You are sent back to 1600 europe (aka pike and shot era) and given the ability to lead a regiment from the country of your choice. What tactical innovations will you implement?
You are sent back to 1600 europe (aka pike and shot era) and given the ability to lead a regiment from the country of your choice.
>given the ability to lead a regiment from the country of your choice
Do I have a choice of where I take them
Dig trenches/fox holes. Laugh and shoot at the suckers advancing slowly in a line.
They used trenches
How do you make a tank before internal combustion?
Shut up and push giovanni
>How do you make a tank before internal combustion?
Human powered. Open top, 1 cm of angled frontal armor. Total weight including armor, wheels, and guns would be 1 or 2 tonnes, probably.
>shoot one bullet
>you are now standing in a hole in the ground while a line of men with bayonets advance on your position
Tank, cartridges
spread the formations out like atleast twice as wide, sacrificing depth, more guerilla type warfare
Replace all matchlocks with snap locks
I choose a Hungarian hussar regiment and cross the seas to North America. I'll then head into the Comancheria and ally myself with them, offering to help them wipe out the Apache if they help me conquer some of the Spanish territories. When that's done, I invite Mongols, Kazakhs, and other steppe people to my new kingdom and have them join in with my Hungarians and Comanche. Now that I've combined all the horse lords of history, I declare the American Khanate and conquer the entire world.
I would highly recommend that anyone who's answer to the question can be boiled down to "apply modern tactics to historical forces" watch the following videos. Does a good job of explaining why tactics of the day were like that, and why attempting to push doctrine forward a few centuries would be worse than useless.
I will turn my camp into a factory and my regiment into factory workers. Industrialization over a hundred years earlier than everyone else.
That's how you get a mutiny.
You use your regiment to sack a city and then force the citizens to do the labor, you absolute scrub.
I lead a support unit and proceed to invent many useful things becoming rich and empowering my grateful liege. Actual combat is for cattle.
>Actual combat is for cattle.
>Gets chopped to pieces by his men for being an autistic pussy
>country
Sweden
>tactical innovations
Modern hygeine/disease control
Most deaths of this time are disease related, so if I take the ascending best military and significantly reduce its losses to disease and infection, I rule the world.
>Netherlands
>corps system, polygonal rifling, rifled artillery, skirmishers/light infantry
Smoking clothes to avoid typhus.
I don't think I could beat pike and shot commander at their own game.
Maybe make greater use of wagons on the battlefield, really no idea
Also you homosexuals OP said tactical.
-1 for anyone who gave technological response
French Régiment d'Auvergne
>Socket bayonets
Have a blacksmith build them from a description/schematics I'd draw
>Grenades
Actualy not that far off (they appeared in the mid-1600s), but my men would get them in advance. It's not that difficult to make : powder goes into a terracota ball with a fuze on top. We could even experiment with a matchlock system from an arquebus to eliminate the need to manualy set the match on fire, and put scrap iron, balls or small stones in there to make WW1 style frag grenades. Also experiment with launching grenades with slings or ballistas (French did that in WW1 trenches before getting rifle grenades, look up the Sauterelle)
>Trench tactics
Already existed for a while in sieges, but I'd use them in most defensive situations.
>Skirmishers/long range-scouts
Also have them use dimmer colours, booby traps, ennemy uniforms or colors when possible. Assign to them people who can speak the ennemy's language, imitate animal sounds, read/write and draw
>Slightly more modern command and control, logistics and admin
Teach every officer and sergent how to read and write, so they can make reports. Give every man an identification number and make files on every single one of them, have their superiors evaluate them for advancements, rewards and punishments.
>Personal hygiene and first aid training
Things like keeping hair short to prevent lice, mouth/dental hygiene by rinsing you mouth with salted water or chewing twigs from certain trees (might invent the toothbrush later), smoking clothes against typhus... Also teach the guys basic first aid, like garrotes
There can be little to no tactical evolution without technological innovation, my moron friend, even minor tinkering by dudes on the field.
Few seems to realize on the of the greatest challenges during history in regards to leading troops is communications. If you can only send orders by horse carrier or shouting, that really limits any kind of fine-tuned tactics you try to implement. People were walking in big squares not only because it concentrated fire, it also meant you only had to tell one of those hundred guys what to do everytime you needed something done. So if you're leading pike and shot troops, you're pretty much limited to do exactly what everyone else was already doing back then.
Now as far as strategies or logistics are concerned you could certainly fix things with the power of historical hindsight, but not really on the tactical level
>Few seems to realize on the of the greatest challenges during history in regards to leading troops is communications. If you can only send orders by horse carrier or shouting, that really limits any kind of fine-tuned tactics you try to implement.
This isn't something you can set up in a single day, and its more for strategic than tactical use, but you could have a "gondor beacon" style of communication system. Have a series of simple towers within telescope range of eachother, and a system of moveable panels (or just a guy playing charades) with different setups representing different letters/numbers. Messages could be moved much faster than by horse, if fog isn't an issue.
>but you could have a "gondor beacon" style of communication system.
Anon you're not gonna believe it
Ops question is literally the entire plot of the safehold novels.
The good guys win by introducing standardised manufacturing, better metallurgy, then speedrunning firearms tech from muskets to breech loaded rifles to bolt actions
Also early adoption of man portable mortars, and an early version of forward artillery officers by using flares
Also implementing the idea of special forces in the form of snipers/scouts/skirmishers on steroids
A corps system
Better logistics
>extensive drilling, professional soldiers
>decentralised command structure
>turn everyone into a dragoon
>Reform regiment into 20 independent light cavalry units of 40 men, divided into squads of 10
>camouflage and civilian clothing
>Socket Bayonets
>dedicated messenger riders, high on whatever stimulants I can afford
>mandatory first aid training: a squad of highly trained field surgeons
A regiment of Special Forces Jäger-Dragoons. I'd never engage in pitched battles, but focus on killing officers, messengers and foragers.
Basically:
>Be Spanish Tercio Footman
>Don't even bother learning the new Captains name, he'll be dead before the end of the week anyway
>Yesterday only one man returned from foraging, wearing a necklace of ears and screaming about ghosts in the forest telling him to "tell the others what happened here"
>Madrid hasn't sent a letter in 4 months
>Haven't fough a single battle for half a year, a third of the army is dead or deserted
>Wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of muffled screaming
>Suddenly someone screams "/K/OMMANDO!" and a hundred other voices join him
>The camp becomes thunder and lead
>"/K/OMMANDO!"
>In the distance, our powder storage is blown, drowning the camp into a brief, thin, orange haze
>Silhoutes of men running from tent to tent with blades on their arqebuses
>There is only screaming now
>Some poor sargeant is trying to group his men into a circle
>As soon as he turns his back on them, he gets jumped and cut to pieces
>The men slink off into the darkness
>OhGodThoseWereNotOurGuys.png
>See our Captain ride past me into the night, naked and weeping
>Hear him fall & beg for surrender outside of view, then yelp
>Silence
>Barely got my helmet and sword
>Cold iron against my throat
>Freeze in terror, praying to the holy virgin for forgiveness
>A warm, wet necklace is placed around my neck
>Oh god its ears
>A voice speaks to me in a thick Dutch accent
>"Tell the others what happened here du verrekte kankermongol"
instantly sell all our weapons and gear and live like kings for the rest of our lives
Introduce bushido