That seems like one of those irrelevant “inside baseball” deals, important only to military geeks, but… It’s not. It’s tremendously impressive, because without drill, you don’t have effective use of large maneuver elements with firearms. And, the Japanese got there first, before William of Orange really got the first bits off the ground in Europe.

There was a huge and largely unknown factor in the early professionalization of the militaries in Europe, centered around the revitalization of discipline and drill. It was literally a lost art, and it took people going back and reinventing a lot of what the Romans had been doing before they really got past the stage of heavily armed mobs with a bunch of warrior-caste dudes out in front.

Fascinating period of history, and a guy like Miles Standish, a professional soldier with training and experience from the wars in the Netherlands, could write their own tickets anywhere they went in Europe. Indeed, the world… The Pilgrims hired Standish specifically to train them and lead them with the modern drill techniques he’d become proficient in. Those techniques were probably more significant than anything else, in fighting the local Indian tribes. Anyone could fire an arquebus, but to make use of volley fire and all the rest? That took training, discipline, and practice: Drill, in short.