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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Col_Pladoh" data-source="post: 464895" data-attributes="member: 796">Just so!  The ones that were the most effective and broke the enemy, or held the line against attack <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>I must also add that the Renaissance was also the heyday of the mercenary. Private armies were going out of style, while national armies were just getting started. It should be noted that England used few mercenaries at this time. Later, during the early Modern Period, the Swedes and French adopted the English model and were successful doing such.[/QUOTE]This is true, although the Swiss, for example, did serve the French through much of the forepart of the Renaissance, and there were English mercenaries too--and of course the Italians and Germans.A good part of the decline in noble forces forming national armies was their ineffectiveness as tactics developed, the pressure from the Ottoman Turks in Eastern Europe, that moving westwards,  However, the Polish-Lithuanian Kindgom did indeed rely on such forces through much of the 17th century.[/QUOTE]By the invention of the bayonet (mid 17th century) armor was relegated to decoration, ceremonial duties, and elite formations.[/QUOTE]Armored formations were effective through the 16th and 17th centuries, bayonet or no.  The plug bayonet simply allowed firearm-equipped foot formations to have a chance to stand against cavalry charges without recourse to pike-armed formations nearby.  Indeed, armored attackers against plug bayonets were in good shape, relatively speaking.  It was the ring bayonet that ended that advantage, as the infantryman could then both shoot and stab.[/B][/QUOTE][/QUOTE]By and large the economic revolution of the time meant a change in the distribution of wealth. No longer was society divided into the very poor and the very rich. Life was now more complicated, and wealth was more evenly spread across societal strata. Which meant the very rich no longer had the resources necessary to maintain a full knight's regalia. Those that could were the Renaissance equivalent of Bill Gates. Anybody below that rarefied stratum of society had to make do with less.[/QUOTE]In pary, but it is more a matter of national units being better trained and thus more effective.  The rich could still field small groups of armored and armed men, but theu were not trained as were the regulars, so such forces were of less and less value in combat.  Why bother with "full knight's regalia" for oneself and a lance when infantry armed with arquibuses or matchlocks or wheel locks could cut them down?  So they went to armor along the lines of that used in the ACW, added their own firearms.[/QUOTE]Over all it was cheaper to outfit the local men with leather jacks, axes, and pikes than a single man with the latest armor and weapons out of Milan. And a well trained pike square could do more. Which are you going to use.[/QUOTE]Right, for the early Renaissance. Arms quickly broke down into two basic sorts for infantry, gunpowder muskets or pikes.  Then, as you note, the plug bayonet brought the pike formation into obsolence.[/QUOTE]Now add in the changes in society. The common man was no longer dependent on the man on a horse for protection. Authority no longer had the "cachet" it once had, what with the Protestent movement, the reformation, and (late in the period) the rise of rationalism and the coming of the Age of Reason. People were more willing to rely upon themselves for protection, as could be seen in the rise of Switzerland and the Netherland. It is this which made possible the English Civil War and Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate. Only in unsettled Germany would the nobility retain its power.[/QUOTE]Okay, although the timeline there is pretty broad, what with the Swiss "commoners" becoming independent in the 13th century, Netherlands a couple of hundred years later.  The ECW was mainly fought by nobles raising local forces against "roundhead" ones likewise raised...Cheers,Gary[/QUOTE]

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