Movie with plenty of black powder guns (Alatriste)

[4V50 Gary]

Matchlocks! Opening scene has a SEAL type action as men wade ashore to spike the enemy's guns. With their matches wrapped around their wrists and matchlock held aloft, they stealthily infiltrate the enemy's camp in a surprise attack. There's plenty of snaphaunces, wheel locks, a few flintlocks, swordplay (and dagger) and even pikes in this Spanish movie about a solider who sold his sword. Alatriste

 

[Cosmoline]

That is a cool one. Lots of good early modern sword fighting, too. It's brutal stuff. The rapiers punch as fast as a bullet. It's set during the horrific, multi-generational war between Catholic Spain and the Protestant Netherlands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...e_Eighty_Years.27_War_.281568.E2.80.931648.29

I don't know enough about the details of pike-and-shot squares to say for sure, but the battle scenes seemed pretty close to the written descriptions I have read. I guess that style of combat remained dominant until someone got the bright idea of putting the spearhead on the musket.

 

[4V50 Gary]

Tercio was the Spanish adaption of the Swiss Pike formation. It combined the pike formation with matchlock armed soldiers. The matchlock soldiers would fire upon the approaching enemy formation and rotated to the rear of the matchlock men to allow the next line to fire. When the enemy got too close, the matchlock men fell back behind the safety of the pikemen.

The Maltese have a reenactment group that combines the arquebusiers and artillery. The artillery would fire and then be pulled back so that arquebusiers could fire a volley, followed by the pikemen who advanced to shield the now hapless artillery and arquebusiers.