Caracole The caracole or caracol ( from the Spanish " caracol " - " snail " ) is a turning maneuver 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 pistol s , 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 . Pistoleer s 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 — if 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 ( 1574 ) , in which 400 Spanish lanzas ( light cavalry ) charged 2 , 000 German reiters ( in Dutch employ ) while the second line was reloading their pistols , easily routing the whole force . It is significant 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 . Nevertheless , various variants of the caracole tactics continued to be used well into 17th century against enemy cavalry . During the battle of Gniew of 1626 , the Polish light cavalry used it with success twice . The first time light cavalry units under Mikołaj Abramowicz fired at the Swedish cavalry rank by rank , but instead of withdrawing to reload , it immediately proceeded to charge the enemy with sabres . Later the same unit also tried the caracole using gaps in the line of charging husaria heavy cavalry . 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 cuirassier s 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 .