 to 162 in 1508. However the supremacy of the besieger lasted only until the 1520s. After that as the successful defence of Milan against the French suggests in 1521, the advantage was passing back to defence. Trace Italienne curtailed dynamic warfare and returned campaigns to positional warfare. As direct contests like Pavia became increasingly rare, failure in a major siege became as important as victory on the open battlefield as Charles V discovered following his inability to recapture Metz in 1552-3.
Features of the new trace italienne were mainly the lowering and thickening of the walls back filled with mounds of earth to absorb solid shot. Often up to 12 metres thick while more commonly time and expense was spared by simply constructing mounds of earth and leaving the brick out, for example the fortifications at Metz in 1552 were hastily improvised simply by filling round towers with earth and heaping up rings of earth to absorb incoming fire. The widening of traditional moats/ditches and the provision of a glacis demonstrated the new role of fortifications, in essence they were to be gun platforms, for the only real defence against artillery was artillery.
The bastion was developed, squat and angled fortifications with the shape being drawn out to make the angle more acute and eliminate the dead area in front and achieve excellent all round fields of fire. And so the famous triangular shape which was to dominate fortifications up to 1916 was born. Further refinements were refining the bastions shape from a triangle to arrow head and the creation of orellion at the base of each bastion so that guns could be placed to fire along walls rather than directly at them and to add outworks to the outer side of ditches themselves so that those in the ditch came under fire from all angles.
Also the use of the half moon if a breach was effected; in essence a hastily constructed semi circle of earth was thrown up from behind which the attackers were assailed by pike and arquebusiers.
In 1494 Charles VIII brought to Italy an army of 18,000 men and horse drawn siege-train of at least forty guns. Even contemporaries realised that this marked a new departure in warfare: in 1498 the Venetian Senate declared that ‘the wars of the present time are influenced more by the force of bombards and artillery than by men at arms and set about acquiring firearms. Other states soon followed and, within a few years, the French invasion was seen as a watershed.
Cerignola. Hand held firearms dominated this battle - the French cavalry and Swiss pike attacked with customary vigour but were driven back by Spanish arquebusiers occupying a carefully chosen defensive position and protected by a ditch and palisade. Cordaba followed up his victory by capturing the city of Naples and in December he surprised the French army defending the both banks of the river Garigliano. Using secretly assembled bridging equipment; the Spanish crossed the river and routed the French. Louis was forced to give up Naples in the treaty of Blois of 1505.
In 1512, Gaston marched his troops across northern Italy and marched south to lay siege to Ravenna. A combined force of Spanish and papal troops moved to raise the siege and in April, the two armies met outside the city. The battle was bloody but the French emerged victorious, but at the cost of the death of their brilliant commander, killed at the moment of victory. The French here took batteries of light field artillery called culverins into battle and were able to bombard the Spanish lines for over 2 hours.
French domination of northern Italy though did not suit the Swiss and unusually they acted for themselves rather than as mercenaries - they aimed to protect their southern borders and secure their supplies of wine and grain and very successfully defended their position by defeating the French at Novara, restoring the Sforzas as Duke of Milan. An attempt by Louis to stage a comeback in 1513 ended disastrously. The Swiss, after routing his army at Novara, swept into Burgundy and besieged Dijon. They withdrew only after the local commander had signed a humiliating treaty which Louis subsequently refused to ratify.
The French armies recklessly attacked a strong Habsburg position at Bicocca, near Milan. The French forces were defeated in battle and other French garrisons in the north of Italy soon surrendered. Charles now held Milan securely and had gained control of northern Italy. Bicocca and later Pavia demonstrated once and for all that tactics would have to be revised in face of the arquebus. The first demonstrated its power in a fortified defensive position, the second in the open field. The main victim at Bicocca was the Swiss infantry, at Pavia the French cavalry, each the best representative of its type.
However, it wasn’t just artillery that helped to revolutionise warfare. The introduction of new weaponry such as the pike, and the arquebus or musket, and the establishment of systematic training to gain the maximum effectiveness from these weapons lead to the emergence of trained armies, requiring professional cadres and instructors. This also lead to the growth of standing armies – having invested time and effort into training these men, a commander wanted to keep them, and so warfare became a profession. However the maintenance of standing armies was so expensive that only the richest powers could afford it.
There was an obvious connection between the changes. The Swiss pike finally provided the long desired means of stopping cavalry charges, but could only be effectively deployed in a mobile square of pikemen who had to wheel and manoeuvre with precision to face the swirling line of attack. Then it was discovered by the Spaniards that it was best used in conjunction with muskets whose firepower could actually bring the attackers down. The musket though was only effective when a body of musketeers were trained to fire in salvo, and then sheltering behind the pikemen while reloading - a combination which first appeared at Ravenna in 1513.
However the pike square was not invulnerable, and with the development of massed artillery the large squares were easy targets and effective cannon fire could lead to carnage. However artillery too required complex technical support and transport and professional gunners, thus increasing the necessity for professionalisation and the creation of efficient logistical support and supply lines.
The development of the trace italienne set out a sophisticated system of ditches, entrapments and low angled bastions which denied the attackers easy targets and access whilst exposing them to withering counter fire.
From all these there are two clear conclusions, that soldiers had to be increasingly professional leading to an increasing dominance of mercenaries, and that the increase of mercenaries meant that rulers had to find new sources of income for their armies and a new bureaucracy to administer them.
Some consider that the main influence in the wars was the adaptation of new infantry tactics, essentially the Swiss pike phalanx, which significantly altered the war’s course and lead to Hapsburg dominance. The rise of infantry came before the technology of gunpowder although the severe limitations of the Swiss equally show that ultimately it was the combination of gun technology and massed infantry formations which the Swiss developed which ultimately proved the most powerful and effective, producing the spectacular Hapsburg successes of the 1500s and 1520s. The Swiss proved able in phalanx not only to withstand the shock of mounted knights in defence but also take to the offensive themselves, a sharp contrast to the traditional foot soldiers who were normally armed with crossbow or longbow. The Swiss invention was ultimately the consolidation of foot soldiers into a square up to 6000 strong, who were highly trained, and could operate on the open battlefield with speed and mobility, changing direction easily and operating as effectively in offence as defence. An example of the devastating effectiveness of the phalanx is shown in the battle of Morat in 1476. Three phalanxes slaughtered a traditional army of 4000 heavily mounted Burgundian knights. Equally at Novara in 1513 the discipline of the infantry was even more impressively revealed. Despite being under heavy attack by cavalry from the flank and rear, Swiss phalanxes were still able to maintain formation and continue their advance, break French lines and save Milan.
Yet the Swiss innovations had severe limitations, ruthlessly exposed at Cerignola in 1503, and it wasn’t until the pikemen were combined with handguns, i.e. the combination of pike and arquebus, that the full military potential of the newly advanced infantry discipline was realised. It was two Spanish commanders who achieved the most in this respect, initially Cordoba then later Pescara.
Firearms had been slow to develop, while they had been experimented with from the 1350s, it was only with the emergence of the arquebus circa 1490 and then its successor the musket in 1512, that the era of the handgun finally dawn. However it was not immediately adopted by all. While Venice for example replaced all its crossbows with arquebuses immediately in 1491, France did not follow suit until as later as 1567 - most in France argued that Cerignola suggested that it was no more than a supporting weapon and attempted to explain away the heavy casualties regularly inflicted on their troops by Spanish and imperial arquebuses.
Many therefore argue that it was the imperial decision to invest wholeheartedly in the arquebus that was a major factor in their success in the 1520s. This is illustrated at Cerignola in 1503; it revealed that a phalanx could maintain formation only on good terrain. The ground across which the French had to advance was a steep hillside, and thus they were unable to keep together and so lost their collective protection and combined force.
The battle showed that the phalanx worked only on an open battlefield. Cordoba had dug his men in behind a protective wall of ditches and stakes which stopped the Swiss advance in their tracks, well out of pike range of the Spanish. Handheld firearms therefore dominated this battle. The French cavalry and Swiss pike attacked but were trapped too far away from the Spanish by the fortifications to do any damage, and were left at the mercy of the Spanish arquebusiers. This battle then enabled Spain to dominate Naples from now on. This battle showed that with field fortifications and handguns, it was feasibly possible to rout a much larger enemy force and in the process transform infantry warfare.
Cordoba had realised the weakness of the phalanx, and to this end he broke the phalanx down into several smaller formations called coronelias. Each of these comprised 250 foot soldiers of which 60% were pike men, and 20% had javelins and 20% were arquebusiers, and each coronelia had its own supporting cavalry and field artillery. Operating in groups, coronelias could combine into a single phalanx or operate in smaller formations adding considerable flexibility.
The arquebus was open to the criticisms that it was unreliable in wet weather and that its rate of fire was slower than the bow’s. But the maximum killing range of an arquebus of the best Italian make was about 400 yards, which compared favourably with the range of a long-bow and equalled that of the cross-bow; the arquebus was also decisively superior in shock and impact and therefore in killing power. The arquebus had been shown to be so effective by the troops— Spanish and Italian—who had first used it on a large scale, that German and Swiss infantry (the latter particularly after Bicocca) employed a proportion of shot with their pike. In Spain the respective value of the two arms, man for man, was reflected in the higher pay offered to the first-class arquebusier than to the best pikeman.
Fernando de Avalos, the Marquis of Pescara, removed javelins and raised the proportion of arquebusiers to a third of each coronelia thus making it a core weapon. He also enhanced the role of field artillery. Guns became the backbone of Pescara’s methods of war and their power against both knights and pike were amply demonstrated at Pavia. Here although Pescara’s force was smaller than the French, his losses were recorded at 700-1500 men while the French at 8000-14,000 though the impact on the cavalry is the most striking feature: at the core of the French cavalry were some 1400 nobility. Less than 400 of these survived and most of these were prisoners of the imperialists, including Francis I himself. Heavy cavalry were met by arquebusiers taking cover in trees and hedgerows and retreating where necessary into the protective ranks of pikes.
Cordoba's and Pescara’s coronelias, packed with arquebuses and supported by field artillery, gave Charles V’s armies the military advantage. Further developments came in 1534 when Spanish forces were again restructured - this time into phalanxes of about 3000 men called tercios. The reduced size gave a tercio greater cohesion while the increase in the proportion of arquebuses to 50% strengthened its striking power. This became the standard formation for European armies. Since cavalry no longer dared to charge infantry, the dense shock absorbing mass of a Swiss phalanx was no longer needed, and it locked too many men within a square. Instead, what was now needed was the firepower of each arquebusier and the shallow tercio increased his opportunity to use his weapon.
After the humiliation of Pavia, France finally began to catch up and by the later 1530s had adopted Pescara’s reforms and the tercio. Once both sides were rebalanced, the course of war could again go either way; superior weapons and tactics only have impact when they possessed by just one side.
This lead to several key overall changes. Cavalry was no longer used against arquebusiers. It was used against other infantry, or to attack pike supported by shot if they were already frontally engaged with other troops. There was a changed attitude to the prestige of the foot soldier. Much of the social stigma attached to infantry service had disappeared by the middle of the period. The increasing popularity of the foot-tourney among noblemen accustomed them to the sight of a gentleman in armour on his own legs. In effect there was increased emphasis on the combination of pike and musket. Firearms helped to make foot service more popular. Both arms were needed. Pike alone was vulnerable to shot; arquebusiers alone were vulnerable to any body of cavalry that charged in without presenting too leisurely, or too broad, a target. If there were pikes to break the impact and give the arquebusiers time to re-load, or arquebusiers to thin a charge before it hit the pikes, then the odds were heavily against the cavalry.
In conclusion therefore it is impossible to argue that tactics or weaponry were more influential in determining the course of the Hapsburg-Valois wars, as both are so inextricably linked that they cannot be separated. However it is clear that the combination of new tactics and weaponry made warfare more lethal and high casualty rates began to be experienced more than ever before. There was no real decisive outcome to the wars so it is difficult to judge the influence of tactics and technology. Ultimately the newly complicated wars bankrupted both rulers, and in the end the fighting stopped, so financially exhausted were the two combatants. The balance of war swung from side to side but after the initial invasion by France it generally favoured the Hapsburgs who were the quickest to take up the new technology and tactics and indeed to refine them, and so ultimately it must be considered that it was in fact the use of the new tactics and technology that was the most influential in determining the course of the war than either tactics or technology.