Chaplains to the English Regiment in Spanish Flanders, 1605-06

Abstract

‘Now at the word Order your pikes, you place the butt end of your pike by the outside of your right foot, your right hand holding it even with your eye and your thumb right up; then your left arm being set akimbo by your side you shall stand with a full body in a comely posture’. In this manner English soldiers of fortune, serving as pikemen in the wars of the Netherlands, were instructed in the art of war in the late sixteenth century. Musketeers were told that stray grains of powder disappeared at the command Blow off your loose corns, sometimes with a puff or two, sometimes with a ‘sudden strong blast’, but always in accordance with regulation. In general soldiers who wished to learn their profession had to look elsewhere than in England. In England no one could take them very seriously, not FalstafF the fraudulent Captain, not swaggering Pistol, nor Nym the impostor who affected military brevity. But those who did go abroad were equal to the best foreign professionals in experience and courage. Most of these English soldiers fought for the Dutch, on account of sympathy for them on religious grounds. But Elizabeth's aid was half-hearted and late in coming, for she despised the Dutch as rebels against their rightful, Spanish sovereign. This, together with the Earl of Leicester's mismanagement of his campaigns, were reasons why the English constantly deserted the Dutch to fight for Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, the best commander in that very war-torn century. From about 1598, however, the situation improved for the Dutch, who, having thrown off their dependence on England, converted the English soldiers into mercenaries, bound by an oath of allegiance to their Dutch paymasters.