Chapter XIII: Conclusion

We have now discussed at length the two systems of tactics which played the chief part in revolutionising the Art of War in Europe. The one has been traced from Morgarten to Bicocca, the other from Falkirk to Formigny, and it has been shown how the ascendancy of each was at last checked by the development of new forms of military efficiency among those against whom it was directed. While ascribing to the pikemen of Switzerland and the English archery the chief part in the overthrow of feudal cavalry--and to no small extent in that of feudalism itself-- we must not forget that the same work was simultaneously being wrought out by other methods in other quarters of Europe.

Prominent among the experiments directed to this end was that of Zisca and his captains, in the great Hussite wars of the first half of the fifteenth century. In Bohemia the new military departure was the result of social and religious convulsions. A gallant nation had risen in arms, stirred at once by outraged patriotism and by spiritual zeal; moved by a desire to drive the intruding German beyond the Erzgebirge, but moved even more by dreams of universal brotherhood, and of a kingdom of righteousness to be established by the sword. All Bohemia was ready to march, but still it was not apparent how the overwhelming strength of Germany was to be met. If the fate of the struggle had depended on the lances of the Tzech nobility it would have been hopeless: they could put into the field only tens to oppose to the thousands of German feudalism. The undisciplined masses of peasants and burghers who accompanied them would, under the old tactical arrangements, have fared no better than the infantry of Flanders had fared at Rosbecque. But the problem of utilising those strong and willing arms fell into the hands of a man of genius. John Zisca of Trocnov had acquired military experience and hatred of Germany while fighting in the ranks of the Poles against the Teutonic knights. He saw clearly that to lead into the field men wholly untrained, and rudely armed with iron-shod staves, flails, and scythes fixed to poles, would be madness. The Bohemians had neither a uniform equipment nor a national system of tactics: their only force lay in their religious and national enthusiasm, which was strong enough to make all differences vanish on the day of battle, so that the wildest fanatics were content to combine and to obey when once the foe came in sight. It was evident that the only chance for the Hussites was to stand upon the defensive, till they had gauged their enemies’ military efficiency and learnt to handle their own arms. Accordingly we hear of intrenchments being everywhere thrown up, and towns being put in a state of defence during the first months of the war. But this was not all; in his Eastern campaigns Zisca had seen a military device which he thought might be developed and turned to account. There prevailed among the Russians and Lithuanians a custom of surrounding every encampment by a portable barricade of beams and stakes, which could be taken to pieces and transferred from position to position. The Russian princes habitually utilised in their wars such a structure, which they called a ‘goliaigorod’ or moving fortress. Zisca’s development of this system consisted in substituting for the beams and stakes a line of waggons, at first merely such as the country-side supplied, but afterwards constructed specially for military purposes, and fitted with hooks and chains by which they were fastened one to another[122]. It was evident that these war-waggons, when once placed in order, would be impregnable to a cavalry charge: however vigorous the impetus of the mail-clad knight might be, it would not carry him through oaken planks and iron links. The onset of the German horseman being the chief thing which the Hussites had to dread, the battle was half won when a method of resisting it had been devised. With the German infantry they were competent to deal without any elaborate preparation. It might be thought that Zisca’s invention would have condemned the Bohemians to adhere strictly to the defensive in the whole campaign, as well as in each engagement in it: this, however, was not the case. When fully worked out, the system assumed a remarkable shape. There was organized a special corps of waggoners, on whose efficiency everything depended: they were continually drilled, and taught to manœuvre their vehicles with accuracy and promptness. At the word of command, we are told, they would form a circle, a square, or a triangle, and then rapidly disengage their teams, thus leaving the waggons in proper position, and only needing to be chained together. This done, they took up their position in the centre of the enclosure. The organization of the whole army was grounded on the waggon as a unit: to each was told off, besides the driver, a band of about twenty men, of whom part were pike-men and flail-men, while the remainder were armed with missile weapons. The former ranged themselves behind the chains which joined waggon to waggon, the latter stood in the vehicles and fired down on the enemy. From the first Zisca set himself to introduce fire-arms among the Bohemians: at length nearly a third of them were armed with ‘hand-guns,’ while a strong train of artillery accompanied every force.

A Hussite army in movement had its regular order of march. Wherever the country was open enough it formed five parallel columns. In the centre marched the cavalry and artillery, to each side of them two divisions of waggons accompanied by their complements of infantry. The two outer divisions were longer than the two which marched next the horsemen and the guns. The latter were intended--in the case of a sudden attack-- to form the front and rear of a great oblong, of which the longer divisions were to compose the sides. To enable the shorter columns to wheel, one forward and the other backward, no great time would be required, and if the few necessary minutes were obtained, the Hussite order of battle stood complete. To such perfection and accuracy was the execution of this manœuvre brought, that we are assured that a Bohemian army would march right into the middle of a German host, so as to separate division from division, and yet find time to throw itself into its normal formation just as the critical moment arrived. The only real danger was from artillery fire, which might shatter the line of carts: but the Hussites were themselves so well provided with cannon that they could usually silence the opposing batteries. Never assuredly were the tactics of the ‘laager’ carried to such perfection; were the records of the Hussite victories not before us, we should have hesitated to believe that the middle ages could have produced a system whose success depended so entirely on that power of orderly movement which is usually claimed as the peculiar characteristic of modern armies.

But in the Bohemia of the fifteenth century, just as in the England of the seventeenth, fanaticism led to rigid discipline, not to disorder. The whole country, we are assured, was divided into two lists of parishes, which alternately put their entire adult population in the field. While the one half fought, the other remained at home, charged with the cultivation of their own and their neighbours’ lands. A conscription law of the most sweeping kind, which made every man a soldier, was thus in force, and it becomes possible to understand the large numbers of the armies put into the field by a state of no great extent.

Zisca’s first victories were to his enemies so unexpected and so marvellous, that they inspired a feeling of consternation. The disproportion of numbers and the inexperience of the Hussites being taken into consideration, they were indeed surprising. But instead of abandoning their stereotyped feudal tactics, to whose inability to cope with any new form of military efficiency the defeats were really due, the Germans merely tried to raise larger armies, and sent them to incur the same fate as the first host which Sigismund had led against Prague. But the engagements only grew more decisive as Zisca fully developed his tactical methods. Invasion after invasion was a failure, because, when once the Bohemians came in sight, the German leaders could not induce their troops to stand firm. The men utterly declined to face the flails and pikes of their enemies, even when the latter advanced far beyond their rampart of waggons, and assumed the offensive. The Hussites were consequently so exalted with the confidence of their own invincibility, that they undertook, and often successfully carried out, actions of the most extraordinary temerity. Relying on the terror which they inspired, small bodies would attack superior numbers when every military consideration was against them, and yet would win the day. Bands only a few thousand strong sallied forth from the natural fortress formed by the Bohemian mountains, and wasted Bavaria, Meissen, Thuringia, and Silesia, almost without hindrance. They returned in safety, their war-waggons laden with the spoil of Eastern Germany, and leaving a broad track of desolation behind them. Long after Zisca’s death the prestige of his tactics remained undiminished, and his successors were able to accomplish feats of war which would have appeared incredible in the first years of the war.

When at last the defeat of the Taborites took place, it resulted from the dissensions of the Bohemians themselves, not from the increased efficiency of their enemies. The battle of Lipan, where Procopius fell and the extreme party were crushed, was a victory won not by the Germans, but by the more moderate sections of the Tzech nation. The event of the fight indicates at once the weak spot of Hussite tactics, and the tremendous self-confidence of the Taborites. After Procopius had repelled the first assaults on his circle of waggons, his men-- forgetting that they had to do not with the panic-stricken hosts of their old enemies, but with their own former comrades,--left their defences and charged the retreating masses. They were accustomed to see the manœuvre succeed against the terrorized Germans, and forgot that it was only good when turned against adversaries whose spirit was entirely broken. In itself an advance meant the sacrifice of all the benefits of a system of tactics which was essentially defensive. The weakness in fact of the device of the waggon-fortress was that, although securing the repulse of the enemy, it gave no opportunity for following up that success, if he was wary and retreated in good order. This however was not a reproach to the inventor of the system, for Zisca had originally to seek not for the way to win decisive victories, but for the way to avoid crushing defeats. At Lipan the moderate party had been beaten back but not routed. Accordingly when the Taborites came out into the open field, the retreating masses turned to fight, while a cavalry reserve which far outnumbered the horsemen of Procopius, rode in between the circle of waggons and the troops which had left it. Thus three-quarters of the Taborite army were caught and surrounded in the plain, where they were cut to pieces by the superior numbers of the enemy. Only the few thousands who had remained behind within the waggon-fortress succeeded in escaping. Thus was demonstrated the incompleteness for military purposes of a system which had been devised as a political necessity, not as an infallible recipe for victory.

The moral of the fight of Lipan was indeed the same as the moral of the fight of Hastings. Purely defensive tactics are hopeless when opposed by a commander of ability and resource, who is provided with steady troops. If the German princes had been generals and the German troops well-disciplined, the careers of Zisca and Procopius would have been impossible. Bad strategy and panic combined to make the Hussites seem invincible. When, however, they were met by rational tactics they were found to be no less liable to the logic of war than other men.

Long before the flails and hand-guns of Zisca’s infantry had turned to rout the chivalry of Germany, another body of foot-soldiers had won the respect of Eastern Europe. On the battlefields of the Balkan Peninsula the Slav and the Magyar had learned to dread the slave-soldiery of the Ottoman Sultans. Kossova had suggested and Nicopolis had proved that the day of the unquestioned supremacy of the horseman was gone in the East as much as in the West. The Janissaries of Murad and Bayezid had stood firm before desperate cavalry charges, and beaten them off with loss. It is curious to recognize in the East the tactics which had won the battles of Creçy and Agincourt. The Janissaries owed their successes to precisely the same causes as the English archer. Their great weapon was the bow, not indeed the long-bow of the West, but nevertheless a very efficient arm. Still more notable is it that they carried the stakes which formed part of the equipment of the English bowman, and planted them before their line whenever an assault by cavalry was expected. Again and again-- notably at Nicopolis and Varna--do we hear of the impetuous charge which had ridden down the rest of the Turkish array, failing at last before the ‘palisade’ of the Janissaries, and the deadly fire of arrows from behind it. The rest of the Janissary’s equipment was very simple: he carried no defensive arms, and wore only a pointed felt cap and a flowing grey tunic reaching to the knees. Besides his bow and quiver he bore a scimitar at his side and a ‘handjar’ or long knife in his waist-cloth. Though their disciplined fanaticism made them formidable foes in close combat, it was not for that kind of fighting that the Janissaries were designed. When we find them storming a breach or leading a charge, they were going beyond their own province. Their entire want of armour would alone have sufficed to show that they were not designed for hand-to-hand contests, and it is a noteworthy fact that they could never be induced to take to the use of the pike. Like the English archery, they were used either in defensive positions or to supplement the employment of cavalry. Eastern hosts ever since the days of the Parthians had consisted of great masses of horsemen, and their weakness had always lain in the want of some steadier force to form the nucleus of resistance and the core of the army. Cavalry can only act on the offensive, yet every general is occasionally compelled to take the defensive. The Ottomans, however, were enabled to solve the problem of producing an army efficient for both alike, when once Orchan had armed and trained the Janissaries. The Timariot horsemen who formed the bulk of the Turkish army differed little from the cavalry of other Oriental states. Not unfrequently they suffered defeats; Shah Ismail’s Persian cavaliers rode them down at Tchaldiran, and the Mamelukes broke them at Radama. If it had been with his feudal horse alone that the Turkish Sultan had faced the chivalry of the West, there is little reason to suppose that the conquest of the Balkan Peninsula would ever have been effected. Attacked in its own home the Hungarian--perhaps even the Servian--state could in the fourteenth century put into the field armies equal in numbers and individually superior to the Ottoman horsemen[123]. But the Servian and the Hungarian, like the Persian and the Mameluke, did not possess any solid and trustworthy body of infantry. To face the disciplined array of the Janissaries they had only the chaotic and half-armed hordes of the national levy. To this we must ascribe the splendid successes of the Sultans: however the tide of battle might fluctuate, the Janissaries would stand like a rock behind their stakes, and it was almost unknown that they should be broken. Again and again they saved the fortune of the day: at those few fights where they could not, they at least died in their ranks, and saved the honour of their corps. At the disaster of Angora they continued to struggle long after the rest of the Turkish army had dispersed, and were at last exterminated rather than beaten. No steadier troops could have been found in any part of Europe.

Perhaps the most interesting of Ottoman fights from the tactician’s point of view was the second battle of Kossova (1448). This was not-- like Varna or Mohacs--an ill-advised attempt to break the Turkish line by a headlong onset. John Huniades, whom long experience had made familiar with the tactics of his enemy, endeavoured to turn against Sultan Murad his own usual scheme. To face the Janissaries he drew up in his centre a strong force of German infantry, armed with the hand-guns whose use the Hussites had introduced. On the wings the chivalry of Hungary were destined to cope with the masses of the Timariot cavalry. In consequence of this arrangement, the two centres faced each other for long hours, neither advancing, but each occupied in thinning the enemy’s ranks, the one with the arbalest-bolt, the other with the bullet. Meanwhile on the wings desperate cavalry charges succeeded each other, till on the second day the Wallachian allies of Huniades gave way before the superior numbers of the Ottomans and the Christian centre had to draw off and retire. So desperate had the fighting been, that half the Hungarian army and a third of that of Murad was left upon the field. The tactical meaning of the engagement was plain: good infantry could make a long resistance to the Ottoman arms, even if they could not secure the victory. The lesson however was not fully realized, and it was not till the military revolution of the sixteenth century that infantry was destined to take the prominent part in withstanding the Ottoman. The landsknechts and hackbut-men of Charles V and Ferdinand of Austria proved much more formidable foes to the Sultans than the gallant but undisciplined light cavalry[124] of Hungary. This was to a great extent due to the perfection of pike-tactics in the West. The Turks, whose infantry could never be induced to adopt that weapon[125], relied entirely on their firearms, and were checked by the combination of pike and hackbut.

It is noticeable that the Janissaries took to the use of the firelock at a comparatively early date. It may have been in consequence of the effectiveness of Huniades’ hand-guns at Kossova, that we find them discarding the arbalest in favour of the newer weapon. But at any rate the Ottoman had fully accomplished the change long before it had been finally carried out in Europe, and nearly a century earlier than the nations of the further East[126].

In recognizing the full importance of cannon the Sultans were equally in advance of their times. The capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II was probably the first event of supreme importance whose result was determined by the power of artillery. The lighter guns of previous years had never accomplished any feat comparable in its results to that which was achieved by the siege-train of the Conqueror. Some decades later we find the Janissaries’ line of arquebuses supported by the fire of field-pieces, often brought forward in great numbers, and chained together so as to prevent cavalry charging down the intervals between the guns[127]. This device is said to have been employed with great success against an enemy superior in the numbers of his horsemen, alike at Dolbek and Tchaldiran.

The ascendency of the Turkish arms was finally terminated by the conjunction of several causes. Of these the chief was the rise in central Europe of standing armies composed for the most part of disciplined infantry. But it is no less undoubted that much was due to the fact that the Ottomans after the reign of Soliman fell behind their contemporaries in readiness to keep up with the advance of military skill, a change which may be connected with the gradual transformation of the Janissaries from a corps into a caste. It should also be remembered that the frontier of Christendom was now covered not by one isolated fortress of supreme importance, such as Belgrade had been, but by a double and triple line of strong towns, whose existence made it hard for the Turks to advance with rapidity, or to reap any such results from success in a single battle or siege as had been possible in the previous century.

On the warfare of the other nations of Eastern Europe it will not be necessary to dwell. The military history of Russia, though interesting in itself, exercised no influence on the general progress of the Art of War. With the more important development of new tactical methods in South-Western Europe we have already dealt, when describing the Spanish infantry in the chapter devoted to the Swiss and their enemies.

All the systems of real weight and consideration have now been discussed. In the overthrow of the supremacy of feudal cavalry the tactics of the shock and the tactics of the missile had each played their part: which had been the more effective it would be hard to say. Between them however the task had been successfully accomplished. The military strength of that system which had embraced all Europe in its cramping fetters, had been shattered to atoms. Warlike efficiency was the attribute no longer of a class but of whole nations; and war had ceased to be an occupation in which feudal chivalry found its pleasure, and the rest of society its ruin. The ‘Art of War’ had become once more a living reality, a matter not of tradition but of experiment, and the vigorous sixteenth century was rapidly adding to it new forms and variations. The middle ages were at last over, and the stirring and scientific spirit of the modern world was working a transformation in military matters, which was to make the methods of mediæval war seem even further removed from the strategy of our own century, than are the operations of the ancients in the great days of Greece and Rome.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cf. Vegetius and Maurice.

[2] Lord Mahon in his Life of Belisarius is wrong in asserting that the legion was no longer known in Justinian’s day. The term is mentioned, though rarely, in Procopius, who more frequently calls the legionary troops οἱ ἐκ τῶν καταλόγων {hoi ek tôn katalogôn}.

[3] Cf. Tacitus, Annals, ii. 21.

[4] The old legions of the first century are found in full vigour at the end of the third. The coins of the British usurper Carausius commemorate as serving under him several of the legions which, as early as the reign of Claudius, were already stationed in Britain and Gaul.

[5] He had 132 legions and ‘numeri,’ besides 100 unattached cohorts.

[6] See Gibbon, ii. cap. xvii.

[7] See Tacitus, Annals, ii. 14.

[8] When the Romans entirely abandoned the offensive an increased army became necessary, as a frontier held against raids requires to be protected on every point. Hence the conscriptions and large composition money of Constantine’s epoch. He is said to have had nearly half a million of men in his forces.

[9] See ὈΥΡΒΙΚΙΟΥ ἘΠΙΤΗΔΕΥΜΑ {OURBIKIOU EPITÊDEUMA}, a fourth century work, printed at the end of the Paris, 1598, edition of Arrian.

[10] The Grand Masters of the infantry and cavalry, the Count of the Palace, and 45 commanders of different corps.

[11] Cf. Ammianus Marcellinus with accounts of the Egyptian crowd at the first battle of El Teb.

[12] Maurice’s Stratêgikon, vi.

[13] At the still fiercer fight, where the army of the usurper Eugenius almost defeated Theodosius, we find that it was the barbarian cavalry of Arbogast, not the native infantry, which had become (only seven years after Maximus’ defeat) the chief force of the Western Empire.

[14] Vegetius, bk. i; ii. (15) and iii. (14).

[15] This Teutonic word is in full acceptation in the sixth century.

[16] Agathias.

[17] Though often called ‘bipennis’ it had not necessarily two blades, that word having become a mere general name for ‘axe.’

[18] See Hewitt’s Ancient Armour, vol. i. 8.

[19] ‘Terrae glacialiter adstricti’ are the Chronicler’s words.

[20] Capitularies, ed. Baluz, i. 508.

[21] A short weapon like the ‘francisca,’ not the long Danish axe which afterwards became the national arm.

[22] If these were the ‘lignis imposita saxa’ of which the Norman chronicler of Hastings spoke, as being English weapons.

[23] Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under A.D. 866 and passim.

[24] See in the Roman de Rou, ii. 262:--

‘Hoem ki od hache volt ferir,
Od sez dous mainz l’estuet tenir.
Ne pot entendre a sei covrir,
S’il velt ferir de grant aïr.
Bien ferir e covrir ensemble
Ne pot l’en fair ço me semble.’

[25] The fate of the only one of Wellington’s squares which attempted to deploy, in order to drive off the infantry which were annoying it, may well be compared with that of Harold’s soldiery. ‘The concentrated fire of this close line of skirmishers was now telling heavily upon the devoted squares of Alten’s division. It was, however, impossible to deploy, as in the hollow, near La Haye Sainte, there lay in wait a body of the enemy’s cavalry. At last the 5th line-battalion of the King’s German Legion, forsaking its square formation, opened out, and advanced against the mass of tirailleurs. The French gave way as the line advanced at the charge; at the next moment the battalion was furiously assailed by a regiment of cuirassiers, who, taking it in flank, fairly rolled it up. So severe was the loss sustained, that out of the whole battalion not more than 30 men and a few officers were gradually collected in their former position.’ (Siborne’s History of the Waterloo Campaign, ii. pp. 114-15.)

[26] Πελεκυφóρος {Pelekuphóros} had become such a mere synonym for Englishmen at Constantinople, that Anna Comnena considers that she defines Robert of Normandy sufficiently, when she calls him ‘the brother of the King of the Πελεκυφóροι {Pelekuphóroi}.’

[27] For these details see Anna Comnena’s Life of Alexius. She calls the commander of the Varangians Ναμéτης {Namétês} or Ναμπéτης {Nampétês}: what English or Scandinavian name can this represent? Considering the remote resemblance of some of Anna’s Western names to their real forms, it is perhaps hopeless to expect an answer.

[28] See especially:--Maurice’s Stratêgikon (Upsala 1664), written about A.D. 595; Leo’s Tactica (Leyden 1612), written about A.D. 900; Nicephorus Phocas’ ΠΕΡΙ ΠΑΡΑΔΡΟΜΗΣ ΠΟΛΕΜΟΥ {PERI PARADROMÊS POLEMOU} (in Migne’s Patrologia), written about A.D. 960.

[29] Gibbon, v. p. 382.

[30] Nic. Pho. Περὶ παραδρόμης πολέμου {Peri paradromês polemou}, § 17.

[31] Nothing better attests the military spirit of the Eastern aristocracy than their duels: cf. the cases of Prusian, etc., in Finlay’s Greece.

[32] Leo, Tactica, § 18. The paragraphs here are a condensation of Leo’s advice, and sometimes an elucidation, not a literal translation.

[33] σκουτáτοι {skoutátoi}, one of the curious Latin survivals in Byzantine military terminology. In translitterating Latin words the Greeks paid no attention to quantity.

[34] Much confusion in military history has been caused by writers attributing the archery of the Turks to the Saracens: the latter were not employers of archery-tactics, but lancers. Battles like Dorylæum, which are given as examples of Saracen warfare, were fought really by Turks.

[35] Leo, § 18. 124.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid. 120.

[38] Leo, Tactica: various scattered notices in § 18.

[39] In Leo’s day the Oriental themes had not been sub-divided, as was afterwards done by his son Constantine. There were then eight themes in Asia Minor, each of which contained a military division of the same name, and could be reckoned on for some 4000 heavy cavalry. These were ‘Armeniacon, Anatolicon, Obsequium, Thracesion, Cibyrrhœot, Bucellarion, and Paphlagonia.’ Optimaton, the ninth theme, had (as Constantine tells us in his treatise on the empire), no military establishments.

[40] See in the next section of this treatise for the plan of his formation, p. 45.

[41] Leo, Tactica, 18. 118.

[42] Ibid. 136.

[43] Ibid. 118.

[44] See Colonel Clery’s Minor Tactics.

[45] Leo, Tactica, 18.

[46] Compare with this the stratagem by which the Russian army escaped from a compromised position during the retreat before the battle of Austerlitz. ‘In agreeing to an Armistice,’ wrote Kutusoff, in a very Byzantine tone, ‘I had in view nothing but to gain time, and thereby obtain the means of removing to a distance from the enemy, and saving my army.’ Dumas, xiv. 48.

[47] The Middle Ages dimly felt this, and (as Gibbon tells us) the Italian Chroniclers name him the ‘first of the Greek Emperors.’

[48] As, for example, the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who, in his book on the ‘Themata Orientis,’ attributes the invention of the ‘Theme’ and ‘tagma’ to Heraclius.

[49] Βάνδον {Bandon}, bandum, had become a common word in Justinian’s time: it is used as a Teutonic equivalent for ‘vexillum’ in both its senses.

[50] Comes had in Constantine’s days been applied to five great officers alone.

[51] This curious word is first formed in Vegetius, where it is only applied to the masses of a barbarian army. (Cf. English ‘throng.’)

[52] See the evidence of coins: the title ΠΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΘΕῼ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΤΩΝ ΡΩΜΑΙΩΝ {PISTOS EN THEÔ BASILEUS TÔN RÔMAIÔN} only becomes common under the Amorian dynasty.

[53] See Leo’s Tactica, xii.

[54] Ibid. vi.

[55] Leo, Tactica, vi.

[56] E.g. a κελίκον {kelikon} and a ματζούκιον {matzoukion}.

[57] The century contained 10 decuries, but the ‘decury’ was 16 not 10 men: thus the century was 160 strong. Three centuries went to a ‘band,’ which would thus be about 450 men.

[58] Gold coin, worth perhaps 12_s._ in metal value.

[59] Nicephorus Phocas, in his ΠΑΡΑΔΡΟΜΗ ΠΟΛΕΜΟΥ {PARADROMÊ POLEMOU}, says that ‘Armenians must never be placed in this line of picquets, as their habitual drowsiness at night makes them untrustworthy.’

[60] Leo, Tactica, iv. § 1.

[61] Nothing gives a better idea of the real military character of the Byzantine aristocracy than a perusal of the curious tenth century romance of ‘Digenes Akritas,’ a member of the house of Ducas, who is ‘Klissurarch’ of the passes of Taurus, and performs with his mighty mace all the exploits of a hero of chivalry. He really existed, and bore the name of Basil Pantherios. See Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. 118.

[62] Eustace de Ribeaumont, for instance, who gave the madly impractical advice which lost the battle of Poictiers, was, we are told, an officer of high ability.

[63] The Black Prince’s campaign in South France, for example, before the battle of Poictiers, was merely an enormous and destructive raid. He besieged no important town, and did not attempt to establish any posts to command the country through which he passed.

[64] The difficulty experienced by Edward III and Henry V in crossing the Somme is equally remarkable.

[65] ‘Capitales barones suos cum paucis secum duxit, solidarios vero milites innumeros.’ Rob. de Monte, 1159.

[66] The classical instances of the successful employment of the mine in England are the captures of Rochester Castle in 1215, and Bedford Castle in 1224, both works of enormous labour.

[67] A revival of the old Roman system of fortification.

[68] As, for example, did Edward III before Calais. He fortified all approaches passable for a relieving army, and waited quietly in his lines.

[69] This was borrowed either from the Byzantine or the Saracen: it is quite distinct from the rude club occasionally found in the West at an earlier date, as, for example, in the hands of Bishop Odo at Hastings.

[70] See, for example, the case cited in Von Elgger’s Kriegswesen der Schweizerischen Eidgenossen, where a patrician of Constance having refused to accept a Bernese plappert (small coin) in payment of a wager, and having scornfully called the bear represented on it a cow, the Confederates took the matter up as a national insult, and ravaged the territory of Constance without any declaration of war.

[71] At Novara, for instance, they put to death after the battle several hundred German prisoners.

[72] See Montluc’s Commentaries.

[73] At Morat the contingent of Bern alone brought with them (besides the great standard of the canton) the flags of twenty-four towns and districts (Thun, Aarau, Lenzburg, Interlaken, Burgdorf, the Haslithal, the Emmenthal, etc. etc.) and of eight craft-guilds and six other associations.

[74] The halberd only differed from the English ‘brown-bill’ in having a spike.

[75] The ‘Morning-Star’ was a club five feet long, set thickly at its end with iron spikes. It had disappeared by the middle of the 15th century. The ‘Lucern Hammer’ was like a halberd, but had three curved prongs instead of the hatchet-blade: it inflicted a horrible jagged wound.

[76] Macchiavelli, Art of War, tr. Farneworth, p. 32.

[77] Macchiavelli even says that the pikemen in his day did not wear the steel-cap, which was entirely confined to the halberdiers. But this can be shown from other sources to be an exaggeration.

[78] See Kirk’s Charles the Bold, book iv. chap. 2.

[79] At Morat, according to Commines, they were nearly a third, 10,000 out of 35,000. At Arbedo they were a seventh: among the Confederates who joined Charles VIII in his march to Naples only a tenth of the force.

[80] E.g. the Forest Cantons were bitterly opposed to the Bernese policy of engaging in war with Charles the Bold; but their troops did no worse service than the rest at Granson or Morat.

[81] Rudolf von Erlach’s position as commander-in-chief at Laupen was quite exceptional. If we hear in the cases mentioned above of Swiss commanders, we must remember that they were co-ordinate authorities, among whom one man might exert more influence than another, but only by his personal ascendancy, not by legal right. It is a mistake to say that Réné of Lorraine formally commanded at Morat or Nancy.

[82] Macchiavelli has a very clear account of this form of advance, see Arte de Guerra, tr. Farneworth, book iii.

[83] See Elgger’s Kriegswesen der Schweizerische, etc. p. 280.

[84] See Elgger as before.

[85] Arte de Guerra, tr. Farneworth, p. 57.

[86] Quoted at length in Elgger.

[87] At Bannockburn, the Scots had made good use of their cavalry, which, though not strong, gave them an advantage wanting to the Swiss at Laupen.

[88] Similarly at the battle of the Standard the English knights dismounted to meet the furious rush of the Galwegians.

[89] The numbers which the Swiss Chroniclers allow to have been present at Sempach are evidently minimised. The whole force of four cantons was there, yet we are told of only 1500 men! Yet the _three_ cantons seventy-one years before put the same number in the field, and the populous state of Lucern had now joined them.

[90] The Confederates were forming their column in Sempach Wood, when Leopold’s artillery opened on them--

‘With their long lances levelled before the fight they stood,
And set their cannon firing at those within the wood;
Then to the good Confederates the battle was not sweet,
When all around the mighty boughs dropped crashing at their feet.’

[Rough translation of Halbshuter’s contemporary ‘Sempacherlied.’]

[91] Sismondi, who writes entirely from Swiss sources as to this fight, gives a very different impression from Machiavelli. The later cites Arbedo as the best known check received by the Swiss, and puts their loss down at several thousands (Arte de Guerra, tr. Farneworth, p. 33). Müller evidently tries to minimise the check; but we may judge from our knowledge of Swiss character how great must have been the pressure required to make a Confederate officer think of surrender. Forty-four members of the Cantonal councils of Lucern fell in the fight: ‘The contingent of Lucern had crossed the lake of the four Cantons in ten large barges, when setting out on this expedition: it returned in two!’ These facts, acknowledged by the Swiss themselves, seem to show that the figure of 400 men for their loss is placed absurdly low.

[92] From a Lucern ‘Raths-Protocoll’ of 1422, ‘Da es den Eidgenossen nicht so wohl ergangen seie,’ etc.

[93] Yet even the Duke said, that ‘Against the Swiss it will never do to march unprepared.’ Panagirola, quoted by Kirk, vol. iii.

[94] ‘If we attack Romont,’ said Ulrich Kätzy at the Swiss council of war, ‘while we are beating him the duke will have time and opportunity to escape; let us go round the hills against the main-body, and when that is routed, we shall have the rest without a stroke.’ This showed real tactical skill.

[95] Machiavelli, Arte de Guerra, book ii.

[96] Frundsberg, the old captain of landsknechts, gives a cool and businesslike account of these shocks, ‘Wo unter den langen Wehren etliche Glieder zu grund gehen, werden die Personen, so dahinter stehen, etwas zaghaft,’ etc.

[97] The two-handed sword had almost entirely, and the ‘morning-star’ and ‘Lucern hammer’ quite, disappeared from use by the end of the fifteenth century.

[98] Machiavelli, Arte de Guerra, book ii. p. 34.

[99] It is a curious fact that Chaka, one of Cetywayo’s predecessors as king of the Zulus, set himself to solve this problem. He took a hundred men and armed them with the shield and the ‘short assegai,’ a thrusting weapon resembling a sword rather than a spear in its use. He then set them to fight another hundred furnished with the shield and the ‘long assegai,’ the slender javelin which had previously been the weapon of his tribe. The wielders of the shorter weapon won with ease, and the king thereupon ordered its adoption throughout the Zulu army. It was this change which originally gave the Zulus their superiority over their neighbours.

[100] Machiavelli, Arte de Guerra, book ii.

[101] See Sismondi’s Italian History, vol. ix. p. 213.

[102] E.g. by the diminutive archer who crouches under a thegn’s shield, like Teucer protected by Ajax.

[103] Giraldus Cambrensis, Itin. Cambriæ, c. 3, speaks of the Welsh bowmen as being able to send an arrow through an oak door four fingers thick. The people of Gwent (Monmouth and Glamorgan) were reckoned the best archers. Those of North Wales were always spearmen, not archers.

[104] Stubbs’ Select Charters, p. 374.

[105] In the Pay Roll of the garrison of Rhuddlan castle, 1281, we find ‘paid to Geoffrey le Chamberlin for the wages of twelve cross-bowmen, and thirteen archers, for twenty-four days, £7 8_s._, each cross-bowman receiving by the day 4_d._, and each archer 2_d._

[106] Nic. Trivet, Annales, 282.

[107] It is surely unnecessary to call in the aid of treachery--as historians have so frequently done--in order to account for the rout of a force numbered by hundreds, by one numbered by thousands.

[108] The characteristic of their descendants in the second decade of the present century.

[109] 320 miles in eighteen days; a rate surpassing any continuous marching recorded of late years.

[110] See for Henry’s columns of route Viollet-le-Duc’s Tactique des Armées Françaises au Moyen Age.

[111] See Viollet-le-Duc’s Tactique des Armées Françaises au Moyen Age, p. 300.

[112] ‘Gladio ad usum fossarum verso, et ungue verrente tellurem concavant: et ante se campum equis inadibilem mira hostium astucia efficiebat.’ Blondel, iv. 6.

[113] ‘Et si Anglici, incaepto conflictu praestantes, Gallos retrogressos insequi ansi fuissent,’ etc. Blondel, iv. 7.

[114] ‘Fusis enim Anglorum bellis robusti quingenti sagittarii in hortum sentibus conseptum prosiliunt ... ac inexorabili Gallorum ferocitate, ut quisque genu flexo arcum traderet, [in sign of surrender] omnes (nec unus evasit) gladio confodiuntur.’ Blondel, iv. 8.

[115] Grafton, Henry VI, year xxvii.

[116] Hall.

[117] The whole country being disaffected and ready--as the events of the autumn proved--to revolt in favour of Warwick or Henry VI, the suppression of the Lincolnshire rebellion and the expulsion of the King-maker were remarkable achievements.

[118] This must have been in the Stroudwater, as Edward marched from Wooton-under-Edge by Stroud and Painswick on Cheltenham.

[119] Somerset attributed this to treachery on the part of Lord Wenlock, commander of the ‘centre-battle,’ who was a follower of Warwick and not an old Lancastrian. Escaping from the advancing Yorkists he rode up to Wenlock, and, without speaking a word, brained him with his battle-axe.

[120] Grafton.

[121] Edward IV is said to have had in his employment in 1470 a small corps of Germans with ‘hand-guns.’ Better known is the band of 2000 hackbut-men which the Earl of Lincoln brought to Stoke in 1487. The name of their leader, Martin Schwart, survives in the ballads of the day.

[122] For an excellent description of Hussite tactics, see Denis, Hus et la Guerre des Hussites.

[123] At the first battle of Kossova we know that the allied Servians and Bosnians outnumbered the Turks.

[124] Already since the middle of the 15th century known as ‘Hussars.’

[125] Montecuculi notes that even in his day far into the 17th century, the Turk had not yet taken to the pike.

[126] The arquebus and cannon were novelties to the Mamelukes as late as 1517, if we are to trust the story of Kait Bey.

[127] Richard III of England is said to have adopted this expedient at Bosworth.

Transcriber's Notes:

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Inconsistent hyphenation retained.

This book uses both “Themes” and “themes”, “Zürich” and “Zurich”, “ascendancy” and “ascendency”.

Latinized transliterations of Greek are approximate.

Page 22: “develope” was printed that way.

Page 28: “Patrologia” was imperfectly printed.

Page 123: “fourteenth and fifteenth century” was printed that way.