Battalion organisation was usually 12 companies and a headquarters, with each company having pikemen and musketeers. The pikemen, large strong men, had an elite status, and were armoured, although by the 1670s this was reduced to a breastplate. A coat of buff leather, doubled in thickness at the skirts, would be worn under the cuirass of breast and back plates, and metal tassets to protect the thighs. The red shoulder sash here probably indicates non-commissioned rank. The captain and two subalterns of the company would have been dressed in more expensive clothes and armed with pistols and swords.
