Caracole

The caracole or caracol (from the Spanish "caracol" - "snail") consists of a manoeuvre on horseback in dressage and, previously, in military tactics.

Dressage caracole

In dressage, riders execute a caracole as a single half turn, either to the left or to the right.

Military caracole

The military caracole as it is usually understood today developed in the mid-16th century in an attempt to integrate gunpowder weapons into cavalry tactics. Equipped with one or two wheellock pistols, cavalrymen would advance on their target at less than a gallop in formation as deep as 12 ranks. As each rank came into range, the soldiers would turn their mount slightly to one side, discharge one pistol, then turn slightly to the other side to discharge the other pistol at their target. Since this involved presenting an almost immobile target to the enemy infantry for some time, the temptation must have been strong to fire the weapons without taking an accurate aim. The horsemen then retired to the back of the formation to reload, and then repeat the manoeuvre. The tactic was accompanied by the increasing popularity of the German Reiter in Western armies from about 1540.

The caracole was a tactic very much criticized by military historians who didn't fully understand its use, especially Charles Oman. The caracole was developed as a light cavalry tactic to be used in combination with the fully armoured lancers that made up the heavy cavalry in those times. Pistoleers were to disrupt infantry with their rolling fire, preparing the ground for the heavy cavalry to deliver a decisive charge. This tactic was successfully implemented, for instance, at the battle of Pinkie Cleugh.

Some historians after Michael Roberts associate the demise of the caracole with the name of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1594-1632). Certainly he regarded the technique as fairly useless, and ordered cavalry under Swedish command not to use the caracole; instead, he required them to charge aggressively like their Polish-Lithuanian opponents. However, there is plenty of evidence that the caracole was falling out of use by the 1580s at the latest. Henry IV's Huguenot cavalry and Dutch cuirassiers were good examples of cavalry units that abandoned the caracole early on--that is, if indeed they ever used it at all.

According to De la Noue, Henry IV's pistol-armed cavalrymen were instructed to deliver a volley at close quarters and then charge home. Ranks were reduced from 12 to 6, still enough to punch a hole into the classic thin line in which heavy lancers were deployed. That was the tactic usually employed by cavalry since then, and the name "reiter" was replaced by "cuirassier". Sometimes it has been erroneously identified as caracole when low morale cavalry units, instead of charging home, contented themselves with delivering a volley and retire without closing the enemy, but in all those actions the distinctive factor of the caracole, the rolling fire through countermarching, was absent.

The caracole was rarely tried against enemy cavalry, as it could be easily broken when performing the maneuver by a countercharge. The last recorded example of the use of the caracole against enemy cavalry ended in disaster at the battle of Mookerheyde, in which 400 Spanish lanzas (light cavalry) charged 2,000 German reiters while the second line was reloading their pistols, easily routing the whole force. It is significative that 20 years later, the Dutch cuirassiers easily routed the Spanish lancers at the battle of Turnhout and the battle of Nieuwpoort, so that according to Charles Oman, in 1603 lancers were finally disbanded from the Spanish army.

It is worth noting that contemporary 16th- and 17th-century sources did not seem to have used the term "caracole" in its modern sense. John Cruso, for example, explained the "caracoll" as a maneuver whereby a formation of cuirassiers would receive the enemy's charge by wheeling apart to either side, letting the enemy rush in between the pincers of their trap, and then charging inwards against the flanks of the overextended enemy.

Sources

Cruso, John, "Militarie Instructions for the Cavallrie"

La Noue, F. "Discours Politiques et Militaires"

Oman, C. "The Art of War in the Sixteenth Century"