Chapter X: Introduction (3)

The military efficiency of the mercenary of the thirteenth century was, however, only a development of that of the ordinary feudal cavalier. Like the latter, he was a heavily-armed horseman; his rise did not bring with it any radical change in the methods of war. Though he was a more practised warrior, he still worked on the old system--or want of system--which characterised the cavalry tactics of the time.

The final stage in the history of mercenary troops was reached when the bands which had served through a long war instead of dispersing at its conclusion, held together, and moved across the continent in search of a state which might be willing to buy their services. But the age of the ‘Great Company’ and the Italian Condottieri lies rather in the fourteenth than the thirteenth century, and its discussion must be deferred to another chapter.

In the whole military history of the period the most striking feature is undoubtedly the importance of fortified places, and the ascendancy assumed by the defensive in poliorcetics. If battles were few, sieges were numerous and abnormally lengthy. The castle was as integral a part of feudal organization as the mailed knight, and just as the noble continued to heap defence after defence on to the persons of himself and his charger, so he continued to surround his dwelling with more and more fortifications. The simple Norman castle of the eleventh century, with its great keep and plain rectangular enclosure, developed into elaborate systems of concentric works, like those of Caerphilly and Carnarvon. The walls of the town rivalled those of the citadel, and every country bristled with forts and places of strength, large and small. The one particular in which real military capacity is displayed in the period is the choice of commanding sites for fortresses. A single stronghold was often so well placed that it served as the key to an entire district. The best claim to the possession of a general’s eye which can be made in behalf of Richard I. rests on the fact that he chose the position for Château Gaillard, the great castle which sufficed to protect the whole of Eastern Normandy as long as it was adequately held.

The strength of a mediæval fortress lay in the extraordinary solidity of its construction. Against walls fifteen to thirty feet thick, the feeble siege-artillery of the day, perriéres, catapults, trebuchets, and so forth, beat without perceptible effect. A Norman keep, solid and tall, with no wood-work to be set on fire, and no openings near the ground to be battered in, had an almost endless capacity for passive resistance. Even a weak garrison could hold out as long as its provisions lasted. Mining was perhaps the device which had most hope of success against such a stronghold[66]; but if the castle was provided with a deep moat, or was built directly on a rock, mining was of no avail. There remained the laborious expedient of demolishing the lower parts of the walls by approaches made under cover of a pent-house, or ‘cat,’ as it was called. If the moat could be filled, and the cat brought close to the foot of the fortifications, this method might be of some use against a fortress of the simple Norman type. Before bastions were invented, there was no means by which the missiles of the besieged could adequately command the ground immediately below the ramparts. If the defenders showed themselves over the walls--as would be necessary in order to reach men perpendicularly below them--they were at once exposed to the archers and cross-bowmen who, under cover of mantlets, protected the working of the besieger’s pioneers. Hence something might be done by the method of demolishing the lower parts of the walls: but the process was always slow, laborious, and exceedingly costly in the matter of human lives. Unless pressed for time a good commander would almost invariably prefer to starve out a garrison.

The success--however partial and hardly won--of this form of attack, led to several developments on the part of the defence. The moat was sometimes strengthened with palisading: occasionally small detached forts were constructed just outside the walls on any favourable spot. But the most generally used expedients were the brattice (_bretêche_) and the construction of large towers, projecting from the wall and flanking the long sketches of ‘curtain’ which had been found the weak point in the Norman system of fortification. The brattice was a wooden gallery fitted with apertures in its floor, and running along the top of the wall, from which it projected several feet. It was supported by beams built out from the rampart, and commanded, by means of its apertures, the ground immediately at the foot of the walls. Thus the besieger could no longer get out of the range of the missiles of the besieged, and continued exposed to them, however close he drew to the fortifications. The objection to the brattice was that, being wooden, it could be set on fire by inflammatory substances projected by the catapults of the besieger. It was therefore superseded ere long by the use of machicolation, where a projecting stone gallery replaced the woodwork. Far more important was the utilization of the flanking action of towers[67], the other great improvement made by the defence. This rendered it possible to direct a converging fire from the sides on the point selected for attack by the besieger. The towers also served to cut off a captured stretch of wall from any communication with the rest of the fortifications. By closing the iron-bound doors in the two on each side of the breach, the enemy was left isolated on the piece of wall he had won, and could not push to right or left without storming a tower. This development of the defensive again reduced the offensive to impotence. Starvation was the only weapon likely to reduce a well-defended place, and fortresses were therefore blockaded rather than attacked. The besieger, having built a line of circumvallation and an intrenched camp, sat down to wait for hunger to do its work[68]. It will be observed that by fortifying his position he gave himself the advantage of the defensive in repelling attacks of relieving armies. His other expedients, such as endeavours to fire the internal buildings of the invested place, to cut off its water supply, or to carry it by nocturnal escalade, were seldom of much avail.

The number and strength of the fortified places of Western Europe explain the apparent futility of many campaigns of the period. A land could not be conquered with rapidity when every district was guarded by three or four castles and walled towns, which would each need several months’ siege before they could be reduced. Campaigns tended to become either plundering raids, which left the strongholds alone, or to be occupied in the prolonged blockade of a single fortified place. The invention of gunpowder was the first advantage thrown on the side of the attack for three centuries. Even cannon, however, were at the period of their invention, and for long years afterward, of very little practical importance. The taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II is perhaps the first event of European importance in which the power of artillery played the leading part.

Before proceeding to discuss the rise of the new forms of military efficiency which brought about the end of the supremacy of feudal cavalry, it may be well to cast a glance at those curious military episodes, the Crusades. Considering their extraordinary and abnormal nature, more results might have been expected to follow them than can in fact be traced. When opposed by a system of tactics to which they were unaccustomed the Western nobles were invariably disconcerted. At fights such as Dorylæum they were only preserved from disaster by their indomitable energy: tactically beaten they extricated themselves by sheer hard fighting. On fairly-disputed fields, such as that of Antioch, they asserted the same superiority over Oriental horsemen which the Byzantine had previously enjoyed. But after a short experience of Western tactics the Turks and Saracens foreswore the battlefield. They normally acted in great bodies of light cavalry, moving rapidly from point to point, and cutting off convoys or attacking detached parties. The Crusaders were seldom indulged in the twelfth century with those pitched battles for which they craved. The Mahometan leaders would only fight when they had placed all the advantages on their own side; normally they declined the contest. In the East, just as in Europe, the war was one of sieges: armies numbered by the hundred thousand were arrested before the walls of a second-class fortress such as Acre, and in despair at reducing it by their operations, had to resort to the lengthy process of starving out the garrison. On the other hand nothing but the ascendancy enjoyed by the defensive could have protracted the existence of the ‘Kingdom of Jerusalem,’ when it had sunk to a chain of isolated fortresses, dotting the shore of the Levant from Alexandretta to Acre and Jaffa. If we can point to any modifications introduced into European warfare by the Eastern experience of the Crusaders, they are not of any great importance. Greek fire, if its composition was really ascertained, would seem to have had very little use in the West: the horse-bowman, copied from the cavalry of the Turkish and Mameluke sultans, did not prove a great military success: the adoption of the curved sabre, the ‘Morris-pike,’ the horseman’s mace[69], and a few other weapons, is hardly worth mentioning. On the whole, the military results of the Crusades were curiously small. As lessons they were wholly disregarded by the European world. When, after the interval of a hundred and fifty years, a Western army once more faced an Oriental foe, it committed at Nicopolis exactly the same blunder which led to the loss of the day at Mansoura.

V.

THE SWISS.

A.D. 1315-1515.

[From the battle of Morgarten to the battle of Marignano.]

(1) _Their Character, Arms, and Organization._

In the fourteenth century infantry, after a thousand years of depression and neglect, at last regained its due share of military importance. Almost simultaneously there appeared two peoples asserting a mastery in European politics by the efficiency of their foot-soldiery. Their manners of fighting were as different as their national character and geographical position, but although they never met either in peace or war, they were practically allied for the destruction of feudal chivalry. The knight, who had for so long ridden roughshod over the populations of Europe, was now to recognize his masters in the art of war. The free yeomanry of England and the free herdsmen of the Alps were about to enter on their career of conquest.

When war is reduced to its simplest elements, we find that there are only two ways in which an enemy can be met and defeated. Either the shock or the missile must be employed against him. In the one case the victor achieves success by throwing himself on his opponent, and worsting him in a hand-to-hand struggle by his numbers, his weight, the superiority of his arms, or the greater strength and skill with which he wields them. In the second case he wins the day by keeping up such a constant and deadly rain of missiles, that his enemy is destroyed or driven back before he can come to close quarters. Each of these methods can be combined with the use of very different arms and tactics, and is susceptible of innumerable variations. In the course of history they have alternately asserted their preponderance: in the early middle ages shock-tactics were entirely in the ascendant, while in our own day the use of the missile has driven the rival system out of the field, nor does it appear possible that this final verdict can ever be reversed.

The English archer and the Swiss pikeman represented these two great forms of military efficiency in their simplest and most elementary shapes. The one relied on his power to defeat his enemy’s attack by rapid and accurate shooting. The other was capable of driving before him far superior numbers by the irresistible impact and steady pressure of his solid column with its serried hedge of spear-points. When tried against the mail-clad cavalry which had previously held the ascendancy in Europe, each of these methods was found adequate to secure the victory for those who employed it. Hence the whole military system of the middle ages received a profound modification. To the unquestioned predominance of a single form, that of the charge delivered by cavalry, succeeded a rapid alternation of successful and unsuccessful experiments in the correlation and combination of cavalry and infantry, of shock-tactics and missile-tactics. Further complicated by the results of the introduction of firearms, this struggle has been prolonged down to the present day. It is only in the last few years that the military world has learnt that the attempt to utilize the shock of the infantry column or the charging squadron must be abandoned in face of the extraordinary development of modern firearms.

The Swiss of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been compared with much aptness to the Romans of the early Republic. In the Swiss, as in the Roman, character we find the most intense patriotism combined with an utter want of moral sense and a certain meanness and pettiness of conception, which prevent us from calling either nation truly great. In both the steadiest courage and the fervour of the noblest self-sacrifice were allied to an appalling ferocity and a cynical contempt and pitiless disregard for the rights of others. Among each people the warlike pride generated by successful wars of independence led ere long to wars of conquest and plunder. As neighbours, both were rendered insufferable by their haughtiness and proneness to take offence on the slightest provocation[70]. As enemies, both were distinguished for their deliberate and cold-blooded cruelty. The resolution to give no quarter, which appears almost pardonable in patriots desperately defending their native soil, becomes brutal when retained in wars of aggression, but reaches the climax of fiendish inhumanity when the slayer is a mere mercenary, fighting for a cause in which he has no national interest. Repulsive as was the bloodthirstiness of the Roman, it was far from equalling in moral guilt the needless ferocity displayed by the hired Swiss soldiery on many a battlefield of the sixteenth century[71].

In no point do we find a greater resemblance between the histories of the two peoples, than in the causes of their success in war. Rome and Switzerland alike are examples of the fact that a good military organization and a sound system of national tactics are the surest basis for a sustained career of conquest. Provided with these a vigorous state needs no unbroken series of great commanders. A succession of respectable mediocrities suffices to guide the great engine of war, which works almost automatically, and seldom fails to cleave its way to success. The elected consuls of Rome, the elected or nominated ‘captains’ of the Confederates, could never have led their troops to victory, had it not been for the systems which the experience of their predecessors had brought to perfection. The combination of pliability and solid strength in the legion, the powers of rapid movement and irresistible impact which met in the Swiss column, were competent to win a field without the exertion of any extraordinary ability by the generals who set them in motion.

The battle-array which the Confederates invariably employed, was one whose prototype had been seen in the Macedonian phalanx. It was always in masses of enormous depth that they presented themselves on the battlefield. Their great national weapon in the days of their highest reputation was the pike, an ashen shaft eighteen feet long, fitted with a head of steel which added another foot to its length. It was grasped with two hands widely extended, and poised at the level of the shoulder with the point slightly sunk, so as to deliver a downward thrust[72]. Before the line projected not only the pikes of the front rank, but those of the second, third, and fourth, an impenetrable hedge of bristling points. The men in the interior of the column held their weapons upright, till called upon to step forward in order to replace those who had fallen in the foremost ranks. Thus the pikes, rising twelve feet above the heads of the men who bore them, gave to the charging mass the appearance of a moving wood. Above it floated numberless flags, the pennons of districts, towns, and guilds[73], the banners of the cantons, sometimes the great standard of ‘the Ancient League of High Germany,’ the white cross on the red ground.

The pike, however, was not the only weapon of the Swiss. In the earlier days of their independence, when the Confederacy consisted of three or four cantons, the halberd was their favourite arm, and even in the sixteenth century a considerable proportion of the army continued to employ it. Eight feet in length--with a heavy head which ended in a sharp point and bore on its front a blade like that of a hatchet, on its back a strong hook--the halberd was the most murderous, if also the most ponderous, of weapons. Swung by the strong arms of the Alpine herdsmen it would cleave helmet, shield, or coat-of-mail, like pasteboard. The sight of the ghastly wounds which it inflicted might well appal the stoutest foeman: he who had once felt its edge required no second stroke. It was the halberd which laid Leopold of Hapsburg dead across his fallen banner at Sempach, and struck down Charles of Burgundy--all his face one gash from temple to teeth--in the frozen ditch by Nancy[74].

The halberdiers had their recognized station in the Confederates’ battle-array. They were drawn up in the centre of the column, around the chief banner, which was placed under their care. If the enemy succeeded in checking the onset of the pikemen, it was their duty to pass between the front ranks, which opened out to give them egress, and throw themselves into the fray. They were joined in their charge by the bearers of two-handed swords, ‘Morning-Stars,’ and ‘Lucern Hammers[75],’ all weapons of the most fearful efficiency in a hand-to-hand combat. It was seldom that a hostile force, whether infantry or cavalry, sustained this final attack, when the infuriated Swiss dashed in among them, slashing right and left, sweeping off the legs of horses, and cleaving armour and flesh with the same tremendous blow.

In repelling cavalry charges, however, the halberd was found, owing to its shortness, a far less useful weapon than the pike. The disastrous fight near Bellinzona in 1422, where the Swiss, having a large proportion of halberdiers in their front rank, were broken by the Milanese gendarmes, was the final cause of its relegation to the second epoch of the battle. From the first shock of the opposing forces it was banished, being reserved for the _mêlée_ which afterwards ensued.

Next to its solidity the most formidable quality of the Swiss infantry was its rapidity of movement. ‘No troops were ever more expeditious on a march, or in forming themselves for battle, because they were not overloaded with armour[76].’ When emergencies arrived a Confederate army could be raised with extraordinary speed; a people who regarded military glory as the one thing which made life worth living, flocked to arms without needing a second summons. The outlying contingents marched day and night in order to reach the mustering place in good time. There was no need to waste days in the weary work of organization, when every man stood among his kinsmen and neighbours, beneath the pennon of his native town or valley. The troops of the democratic cantons elected their officers, those of the larger states received leaders appointed by their councils, and then without further delay the army marched to meet the enemy. Thus an invader, however unexpected his attack, might in the course of three or four days find twenty thousand men on his hands. They would often be within a few miles of him, before he had heard that a Swiss force was in the field.

In face of such an army it was impossible for the slowly-moving troops of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries to execute manœuvres. An attempt to alter the line of battle,--as Charles the Rash discovered to his dismay at Granson,--was sure to lead to disaster. When once the Confederates were in motion their enemy had to resign himself to fighting in whatever order he found himself at the moment. They always made it their rule to begin the fight, and never to allow themselves to be attacked. The composition of their various columns was settled early on the battle morning, and the men moved off to the field already drawn up in their fighting-array. There was no pause needed to draw the army out in line of battle; each phalanx marched on the enemy at a steady but swift pace, which covered the ground in an incredibly short time. The solid masses glided forward in perfect order and in deep silence, until the war-cry burst out in one simultaneous roar and the column dashed itself against the hostile front. The rapidity of the Swiss advance had in it something portentous: the great wood of pikes and halberds came rolling over the brow of some neighbouring hill; a moment later it was pursuing its even way towards the front, and then--almost before the opponent had time to realize his position--it was upon him, with its four rows of spear-points projecting in front and the impetus of file upon file surging up from the rear.

This power of swift movement was--as Macchiavelli observed--the result of the Confederates’ determination not to burden themselves with heavy armour. Their abstention from its use was originally due to their poverty alone, but was confirmed by the discovery that a heavy panoply would clog and hamper the efficiency of their national tactics. The normal equipment of the pikeman or halberdier was therefore light, consisting of a steel-cap and breastplate alone. Even these were not in universal employment; many of the soldiery trusted the defence of their persons to their weapons, and wore only felt hats and leather jerkins[77]. The use of back-plates, arm-pieces, and greaves was by no means common; indeed the men wearing them were often not sufficient in number to form a single rank at the head of the column, the post in which they were always placed. The leaders alone were required to present themselves in full armour; they were therefore obliged to ride while on the march, in order to keep up with their lightly-armed followers. When they arrived in sight of the enemy they dismounted and led their men to the charge on foot. A few of the patricians and men of knightly family from Bern were found in the fifteenth century serving as cavalry, but their numbers were absolutely insignificant, a few scores at the most[78].

Although the strength and pride of the Confederates lay in their pikemen and halberdiers, the light troops were by no means neglected. On occasion they were known to form as much as a fourth of the army, and they never sank below a tenth of the whole number[79]. They were originally armed with the cross-bow--the weapon of the fabulous Tell-- but even before the great Burgundian war the use of the clumsy firearms of the day was general among them. It was their duty to precede the main body, and to endeavour to draw on themselves the attention of the enemy’s artillery and light troops, so that the columns behind them might advance as far as possible without being molested. Thus the true use of a line of skirmishers was already appreciated among the Swiss in the fifteenth century. When the pikemen had come up with them, they retired into the intervals between the various masses, and took no part in the great charge, for which their weapons were not adapted.

It is at once evident that in the simplicity of its component elements lay one of the chief sources of the strength of a Confederate army. Its commanders were not troubled by any of those problems as to the correlation and subordination of the various arms, which led to so many unhappy experiments among the generals of other nations. Cavalry and artillery were practically non-existent; nor were the operations hampered by the necessity of finding some employment for those masses of troops of inferior quality who so often increased the numbers, but not the efficiency, of a mediæval army. A Swiss force--however hastily gathered--was always homogeneous and coherent; there was no residuum of untried or disloyal soldiery for whose conduct special precautions would have to be taken. The larger proportion of the men among a nation devoted to war had seen a considerable amount of service; while if local jealousies were ever remembered in the field, they only served to spur the rival contingents on to a healthy emulation in valour. However much the cantons might wrangle among themselves, they were always found united against a foreign attack[80].

(2) _Tactics and Strategy._

The character and organization of the Confederate army were exceedingly unfavourable to the rise of great generals. The soldier rested his hope of success rather on an entire confidence in the fighting power of himself and his comrades, than on the skill of his commander. Troops who have proved in a hundred fields their ability to bear up against the most overwhelming odds, are comparatively indifferent as to the personality of their leader. If he is competent they work out his plan with success, if not, they cheerfully set themselves to repair his faults by sheer hard fighting. Another consideration was even more important among the Swiss; there was a universal prejudice felt against placing the troops of one canton under the orders of the citizen of another. So strong was this feeling that an extraordinary result ensued: the appointment of a commander-in-chief remained, throughout the brilliant period of Swiss history, an exception rather than a rule. Neither in the time of Sempach, in the old war of Zurich, in the great struggle with Burgundy, nor in the Swabian campaign against Maximilian of Austria, was any single general entrusted with supreme authority[81]. The conduct of affairs was in the hands of a ‘council of war;’ but it was a council which, contrary to the old proverb about such bodies, was always ready and willing to fight. It was composed of the ‘captains’ of each cantonal contingent, and settled the questions which came under discussion by a simple majority of voices. Before a battle it entrusted the command of van, rear, main-body, and light troops to different officers, but the holders of such posts enjoyed a mere delegated authority, which expired with the cessation of the emergency.

The existence of this curious subdivision of power, to which the nearest parallel would be found in early Byzantine days, would suffice by itself to explain the lack of all strategical skill and unity of purpose which was observable in Swiss warfare. The compromise which forms the mean between several rival schemes usually combines their faults, not their merits. But in addition to this, we may suspect that to find any one Swiss officer capable of working out a coherent plan of campaign would have been difficult. The ‘Captain’ was an old soldier who had won distinction on bygone battlefields, but except in his experience nowise different to the men under his orders. Of elaborating the more difficult strategical combinations a Swiss ‘Council of War’ was not much more capable than an average party of veteran sergeant-majors would be in our own day.

With tactics, however, the case was different. The best means of adapting the attack in column to the accidents of locality or the quality and armament of the opposing troops were studied in the school of experience. A real tactical system was developed, whose efficiency was proved again and again in the battles of the fifteenth century. For dealing with the mediæval men-at-arms and infantry against whom it had been designed, the Swiss method was unrivalled: it was only when a new age introduced different conditions into war that it gradually became obsolete.

The normal order of battle employed by the Confederates, however small or large their army might be, was an advance in an échelon of three divisions[82]. The first corps (’vorhut’), that which had formed the van while the force was on the march, made for a given point in the enemy’s line. The second corps (’gewaltshaufen’), instead of coming up in line with the first, advanced parallel to it, but at a short distance to its right or left rear. The third corps (’nachhut’) advanced still further back, and often halted until the effect of the first attack was seen, in order that it might be able to act, if necessary, as a reserve. This disposition left a clear space behind each column, so that if it was repulsed it could retire without throwing into disorder the rest of the army. Other nations (e.g. the French at Agincourt), who were in the habit of placing one corps directly in front of another, had often to pay the penalty for their tactical crime, by seeing the defeat of their first line entail the rout of the whole army, each division being rolled back in confusion on that immediately in its rear. The Swiss order of attack had another strong point in rendering it almost impossible for the enemy’s troops to wheel inwards and attack the most advanced column: if they did so they at once exposed their own flank to the second column, which was just coming up and commencing its charge.

The advance in échelon of columns was not the only form employed by the Confederates. At Laupen the centre or ‘gewaltshaufen’ moved forward and opened the fight before the wings were engaged. At the combat of Frastenz in 1499, on the other hand, the wings commenced the onset, while the centre was refused, and only came up to complete the overthrow.

Even the traditional array in three masses was sometimes discarded for a different formation. At Sempach the men of the Forest Cantons were drawn up in a single ‘wedge’ (Keil). This order was not, as might be expected from its name, triangular, but merely a column of more than ordinary depth in proportion to its frontage. Its object was to break a hostile line of unusual firmness by a concentrated shock delivered against its centre. In 1468, during the fighting which preceded the siege of Waldshut, the whole Confederate army moved out to meet the Austrian cavalry in a great hollow square, in the midst of which were placed the banners with their escort of halberdiers. When such a body was attacked, the men faced outwards to receive the onset of the horsemen; this they called ‘forming the hedgehog[83].’ So steady were they that, with very inferior numbers, they could face the most energetic charge: in the Swabian war of 1498, six hundred men of Zurich, caught in the open plain by a thousand imperial men-at-arms, ‘formed a hedgehog, and drove off the enemy with ease and much jesting[84].’ Macchiavelli[85] speaks of another Swiss order of battle, which he calls ‘the Cross:’ ‘between the arms of which they place their musketeers, to shelter them from the first shock of the hostile column.’ His description, however, is anything but explicit, and we can find no trace of any formation of the kind in any recorded engagement.

(3) _Development of Swiss Military Supremacy._

The first victory of the Confederates was won, not by the tactics which afterwards rendered them famous, but by a judicious choice of a battlefield. Morgarten was a fearful example of the normal uselessness of feudal cavalry in a mountainous country. On a frosty November day, when the roads were like ice underfoot, Leopold of Austria thrust his long narrow column into the defiles leading to the valley of Schwytz. In front rode the knights, who had of course claimed the honour of opening the contest, while the 6000 infantry blocked the way behind. In the narrow pass of Morgarten, where the road passes between a precipitous slope on the right and the waters of the Egeri lake on the left, the 1500 Confederates awaited the Austrians. Full of the carelessness which accompanies overweening arrogance, the duke had neglected the most ordinary precaution of exploring his road, and only discovered the vicinity of the enemy when a shower of boulders and tree-trunks came rolling down the slope on his right flank, where a party of Swiss were posted in a position entirely inaccessible to horsemen. A moment later the head of the helpless column was charged by the main body of the mountaineers. Before the Austrians had realized that the battle had commenced, the halberds and ‘morning-stars’ of the Confederates were working havoc in their van. The front ranks of the knights, wedged so tightly together by the impact of the enemy that they could not lay their lances in rest, much less spur their horses to the charge, fought and died. The centre and rear were compelled to halt and stand motionless, unable to push forward on account of the narrowness of the pass, or to retreat on account of the infantry, who choked the road behind. For a short time they endured the deadly shower of rocks and logs, which continued to bound down the slope, tear through the crowded ranks, and hurl man and horse into the lake below. Then, by a simultaneous impulse, the greater part of the mass turned their reins and made for the rear. In the press hundreds were pushed over the edge of the road, to drown in the deep water on the left. The main body burst into the column of their own infantry, and, trampling down their unfortunate followers, fled with such speed as was possible on the slippery path. The Swiss, having now exterminated the few knights in the van who had remained to fight, came down on the rear of the panic-stricken crowd, and cut down horseman and footman alike without meeting any resistance. ‘It was not a battle,’ says John of Winterthur, a contemporary chronicler, ‘but a mere butchery of duke Leopold’s men; for the mountain folk slew them like sheep in the shambles: no one gave any quarter, but they cut down all, without distinction, till there were none left to kill. So great was the fierceness of the Confederates that scores of the Austrian footmen, when they saw the bravest knights falling helplessly, threw themselves in panic into the lake, preferring to sink in its depths rather than to fall under the fearful weapons of their enemies[86].’

In short, the Swiss won their freedom, because, with instinctive tactical skill, they gave the feudal cavalry no opportunity for attacking them at advantage. ‘They were lords of the field, because it was they, and not their foe, who settled where the fighting should take place.’ On the steep and slippery road, where they could not win impetus for their charge, and where the narrowness of the defile prevented them from making use of their superior numbers, the Austrians were helpless. The crushing character of the defeat, however, was due to Leopold’s inexcusable carelessness, in leaving the way unexplored and suffering himself to be surprised in the fatal trap of the pass.

Morgarten exhibits the Swiss military system in a rudimentary condition. Though won, like all Confederate victories, by the charge of a column, it was the work of the halberd, not of the pike. The latter weapon was not yet in general use among the mountaineers of the three cantons: it was, in fact, never adopted by them to so great an extent as was the case among the Swiss of the lower Alpine lands and Aar valley, the Bernese and people of Zurich and Lucern. The halberd, murderous though it might be, was not an arm whose possession would give an unqualified ascendancy to its wielders: it was the position, not the weapons nor the tactics, of the Swiss which won Morgarten. But their second great success bears a far higher military importance.

At Laupen, for the first time almost since the days of the Romans, infantry, entirely unsupported by horsemen, ranged on a fair field in the plains, withstood an army complete in all arms and superior in numbers[87]. It was twenty-four years after duke Leopold’s defeat that the Confederates and their newly-allied fellows of Bern met the forces of the Burgundian nobility of the valleys of the Aar and Rhone, mustered by all the feudal chiefs between Elsass and Lake Leman. Count Gerard of Vallangin, the commander of the baronial army, evidently intended to settle the day by turning one wing of the enemy, and crushing it. With this object he drew up the whole of his cavalry on the right of his array, his centre and left being entirely composed of infantry. The Swiss formed the three columns which were henceforth to be their normal order of battle. They were under a single commander, Rudolf of Erlach, to whom the credit of having first employed the formation apparently belongs. The Bernese, who were mainly armed with the pike, formed the centre column, the wings were drawn back. That on the left was composed of the men of the three old cantons, who were still employing the halberd as their chief weapon, while the right was made up of other allies of Bern. In this order they moved on to the attack, the centre considerably in advance. The infantry of the Barons proved to be no match for the Confederates: with a steady impulse the Bernese pushed it back, trampled down the front ranks, and drove the rest off the field. A moment later the Burgundian left suffered the same fate at the hands of the Swiss right column. Then, without wasting time in pursuit, the two victorious masses turned to aid the men of the Forest Cantons. Surrounded by a raging flood of horsemen on all sides, the left column was hard pressed. The halberd, though inflicting the most ghastly wounds, could not prevent the cavalry from occasionally closing in. Like a rock, however, the mountaineers withstood the incessant charges, and succeeded in holding their own for the all-important period during which the hostile infantry was being driven off the field. Then the two successful columns came down on the left and rear of the Baronial horsemen, and steadily met their charge. Apparently the enemy was already exhausted by his attempt to overcome the men of the Forest Cantons, for, after one vain attempt to ride down the Bernese pikemen, he turned and rode off the field, not without considerable loss, as many of his rearguard were intercepted and driven into the river Sense.

Laupen was neither so bloody nor so dramatic a field as Morgarten; but it is one of three great battles which mark the beginning of a new period in the history of war. Bannockburn had already sounded the same note in the distant West, but for the Continent Laupen was the first revelation as to the power of good infantry. The experiment which had been tried a few years before at Cassel and Mons-en-Puelle with such ill success, was renewed with a very different result. The Swiss had accomplished the feat which the Flemings had undertaken with inadequate means and experience. Seven years later a yet more striking lesson was to be administered to feudal chivalry, when the archer faced the knight at Cressy. The mail-clad horseman was found unable to break the phalanx of pikes, unable to approach the line from which the deadly arrow reached him, but still the old superstition which gave the most honourable name in war to the mounted man, was strong enough to perpetuate for another century the cavalry whose day had really gone by. A system which was so intimately bound up with mediæval life and ideas could not be destroyed by one, or by twenty disasters.

Sempach, the third great victory won by the Confederates, shares with the less famous fight of Arbedo a peculiar interest. Both were attempts to break the Swiss column by the adoption of a similar method of attack to that which rendered it so formidable. Leopold the Proud, remembering no doubt the powerlessness of the horsemen which had been shown at Laupen, made his knights dismount, as Edward of England had done with such splendid results thirty years earlier. Perhaps he may have borne in mind a similar order given by his ancestor the Emperor Albert, when he fought the Bavarians at Hasenbühl in 1298. At any rate the duke awaited the enemy’s attack with his 4000 mailed men-at-arms formed in one massive column,--their lances levelled in front,-- ready to meet the Swiss with tactics similar to their own and with the advantage which the superior protection of armour gave in a contest otherwise equal[88]. Leopold had also posted in reserve a considerable body of foot and horse, who were to fall on the flanks and rear of the Confederates, when they were fully engaged in front.

Arrayed in a single deep column (Keil), the Swiss came rushing down from the hills with their usual impetuosity, the horns of Uri and Unterwalden braying in their midst and the banners of the four Forest Cantons waving above them[89]. The first shock between the two masses was tremendous, but when it was ended the Confederates found themselves thrust back. Their whole front rank had gone down, and the Austrian column was unshaken. In a moment they rallied; Uri replaced Lucern as the head of the phalanx, and again they dashed at the mail-clad line before them. But the second charge was no more successful than the first: Schwytz had to succeed Uri, and again Unterwalden took the place of Schwytz, and yet nothing more was effected. The Austrians stood victorious, while in front of them a long bank of Swiss corpses lay heaped. At the same moment the duke’s reserve began to move, with the intention of encircling the Confederate flank. The critical moment had come; without some desperate effort the day was lost: but while the Swiss were raging along the line of bristling points, vainly hacking at the spears which pierced them, the necessary impulse was at last given. To detail once more Winkelried’s heroic death is unnecessary: every one knows how the Austrian column was broken, how in the close combat which followed the lance and long horseman’s sword proved no match for the halberd, the battle-axe and the cutlass, how the duke and his knights, weighed down by their heavy armour, neither could nor would flee, and fell to a man around their banner.

Historians tell us all this, but what they forget to impress upon us is that, in spite of his failure, duke Leopold was nearer to success than any other commander, one exception alone being made, who faced the Swiss down to the day of Marignano. His idea of meeting the shock of the Swiss phalanx with a heavier shock of his own was feasible. His mistakes in detail ruined a plan which in itself was good. The first fault was that he halted to receive the enemy’s charge, and did not advance to meet it. Thus he lost most of the advantage which the superior weight of his men would have given in the clashing of the columns. He was equally misguided in making no attempt to press on the Confederates when their first three charges had failed, and so allowing them time to rally. Moreover he made no adequate use of his mounted squadron in reserve, his light troops, and the artillery, which we know that he had with him[90]. If these had been employed on the Swiss flanks at the proper moment, they would have decided the day. But Leopold only used his artillery to open the combat, and kept his crossbowmen and slingers in the rear, probably out of that feudal superstition which demanded that the knight should have the most important part in the battle. Neglecting these precautions, he lost the day, but only after some of the hardest fighting which the Swiss ever experienced.

What a better general could do by the employment of Leopold’s tactical experiment was shown thirty-seven years later on the field of Arbedo. On that occasion Carmagnola the Milanese general,--who then met the Confederates for the first time,--opened the engagement with a cavalry charge. Observing its entire failure, the experienced condottiere at once resorted to another form of attack. He dismounted the whole of his 6000 men-at-arms, and launched them in a single column against the Swiss phalanx. The enemy, a body of 4000 men from Uri, Unterwalden, Zug, and Lucern, were mainly halberdiers, the pikemen and crossbowmen forming only a third of their force. The two masses met, and engaged in a fair duel between lance and sword on the one hand and pike and halberd on the other. The impetus of the larger force bore down that of the smaller, and, in spite of the desperate fighting of their enemies, the Milanese began to gain ground. So hardly were the Confederates now pressed that the Schultheiss of Lucern even thought of surrender, and planted his halberd in the ground in token of submission. Carmagnola, however, heated with the fight, cried out that men who gave no quarter should receive none, and continued his advance. He was on the very point of victory[91], when a new Swiss force suddenly appeared in his rear. Believing them to be the contingents of Zürich, Schwytz, Glarus, and Appenzell, which he knew to be at no great distance, Carmagnola drew off his men and began to reform. But in reality the new-comers were only a band of 600 foragers; they made no attack; while the Swiss main-body took advantage of the relaxation of the pressure to retire in good order. They had lost 400 men according to their own acknowledgment, many more if Italian accounts are to be received. Carmagnola’s loss, though numerically larger, bore no such proportion to his whole force, and had indeed been mainly incurred in the unsuccessful cavalry charge which opened the action.

From the results of Sempach and Arbedo it seems natural to draw the conclusion that a judicious employment of dismounted men-at-arms might have led to success, if properly combined with the use of other arms. The experiment, however, was never repeated by the enemies of the Swiss: indeed almost the only consequence which we can attribute to it is a decree of the Council of Lucern, that ‘since things had not gone altogether well with the Confederates’ a larger proportion of the army was in future to be furnished with the pike[92], a weapon which, unlike the halberd, could contend on superior terms with the lance.

Putting aside the two battles which we have last examined, we may say that for the first 150 years of their career the Swiss were so fortunate as never to meet either with a master of the art of war, or with any new form of tactical efficiency which could rival their own phalanx. It was still with the mailed horsemen or the motley and undisciplined infantry-array of the middle ages that they had to deal. Their tactics had been framed for successful conflict with such forces, and continued to preserve an ascendancy over them. The free lances of Enguerrand de Coucy, the burghers and nobles of Swabia, the knights who followed Frederick or Leopold or Sigismund of Hapsburg, were none of them exponents of a new system, and served each in their turn to demonstrate yet more clearly the superiority of the Confederates in military skill.

Even the most dangerous attack ever aimed against Switzerland, the invasion by the ‘Armagnac’ mercenaries of the Dauphin Louis in 1444, was destined to result in the increase of the warlike reputation of its soldiery. The battle of St. Jacob, mad and unnecessary though it was, might serve as an example to deter the boldest enemy from meddling with men who preferred annihilation to retreat. Possessed by the single idea that their phalanx could bear down any obstacle, the Confederates deliberately crossed the Birs in face of an army of fifteen times their strength. They attacked it, broke its centre, and were then surrounded by its overwhelming numbers. Compelled to ‘form the hedgehog’ in order to resist the tremendous cavalry charges directed against them, they remained rooted to the spot for the remainder of the day. The Dauphin launched squadron after squadron at them, but each in its turn was hurled back in disorder. In the intervals between these onsets the French light troops poured in their missiles, but though the clump of pikes and halberds grew smaller it still remained impenetrable. Not until the evening was the fighting ended, and then 6000 Armagnacs lay dead around the heap of Swiss corpses in the centre. Louis saw that a few such victories would destroy his whole army, and turned back into Alsace, leaving Switzerland unmolested.

From that day the Confederates were able to reckon their reputation for obstinate and invincible courage, as one of the chief causes which gave them political importance. The generals and armies who afterwards faced them, went into battle without full confidence in themselves. It was no light matter to engage with an enemy who would not retire before any superiority in numbers, who was always ready for the fight, who would neither give nor take quarter. The enemies of the Swiss found these considerations the reverse of inspiriting before a combat: it may almost be said that they came into the field expecting a defeat, and therefore earned one. This fact is especially noticeable in the great Burgundian war. If Charles the Rash himself was unawed by the warlike renown of his enemies[93], the same cannot be said of his troops. A large portion of his motley army could not be trusted in any dangerous crisis: the German, Italian, and Savoyard mercenaries knew too well the horrors of Swiss warfare, and shrank instinctively from the shock of the phalanx of pikes. The duke might range his men in order of battle, but he could not be sure that they would fight. The old proverb that ‘God was on the side of the Confederates’ was ever ringing in their ears, and so they were half beaten before a blow was struck. Charles had endeavoured to secure the efficiency of his army, by enlisting from each warlike nation of Europe the class of troops for which it was celebrated. The archers of England, the arquebusiers of Germany, the light cavalry of Italy, the pikemen of Flanders, marched side by side with the feudal chivalry of his Burgundian vassals. But the duke had forgotten that, in assembling so many nationalities under his banner, he had thrown away the cohesion which is all-important in battle. Without mutual confidence or certainty that each comrade would do his best for the common cause, the soldiery would not stand firm. Granson was lost merely because the nerve of the infantry failed them at the decisive moment, although they had not yet been engaged.

A. _Burgundian Entrenched Position, weakly held._

B. _The Duke and his Main Body, coming up in disorder to occupy
the Position._

C. _Blockading force South of Morat, Italians under Troylus._

D. _Spot where this force was driven into the Lake._

E. _Blockading force North of Morat, Savoyards under Romont._]