CONCLUSION.
Zisca and the Hussites.--The Waggon-fortress and the tactics
depending on it.--Ascendency and decline of the Hussites.--
Battle of Lipan.--The Ottomans.--Organization and equipment
of the Janissaries.--The Timariot cavalry.--The other
nations of Europe.--Concluding remarks 124-134
INTRODUCTION.
The Art of War has been very simply defined as ‘the art which enables
any commander to worst the forces opposed to him.’ It is therefore
conversant with an enormous variety of subjects: Strategy and
Tactics are but two of the more important of its branches. Besides
dealing with discipline, organization, and armament, it is bound to
investigate every means which can be adapted to increase the physical
or moral efficiency of an army. The author who opened his work with a
dissertation on ‘the age which is preferable in a generalissimo,’ or
‘the average height which the infantry soldier should attain[1],’ was
dealing with the Art of War, no less than he who confined himself to
purely tactical speculations.
The complicated nature of the subject being taken into consideration,
it is evident that a complete sketch, of the social and political
history of any period would be necessary to account fully for the
state of the ‘Art of War’ at the time. That art has existed, in a
rudimentary form, ever since the day on which two bodies of men first
met in anger to settle a dispute by the arbitrament of force. At
some epochs, however, military and social history have been far more
closely bound up than at others. In the present century wars are but
episodes in a people’s existence: there have, however, been times when
the whole national organization was founded on the supposition of a
normal state of strife. In such cases the history of the race and of
its ‘art of war’ are one and the same. To detail the constitution of
Sparta, or of Ancient Germany, is to give little more than a list of
military institutions. Conversely, to speak of the characteristics of
their military science involves the mention of many of their political
institutions.
At no time was this interpenetration more complete than in the age
which forms the central part of our period. Feudalism, in its origin
and development, had a military as well as a social side, and its
decline is by no means unaffected by military considerations. There is
a point of view from which its history could be described as ‘the rise,
supremacy, and decline of heavy cavalry as the chief power in war.’ To
a certain extent the tracing out of this thesis will form the subject
of our researches. It is here that we find the thread which links the
history of the military art in the middle ages into a connected whole.
Between Adrianople, the first, and Marignano, the last, of the triumphs
of the mediæval horseman, lie the chapters in the scientific history of
war which we are about to investigate.
I.
THE TRANSITION FROM ROMAN TO MEDIÆVAL FORMS IN WAR.
A.D. 378-582.
[From the battle of Adrianople to the Accession of Maurice.]
Between the middle of the fourth and the end of the sixth century lies
a period of transition in military history, an epoch of transformations
as strange and as complete as those contemporary changes which turned
into a new channel the course of political history and civilisation in
Europe. In war, as in all else, the institutions of the ancient world
are seen to pass away, and a new order of things develops itself.
Numerous and striking as are the symptoms of that period of transition,
none is more characteristic than the gradual disuse of the honoured
name of ‘Legion,’ the title intimately bound up with all the ages of
Roman greatness. Surviving in a very limited acceptance in the time of
Justinian[2], it had fifty years later become obsolete. It represented
a form of military efficiency which had now completely vanished. That
wonderful combination of strength and flexibility, so solid and yet
so agile and easy to handle, had ceased to correspond to the needs of
the time. The day of the sword and pilum had given place to that of
the lance and bow. The typical Roman soldier was no longer the iron
legionary, who, with shield fitted close to his left shoulder and
sword-hilt sunk low, cut his way through the thickest hedge of pikes,
and stood firm before the wildest onset of Celt or German[3]. The
organization of Augustus and Trajan was swept away by Constantine, and
the legions which for three hundred years had preserved their identity,
their proud titles of honour, and their _ésprit de corps_, knew
themselves no longer[4].
Constantine, when he cut down the numbers of the military unit to
a quarter of its former strength, and created many scores of new
corps[5], was acting from motives of political and not military
expediency[6]. The armament and general character of the troops
survived their organization, and the infantry, the ‘robur peditum,’
still remained the most important and numerous part of the army. At
the same time, however, a tendency to strengthen the cavalry made
itself felt, and the proportion of that arm to the whole number of
the military establishment continued steadily to increase throughout
the fourth century. Constantine himself, by depriving the legion of
its complementary ‘turmae,’ and uniting the horsemen into larger
independent bodies, bore witness to their growing importance. It would
seem that the Empire--having finally abandoned the offensive in war,
and having resolved to confine itself to the protection of its own
provinces--found that there was an increasing need for troops who
could transfer themselves with rapidity from one menaced point on the
frontier to another. The Germans could easily distance the legion,
burdened by the care of its military machines and impedimenta. Hence
cavalry in larger numbers was required to intercept their raids.
But it would appear that another reason for the increase of the
horsemen was even more powerful. The ascendancy of the Roman infantry
over its enemies was no longer so marked as in earlier ages, and it
therefore required to be more strongly supported by cavalry than had
been previously necessary. The Franks, Burgundians, and Allemanni
of the days of Constantine were no longer the half-armed savages of
the first century, who, ‘without helm or mail, with weak shields of
wicker-work, and armed only with the javelin[7],’ tried to face the
embattled front of the cohort. They had now the iron-bound buckler, the
pike, and the short stabbing sword (’scramasax’), as well as the long
cutting sword (’spatha’), and the deadly ‘francisca’ or battle-axe,
which, whether thrown or wielded, would penetrate Roman armour and
split the Roman shield. As weapons for hand to hand combat these so
far surpassed the old ‘framea,’ that the imperial infantry found it no
light matter to defeat a German tribe. At the same time, the _morale_
of the Roman army was no longer what it had once been: the corps were
no longer homogeneous, and the insufficient supply of recruits was
eked out by enlisting slaves and barbarians in the legions themselves,
and not only among the auxiliary cohorts[8]. Though seldom wanting in
courage, the troops of the fourth century had lost the self-reliance
and cohesion of the old Roman infantry, and required far more careful
handling on the part of the general. Few facts show this more forcibly
than the proposal of the tactician Urbicius to furnish the legionaries
with a large supply of portable beams and stakes, to be carried by
pack-mules attached to each cohort. These were to be planted on the
flanks and in the front of the legion, when there was a probability
of its being attacked by hostile cavalry: behind them the Romans
were to await the enemy’s onset, without any attempt to assume the
offensive[9]. This proposition marks a great decay in the efficiency of
the imperial foot-soldier: the troops of a previous generation would
have scorned such a device, accustomed as they were to drive back with
ease the assaults of the Parthian and Sarmatian ‘cataphracti.’
This tendency to deterioration on the part of the Roman infantry, and
the consequent neglect of that arm by the generals of the time, were
brought to a head by a disaster. The battle of Adrianople was the most
fearful defeat suffered by a Roman army since Cannæ; a slaughter to
which it is aptly compared by the military author Ammianus Marcellinus.
The Emperor Valens, all his chief officers[10], and forty thousand
men were left upon the field; indeed the army of the East was almost
annihilated, and was never reorganized upon the same lines as had
previously served for it.
The military importance of Adrianople was unmistakable; it was a
victory of cavalry over infantry. The imperial army had developed its
attack on the position of the Goths, and the two forces were hotly
engaged, when suddenly a great body of horsemen charged in upon the
Roman flank. It was the main strength of the Gothic cavalry, which had
been foraging at a distance; receiving news of the fight it had ridden
straight for the battlefield. Two of Valens’ squadrons, which covered
the flank of his array, threw themselves in the way of the oncoming
mass, and were ridden down and trampled under foot. Then the Goths
swept down on the infantry of the left wing, rolled it up, and drove it
in upon the centre. So tremendous was their impact that the legions and
cohorts were pushed together in helpless confusion. Every attempt to
stand firm failed, and in a few minutes left, centre, and reserve were
one undistinguishable mass. Imperial guards, light troops, lancers,
foederati and infantry of the line were wedged together in a press
that grew closer every moment. The Roman cavalry saw that the day was
lost, and rode off without another effort. Then the abandoned infantry
realised the horror of their position: equally unable to deploy or to
fly, they had to stand to be cut down. It was a sight such as had been
seen once before at Cannæ, and was to be seen once after at Rosbecque.
Men could not raise their arms to strike a blow, so closely were they
packed; spears snapped right and left, their bearers being unable to
lift them to a vertical position: many soldiers were stifled in the
press. Into this quivering mass the Goths rode, plying lance and sword
against the helpless enemy. It was not till two-thirds of the Roman
army had fallen that the thinning of the ranks enabled a few thousand
men to break out[11], and follow their right wing and cavalry in a
headlong flight.
Such was the battle of Adrianople, the first great victory gained by
that heavy cavalry which had now shown its ability to supplant the
heavy infantry of Rome as the ruling power of war. During their sojourn
in the steppes of South Russia the Goths, first of all Teutonic races,
had become a nation of horsemen. Dwelling in the Ukraine, they had felt
the influence of that land, ever the nurse of cavalry, from the day
of the Scythian to that of the Tartar and Cossack. They had come to
‘consider it more honourable to fight on horse than on foot[12],’ and
every chief was followed by his war-band of mounted men. Driven against
their will into conflict with the empire, they found themselves face to
face with the army that had so long held the world in fear. The shock
came, and, probably to his own surprise, the Goth found that his stout
lance and good steed would carry him through the serried ranks of the
legion. He had become the arbiter of war, the lineal ancestor of all
the knights of the middle ages, the inaugurator of that ascendancy of
the horseman which was to endure for a thousand years.
Theodosius, on whom devolved the task of reorganizing the troops of the
Eastern empire, appears to have appreciated to its fullest extent the
military meaning of the fight of Adrianople. Abandoning the old Roman
theory of war, he decided that the cavalry must in future compose the
most important part of the imperial army. To provide himself with a
sufficient force of horsemen, he was driven to a measure destined to
sever all continuity between the military organization of the fourth
and that of the fifth century. He did not, like Constantine, raise new
corps, but began to enlist wholesale every Teutonic chief whom he could
bribe to enter his service. The war-bands which followed these princes
were not incorporated with the national troops; they obeyed their
immediate commanders alone, and were strangers to the discipline of
the Roman army. Yet to them was practically entrusted the fate of the
empire; since they formed the most efficient division of the imperial
forces. From the time of Theodosius the prince had to rely for the
maintenance of order in the Roman world merely on the amount of loyalty
which a constant stream of titles and honours could win from the
commanders of the ‘Foederati.’
Only six years after Adrianople there were already 40,000 Gothic and
other German horsemen serving under their own chiefs in the army of the
East. The native troops sunk at once to an inferior position in the
eyes of Roman generals, and the justice of their decision was verified
a few years later when Theodosius’ German mercenaries won for him the
two well-contested battles which crushed the usurper Magnus Maximus
and his son Victor. On both those occasions, the Roman infantry of the
West, those Gallic legions who had always been considered the best
footmen in the world, were finally ridden down by the Teutonic cavalry
who followed the standard of the legitimate emperor[13].
A picture of the state of the imperial army in the Western provinces,
drawn precisely at this period, has been preserved for us in the work
of Vegetius, a writer whose treatise would be of far greater value
had he refrained from the attempt to identify the organization of
his own day with that of the first century, by the use of the same
words for entirely different things. In drawing inferences from his
statements, it has also to be remembered that he frequently gives
the ideal military forms of his imagination, instead of those which
really existed in his day. For example, his legion is made to consist
of 6000 men, while we know that in the end of the fourth century its
establishment did not exceed 1500. His work is dedicated to one of the
emperors who bore the name of Valentinian, probably to the second,
as (in spite of Gibbon’s arguments in favour of Valentinian III) the
relations of the various arms to each other and the character of their
organization point to a date prior to the commencement of the fifth
century.
A single fact mentioned by Vegetius gives us the date at which the
continuity of the existence of the old Roman heavy infantry may be said
to terminate. As might be expected, this epoch exactly corresponds
with that of the similar change in the East, which followed the
battle of Adrianople. ‘From the foundation of the city to the reign
of the sainted Gratian,’ says the tactician, ‘the legionaries wore
helmet and cuirass. But when the practice of holding frequent reviews
and sham-fights ceased, these arms began to seem heavy, because the
soldiers seldom put them on. They therefore begged from the emperor
permission to discard first their cuirasses, and then even their
helmets, and went to face the barbarians unprotected by defensive arms.
In spite of the disasters which have since ensued, the infantry have
not yet resumed the use of them.... And now, how can the Roman soldier
expect victory, when helmless and unarmoured, and even without a shield
(for the shield cannot be used in conjunction with the bow), he goes
against the enemy[14]?’
Vegetius--often more of a rhetorician than a soldier--has evidently
misstated the reason of this change in infantry equipment. At a time
when cavalry were clothing themselves in more complete armour, it
is not likely that the infantry were discarding it from mere sloth
and feebleness. The real meaning of the change was that, in despair
of resisting horsemen any longer by the solidity of a line of heavy
infantry, the Romans had turned their attention to the use of missile
weapons,--a method of resisting cavalry even more efficacious than
that which they abandoned, as was to be shown a thousand years later
at Cressy and Agincourt. That Vegetius’ account is also considerably
exaggerated is shown by his enumeration of the legionary order of his
own day, where the first rank was composed of men retaining shield,
pilum, and cuirass (whom he pedantically calls ‘Principes’). The second
rank was composed of archers, but wore the cuirass and carried a lance
also; only the remaining half of the legion had entirely discarded
armour, and given up all weapons but the bow.
Vegetius makes it evident that cavalry, though its importance was
rapidly increasing, had not yet entirely supplanted infantry to such
a large extent as in the Eastern Empire. Though no army can hope for
success without them, and though they must always be at hand to protect
the flanks, they are not, in his estimation, the most effective force.
As an antiquary he feels attached to the old Roman organization, and
must indeed have been somewhat behind the military experience of his
day. It may, however, be remembered that the Franks and Allemanni, the
chief foes against whom the Western legions had to contend, were--
unlike the Goths--nearly all footmen. It was not till the time of
Alaric that Rome came thoroughly to know the Gothic horsemen, whose
efficiency Constantinople had already comprehended and had contrived
for the moment to subsidize. In the days of Honorius, however, the Goth
became the terror of Italy, as he had previously been of the Balkan
peninsula. His lance and steed once more asserted their supremacy:
the generalship of Stilicho, the trained bowmen and pikemen of the
reorganized Roman army, the native and foederate squadrons whose array
flanked the legions, were insufficient to arrest the Gothic charge.
For years the conquerors rode at their will through Italy: when they
quitted it, it was by their own choice, for there were no troops left
in the world who could have expelled them by force.
The day of infantry had in fact gone by in Southern Europe: they
continued to exist, not as the core and strength of the army, but for
various minor purposes,--to garrison towns or operate in mountainous
countries. Roman and barbarian alike threw their vigour into the
organization of their cavalry. Even the duty of acting as light troops
fell into the hands of the horsemen. The Roman trooper added the bow to
his equipment, and in the fifth century the native force of the Empire
had come to resemble that of its old enemy, the Parthian state of the
first century, being composed of horsemen armed with bow and lance.
Mixed with these horse-archers fought squadrons of the Foederati, armed
with the lance alone. Such were the troops of Aetius and Ricimer, the
army which faced the Huns on the plain of Chalons.
The Huns themselves were another manifestation of the strength of
cavalry; formidable by their numbers, their rapidity of movement, and
the constant rain of arrows which they would pour in without allowing
their enemy to close. In their tactics they were the prototypes of
the hordes of Alp Arslan, of Genghiz, and Tamerlane. But mixed with
the Huns in the train of Attila marched many subject German tribes,
Herules and Gepidæ, Scyri, Lombards, and Rugians, akin to the Goths
alike in their race and their manner of fighting. Chalons then was
fought by horse-archer and lancer against horse-archer and lancer, a
fair conflict with equal weapons. The Frankish allies of Aetius were
by far the most important body of infantry on the field, and these
were ranged, according to the traditional tactics of Rome, in the
centre:--flanked on one side by the Visigothic lances, on the other by
the imperial array of horse-archers and heavy cavalry intermixed. The
victory was won, not by superior tactics, but by sheer hard fighting,
the decisive point having been the riding down of the native Huns by
Theodoric’s heavier horsemen.
To trace out in detail the military meaning of all the wars of the
fifth century does not fall within our province. As to the organization
of the Roman armies a few words will suffice. In the West the
Foederati became the sole force of the empire, so that at last one of
their chiefs, breaking through the old spell of the Roman name, could
make himself, in title as well as in reality, ruler of Italy. In the
East, the decline of the native troops never reached this pitch. Leo
I (457-474 A.D.), taking warning by the fate of the Western Empire,
determined on increasing the proportion of Romans to Foederati, and
carried out his purpose, though it involved the sacrifice of the
life of his benefactor, the Gothic patrician Aspar. Zeno (474-491)
continued this work, and made himself noteworthy as the first emperor
who utilised the military virtues of the Isaurians, or semi-Romanized
mountaineers of the interior of Asia Minor. Not only did they form his
imperial guard, but a considerable number of new corps were raised
among them. Zeno also enlisted Armenians and other inhabitants of the
Roman frontier of the East, and handed over to his successor Anastasius
an army in which the barbarian element was adequately counterpoised by
the native troops.
The victorious armies of Justinian were therefore composed of two
distinct elements, the foreign auxiliaries serving under their own
chiefs, and the regular imperial troops. The pages of Procopius give
us sufficient evidence that in both these divisions the cavalry was by
far the most important arm. The light horseman of the Asiatic provinces
wins his especial praise. With body and limbs clothed in mail, his
quiver at his right side and his sword at his left, the Roman trooper
would gallop along and discharge his arrows to front or flank or rear
with equal ease. To support him marched in the second line the heavier
squadrons of the subsidized Lombard, or Herule, or Gepidan princes,
armed with the lance. ‘There are some,’ writes Procopius, ‘who regard
antiquity with wonder and respect, and attach no special worth to our
modern military institutions: it is, however, by means of the latter
that the weightiest and most striking results have been obtained.’
The men of the sixth century were, in fact, entirely satisfied with
the system of cavalry tactics which they had adopted, and looked with
a certain air of superiority on the infantry tactics of their Roman
predecessors.
Justinian’s army and its achievements were indeed worthy of all
praise; its victories were its own, while its defeats were generally
due to the wretched policy of the emperor, who persisted in dividing
up the command among many hands,--a system which secured military
obedience at the expense of military efficiency. Justinian might,
however, plead in his defence that the organization of the army had
become such that it constituted a standing menace to the central
power. The system of the Teutonic ‘comitatus,’ of the ‘war-band’
surrounding a leader to whom the soldiers are bound by a personal
tie, had become deeply ingrained in the imperial forces. Always
predominant among the Foederati, it had spread from them to the
native corps. In the sixth century the monarch had always to dread
that the loyalty of the troops towards their immediate commanders
might prevail over their higher duties. Belisarius, and even Narses,
were surrounded by large bodyguards of chosen men, bound to them by
oath. That, of the former general at the time of his Gothic triumph
amounted to 7000 veteran horsemen. The existence of such corps rendered
every successful commander a possible Wallenstein, to use a name of
more modern importance. Thus the emperor, in his desire to avert
the predominance of any single officer, would join several men of
discordant views in the command of an army, and usually ensure the
most disastrous consequences. This organization of the imperial force
in ‘banda,’[15] bodies attached by personal ties to their leaders,
is the characteristic military form of the sixth century. Its normal
prevalence is shown by the contemporary custom of speaking of each
corps by the name of its commanding officer, and not by any official
title. Nothing could be more opposed than this usage to old Roman
precedent.
The efficiency of Justinian’s army in the Vandalic, Persian, or
Gothic wars, depended (as has already been implied) almost entirely
on its excellent cavalry. The troops, whether Teutonic or Eastern,
against which it was employed were also horsemen. Engaging them the
Romans prevailed, because in each case they were able to meet their
adversaries’ weapons and tactics not merely with similar methods, but
with a greater variety of resources. Against the Persian horse-archer
was sent not only the light-cavalry equipped with arms of the same
description, but the heavy foederate lancers, who could ride the
Oriental down. Against the Gothic heavy cavalry the same lancers
were supported by the mounted bowmen, to whom the Goths had nothing
to oppose. If, however, the Roman army enjoyed all the advantages of
its diverse composition, it was, on the other hand, liable to all the
perils which arise from a want of homogeneity. Its various elements
were kept together only by military pride, or confidence in some
successful general. Hence, in the troublous times which commenced
in the end of Justinian’s reign and continued through those of his
successors, the whole military organization of the empire began to
crumble away. A change not less sweeping than that which Theodosius had
introduced was again to be taken in hand. In 582 A.D. the reforming
Emperor Maurice came to the throne, and commenced to recast the
imperial army in a new mould.
II.
THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES.
A.D. 476-1066-81.
[From the Fall of the Western Empire to the Battles of Hastings and
Durazzo.]
_The Franks, Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, etc._
In leaving the discussion of the military art of the later Romans
in order to investigate that of the nations of Northern and Western
Europe, we are stepping from a region of comparative light into one of
doubt and obscurity. The data which in the history of the empire may
occasionally seem scanty and insufficient are in the history of the
Teutonic races often entirely wanting. To draw up from our fragmentary
authorities an estimate of the military importance of the Eastern
campaigns of Heraclius is not easy: but to discover what were the
particular military causes which settled the event of the day at Vouglé
or Tolbiac, at Badbury or the Heavenfield, is absolutely impossible.
The state of the Art of War in the Dark Ages has to be worked out from
monkish chronicles and national songs, from the casual references of
Byzantine historians, from the quaint drawings of the illuminated
manuscript, or the mouldering fragments found in the warrior’s barrow.
It is fortunate that the general characteristics of the period render
its military history comparatively simple. Of strategy there could be
little in an age when men strove to win their ends by hard fighting
rather than by skilful operations or the utilizing of extraneous
advantages. Tactics were stereotyped by the national organizations of
the various peoples. The true interest of the centuries of the early
Middle Ages lies in the gradual evolution of new forms of warlike
efficiency, which end in the establishment of a military class as
the chief factor in war, and the decay among most peoples of the
old system which made the tribe arrayed in arms the normal fighting
force. Intimately connected with this change was an alteration in
arms and equipment, which transformed the outward appearance of war
in a manner not less complete. This period of transition may be
considered to end when, in the eleventh century, the feudal cavalier
established his superiority over all the descriptions of troops which
were pitted against him, from the Magyar horse-archers of the East to
the Anglo-Danish axe-men of the West. The fight of Hastings, the last
attempt made for three centuries by infantry to withstand cavalry,
serves to mark the termination of the epoch.
The Teutonic nation of North-Western Europe did not--like the Goths
and Lombards--owe their victories to the strength of their mail-clad
cavalry. The Franks and Saxons of the sixth and seventh centuries were
still infantry. It would appear that the moors of North Germany and
Schleswig, and the heaths and marshes of Belgium, were less favourable
to the growth of cavalry than the steppes of the Ukraine or the
plains of the Danube valley. The Frank, as pictured to us by Sidonius
Apollinaris, Procopius, and Agathias, still bore a considerable
resemblance to his Sigambrian ancestors. Like them he was destitute of
helmet and body-armour; his shield, however, had become a much more
effective defence than the wicker framework of the first century: it
was a solid oval with a large iron boss and rim. The ‘framea’ had now
been superseded by the ‘angon’--‘a dart neither very long nor very
short, which can be used against the enemy either by grasping it as a
pike or hurling it[16].’ The iron of its head extended far down the
shaft; at its ‘neck’ were two barbs, which made its extraction from a
wound or a pierced shield almost impossible. The ‘francisca,’ however,
was the great weapon of the people from whom it derived its name.
It was a single-bladed battle-axe[17], with a heavy head composed
of a long blade curved on its outer face and deeply hollowed in the
interior. It was carefully weighted, so that it could be used, like an
American tomahawk, for hurling at the enemy. The skill with which the
Franks discharged this weapon, just before closing with the hostile
line, was extraordinary, and its effectiveness made it their favourite
arm. A sword and dagger (’scramasax’) completed the normal equipment of
the warrior; the last was a broad thrusting blade, 18 inches long, the
former a two-edged cutting weapon of about 2½ feet in length.
Such was the equipment of the armies which Theodebert, Buccelin,
and Lothair led down into Italy in the middle of the sixth century.
Procopius informs us that the first-named prince brought with him some
cavalry; their numbers, however, were insignificant, a few hundreds
in an army of 90,000 men. They carried the lance and a small round
buckler, and served as a body-guard round the person of the king. Their
presence, though pointing to a new military departure among the Franks,
only serves to show the continued predominance of infantry in their
armies.
A problem interesting to the historian was worked out, when in A.D.
553 the footmen of Buccelin met the Roman army of Narses at the
battle of Casilinum. The superiority of the tactics and armament of
the imperial troops was made equally conspicuous. Formed in one deep
column the Franks advanced into the centre of the semicircle in which
Narses had ranged his men. The Roman infantry and the dismounted heavy
cavalry of the Herule auxiliaries held them in play in front, while the
horse-archers closed in on their flanks, and inflicted on them the same
fate which had befallen the army of Crassus. Hardly a man of Buccelin’s
followers escaped from the field the day of infantry was gone, for the
Franks as much as for the rest of the world.
We are accordingly not surprised to find that from the sixth to the
ninth century a steady increase in the proportion of cavalry in the
Frank armies is to be found; corresponding to it is an increased
employment of defensive arms. A crested helmet of classical shape
becomes common among them, and shortly after a mail-shirt reaching
to the hips is introduced. The Emperor Charles the Great himself
contributed to the armament of his cavalry, by adopting defences for
the arms and thighs: ‘coxarum exteriora in eo ferreis ambiebantur
bracteolis[18].’ This protection, however, was at first rejected by
many of the Franks, who complained that it impaired their seat on
horseback.
At Tours a considerable number of horsemen appear to have served in
the army of Charles Martel: the general tactics of the day, however,
were not those of an army mainly composed of cavalry. The Franks
stood rooted to the spot[19], and fought a waiting battle, till the
light-horse of the Saracens had exhausted their strength in countless
unsuccessful charges: then they pushed forward and routed such of the
enemy as had spirit to continue the fight. In the time of Charles the
Great we are told that all men of importance, with their immediate
followers, were accustomed to serve on horseback. The national forces,
however, as opposed to the personal retinues of the monarch and his
great officials and nobles, continued to form the infantry of the
army, as can be seen from the list of the weapons which the ‘Counts’
are directed to provide for them. The Capitularies are explicit in
declaring that the local commanders ‘are to be careful that the men
whom they have to lead to battle are fully equipped: that is, that
they possess spear, shield, helm, mail-shirt (’brunia’), a bow, two
bow-strings, and twelve arrows[20].’ The Franks had therefore become
heavy infantry at the end of the eighth century: in the ninth century
they were finally to abandon their old tactics, and to entrust all
important operations to their cavalry.
This transformation may be said to date from the law of Charles the
Bald, providing ‘ut pagenses Franci qui caballos habent, aut habere
possunt, cum suis comitibus in hostem pergant.’ Whether merely
ratifying an existing state of things, or instituting a new one, this
order is eminently characteristic of the period, in which the defence
of the country was falling into the hands of its cavalry force alone.
Of the causes which led to this consummation the most important was
the character of the enemies with whom the Franks had to contend in
the ninth and tenth centuries. The Northman in the Western kingdom,
the Magyar in the Eastern, were marauders bent on plunder alone, and
owing their success to the rapidity of their movements. The hosts of
the Vikings were in the habit of seizing horses in the country which
they invaded, and then rode up and down the length of the land, always
distancing the slowly-moving local levies. The Hungarian horse-archers
conducted forays into the heart of Germany, yet succeeded in evading
pursuit. For the repression of such inroads infantry was absolutely
useless; like the Romans of the fourth century, the Franks, when
obliged to stand upon the defensive, had to rely upon their cavalry.
This crisis in the military history of Europe coincided with the
breaking up of all central power in the shipwreck of the dynasty of
Charles the Great. In the absence of any organized national resistance,
the defence of the empire fell into the hands of the local counts,
who now became semi-independent sovereigns. To these petty rulers the
landholders of each district were now ‘commending’ themselves, in
order to obtain protection in an age of war and anarchy. At the same
time, and for the same reason, the poorer freemen were ‘commending’
themselves to the landholders. Thus the feudal hierarchy was
established, and a new military system appears, when the ‘count’ or
‘duke’ leads out to battle his vassals and their mounted retainers.
Politically retrogressive as was that system, it had yet its day of
success: the Magyar was crushed at Merseberg and the Lechfeld, and
driven back across the Leith, soon to become Christianised and grow
into an orderly member of the European commonwealth. The Viking was
checked in his plundering forays, expelled from his strongholds at the
river-mouths, and restricted to the single possession of Normandy,
where he--like the Magyar--was assimilated to the rest of feudal
society. The force which had won these victories, and saved Europe from
a relapse into the savagery and Paganism of the North and East, was
that of the mail-clad horseman. What wonder then if his contemporaries
and successors glorified him into the normal type of warriorhood,
and believed that no other form of military efficiency was worth
cultivating? The perpetuation of feudal chivalry for four hundred years
was the reward of its triumphs in the end of the Dark Ages.
* * * * *
Beyond the English Channel the course of the history of war is parallel
to that which it took in the lands of the Continent, with a single
exception in the form of its final development. Like the Franks, the
Angles and Saxons were at the time of their conquest of Britain a
nation of infantry soldiers, armed with the long ashen javelin, the
broadsword, the seax or broad stabbing dagger, and occasionally the
battle-axe[21]. Their defensive weapon was almost exclusively the
shield, the ‘round war-board,’ with its large iron boss. Ring-mail,
though known to them at a very early date, was, as all indications
unite to show, extremely uncommon. The ‘grey war-sark’ or ‘ring-locked
byrnie’ of Beowulf was obtainable by kings and princes alone. The
helmet also, with its ‘iron-wrought boar-crest,’ was very restricted in
its use. If the monarch and his gesiths wore such arms, the national
levy, which formed the main fighting force of a heptarchic kingdom, was
entirely without them.
Unmolested for many centuries in their island home, the English kept
up the old Teutonic war customs for a longer period than other
European nations. When Mercia and Wessex were at strife, the campaign
was fought out by the hastily-raised hosts of the various districts,
headed by their aldermen and reeves. Hence war bore the spasmodic and
inconsequent character which resulted from the temporary nature of such
armies. With so weak a military organization, there was no possibility
of working out schemes of steady and progressive conquest. The frays
of the various kingdoms, bitter and unceasing though they might be,
led to no decisive results. If in the ninth century a tendency towards
unification began to show itself in England, it was caused, not by the
military superiority of Wessex, but by the dying out of royal lines and
the unfortunate internal condition of the other states.
While this inclination towards union was developing itself, the whole
island was subjected to the stress of the same storm of foreign
invasion which was shaking the Frankish empire to its foundations.
The Danes came down upon England, and demonstrated, by the fearful
success of their raids, that the old Teutonic military system was
inadequate to the needs of the day. The Vikings were in fact superior
to the forces brought against them, alike in tactics, in armament, in
training, and in mobility. Personally the Dane was the member of an
old war-band contending with a farmer fresh from the plough, a veteran
soldier pitted against a raw militiaman. As a professional warrior he
had provided himself with an equipment which only the chiefs among
the English army could rival, the mail ‘byrnie’ being a normal rather
than an exceptional defence, and the steel cap almost universal. The
‘fyrd’ on the other hand, came out against him destitute of armour, and
bearing a motley array of weapons, wherein the spear and sword were
mixed with the club and the stone-axe[22]. If, however, the Danes had
been in the habit of waiting for the local levies to come up with them,
equal courage and superior numbers might have prevailed over these
advantages of equipment. Plunder, however, rather than fighting, was
the Vikings object: the host threw itself upon some district of the
English coast, ‘was there a-horsed[23],’ and then rode far and wide
through the land, doing all the damage in its power. The possession of
the horses they had seized gave them a power of rapid movement which
the fyrd could not hope to equal: when the local levies arrived at
the spot where the invaders had been last seen, it was only to find
smoke and ruins, not an enemy. When driven to bay--as, in spite of
their habitual retreats, was sometimes the case--the Danes showed an
instinctive tactical ability by their use of entrenchments, with which
the English were unaccustomed to deal. Behind a ditch and palisade,
in some commanding spot, the invaders would wait for months, till the
accumulated force of the fyrd had melted away to its homes.
Of assaults on their positions they knew no fear: the line of axemen
could generally contrive to keep down the most impetuous charge of the
English levies: Reading was a more typical field than Ethandun. For one
successful storm of an intrenched camp there were two bloody repulses.
Thirty years of disasters sealed the fate of the old national military
organization: something more than the fyrd was necessary to meet the
organized war-bands of the Danes. The social results of the invasion
in England had been similar to those which we have observed in the
Frankish empire. Everywhere the free ‘ceorls’ had been ‘commending’
themselves to the neighbouring landowners. By accepting this
‘commendation’ the thegnhood had rendered itself responsible for the
defence of the country. The kingly power was in stronger hands in
England than across the Channel, so that the new system did not at
once develope itself into feudalism. Able to utilise, instead of bound
to fear, the results of the change, Alfred and Eadward determined to
use it as the basis for a new military organization. Accordingly all
holders of five hides of land were subjected to ‘Thegn-service,’ and
formed a permanent basis for the national army. To supplement the force
thus obtained, the fyrd was divided into two halves, one of which was
always to be available. These arrangements had the happiest results:
the tide of war turned, and England reasserted itself, till the tenth
century saw the culmination of her new strength at the great battle of
Brunanburh. The thegn, a soldier by position like the Frankish noble,
has now become the leading figure in war: arrayed in mail shirt and
steel cap, and armed with sword and long pointed shield, the ‘bands of
chosen ones’ were ready to face and hew down the Danish axemen. It is,
however, worth remembering that the military problem of the day had now
been much simplified for the English by the settlement of the invaders
within the Danelaw. An enemy who has towns to be burnt and homesteads
to be harried can have pressure put upon him which cannot be brought
to bear on a marauder whose basis of operations is the sea. It is
noteworthy that Eadward utilised against the Danes that same system of
fortified positions which they had employed against his predecessors;
the stockades of his new burghs served to hold in check the ‘heres’ of
the local jarls of the Five Towns, while the king with his main force
was busied in other quarters.
A century later than the military reforms of Alfred the feudal danger
which had split up the Frankish realm began to make itself felt in
England. The great ealdormen of the reign of Ethelred correspond to
the counts of the time of Charles the Fat, in their tendency to pass
from the position of officials into that of petty princes. Their rise
is marked by the decay of the central military organization for war;
and during the new series of Danish invasions the forces of each
ealdormanry are seen to fight and fall without any support from their
neighbours. England was in all probability only saved from the fate of
France by the accession of Canute. That monarch, besides reducing the
provincial governors to their old position of delegates of the crown,
strengthened his position by the institution of the House-Carles, a
force sufficiently numerous to be called a small standing army rather
than a mere royal guard.
These troops are not only the most characteristic token of the
existence of a powerful central government, but represent the maximum
of military efficiency to be found in the Anglo-Danish world. Their
tactics and weapons differed entirely from those of the feudal
aristocracy of the continent, against whom they were ere long to
be pitted. They bore the long Danish battle-axe, a shaft five feet
long fitted with a single-bladed head of enormous size. It was far
too ponderous for use on horseback, and being wielded with both arms
precluded the use of a shield in hand to hand combat[24]. The blows
delivered by this weapon were tremendous: no shield or mail could
resist them; they were even capable, as was shown at Hastings, of
lopping off a horse’s head at a single stroke. The house-carle in his
defensive equipment did not differ from the cavalry of the lands beyond
the Channel: like them he wore a mail shirt of a considerable length,
reaching down to the lower thigh, and a pointed steel cap fitted with a
nasal.
The tactics of the English axemen were those of the column: arranged
in a compact mass they could beat off almost any attack, and hew their
way through every obstacle. Their personal strength and steadiness,
their confidence and _esprit de corps_, made them the most dangerous
adversaries. Their array, however, was vitiated by the two defects of
slowness of movement and vulnerability by missiles. If assailed by
horsemen, they were obliged to halt and remain fixed to the spot, in
order to keep off the enemy by their close order. If attacked from a
distance by light troops, they were also at a disadvantage, as unable
to reach men who retired before them.
The battle of Hastings, the first great mediæval fight of which we
have an account clear enough to give us an insight into the causes of
its result, was the final trial of this form of military efficiency.
Backed by the disorderly masses of the fyrd, and by the thegns of
the home counties, the house-carles of King Harold stood in arms to
defend the entrenchments of Senlac. Formidable as was the English
array, it was opposed precisely by those arms which, in the hands of
an able general, were competent to master it. The Norman knights, if
unsupported by their light infantry, might have surged for ever around
the impregnable palisades. The archers, if unsupported by the knights,
could easily have been driven off the field by a general charge.
United, however, by the skilful tactics of William, the two divisions
of the invading army won the day. The Saxon mass was subjected to
exactly the same trial which befell the British squares in the battle
of Waterloo[25]: incessant charges by a gallant cavalry were alternated
with a destructive fire of missiles. Nothing can be more maddening
than such an ordeal to the infantry soldier, rooted to the spot by the
necessities of his formation. After repelling charge after charge with
the greatest steadiness, the axemen could no longer bear the rain of
arrows. When at last the horsemen drew back in apparent disorder, a
great part of Harold’s troops stormed down into the valley after them,
determined to finish the battle by an advance which should not allow
the enemy time to rally. This mistake was fatal: the Norman retreat had
been the result of the Duke’s orders, not of a wish to leave the field.
The cavalry turned, rode down the scattered mass which had pursued
them, and broke into the gap in the English line which had been made by
the inconsiderate charge. Desperate as was their position, the English
still held out: the arrows fell thickly among them, the knights were
forcing their way among the disordered ranks of the broken army, but
for three hours longer the fight went on. This exhibition of courage
only served to increase the number of the slain: the day was hopelessly
lost, and, as evening fell, the few survivors of the English army were
glad to be able to make their retreat under cover of the darkness.
The tactics of the phalanx of axemen had been decisively beaten by
William’s combination of archers and cavalry.
Once more only--on a field far away from its native land--did the
weapon of the Anglo-Danes dispute the victory with the lance and bow.
Fifteen years after Harold’s defeat another body of English axemen--
some of them may well have fought at Senlac--were advancing against
the army of a Norman prince. They were the Varangian guard--the famous
Πελεκυφóροι {Pelekuphóroi}--of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus[26]. That
prince was engaged in an attempt to raise the siege of Dyrrhachium,
then invested by Robert Guiscard. The Norman army was already drawn
up in front of its lines, while the troops of Alexius were only
slowly arriving on the field. Among the foremost of his corps were
the Varangians, whom his care had provided with horses, in order that
they might get to the front quickly and execute a turning movement.
This they accomplished; but when they approached the enemy they were
carried away by their eagerness to begin the fray. Without waiting
for the main attack of the Greek army to be developed, the axemen
sent their horses to the rear, and advanced in a solid column against
the Norman flank. Rushing upon the division commanded by Count Amaury
of Bari, they drove it, horse and foot, into the sea. Their success,
however, had disordered their ranks, and the Norman prince was enabled,
since Alexius’ main body was still far distant, to turn all his forces
against them. A vigorous cavalry charge cut off the greater part of the
English; the remainder collected on a little mound by the sea-shore,
surmounted by a deserted chapel. Here they were surrounded by the
Normans, and a scene much like Senlac, but on a smaller scale, was
enacted. After the horsemen and the archers had destroyed the majority
of the Varangians, the remainder held out obstinately within the
chapel. Sending for fascines and timber from his camp, Robert heaped
them round the building and set fire to the mass[27]. The English
sallied out to be slain one by one, or perished in the flames: not a
man escaped; the whole corps suffered destruction, as a consequence of
their misplaced eagerness to open the fight. Such was the fate of the
last attempt made by infantry to face the feudal array of the eleventh
century. No similar experiment was now to be made for more than two
hundred years: the supremacy of cavalry was finally established.
III.
THE BYZANTINES AND THEIR ENEMIES[28].
A.D. 582-1071.
[From the accession of Maurice to the battle of Manzikert.]
(1) _Character of Byzantine Strategy._
Alike in composition and in organization, the army which for 500 years
held back Slav and Saracen from the frontier of the Eastern Empire,
differed from the troops whose name and traditions it inherited. To the
‘Palatine’ and ‘Limitary’ ‘numeri’ of Constantine it bore as little
likeness as to the legions of Trajan. Yet in one respect at least it
resembled both those forces: it was in its day the most efficient
military body in the world. The men of the lower Empire have received
scant justice at the hands of modern historians: their manifest faults
have thrown the stronger points of their character into the shade, and
Byzantinism is accepted as a synonym for effete incapacity alike in
peace and war. Much might be written in general vindication of their
age, but never is it easier to produce a strong defence than when their
military skill and prowess are disparaged.
‘The vices of Byzantine armies,’ says Gibbon[29], ‘were inherent,
their victories accidental.’ So far is this sweeping condemnation from
the truth, that it would be far more correct to call their defeats
accidental, their successes, normal. Bad generalship, insufficient
numbers, unforeseen calamities, not the inefficiency of the troops,
were the usual causes of disaster in the campaigns of the Eastern
Emperors. To the excellence of the soldiery witness, direct or
indirect, is borne in every one of those military treatises which give
us such a vivid picture of the warfare of the age. Unless the general
is incompetent or the surrounding circumstances unusually adverse,
the authors always assume that victory will follow the banner of
the Empire. The troops can be trusted, like Wellington’s Peninsular
veterans, ‘to go anywhere and do anything.’ ‘The commander,’ says
Nicephorus Phocas[30], ‘who has 6000 of our heavy cavalry and God’s
help, needs nothing more.’ In a similar spirit Leo the Philosopher
declares in his Tactica that, except the Frankish and Lombard knights,
there were no horsemen in the world who could face the Byzantine
‘Cataphracti,’ when the numbers of the combatants approached equality.
Slav, Turk, or Saracen could be ridden down by a charge fairly pressed
home: only with the men of the West was the result of the shock
doubtful. The causes of the excellence and efficiency of the Byzantine
army are not hard to discover. In courage they were equal to their
enemies; in discipline, organization, and armament far superior.
Above all, they possessed not only the traditions of Roman strategy,
but a complete system of tactics, carefully elaborated to suit the
requirements of the age.
For centuries war was studied as an art in the East, while in the
West it remained merely a matter of hard fighting. The young Frankish
noble deemed his military education complete when he could sit his
charger firmly, and handle lance and shield with skill. The Byzantine
patrician, while no less exercised in arms[31], added theory to empiric
knowledge by the study of the works of Maurice, of Leo, of Nicephorus
Phocas, and of other authors whose books survive in name alone. The
results of the opposite views taken by the two divisions of Europe
are what might have been expected. The men of the West, though they
regarded war as the most important occupation of life, invariably
found themselves at a loss when opposed by an enemy with whose tactics
they were not acquainted. The generals of the East, on the other hand,
made it their boast that they knew how to face and conquer Slav or
Turk, Frank or Saracen, by employing in each case the tactical means
best adapted to meet their opponents’ method of warfare.
The directions for the various emergencies given by the Emperor Leo
impress us alike as showing the diversity of the tasks set before the
Byzantine general, and the practical manner in which they were taken in
hand. They serve indeed as a key to the whole system of the art of war
as it was understood at Constantinople.
‘The Frank,’ says Leo[32], ‘believes that a retreat under any
circumstances must be dishonourable; hence he will fight whenever you
choose to offer him battle. This you must not do till you have secured
all possible advantages for yourself, as his cavalry, with their long
lances and large shields, charge with a tremendous impetus. You should
deal with him by protracting the campaign, and if possible lead him
into the hills, where his cavalry are less efficient than in the plain.
After a few weeks without a great battle his troops, who are very
susceptible to fatigue and weariness, will grow tired of the war, and
ride home in great numbers.... You will find him utterly careless as to
outposts and reconnaisances, so that you can easily cut off outlying
parties of his men, and attack his camp at advantage. As his forces
have no bonds of discipline, but only those of kindred or oath, they
fall into confusion after delivering their charge; you can therefore
simulate flight, and then turn them, when you will find them in utter
disarray. On the whole, however, it is easier and less costly to wear
out a Frankish army by skirmishes and protracted operations rather than
to attempt to destroy it at a single blow.’
The chapters of which these directions are an abstract have two
distinct points of interest. They present us with a picture of a
Western army of the ninth or tenth century, the exact period of the
development of feudal cavalry, drawn by the critical hand of an enemy.
They also show the characteristic strength and weakness of Byzantine
military science. On the one hand, we note that Leo’s precepts are
practical and efficacious; on the other, we see that they are based
upon the supposition that the imperial troops will normally act
upon the defensive, a limitation which must materially lessen their
efficiency. These, however, were the tactics by which the Eastern
Emperors succeeded in maintaining their Italian ‘Themes’ for 400 years,
against every attack of Lombard duke or Frankish emperor.
The method which is recommended by Leo for resisting the ‘Turks’ (by
which name he denotes the Magyars and the tribes dwelling north of the
Euxine) is different in every respect from that directed against the
nations of the West. The Turkish army consisted of innumerable bands of
light horsemen, who carried javelin and scimitar, but relied on their
arrows for victory. Their tactics were in fact a repetition of those of
Attila, a foreshadowing of those of Alp Arslan or Batu Khan. The Turks
were ‘given to ambushes and stratagems of every sort,’ and were noted
for the care with which they posted their vedettes, so that they could
seldom or never be attacked by surprise. On a fair open field, however,
they could be ridden down by the Byzantine heavy cavalry, who are
therefore recommended to close with them at once, and not to exchange
arrows with them at a distance. Steady infantry they could not break,
and indeed they were averse to attacking it, since the bows of the
Byzantine foot-archers carried farther than their own shorter weapon,
and they were thus liable to have their horses shot before coming
within their own limit of efficacious range. Their armour protected
their own bodies, but not those of their chargers; and they might thus
find themselves dismounted, in which position they were absolutely
helpless, the nomad of the steppes having never been accustomed
to fight on foot. With the Turks, therefore, a pitched battle was
desirable; but as they were prompt at rallying, it was always necessary
to pursue them with caution, and not to allow the troops to get out of
hand during the chase.’
It is at once apparent from these directions how utterly the efficiency
of the Byzantine infantry differed from that of the legions of an
earlier day. The soldiers of the first century, armed with sword and
pilum alone, were destroyed from a distance by the Parthian mounted
bowmen. The adoption of the bow by infantry had now changed the aspect
of affairs, and it was the horse-archer who now found himself at a
disadvantage in the exchange of missiles. Nor could he hope to retrieve
the day by charging, since the ‘scutati[33],’ or spearmen carrying the
large shield, who formed the front rank of a Byzantine ‘tagma,’ could
keep at bay horsemen armed, not with the heavy lance of the West,
but merely with scimitars and short javelins. Hence the Turk avoided
conflicts with the imperial infantry, and used his superior powers of
locomotion to keep out of its way. It was only the cavalry which could,
as a rule, come up with him.
The tactics calculated for success against the Slavs call for little
notice. The Servians and the Slovenes possessed hardly any cavalry, and
were chiefly formidable to the imperial troops when they kept to the
mountains, where their archers and javelin-men, posted in inaccessible
positions, could annoy the invader from a distance, or the spearmen
could make sudden assaults on the flank of his marching columns. Such
attacks could be frustrated by proper vigilance, while, if the Slavs
were only surprised while engaged in their plundering expeditions into
the plains, they could be ridden down and cut to pieces by the imperial
cavalry.
To deal with the Saracen[34], on the other hand, the greatest care
and skill were required. ‘Of all barbarous nations,’ says Leo[35],
‘they are the best advised and the most prudent in their military
operations.’ The commander who has to meet with them will need all his
tactical and strategical ability, the troops must be well disciplined
and confident, if the ‘barbarous and blaspheming Saracen[36]’ is to be
driven back in rout through the ‘Klissuras’ of Taurus.
The Arabs whom Khaled and Amrou had led in the seventh century to the
conquest of Syria and Egypt, had owed their victory neither to the
superiority of their arms nor to the excellence of their organization.
The fanatical courage of the fatalist had enabled them--as it has
enabled their co-religionists in the present spring--to face better
armed and better disciplined troops. Settled in their new homes,
however, when the first outburst of their vigour had passed away,
they did not disdain to learn a lesson from the nations they had
defeated. Accordingly the Byzantine army served as a model for the
forces of the Khalifs; ‘they have copied the Romans in most of their
military practices,’ says Leo[37], both in arms and in strategy. Like
the imperial generals, they placed their confidence in their mailed
lancers; but the Saracen and his charger were alike at a disadvantage
in the onset. Horse for horse and man for man, the Byzantines were
heavier, and could ride the Orientals down when the final shock came.
Two things alone rendered the Saracens the most dangerous of foes,
their numbers and their extraordinary powers of locomotion. When
an inroad into Asia Minor was projected, the powers of greed and
fanaticism united to draw together every unquiet spirit between
Khorassan and Egypt. The wild horsemen of the East poured out in
myriads from the gates of Tarsus and Adana, to harry the fertile
uplands of the Anatolic Themes. ‘They are no regular troops, but a
mixed multitude of volunteers: the rich man serves from pride of race,
the poor man from hope of plunder. Many of them go forth because they
believe that God delights in war, and has promised victory to them.
Those who stay at home, both men and women, aid in arming their poorer
neighbours, and think that they are performing a good work thereby.
Thus there is no homogeneity in their armies, since experienced
warriors and untrained plunderers march side by side[38].’ Once clear
of the passes of Taurus, the great horde of Saracen horsemen cut itself
loose from its communications, and rode far and wide through Phrygia
and Cappadocia, burning the open towns, harrying the country side, and
lading their beasts of burden with the plunder of a region which was in
those days one of the richest in the world.
Now was the time for the Byzantine general to show his metal: first he
had to come up with his enemies, and then to fight them. The former
task was no easy matter, as the Saracen in the first days of his inroad
could cover an incredible distance. It was not till he had loaded and
clogged himself with plunder that he was usually to be caught.
When the news of the raid reached the general of the ‘Anatolic’ or
‘Armeniac’ theme, he had at once to collect every efficient horseman in
his province, and strike at the enemy. Untrained men and weak horses
were left behind, and the infantry could not hope to keep up with the
rapid movements which had now to be undertaken. Accordingly, Leo would
send all the disposable foot to occupy the ‘Klissuras’ of the Taurus,
where, even if the cavalry did not catch the invader, his retreat might
be delayed and harassed in passes where he could not fight to advantage.
In his cavalry, however, lay the Byzantine commander’s hope of
success. To ascertain the enemy’s position he must spare no trouble:
‘never turn away freeman or slave, by day or night, though you may
be sleeping or eating or bathing,’ writes Nicephorus Phocas, ‘if he
says that he has news for you.’ When once the Saracen’s track had been
discovered, he was to be pursued without ceasing, and his force and
objects discovered. If all Syria and Mesopotamia had come out for an
invasion rather than a mere foray, the general must resign himself to
taking the defensive, and only hang on the enemy’s flanks, cutting off
his stragglers and preventing any plundering by detached parties. No
fighting must be taken in hand till ‘all the Themes of the East have
been set marching;’ an order which would put some 25,000 or 30,000
heavy cavalry[39] at the disposal of the commander-in-chief, but would
cost the loss of much precious time. These Saracen ‘Warden-raids’ (if
we may borrow an expression from the similar expeditions of our own
Borderers) were of comparatively unfrequent occurrence: it was seldom
that the whole Byzantine force in Asia was drawn out to face the enemy
in a great battle. The more typical Saracen inroad was made by the
inhabitants of Cilicia and Northern Syria, with the assistance of
casual adventurers from the inner Mohammedan lands.
To meet them the Byzantine commander would probably have no more than
the 4000 heavy cavalry of his own Theme in hand; a force for whose
handling Leo gives minute tactical directions[40]. When he had come
up with the raiders they would turn and offer him battle: nor was
their onset to be despised. Though unequal, man for man, to their
adversaries, they were usually in superior numbers, and always came on
with great confidence. ‘They are very bold at first with expectation
of victory; nor will they turn at once, even if their line is broken
through by our impact[41].’ When they suppose that their enemy’s vigour
is relaxing, they all charge together with a desperate effort[42]. If,
however, this failed, a rout generally ensued, ‘for they think that all
misfortune is sent by God, and so, if they are once beaten, they take
their defeat as a sign of divine wrath, and no longer attempt to defend
themselves[43].’ Hence the Mussulman army, when once it turned to fly,
could be pursued _à l’outrance_, and the old military maxim, ‘Vince
sed ne nimis vincas,’ was a caution which the Byzantine officer could
disregard.
The secret of success in an engagement with the Saracens lay in the
cavalry tactics, which had for three centuries been in process of
elaboration. By the tenth century they attained their perfection, and
the experienced soldier Nicephorus Phocas vouches for their efficacy.
Their distinguishing feature was that the troops were always placed
in two lines and a reserve, with squadrons detached on the flanks
to prevent their being turned. The enemy came on in one very deep
line, and could never stand the three successive shocks as the first
line, second line, and reserve were one after another flung into the
mêlée against them. The Byzantines had already discovered the great
precept which modern military science has claimed as its own, that,
‘in a cavalry combat, the side which holds back the last reserve must
win[44].’ The exact formation used on these occasions, being carefully
described by our authorities, is worth detailing, and will be found in
our section treating of the organization of the Byzantine army.
There were several other methods of dealing with the Saracen invader.
It was sometimes advisable, when his inroad was made in great force, to
hang about the rear of the retreating plunderers, and only fall upon
them when they were engaged in passing the ‘Klissuras’ of the Taurus.
If infantry was already on the spot to aid the pursuing cavalry,
success was almost certain, when the Saracens and their train of
beasts, laden with spoil, were wedged in the passes. They could then
be shot down by the archers, and would not stand for a moment when
they saw their horses, ‘the “Pharii,” whom they esteem above all other
things[45],’ struck by arrows from a distance; for the Saracen, when
not actually engaged in close combat, would do anything to save his
horse from harm.
Cold and rainy weather was also distasteful to the Oriental invader:
at times, when it prevailed, he did not display his ordinary firmness
and daring, and could be attacked at great advantage. Much could also
be done by delivering a vigorous raid into his country, and wasting
Cilicia and Northern Syria, the moment his armies were reported to
have passed north into Cappadocia. This destructive practice was very
frequently adopted, and the sight of two enemies each ravaging the
other’s territory without attempting to defend his own, was only too
familiar to the inhabitants of the borderlands of Christendom and
Islam. Incursions by sea supplemented the forays by land. ‘When the
Saracens of Cilicia have gone off by the passes, to harry the country
north of Taurus,’ says Leo, ‘the commander of the Cibyrrhœot Theme
should immediately go on shipboard with all available forces, and
ravage their coast. If, on the other hand, they have sailed off to
attempt the shore districts of Pisidia, the Klissurarchs of Taurus can
lay waste the territories of Tarsus and Adana without danger.’
Nothing can show more clearly than these directions the high average
skill of the Byzantine officer. Leo himself was not a man of any
great ability, and his ‘Tactica’ are intended to codify an existing
military art, rather than to construct a new one. Yet still the book is
one whose equal could not have been written in Western Europe before
the sixteenth century. One of its most striking points is the utter
difference of its tone from that of contemporary feeling in the rest of
Christendom. Of chivalry there is not a spark in the Byzantine, though
professional pride is abundantly shown. Courage is regarded as one of
the requisites necessary for obtaining success, not as the sole and
paramount virtue of the warrior. Leo considers a campaign successfully
concluded without a great battle as the cheapest and most satisfactory
consummation in war. He has no respect for the warlike ardour which
makes men eager to plunge into the fray: it is to him rather a
characteristic of the brainless barbarian, and an attribute fatal to
any one who makes any pretension to generalship. He shows a strong
predilection for stratagems, ambushes, and simulated retreats. For an
officer who fights without having first secured all the advantages
to his own side, he has the greatest contempt. It is with a kind of
intellectual pride that he gives instructions how _parlementaires_ are
to be sent to the enemy without any real object except that of spying
out the number and efficiency of his forces. He gives, as a piece
of most ordinary and moral advice, the hint that a defeated general
may often find time to execute a retreat by sending an emissary to
propose a surrender (which he has no intention of carrying out) to the
hostile commander[46]. He is not above employing the old-world trick
of addressing treasonable letters to the subordinate officers of the
enemy’s army, and contriving that they should fall into the hands of
the commander-in-chief, in order that he may be made suspicious of his
lieutenants. Schemes such as these are ‘Byzantine’ in the worst sense
of the word, but their character must not be allowed to blind us to the
real and extraordinary merits of the strategical system into which they
have been inserted. The ‘Art of War,’ as understood at Constantinople
in the tenth century, was the only scheme of true scientific merit
existing in the world, and was unrivalled till the sixteenth century.
(2) _Arms, Organization and Tactics of the Byzantine Armies._
The Byzantine army may be said to owe its peculiar form to the Emperor
Maurice, a prince whose reign is one of the chief landmarks in the
history of the lower empire[47]. The fortunate preservation of his
‘Stratêgikon’ suffices to show us that the reorganization of the troops
of the East was mainly due to him. Contemporary historians also mention
his reforms, but without descending to details, and inform us that,
though destined to endure, they won him much unpopularity among the
soldiery. Later writers, however, have erroneously attributed these
changes to the more celebrated warrior Heraclius[48], the prince who
bore the Roman standards further than any of his predecessors into the
lands of the East. In reality, the army of Heraclius had already been
reorganized by the worthy but unfortunate Maurice.
The most important of Maurice’s alterations was the elimination of that
system somewhat resembling the Teutonic ‘comitatus,’ which had crept
from among the Foederati into the ranks of the regular Roman army. The
loyalty of the soldier was secured rather to the emperor than to his
immediate superiors, by making the appointment of all officers above
the rank of centurion a care of the central government. The commander
of an army or division had thus no longer in his hands the power and
patronage which had given him the opportunity of becoming dangerous to
the state. The men found themselves under the orders of delegates of
the emperor, not of quasi-independent authorities who enlisted them as
personal followers rather than as units in the military establishment
of the empire.
This reform Maurice succeeded in carrying out, to the great benefit
of the discipline and loyalty of his army. He next took in hand
the reducing of the whole force of the empire to a single form of
organization. The rapid decrease of the revenues of the state, which
had set in towards the end of Justinian’s reign, and continued to
make itself more and more felt, had apparently resulted in a great
diminution in the number of foreign mercenaries serving in the Roman
army. To the same end contributed the fact that of the Lombards,
Herules, and Gepidæ, the nations who had furnished the majority of the
imperial Foederati, one race had removed to other seats, while the
others had been exterminated. At last the number of the foreign corps
had sunk to such a low ebb, that there was no military danger incurred
in assimilating their organization to that of the rest of the army.
The new system introduced by Maurice was destined to last for nearly
five hundred years. Its unit, alike for infantry and cavalry, was
the βάνδον {bandon}[49]--a weak battalion or horse-regiment of 400
men, commanded by an officer who usually bore the vulgarized title of
‘comes[50],’ but was occasionally denominated by the older name of
τριβῶνος {tribônos}, or military tribune. Three ‘bands’ (or τάγματα
{tagmata} as they were sometimes styled) formed a small brigade,
called indifferently μοῖρα {moira}, χιλιαρχία {chiliarchia}, or
δροῦγγος {droungos}[51]. Three ‘drunges’ formed the largest military
group recognised by Maurice, and the division made by their union was
the ‘turma’ or μέρος {meros}. Nothing can be more characteristic of
the whole Byzantine military system than the curious juxtaposition of
Latin, Greek, and German words in its terminology. Upon the substratum
of the old Roman survivals we find first a layer of Teutonic names
introduced by the ‘Foederati’ of the fourth and fifth centuries,
and finally numerous Greek denominations, some of them borrowed
from the old Macedonian military system, others newly invented. The
whole official language of the Empire was in fact still in a state
of flux; Maurice himself was hailed by his subjects as ‘Pius, Felix,
Augustus[52],’ though those who used the title were, for the most part,
accustomed to speak in Greek. In the ‘Stratêgikon’ the two tongues are
inextricably mixed: ‘before the battle,’ says the emperor, ‘let the
counts face their bands and raise the war-cry “Δεοῦς Νοβισκοῦμ {Deous
Nobiskoum}” (Deus nobiscum), and the troopers will shout the answering
cry “Κύριε, Ἐλέησον {Kyrie, Eleêson}.”’
It would appear that Maurice had intended to break down the barrier,
which had been interposed in the fourth century, between the class
which paid the taxes and that which recruited the national army. ‘We
wish,’ he writes, ‘that every young Roman of free condition should
learn the use of the bow, and should be constantly provided with that
weapon and with two javelins.’ If, however, this was intended to be
the first step towards the introduction of universal military service,
the design was never carried any further. Three hundred years later
Leo is found echoing the same words, as a pious wish rather than as
a practical expedient. The rank and file, however, of the imperial
forces were now raised almost entirely within the realm, and well nigh
every nation contained in its limits, except the Greeks, furnished a
considerable number of soldiers. The Armenians and Isaurians in Asia,
the ‘Thracians’ and ‘Macedonians’--or more properly the semi-Romanized
Slavs--in Europe, were considered the best material by the recruiting
officer.
The extraordinary permanence of all Byzantine institutions is
illustrated by the fact that Maurice’s arrangements were found almost
unchanged three hundred years after his death. The chapters of Leo’s
‘Tactica’ which deal with the armament and organization of the
troops are little more than a reëdition of the similar parts of his
predecessor’s ‘Stratêgikon.’ The description of the heavy and light
horseman, and of the infantry soldier, are identical in the two works,
except in a few points of terminology.
The καβαλλάριος {kaballarios}, or heavy trooper, wore at both epochs a
steel cap surmounted by a small crest, and a long mail shirt, reaching
from the neck to the thighs. He was also protected by gauntlets and
steel-shoes, and usually wore a light surcoat over his mail. The horses
of the officers, and of the men in the front rank, were furnished
with steel frontlets and poitrails. The arms of the soldier were a
broad-sword (σπάθιον {spathion}), a dagger (παραμήριον {paramêrion}),
a horseman’s bow and quiver, and a long lance (κοντάριον {kontarion}),
fitted with a thong towards its butt, and ornamented with a little
bannerole. The colour of bannerole, crest, and surcoat was that of
the regimental standard, and no two ‘bands’ in the same ‘turma’
had standards of the same hue. Thus the line presented an uniform
and orderly appearance, every band displaying its own regimental
facings. Strapped to his saddle each horseman carried a long cloak,
which he assumed in cold and rainy weather, or when, for purposes
of concealment, he wished to avoid displaying the glitter of his
armour[53].
The light trooper had less complete equipment, sometimes a cuirass
of mail or horn, at others only a light mail cape covering the neck
and shoulders. He carried a large shield, a defence which the heavy
horseman could not adopt, on account of his requiring both hands to
draw his bow. For arms the light cavalry carried lance and sword.
The infantry, which was much inferior to the horsemen in importance,
was, like them, divided into two descriptions, heavy and light. The
‘scutati’ (σκουτάτοι {skoutátoi}), or troops of the former class, wore
a steel helmet with a crest, and a short mail shirt; they carried a
large oblong shield (θύρις {thyris}), which, like their crests, was
of the same colour as the regimental banner. Their chief weapon was a
short but heavy battle-axe (τζικούριον {tzikourion} = securis)
with a blade in front and a spike behind: they were also provided with
a dagger. The light infantry (ψιλοί {psiloi}) wore no defensive
armour; they were provided with a powerful bow, which carried much
further than the horseman’s weapon, and was therefore very formidable
to hostile horse-archers. A few corps, drawn from provinces where the
bow was not well known, carried instead two or three javelins (ῥιπτάρια
{rhiptaria}). For hand to hand fighting the psiloi were provided with
an axe similar to that of the scutati, and a very small round target,
which hung at their waists[54].
An extensive train of non-combatants was attached to the army. Among
the cavalry every four troopers had a groom; among the infantry
every sixteen men were provided with an attendant, who drove a cart
containing ‘a hand-mill, a bill-hook, a saw, two spades, a mallet, a
large wicker basket, a scythe, and two pick-axes[55],’ besides several
other utensils for whose identity the dictionary gives no clue[56].
Thus twenty spades and twenty pick-axes per ‘century[57]’ were always
forthcoming for entrenching purposes; a consummation for which the
modern infantry company would be glad if it could find a parallel. So
perfect was the organization of the Byzantine army that it contained
not only a ‘military train,’ but even an ambulance-corps of bearers
(σκριβῶνοι {skribônoi}) and surgeons. The value attached to the lives
of the soldiery is shown by the fact that the ‘scriboni’ received
a ‘nomisma[58]’ for every wounded man whom they brought off when
the troops were retiring. Special officers were told to superintend
the march of this mass of non-combatants and vehicles, which is
collectively styled ‘tuldum’ (τοῦλδον {touldon}), and forms not the
least part among the cares of the laborious author of the ‘Tactica.’
Those portions of the works of Maurice and Leo which deal with tactics
show a far greater difference between the methods of the sixth and
the ninth centuries, than is observable in other parts of their
military systems. The chapters of Leo are, as is but natural, of a more
interesting character than those of his predecessor. The more important
of his ordinances are well worthy our attention.
It is first observable that the old Roman system of drawing
entrenchments round the army, every time that it rested for the night,
had been resumed. A corps of engineers (Μένσορες {Mensores} (sic))
always marched with the van-guard, and, when the evening halt had been
called, traced out with stakes and ropes the contour of the camp. When
the main body had come up, the ‘tuldum’ was placed in the centre of the
enclosure, while the infantry ‘bands’ drew a ditch and bank along the
lines of the Mensores’ ropes, each corps doing a fixed amount of the
work. A thick chain of picquets was kept far out from the camp, so that
a surprise, even on the darkest of nights, was almost impossible[59].
The main characteristic of the Byzantine system of tactics is the
small size of the various units employed in the operations, a sure
sign of the existence of a high degree of discipline and training.
While a Western army went on its blundering way arranged in two or
three enormous ‘battles,’ each mustering many thousand men, a Byzantine
army of equal strength would be divided into many scores of fractions.
Leo does not seem to contemplate the existence of any column of
greater strength than that of a single ‘band.’ The fact that order and
cohesion could be found in a line composed of so many separate units,
is the best testimony to the high average ability of the officers
in subordinate commands. These ‘counts’ and ‘moirarchs’ were in the
ninth and tenth centuries drawn for the most part from the ranks of
the Byzantine aristocracy. ‘Nothing prevents us,’ says Leo[60], ‘from
finding a sufficient supply of men of wealth, and also of courage and
high birth, to officer our army. Their nobility makes them respected
by the soldiers, while their wealth enables them to win the greatest
popularity among their troops by the occasional and judicious gift
of small creature-comforts.’ A true military spirit existed among
the noble families of the Eastern Empire: houses like those of
Skleros and Phocas, of Bryennius, Kerkuas, and Comnenus are found
furnishing generation after generation of officers to the national
army. The patrician left luxury and intrigue behind him when he passed
through the gates of Constantinople, and became in the field a keen
professional soldier[61].
Infantry plays in Leo’s work a very secondary part. So much is this
the case, that in many of his tactical directions he gives a sketch of
the order to be observed by the cavalry alone, without mentioning the
foot. This results from the fact that when the conflict was one with a
rapidly moving foe like the Saracen or Turk, the infantry would at the
moment of battle be in all probability many marches in the rear. It is,
therefore, with the design of showing the most typical development of
Byzantine tactics that we have selected for description a ‘turma’ of
nine ‘bands,’ or 4000 men, as placed in order, before engaging with an
enemy whose force consists of horsemen.
The front line consists of three ‘banda,’ each drawn up in a line
seven (or occasionally five) deep. These troops are to receive the
first shock. Behind the first line is arranged a second, consisting of
four half-banda, each drawn up ten (or occasionally eight) deep. They
are placed not directly behind the front bands, but in the intervals
between them, so that, if the first line is repulsed, they may fall
back, not on to their comrades, but into the spaces between them.
To produce, however, an impression of solidity in the second line,
a single bandon is divided into three parts, and its men drawn up,
two deep, in the spaces between the four half-banda. These troops,
on seeing the men of the first line beaten back and falling into the
intervals of the second line, are directed to wheel to the rear, and
form a support behind the centre of the array. The main reserve,
however, consists of two half-banda, posted on the flanks of the
second line, but considerably to the rear. It is in line with these
that the retiring bandon, of which we have just spoken, would array
itself. To each flank of the main body was attached a half-bandon, of
225 men; these were called πλαγιοφύλακες {plagiophylakes}, and were
entrusted with the duty of resisting attempts to turn the flanks of the
‘turma.’ Still further out, and if possible under cover, were placed
two other bodies of similar strength; it was their duty to endeavour
to get into the enemy’s rear, or at any rate to disturb his wings by
unexpected assaults: these troops were called Ἔνεδροι {Enedroi}, or
‘lyers-in-wait.’ The commander’s position was normally in the centre of
the second line, where he would be able to obtain a better general idea
of the fight, than if he at once threw himself into the _melée_ at the
head of the foremost squadrons.
This order of battle is deserving of all praise. It provides for that
succession of shocks which is the key to victory in a cavalry combat;
as many as five different attacks would be made on the enemy before all
the impetus of the Byzantine force had been exhausted. The arrangement
of the second line behind the intervals of the first, obviated the
possibility of the whole force being disordered by the repulse of the
first squadrons. The routed troops would have behind them a clear space
in which to rally, not a close line into which they would carry their
disarray. Finally, the charge of the reserve and the detached troops
would be made not on the enemy’s centre, which would be covered by the
remains of the first and second lines, but on to his flank, his most
uncovered and vulnerable point.
A further idea of the excellent organization of the Byzantine army
will be given by the fact that in minor engagements each corps was
told off into two parts, one of which, the cursores (κούρσορες
{koursores}), represented the ‘skirmishing line,’ the other, the
defensores (διφένσορες {diphensores}), ‘the supports.’ The former in
the case of the infantry-turma would of course consist of the archers,
the latter of the Scutati.
To give a complete sketch of Leo’s ‘Tactics’ would be tedious and
unnecessary. Enough indications have now been given to show their
strength and completeness. It is easy to understand, after a perusal of
such directions, the permanence of the military power of the Eastern
Empire. Against the undisciplined Slav and Saracen the Imperial troops
had on all normal occasions the tremendous advantages of science and
discipline. It is their defeats rather than their victories which need
an explanation.
[Illustration: A BYZANTINE CAVALRY ‘TURMA’ IN ORDER OF BATTLE.
A.A.A. _Front Line, three ‘banda’ of about 450 men each._
B.B.B.B. _Second Line, four half-’banda’ of about 225 men each._
C.C. _Reserve, two half-’banda’ of same force._
D.D.D. _One ‘bandon’ in double rank filling the intervals of the
second line._
E.E. Ἔνεδροι {Enedroi}, _or detached bodies at the wings, who
are to turn the enemy’s flanks: 225 each or one bandon
together._
F.F. Πλαγιοφύλακες {Plagiophylakes}, _troops posted to prevent
similar attempts of the enemy: 225 each, or one ‘bandon’
together._
G. _The Commander and his Staff._
H. _Place to which the troops D.D.D. would retire, when 2nd
line charged._]
We have fixed, as the termination of the period of Byzantine
greatness, the battle of Manzikert, A.D. 1071. At this fight the
rashness of Romanus Diogenes led to the annihilation of the forces
of the Asiatic Themes by the horse-archers of Alp-Arslan. The decay
of the central power which is marked by the rise of Isaac Comnenus,
the nominee of the feudal party of Asiatic nobles, may have already
enfeebled the army. It was, however, the result of Manzikert which
was fatal to it; as the occupation of the themes of the interior
of Asia Minor by the Seljuks cut off from the empire its greatest
recruiting-ground, the land of the gallant Isaurians and Armenians, who
had for five hundred years formed the core of the Eastern army.
It will be observed that we have given no long account of the famous
‘Greek-fire,’ the one point in Byzantine military affairs which most
authors condescend to notice. If we have neglected it, it is from
a conviction that, although its importance in ‘poliorcetics’ and
naval fighting was considerable, it was, after all, a minor engine
of war, and not comparable as a cause of Byzantine success to the
excellent strategical and tactical system on which we have dilated.
Very much the same conclusion may be drawn from a study of the other
purely mechanical devices which existed in the hands of the imperial
generals. The old skill of the Roman engineer was preserved almost in
its entirety, and the armouries of Constantinople were filled with
machines, whose deadly efficacy inspired the ruder peoples of the West
and East with a mysterious feeling of awe. The vinea and testudo, the
catapult onager and balista, were as well known in the tenth century
as in the first. They were undoubtedly employed, and employed with
effect, at every siege. But no amount of technical skill in the use of
military machines would have sufficed to account for the ascendancy
enjoyed by the Byzantines over their warlike neighbours. The sources
of that superiority are to be sought in the existence of science and
discipline, of strategy and tactics, of a professional and yet national
army, of an upper class at once educated and military. When the
aristocracy became mere courtiers, when foreign mercenaries superseded
the Isaurian bowman and the Anatolic cavalier, when the traditions
of old Roman organization gave place to mere centralization, then
no amount of the inherited mechanical skill of past ages could save
the Byzantine empire from its fall. The rude vigour of the Western
knight accomplished the task which Chosroes and Crumn, Moslemah and
Sviatoslaf, had found too hard for them. But it was not the empire of
Heraclius or John Zimisces, of Leo the Isaurian, or Leo the Armenian,
that was subdued by the piratical Crusaders, it was only the diminished
and disorganized realm of the miserable Alexius Angelus.
IV.
THE SUPREMACY OF FEUDAL CAVALRY.
A.D. 1066-1346.
[From the battle of Hastings to the battles of Morgarten and Cressy.]
Between the last struggles of the infantry of the Anglo-Dane, and the
rise of the pikemen and bowmen of the fourteenth century lies the
period of the supremacy of the mail-clad feudal horseman. The epoch is,
as far as strategy and tactics are concerned, one of almost complete
stagnation: only in the single branch of ‘Poliorcetics’ does the art of
war make any appreciable progress.
The feudal organization of society made every person of gentle blood a
fighting man, but it cannot be said that it made him a soldier. If he
could sit his charger steadily, and handle lance and sword with skill,
the horseman of the twelfth or thirteenth century imagined himself to
be a model of military efficiency. That discipline or tactical skill
may be as important to an army as mere courage, he had no conception.
Assembled with difficulty, insubordinate, unable to manœuvre, ready to
melt away from its standard the moment that its short period of service
was over,--a feudal force presented an assemblage of unsoldierlike
qualities such as has seldom been known to coexist. Primarily intended
to defend its own borders from the Magyar, the Northman, or the
Saracen, the foes who in the tenth century had been a real danger
to Christendom, the institution was utterly unadapted to take the
offensive. When a number of tenants-in-chief had come together, each
blindly jealous of his fellows and recognizing no superior but the
king, it would require a leader of uncommon skill to persuade them to
institute that hierarchy of command, which must be established in every
army that is to be something more than an undisciplined mob. Monarchs
might try to obviate the danger by the creation of offices such as
those of the Constable and Marshal, but these expedients were mere
palliatives. The radical vice of insubordination continued to exist.
It was always possible that at some critical moment a battle might be
precipitated, a formation broken, a plan disconcerted, by the rashness
of some petty baron or banneret, who could listen to nothing but the
promptings of his own heady valour. When the hierarchy of command was
based on social status rather than on professional experience, the
noble who led the largest contingent or held the highest rank, felt
himself entitled to assume the direction of the battle. The veteran
who brought only a few lances to the array could seldom aspire to
influencing the movements of his superiors.
When mere courage takes the place of skill and experience, tactics
and strategy alike disappear. Arrogance and stupidity combine to
give a certain definite colour to the proceedings of the average
feudal host. The century and the land may differ, but the incidents
of battle are the same: Mansoura is like Aljubarotta, Nicopolis is
like Courtrai. When the enemy came in sight, nothing could restrain
the Western knights: the shield was shifted into position, the lance
dropped into rest, the spur touched the charger, and the mail-clad
line thundered on, regardless of what might be before it. As often as
not its career ended in being dashed against a stone wall or tumbled
into a canal, in painful flounderings in a bog, or futile surgings
around a palisade. The enemy who possessed even a rudimentary system
of tactics could hardly fail to be successful against such armies.
The fight of Mansoura may be taken as a fair specimen of the military
customs of the thirteenth century. When the French vanguard saw a fair
field before them and the lances of the infidel gleaming among the
palm-groves, they could not restrain their eagerness. With the Count
of Artois at their head, they started off in a headlong charge, in
spite of St. Louis’ strict prohibition of an engagement. The Mamelukes
retreated, allowed their pursuers to entangle themselves in the streets
of a town, and then turned fiercely on them from all sides at once. In
a short time the whole ‘battle’ of the Count of Artois was dispersed
and cut to pieces. Meanwhile the main-body, hearing of the danger of
their companions, had ridden off hastily to their aid. However, as each
commander took his own route and made what speed he could, the French
army arrived upon the field in dozens of small scattered bodies. These
were attacked in detail, and in many cases routed by the Mamelukes.
No general battle was fought, but a number of detached and incoherent
cavalry combats had all the results of a great defeat. A skirmish and
a street fight could overthrow the chivalry of the West, even when it
went forth in great strength, and was inspired by all the enthusiasm of
a Crusade.