The array of a feudal force was stereotyped to a single pattern. As

it was impossible to combine the movements of many small bodies, when

the troops were neither disciplined nor accustomed to act together, it

was usual to form the whole of the cavalry into three great masses,

or ‘battles,’ as they were called, and launch them at the enemy.

The refinement of keeping a reserve in hand was practised by a few

commanders, but these were men distinctly in advance of their age.

Indeed it would often have been hard to persuade a feudal chief to take

a position out of the front line, and to incur the risk of losing his

share in the hard fighting. When two ‘battles’ met, a fearful _mêlée_

ensued, and would often be continued for hours. Sometimes, as if by

agreement, the two parties wheeled to the rear, to give their horses

breath, and then rushed at each other again, to renew the conflict

till one side grew overmatched and left the field. An engagement like

Brenville or Bouvines or Benevento was nothing more than a huge scuffle

and scramble of horses and men over a convenient heath or hillside.

The most ordinary precautions, such as directing a reserve on a

critical point, or detaching a corps to take the enemy in flank, or

selecting a good position in which to receive battle, were considered

instances of surpassing military skill. Charles of Anjou, for instance,

has received the name of a great commander, because at Tagliacozzo

he retained a body of knights under cover, and launched it against

Conradin’s rear, when the Ghibellines had dispersed in pursuit of the

routed Angevin main-battle. Simon de Montfort earned high repute; but

if at Lewes he kept and utilized a reserve, we must not forget that at

Evesham he allowed himself to be surprised and forced to fight with

his back to a river, in a position from which no retreat was possible.

The commendation of the age was, in short, the meed of striking feats

of arms rather than of real generalship. If much attention were to be

paid to the chroniclers, we should believe that commanders of merit

were numerous; but, if we examine the actions of these much-belauded

individuals rather than the opinions of their contemporaries, our

belief in their ability almost invariably receives a rude shock[62].

If the minor operations of war were badly understood, strategy--the

higher branch of the military art--was absolutely non-existent. An

invading army moved into hostile territory, not in order to strike at

some great strategical point, but merely to burn and harry the land. As

no organized commissariat existed, the resources of even the richest

districts were soon exhausted, and the invader moved off in search of

subsistence, rather than for any higher aim. It is only towards the end

of the period with which we are dealing that any traces of systematic

arrangements for the provisioning of an army are found. Even these

were for the most part the results of sheer necessity: in attacking a

poor and uncultivated territory, like Wales or Scotland, the English

kings found that they could not live on the country, and were compelled

to take measures to keep their troops from starvation. But a French

or German army, when it entered Flanders or Lombardy, or an English

force in France, trusted, as all facts unite to demonstrate, for its

maintenance to its power of plundering the invaded district[63].

Great battles were, on the whole, infrequent: a fact which appears

strange, when the long-continued wars of the period are taken into

consideration. Whole years of hostilities produced only a few partial

skirmishes: compared with modern campaigns, the general engagements

were incredibly few. Frederick the Great or Napoleon I. fought more

battles in one year than a mediæval commander in ten. The fact would

appear to be that the opposing armies, being guided by no very definite

aims, and invariably neglecting to keep touch of each other by means

of outposts and vedettes, might often miss each other altogether.

When they met it was usually from the existence of some topographical

necessity, of an old Roman road, or a ford or bridge on which all

routes converged. Nothing could show the primitive state of the

military art better than the fact that generals solemnly sent and

accepted challenges to meet in battle at a given place and on a given

day. Without such precautions there was apparently a danger lest the

armies should lose sight of each other, and stray away in different

directions. When maps were non-existent, and geographical knowledge

both scanty and inaccurate, this was no inconceivable event. Even when

two forces were actually in presence, it sometimes required more skill

than the commanders owned to bring on a battle. Bela of Hungary and

Ottokar of Bohemia were in arms in 1252, and both were equally bent on

fighting; but when they sighted each other it was only to find that the

River March was between them. To pass a stream in face of an enemy was

a task far beyond the ability of a thirteenth-century general[64]--

as St. Louis had found, two years earlier, on the banks of the

Achmoum Canal. Accordingly it was reckoned nothing strange when the

Bohemian courteously invited his adversary either to cross the March

unhindered, and fight in due form on the west bank, or to give him the

same opportunity and grant a free passage to the Hungarian side. Bela

chose the former alternative, forded the river without molestation, and

fought on the other side the disastrous battle of Cressenbrunn.

Infantry was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries absolutely

insignificant: foot-soldiers accompanied the army for no better purpose

than to perform the menial duties of the camp, or to assist in the

numerous sieges of the period. Occasionally they were employed as

light troops, to open the battle by their ineffective demonstrations.

There was, however, no really important part for them to play. Indeed

their lords were sometimes affronted if they presumed to delay too

long the opening of the cavalry charges, and ended the skirmishing by

riding into and over their wretched followers. At Bouvines the Count of

Boulogne could find no better use for his infantry than to form them

into a great circle, inside which he and his horsemen took shelter when

their chargers were fatigued and needed a short rest. If great bodies

of foot occasionally appeared upon the field, they came because it

was the duty of every able-bodied man to join the _arrière-ban_ when

summoned, not because the addition of 20,000 or 100,000 half-armed

peasants and burghers was calculated to increase the real strength

of the levy. The chief cause of their military worthlessness may be

said to have been the miscellaneous nature of their armament. Troops

like the Scotch Lowlanders, with their long spears, or the Saracen

auxiliaries of Frederick II, with their cross-bows, deserved and

obtained some respect on account of the uniformity of their equipment.

But with ordinary infantry the case was different; exposed, without

discipline and with a miscellaneous assortment of dissimilar weapons,

to a cavalry charge, they could not combine to withstand it, but were

ridden down and crushed. A few infantry successes which appear towards

the end of the period were altogether exceptional in character. The

infantry of the ‘Great Company,’ in the East beat the Duke of Athens,

by inducing him to charge with all his men-at-arms into a swamp. In a

similar way the victory of Courtrai was secured, not by the mallets

and iron-shod staves of the Flemings, but by the canal, into which the

headlong onset of the French cavalry thrust rank after rank of their

companions.

The attempt to introduce some degree of efficiency into a feudal force

drove monarchs to various expedients. Frederick Barbarossa strove to

enforce discipline by a strict code of ‘Camp Laws;’ an undertaking in

which he won no great success, if we may judge of their observance by

certain recorded incidents. In 1158, for example, Egbert von Buten, a

young Austrian noble, left his post and started off with a thousand

men to endeavour to seize one of the gates of Milan, a presumptuous

violation of orders in which he lost his life. This was only in

accordance with the spirit of the times, and by no means exceptional.

If the stern and imposing personality of the great emperor could not

win obedience, the task was hopeless for weaker rulers. Most monarchs

were driven into the use of another description of troops, inferior

in _morale_ to the feudal force, but more amenable to discipline. The

mercenary comes to the fore in the second half of the twelfth century.

A stranger to all the nobler incentives to valour, an enemy to his God

and his neighbour, the most deservedly hated man in Europe, he was yet

the instrument which kings, even those of the better sort, were obliged

to seek out and cherish. When wars ceased to be mere frontier raids,

and were carried on for long periods at a great distance from the homes

of most of the baronage, it became impossible to rely on the services

of the feudal levy. But how to provide the large sums necessary for

the payment of mercenaries was not always obvious. Notable among the

expedients employed was that of Henry II of England, who substituted

for the personal service of each knight the system of ‘scutage.’ By

this the majority of the tenants of the crown compounded for their

personal service by paying two marks for each knight’s fee. Thus the

king was enabled to pass the seas at the head of a force of mercenaries

who were, for most military purposes, infinitely preferable to the

feudal array[65]. However objectionable the hired foreigner might be,

on the score of his greed and ferocity, he could, at least, be trusted

to stand by his colours as long as he was regularly paid. Every ruler

found him a necessity in time of war, but to the unconstitutional

and oppressive ruler his existence was especially profitable: it was

solely by the lavish use of mercenaries that the warlike nobility could

be held in check. Despotism could only begin when the monarch became

able to surround himself with a strong force of men whose desires

and feelings were alien to those of the nation. The tyrant in modern

Europe, as in ancient Greece, found his natural support in foreign

hired soldiery. King John, when he drew to himself his ‘Routiers,’

‘Brabançons,’ and ‘Satellites,’ was unconsciously imitating Pisistratus

and Polycrates.

The military efficiency of the mercenary of the thirteenth century was,

however, only a development of that of the ordinary feudal cavalier.

Like the latter, he was a heavily-armed horseman; his rise did not

bring with it any radical change in the methods of war. Though he was a

more practised warrior, he still worked on the old system--or want of

system--which characterised the cavalry tactics of the time.

The final stage in the history of mercenary troops was reached when

the bands which had served through a long war instead of dispersing

at its conclusion, held together, and moved across the continent in

search of a state which might be willing to buy their services. But the

age of the ‘Great Company’ and the Italian Condottieri lies rather in

the fourteenth than the thirteenth century, and its discussion must be

deferred to another chapter.

In the whole military history of the period the most striking feature

is undoubtedly the importance of fortified places, and the ascendancy

assumed by the defensive in poliorcetics. If battles were few, sieges

were numerous and abnormally lengthy. The castle was as integral a part

of feudal organization as the mailed knight, and just as the noble

continued to heap defence after defence on to the persons of himself

and his charger, so he continued to surround his dwelling with more and

more fortifications. The simple Norman castle of the eleventh century,

with its great keep and plain rectangular enclosure, developed into

elaborate systems of concentric works, like those of Caerphilly and

Carnarvon. The walls of the town rivalled those of the citadel, and

every country bristled with forts and places of strength, large and

small. The one particular in which real military capacity is displayed

in the period is the choice of commanding sites for fortresses. A

single stronghold was often so well placed that it served as the key

to an entire district. The best claim to the possession of a general’s

eye which can be made in behalf of Richard I. rests on the fact that

he chose the position for Château Gaillard, the great castle which

sufficed to protect the whole of Eastern Normandy as long as it was

adequately held.

The strength of a mediæval fortress lay in the extraordinary solidity

of its construction. Against walls fifteen to thirty feet thick, the

feeble siege-artillery of the day, perriéres, catapults, trebuchets,

and so forth, beat without perceptible effect. A Norman keep, solid

and tall, with no wood-work to be set on fire, and no openings near

the ground to be battered in, had an almost endless capacity for

passive resistance. Even a weak garrison could hold out as long as its

provisions lasted. Mining was perhaps the device which had most hope of

success against such a stronghold[66]; but if the castle was provided

with a deep moat, or was built directly on a rock, mining was of no

avail. There remained the laborious expedient of demolishing the lower

parts of the walls by approaches made under cover of a pent-house,

or ‘cat,’ as it was called. If the moat could be filled, and the cat

brought close to the foot of the fortifications, this method might

be of some use against a fortress of the simple Norman type. Before

bastions were invented, there was no means by which the missiles of

the besieged could adequately command the ground immediately below the

ramparts. If the defenders showed themselves over the walls--as would

be necessary in order to reach men perpendicularly below them--they

were at once exposed to the archers and cross-bowmen who, under cover

of mantlets, protected the working of the besieger’s pioneers. Hence

something might be done by the method of demolishing the lower parts of

the walls: but the process was always slow, laborious, and exceedingly

costly in the matter of human lives. Unless pressed for time a good

commander would almost invariably prefer to starve out a garrison.

The success--however partial and hardly won--of this form of attack,

led to several developments on the part of the defence. The moat was

sometimes strengthened with palisading: occasionally small detached

forts were constructed just outside the walls on any favourable spot.

But the most generally used expedients were the brattice (_bretêche_)

and the construction of large towers, projecting from the wall and

flanking the long sketches of ‘curtain’ which had been found the weak

point in the Norman system of fortification. The brattice was a wooden

gallery fitted with apertures in its floor, and running along the top

of the wall, from which it projected several feet. It was supported

by beams built out from the rampart, and commanded, by means of its

apertures, the ground immediately at the foot of the walls. Thus the

besieger could no longer get out of the range of the missiles of the

besieged, and continued exposed to them, however close he drew to the

fortifications. The objection to the brattice was that, being wooden,

it could be set on fire by inflammatory substances projected by the

catapults of the besieger. It was therefore superseded ere long by

the use of machicolation, where a projecting stone gallery replaced

the woodwork. Far more important was the utilization of the flanking

action of towers[67], the other great improvement made by the defence.

This rendered it possible to direct a converging fire from the sides on

the point selected for attack by the besieger. The towers also served

to cut off a captured stretch of wall from any communication with the

rest of the fortifications. By closing the iron-bound doors in the

two on each side of the breach, the enemy was left isolated on the

piece of wall he had won, and could not push to right or left without

storming a tower. This development of the defensive again reduced the

offensive to impotence. Starvation was the only weapon likely to reduce

a well-defended place, and fortresses were therefore blockaded rather

than attacked. The besieger, having built a line of circumvallation and

an intrenched camp, sat down to wait for hunger to do its work[68]. It

will be observed that by fortifying his position he gave himself the

advantage of the defensive in repelling attacks of relieving armies.

His other expedients, such as endeavours to fire the internal buildings

of the invested place, to cut off its water supply, or to carry it by

nocturnal escalade, were seldom of much avail.

The number and strength of the fortified places of Western Europe

explain the apparent futility of many campaigns of the period. A land

could not be conquered with rapidity when every district was guarded by

three or four castles and walled towns, which would each need several

months’ siege before they could be reduced. Campaigns tended to become

either plundering raids, which left the strongholds alone, or to be

occupied in the prolonged blockade of a single fortified place. The

invention of gunpowder was the first advantage thrown on the side of

the attack for three centuries. Even cannon, however, were at the

period of their invention, and for long years afterward, of very little

practical importance. The taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II is

perhaps the first event of European importance in which the power of

artillery played the leading part.

Before proceeding to discuss the rise of the new forms of military

efficiency which brought about the end of the supremacy of feudal

cavalry, it may be well to cast a glance at those curious military

episodes, the Crusades. Considering their extraordinary and abnormal

nature, more results might have been expected to follow them than can

in fact be traced. When opposed by a system of tactics to which they

were unaccustomed the Western nobles were invariably disconcerted.

At fights such as Dorylæum they were only preserved from disaster

by their indomitable energy: tactically beaten they extricated

themselves by sheer hard fighting. On fairly-disputed fields, such

as that of Antioch, they asserted the same superiority over Oriental

horsemen which the Byzantine had previously enjoyed. But after a

short experience of Western tactics the Turks and Saracens foreswore

the battlefield. They normally acted in great bodies of light

cavalry, moving rapidly from point to point, and cutting off convoys

or attacking detached parties. The Crusaders were seldom indulged in

the twelfth century with those pitched battles for which they craved.

The Mahometan leaders would only fight when they had placed all the

advantages on their own side; normally they declined the contest.

In the East, just as in Europe, the war was one of sieges: armies

numbered by the hundred thousand were arrested before the walls of a

second-class fortress such as Acre, and in despair at reducing it by

their operations, had to resort to the lengthy process of starving out

the garrison. On the other hand nothing but the ascendancy enjoyed

by the defensive could have protracted the existence of the ‘Kingdom

of Jerusalem,’ when it had sunk to a chain of isolated fortresses,

dotting the shore of the Levant from Alexandretta to Acre and Jaffa.

If we can point to any modifications introduced into European warfare

by the Eastern experience of the Crusaders, they are not of any great

importance. Greek fire, if its composition was really ascertained,

would seem to have had very little use in the West: the horse-bowman,

copied from the cavalry of the Turkish and Mameluke sultans, did not

prove a great military success: the adoption of the curved sabre, the

‘Morris-pike,’ the horseman’s mace[69], and a few other weapons, is

hardly worth mentioning. On the whole, the military results of the

Crusades were curiously small. As lessons they were wholly disregarded

by the European world. When, after the interval of a hundred and fifty

years, a Western army once more faced an Oriental foe, it committed at

Nicopolis exactly the same blunder which led to the loss of the day at

Mansoura.

V.

THE SWISS.

A.D. 1315-1515.

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

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

In the fourteenth century infantry, after a thousand years of

depression and neglect, at last regained its due share of military

importance. Almost simultaneously there appeared two peoples

asserting a mastery in European politics by the efficiency of their

foot-soldiery. Their manners of fighting were as different as their

national character and geographical position, but although they never

met either in peace or war, they were practically allied for the

destruction of feudal chivalry. The knight, who had for so long ridden

roughshod over the populations of Europe, was now to recognize his

masters in the art of war. The free yeomanry of England and the free

herdsmen of the Alps were about to enter on their career of conquest.

When war is reduced to its simplest elements, we find that there are

only two ways in which an enemy can be met and defeated. Either the

shock or the missile must be employed against him. In the one case

the victor achieves success by throwing himself on his opponent, and

worsting him in a hand-to-hand struggle by his numbers, his weight, the

superiority of his arms, or the greater strength and skill with which

he wields them. In the second case he wins the day by keeping up such

a constant and deadly rain of missiles, that his enemy is destroyed or

driven back before he can come to close quarters. Each of these methods

can be combined with the use of very different arms and tactics, and

is susceptible of innumerable variations. In the course of history they

have alternately asserted their preponderance: in the early middle ages

shock-tactics were entirely in the ascendant, while in our own day the

use of the missile has driven the rival system out of the field, nor

does it appear possible that this final verdict can ever be reversed.

The English archer and the Swiss pikeman represented these two great

forms of military efficiency in their simplest and most elementary

shapes. The one relied on his power to defeat his enemy’s attack

by rapid and accurate shooting. The other was capable of driving

before him far superior numbers by the irresistible impact and steady

pressure of his solid column with its serried hedge of spear-points.

When tried against the mail-clad cavalry which had previously held

the ascendancy in Europe, each of these methods was found adequate

to secure the victory for those who employed it. Hence the whole

military system of the middle ages received a profound modification.

To the unquestioned predominance of a single form, that of the charge

delivered by cavalry, succeeded a rapid alternation of successful and

unsuccessful experiments in the correlation and combination of cavalry

and infantry, of shock-tactics and missile-tactics. Further complicated

by the results of the introduction of firearms, this struggle has been

prolonged down to the present day. It is only in the last few years

that the military world has learnt that the attempt to utilize the

shock of the infantry column or the charging squadron must be abandoned

in face of the extraordinary development of modern firearms.

The Swiss of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been compared

with much aptness to the Romans of the early Republic. In the Swiss,

as in the Roman, character we find the most intense patriotism

combined with an utter want of moral sense and a certain meanness

and pettiness of conception, which prevent us from calling either

nation truly great. In both the steadiest courage and the fervour of

the noblest self-sacrifice were allied to an appalling ferocity and

a cynical contempt and pitiless disregard for the rights of others.

Among each people the warlike pride generated by successful wars

of independence led ere long to wars of conquest and plunder. As

neighbours, both were rendered insufferable by their haughtiness

and proneness to take offence on the slightest provocation[70]. As

enemies, both were distinguished for their deliberate and cold-blooded

cruelty. The resolution to give no quarter, which appears almost

pardonable in patriots desperately defending their native soil, becomes

brutal when retained in wars of aggression, but reaches the climax of

fiendish inhumanity when the slayer is a mere mercenary, fighting for

a cause in which he has no national interest. Repulsive as was the

bloodthirstiness of the Roman, it was far from equalling in moral guilt

the needless ferocity displayed by the hired Swiss soldiery on many a

battlefield of the sixteenth century[71].

In no point do we find a greater resemblance between the histories

of the two peoples, than in the causes of their success in war. Rome

and Switzerland alike are examples of the fact that a good military

organization and a sound system of national tactics are the surest

basis for a sustained career of conquest. Provided with these a

vigorous state needs no unbroken series of great commanders. A

succession of respectable mediocrities suffices to guide the great

engine of war, which works almost automatically, and seldom fails to

cleave its way to success. The elected consuls of Rome, the elected or

nominated ‘captains’ of the Confederates, could never have led their

troops to victory, had it not been for the systems which the experience

of their predecessors had brought to perfection. The combination of

pliability and solid strength in the legion, the powers of rapid

movement and irresistible impact which met in the Swiss column, were

competent to win a field without the exertion of any extraordinary

ability by the generals who set them in motion.

The battle-array which the Confederates invariably employed, was one

whose prototype had been seen in the Macedonian phalanx. It was always

in masses of enormous depth that they presented themselves on the

battlefield. Their great national weapon in the days of their highest

reputation was the pike, an ashen shaft eighteen feet long, fitted

with a head of steel which added another foot to its length. It was

grasped with two hands widely extended, and poised at the level of the

shoulder with the point slightly sunk, so as to deliver a downward

thrust[72]. Before the line projected not only the pikes of the front

rank, but those of the second, third, and fourth, an impenetrable

hedge of bristling points. The men in the interior of the column held

their weapons upright, till called upon to step forward in order to

replace those who had fallen in the foremost ranks. Thus the pikes,

rising twelve feet above the heads of the men who bore them, gave to

the charging mass the appearance of a moving wood. Above it floated

numberless flags, the pennons of districts, towns, and guilds[73], the

banners of the cantons, sometimes the great standard of ‘the Ancient

League of High Germany,’ the white cross on the red ground.

The pike, however, was not the only weapon of the Swiss. In the earlier

days of their independence, when the Confederacy consisted of three

or four cantons, the halberd was their favourite arm, and even in the

sixteenth century a considerable proportion of the army continued to

employ it. Eight feet in length--with a heavy head which ended in

a sharp point and bore on its front a blade like that of a hatchet,

on its back a strong hook--the halberd was the most murderous, if

also the most ponderous, of weapons. Swung by the strong arms of the

Alpine herdsmen it would cleave helmet, shield, or coat-of-mail, like

pasteboard. The sight of the ghastly wounds which it inflicted might

well appal the stoutest foeman: he who had once felt its edge required

no second stroke. It was the halberd which laid Leopold of Hapsburg

dead across his fallen banner at Sempach, and struck down Charles of

Burgundy--all his face one gash from temple to teeth--in the frozen

ditch by Nancy[74].

The halberdiers had their recognized station in the Confederates’

battle-array. They were drawn up in the centre of the column, around

the chief banner, which was placed under their care. If the enemy

succeeded in checking the onset of the pikemen, it was their duty

to pass between the front ranks, which opened out to give them

egress, and throw themselves into the fray. They were joined in their

charge by the bearers of two-handed swords, ‘Morning-Stars,’ and

‘Lucern Hammers[75],’ all weapons of the most fearful efficiency in

a hand-to-hand combat. It was seldom that a hostile force, whether

infantry or cavalry, sustained this final attack, when the infuriated

Swiss dashed in among them, slashing right and left, sweeping off the

legs of horses, and cleaving armour and flesh with the same tremendous

blow.

In repelling cavalry charges, however, the halberd was found, owing to

its shortness, a far less useful weapon than the pike. The disastrous

fight near Bellinzona in 1422, where the Swiss, having a large

proportion of halberdiers in their front rank, were broken by the

Milanese gendarmes, was the final cause of its relegation to the second

epoch of the battle. From the first shock of the opposing forces it was

banished, being reserved for the _mêlée_ which afterwards ensued.

Next to its solidity the most formidable quality of the Swiss infantry

was its rapidity of movement. ‘No troops were ever more expeditious

on a march, or in forming themselves for battle, because they were not

overloaded with armour[76].’ When emergencies arrived a Confederate

army could be raised with extraordinary speed; a people who regarded

military glory as the one thing which made life worth living, flocked

to arms without needing a second summons. The outlying contingents

marched day and night in order to reach the mustering place in

good time. There was no need to waste days in the weary work of

organization, when every man stood among his kinsmen and neighbours,

beneath the pennon of his native town or valley. The troops of the

democratic cantons elected their officers, those of the larger states

received leaders appointed by their councils, and then without further

delay the army marched to meet the enemy. Thus an invader, however

unexpected his attack, might in the course of three or four days find

twenty thousand men on his hands. They would often be within a few

miles of him, before he had heard that a Swiss force was in the field.

In face of such an army it was impossible for the slowly-moving troops

of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries to execute manœuvres. An

attempt to alter the line of battle,--as Charles the Rash discovered

to his dismay at Granson,--was sure to lead to disaster. When once

the Confederates were in motion their enemy had to resign himself to

fighting in whatever order he found himself at the moment. They always

made it their rule to begin the fight, and never to allow themselves to

be attacked. The composition of their various columns was settled early

on the battle morning, and the men moved off to the field already drawn

up in their fighting-array. There was no pause needed to draw the army

out in line of battle; each phalanx marched on the enemy at a steady

but swift pace, which covered the ground in an incredibly short time.

The solid masses glided forward in perfect order and in deep silence,

until the war-cry burst out in one simultaneous roar and the column

dashed itself against the hostile front. The rapidity of the Swiss

advance had in it something portentous: the great wood of pikes and

halberds came rolling over the brow of some neighbouring hill; a moment

later it was pursuing its even way towards the front, and then--almost

before the opponent had time to realize his position--it was upon him,

with its four rows of spear-points projecting in front and the impetus

of file upon file surging up from the rear.

This power of swift movement was--as Macchiavelli observed--the

result of the Confederates’ determination not to burden themselves

with heavy armour. Their abstention from its use was originally due to

their poverty alone, but was confirmed by the discovery that a heavy

panoply would clog and hamper the efficiency of their national tactics.

The normal equipment of the pikeman or halberdier was therefore light,

consisting of a steel-cap and breastplate alone. Even these were not

in universal employment; many of the soldiery trusted the defence of

their persons to their weapons, and wore only felt hats and leather

jerkins[77]. The use of back-plates, arm-pieces, and greaves was by no

means common; indeed the men wearing them were often not sufficient

in number to form a single rank at the head of the column, the post

in which they were always placed. The leaders alone were required to

present themselves in full armour; they were therefore obliged to

ride while on the march, in order to keep up with their lightly-armed

followers. When they arrived in sight of the enemy they dismounted and

led their men to the charge on foot. A few of the patricians and men of

knightly family from Bern were found in the fifteenth century serving

as cavalry, but their numbers were absolutely insignificant, a few

scores at the most[78].

Although the strength and pride of the Confederates lay in their

pikemen and halberdiers, the light troops were by no means neglected.

On occasion they were known to form as much as a fourth of the army,

and they never sank below a tenth of the whole number[79]. They were

originally armed with the cross-bow--the weapon of the fabulous Tell--

but even before the great Burgundian war the use of the clumsy firearms

of the day was general among them. It was their duty to precede the

main body, and to endeavour to draw on themselves the attention of the

enemy’s artillery and light troops, so that the columns behind them

might advance as far as possible without being molested. Thus the true

use of a line of skirmishers was already appreciated among the Swiss

in the fifteenth century. When the pikemen had come up with them, they

retired into the intervals between the various masses, and took no part

in the great charge, for which their weapons were not adapted.

It is at once evident that in the simplicity of its component elements

lay one of the chief sources of the strength of a Confederate army.

Its commanders were not troubled by any of those problems as to the

correlation and subordination of the various arms, which led to so

many unhappy experiments among the generals of other nations. Cavalry

and artillery were practically non-existent; nor were the operations

hampered by the necessity of finding some employment for those masses

of troops of inferior quality who so often increased the numbers, but

not the efficiency, of a mediæval army. A Swiss force--however hastily

gathered--was always homogeneous and coherent; there was no residuum

of untried or disloyal soldiery for whose conduct special precautions

would have to be taken. The larger proportion of the men among a nation

devoted to war had seen a considerable amount of service; while if

local jealousies were ever remembered in the field, they only served to

spur the rival contingents on to a healthy emulation in valour. However

much the cantons might wrangle among themselves, they were always found

united against a foreign attack[80].

(2) _Tactics and Strategy._

The character and organization of the Confederate army were exceedingly

unfavourable to the rise of great generals. The soldier rested his hope

of success rather on an entire confidence in the fighting power of

himself and his comrades, than on the skill of his commander. Troops

who have proved in a hundred fields their ability to bear up against

the most overwhelming odds, are comparatively indifferent as to the

personality of their leader. If he is competent they work out his plan

with success, if not, they cheerfully set themselves to repair his

faults by sheer hard fighting. Another consideration was even more

important among the Swiss; there was a universal prejudice felt against

placing the troops of one canton under the orders of the citizen of

another. So strong was this feeling that an extraordinary result

ensued: the appointment of a commander-in-chief remained, throughout

the brilliant period of Swiss history, an exception rather than a

rule. Neither in the time of Sempach, in the old war of Zurich, in

the great struggle with Burgundy, nor in the Swabian campaign against

Maximilian of Austria, was any single general entrusted with supreme

authority[81]. The conduct of affairs was in the hands of a ‘council

of war;’ but it was a council which, contrary to the old proverb about

such bodies, was always ready and willing to fight. It was composed of

the ‘captains’ of each cantonal contingent, and settled the questions

which came under discussion by a simple majority of voices. Before a

battle it entrusted the command of van, rear, main-body, and light

troops to different officers, but the holders of such posts enjoyed

a mere delegated authority, which expired with the cessation of the

emergency.

The existence of this curious subdivision of power, to which the

nearest parallel would be found in early Byzantine days, would suffice

by itself to explain the lack of all strategical skill and unity of

purpose which was observable in Swiss warfare. The compromise which

forms the mean between several rival schemes usually combines their

faults, not their merits. But in addition to this, we may suspect that

to find any one Swiss officer capable of working out a coherent plan of

campaign would have been difficult. The ‘Captain’ was an old soldier

who had won distinction on bygone battlefields, but except in his

experience nowise different to the men under his orders. Of elaborating

the more difficult strategical combinations a Swiss ‘Council of

War’ was not much more capable than an average party of veteran

sergeant-majors would be in our own day.

With tactics, however, the case was different. The best means of

adapting the attack in column to the accidents of locality or the

quality and armament of the opposing troops were studied in the school

of experience. A real tactical system was developed, whose efficiency

was proved again and again in the battles of the fifteenth century. For

dealing with the mediæval men-at-arms and infantry against whom it had

been designed, the Swiss method was unrivalled: it was only when a new

age introduced different conditions into war that it gradually became

obsolete.

The normal order of battle employed by the Confederates, however small

or large their army might be, was an advance in an échelon of three

divisions[82]. The first corps (’vorhut’), that which had formed the

van while the force was on the march, made for a given point in the

enemy’s line. The second corps (’gewaltshaufen’), instead of coming

up in line with the first, advanced parallel to it, but at a short

distance to its right or left rear. The third corps (’nachhut’)

advanced still further back, and often halted until the effect of

the first attack was seen, in order that it might be able to act, if

necessary, as a reserve. This disposition left a clear space behind

each column, so that if it was repulsed it could retire without

throwing into disorder the rest of the army. Other nations (e.g. the

French at Agincourt), who were in the habit of placing one corps

directly in front of another, had often to pay the penalty for their

tactical crime, by seeing the defeat of their first line entail the

rout of the whole army, each division being rolled back in confusion

on that immediately in its rear. The Swiss order of attack had another

strong point in rendering it almost impossible for the enemy’s troops

to wheel inwards and attack the most advanced column: if they did so

they at once exposed their own flank to the second column, which was

just coming up and commencing its charge.

The advance in échelon of columns was not the only form employed

by the Confederates. At Laupen the centre or ‘gewaltshaufen’ moved

forward and opened the fight before the wings were engaged. At the

combat of Frastenz in 1499, on the other hand, the wings commenced the

onset, while the centre was refused, and only came up to complete the

overthrow.

Even the traditional array in three masses was sometimes discarded for

a different formation. At Sempach the men of the Forest Cantons were

drawn up in a single ‘wedge’ (Keil). This order was not, as might be

expected from its name, triangular, but merely a column of more than

ordinary depth in proportion to its frontage. Its object was to break

a hostile line of unusual firmness by a concentrated shock delivered

against its centre. In 1468, during the fighting which preceded the

siege of Waldshut, the whole Confederate army moved out to meet the

Austrian cavalry in a great hollow square, in the midst of which

were placed the banners with their escort of halberdiers. When such

a body was attacked, the men faced outwards to receive the onset of

the horsemen; this they called ‘forming the hedgehog[83].’ So steady

were they that, with very inferior numbers, they could face the most

energetic charge: in the Swabian war of 1498, six hundred men of

Zurich, caught in the open plain by a thousand imperial men-at-arms,

‘formed a hedgehog, and drove off the enemy with ease and much

jesting[84].’ Macchiavelli[85] speaks of another Swiss order of battle,

which he calls ‘the Cross:’ ‘between the arms of which they place

their musketeers, to shelter them from the first shock of the hostile

column.’ His description, however, is anything but explicit, and we can

find no trace of any formation of the kind in any recorded engagement.

(3) _Development of Swiss Military Supremacy._

The first victory of the Confederates was won, not by the tactics

which afterwards rendered them famous, but by a judicious choice of a

battlefield. Morgarten was a fearful example of the normal uselessness

of feudal cavalry in a mountainous country. On a frosty November day,

when the roads were like ice underfoot, Leopold of Austria thrust his

long narrow column into the defiles leading to the valley of Schwytz.

In front rode the knights, who had of course claimed the honour of

opening the contest, while the 6000 infantry blocked the way behind.

In the narrow pass of Morgarten, where the road passes between a

precipitous slope on the right and the waters of the Egeri lake on

the left, the 1500 Confederates awaited the Austrians. Full of the

carelessness which accompanies overweening arrogance, the duke had

neglected the most ordinary precaution of exploring his road, and

only discovered the vicinity of the enemy when a shower of boulders

and tree-trunks came rolling down the slope on his right flank, where

a party of Swiss were posted in a position entirely inaccessible to

horsemen. A moment later the head of the helpless column was charged by

the main body of the mountaineers. Before the Austrians had realized

that the battle had commenced, the halberds and ‘morning-stars’ of the

Confederates were working havoc in their van. The front ranks of the

knights, wedged so tightly together by the impact of the enemy that

they could not lay their lances in rest, much less spur their horses

to the charge, fought and died. The centre and rear were compelled

to halt and stand motionless, unable to push forward on account of

the narrowness of the pass, or to retreat on account of the infantry,

who choked the road behind. For a short time they endured the deadly

shower of rocks and logs, which continued to bound down the slope,

tear through the crowded ranks, and hurl man and horse into the lake

below. Then, by a simultaneous impulse, the greater part of the mass

turned their reins and made for the rear. In the press hundreds were

pushed over the edge of the road, to drown in the deep water on the

left. The main body burst into the column of their own infantry, and,

trampling down their unfortunate followers, fled with such speed as

was possible on the slippery path. The Swiss, having now exterminated

the few knights in the van who had remained to fight, came down on the

rear of the panic-stricken crowd, and cut down horseman and footman

alike without meeting any resistance. ‘It was not a battle,’ says

John of Winterthur, a contemporary chronicler, ‘but a mere butchery

of duke Leopold’s men; for the mountain folk slew them like sheep in

the shambles: no one gave any quarter, but they cut down all, without

distinction, till there were none left to kill. So great was the

fierceness of the Confederates that scores of the Austrian footmen,

when they saw the bravest knights falling helplessly, threw themselves

in panic into the lake, preferring to sink in its depths rather than to

fall under the fearful weapons of their enemies[86].’

In short, the Swiss won their freedom, because, with instinctive

tactical skill, they gave the feudal cavalry no opportunity for

attacking them at advantage. ‘They were lords of the field, because

it was they, and not their foe, who settled where the fighting should

take place.’ On the steep and slippery road, where they could not

win impetus for their charge, and where the narrowness of the defile

prevented them from making use of their superior numbers, the Austrians

were helpless. The crushing character of the defeat, however, was due

to Leopold’s inexcusable carelessness, in leaving the way unexplored

and suffering himself to be surprised in the fatal trap of the pass.

Morgarten exhibits the Swiss military system in a rudimentary

condition. Though won, like all Confederate victories, by the charge

of a column, it was the work of the halberd, not of the pike. The

latter weapon was not yet in general use among the mountaineers of the

three cantons: it was, in fact, never adopted by them to so great an

extent as was the case among the Swiss of the lower Alpine lands and

Aar valley, the Bernese and people of Zurich and Lucern. The halberd,

murderous though it might be, was not an arm whose possession would

give an unqualified ascendancy to its wielders: it was the position,

not the weapons nor the tactics, of the Swiss which won Morgarten. But

their second great success bears a far higher military importance.

At Laupen, for the first time almost since the days of the Romans,

infantry, entirely unsupported by horsemen, ranged on a fair field

in the plains, withstood an army complete in all arms and superior

in numbers[87]. It was twenty-four years after duke Leopold’s defeat

that the Confederates and their newly-allied fellows of Bern met the

forces of the Burgundian nobility of the valleys of the Aar and Rhone,

mustered by all the feudal chiefs between Elsass and Lake Leman. Count

Gerard of Vallangin, the commander of the baronial army, evidently

intended to settle the day by turning one wing of the enemy, and

crushing it. With this object he drew up the whole of his cavalry on

the right of his array, his centre and left being entirely composed of

infantry. The Swiss formed the three columns which were henceforth to

be their normal order of battle. They were under a single commander,

Rudolf of Erlach, to whom the credit of having first employed the

formation apparently belongs. The Bernese, who were mainly armed with

the pike, formed the centre column, the wings were drawn back. That on

the left was composed of the men of the three old cantons, who were

still employing the halberd as their chief weapon, while the right was

made up of other allies of Bern. In this order they moved on to the

attack, the centre considerably in advance. The infantry of the Barons

proved to be no match for the Confederates: with a steady impulse

the Bernese pushed it back, trampled down the front ranks, and drove

the rest off the field. A moment later the Burgundian left suffered

the same fate at the hands of the Swiss right column. Then, without

wasting time in pursuit, the two victorious masses turned to aid the

men of the Forest Cantons. Surrounded by a raging flood of horsemen

on all sides, the left column was hard pressed. The halberd, though

inflicting the most ghastly wounds, could not prevent the cavalry

from occasionally closing in. Like a rock, however, the mountaineers

withstood the incessant charges, and succeeded in holding their own for

the all-important period during which the hostile infantry was being

driven off the field. Then the two successful columns came down on the

left and rear of the Baronial horsemen, and steadily met their charge.

Apparently the enemy was already exhausted by his attempt to overcome

the men of the Forest Cantons, for, after one vain attempt to ride down

the Bernese pikemen, he turned and rode off the field, not without

considerable loss, as many of his rearguard were intercepted and driven

into the river Sense.

Laupen was neither so bloody nor so dramatic a field as Morgarten; but

it is one of three great battles which mark the beginning of a new

period in the history of war. Bannockburn had already sounded the same

note in the distant West, but for the Continent Laupen was the first

revelation as to the power of good infantry. The experiment which had

been tried a few years before at Cassel and Mons-en-Puelle with such

ill success, was renewed with a very different result. The Swiss had

accomplished the feat which the Flemings had undertaken with inadequate

means and experience. Seven years later a yet more striking lesson

was to be administered to feudal chivalry, when the archer faced the

knight at Cressy. The mail-clad horseman was found unable to break the

phalanx of pikes, unable to approach the line from which the deadly

arrow reached him, but still the old superstition which gave the

most honourable name in war to the mounted man, was strong enough to

perpetuate for another century the cavalry whose day had really gone

by. A system which was so intimately bound up with mediæval life and

ideas could not be destroyed by one, or by twenty disasters.

Sempach, the third great victory won by the Confederates, shares

with the less famous fight of Arbedo a peculiar interest. Both were

attempts to break the Swiss column by the adoption of a similar method

of attack to that which rendered it so formidable. Leopold the Proud,

remembering no doubt the powerlessness of the horsemen which had been

shown at Laupen, made his knights dismount, as Edward of England had

done with such splendid results thirty years earlier. Perhaps he may

have borne in mind a similar order given by his ancestor the Emperor

Albert, when he fought the Bavarians at Hasenbühl in 1298. At any rate

the duke awaited the enemy’s attack with his 4000 mailed men-at-arms

formed in one massive column,--their lances levelled in front,--

ready to meet the Swiss with tactics similar to their own and with the

advantage which the superior protection of armour gave in a contest

otherwise equal[88]. Leopold had also posted in reserve a considerable

body of foot and horse, who were to fall on the flanks and rear of the

Confederates, when they were fully engaged in front.

Arrayed in a single deep column (Keil), the Swiss came rushing down

from the hills with their usual impetuosity, the horns of Uri and

Unterwalden braying in their midst and the banners of the four Forest

Cantons waving above them[89]. The first shock between the two masses

was tremendous, but when it was ended the Confederates found themselves

thrust back. Their whole front rank had gone down, and the Austrian

column was unshaken. In a moment they rallied; Uri replaced Lucern as

the head of the phalanx, and again they dashed at the mail-clad line

before them. But the second charge was no more successful than the

first: Schwytz had to succeed Uri, and again Unterwalden took the place

of Schwytz, and yet nothing more was effected. The Austrians stood

victorious, while in front of them a long bank of Swiss corpses lay

heaped. At the same moment the duke’s reserve began to move, with the

intention of encircling the Confederate flank. The critical moment had

come; without some desperate effort the day was lost: but while the

Swiss were raging along the line of bristling points, vainly hacking at

the spears which pierced them, the necessary impulse was at last given.

To detail once more Winkelried’s heroic death is unnecessary: every one

knows how the Austrian column was broken, how in the close combat which

followed the lance and long horseman’s sword proved no match for the

halberd, the battle-axe and the cutlass, how the duke and his knights,

weighed down by their heavy armour, neither could nor would flee, and

fell to a man around their banner.

Historians tell us all this, but what they forget to impress upon us

is that, in spite of his failure, duke Leopold was nearer to success

than any other commander, one exception alone being made, who faced

the Swiss down to the day of Marignano. His idea of meeting the shock

of the Swiss phalanx with a heavier shock of his own was feasible.

His mistakes in detail ruined a plan which in itself was good. The

first fault was that he halted to receive the enemy’s charge, and

did not advance to meet it. Thus he lost most of the advantage which

the superior weight of his men would have given in the clashing of

the columns. He was equally misguided in making no attempt to press

on the Confederates when their first three charges had failed, and

so allowing them time to rally. Moreover he made no adequate use of

his mounted squadron in reserve, his light troops, and the artillery,

which we know that he had with him[90]. If these had been employed on

the Swiss flanks at the proper moment, they would have decided the

day. But Leopold only used his artillery to open the combat, and kept

his crossbowmen and slingers in the rear, probably out of that feudal

superstition which demanded that the knight should have the most

important part in the battle. Neglecting these precautions, he lost the

day, but only after some of the hardest fighting which the Swiss ever

experienced.

What a better general could do by the employment of Leopold’s tactical

experiment was shown thirty-seven years later on the field of Arbedo.

On that occasion Carmagnola the Milanese general,--who then met the

Confederates for the first time,--opened the engagement with a cavalry

charge. Observing its entire failure, the experienced condottiere at

once resorted to another form of attack. He dismounted the whole of

his 6000 men-at-arms, and launched them in a single column against the

Swiss phalanx. The enemy, a body of 4000 men from Uri, Unterwalden,

Zug, and Lucern, were mainly halberdiers, the pikemen and crossbowmen

forming only a third of their force. The two masses met, and engaged

in a fair duel between lance and sword on the one hand and pike and

halberd on the other. The impetus of the larger force bore down that of

the smaller, and, in spite of the desperate fighting of their enemies,

the Milanese began to gain ground. So hardly were the Confederates now

pressed that the Schultheiss of Lucern even thought of surrender, and

planted his halberd in the ground in token of submission. Carmagnola,

however, heated with the fight, cried out that men who gave no quarter

should receive none, and continued his advance. He was on the very

point of victory[91], when a new Swiss force suddenly appeared in his

rear. Believing them to be the contingents of Zürich, Schwytz, Glarus,

and Appenzell, which he knew to be at no great distance, Carmagnola

drew off his men and began to reform. But in reality the new-comers

were only a band of 600 foragers; they made no attack; while the

Swiss main-body took advantage of the relaxation of the pressure to

retire in good order. They had lost 400 men according to their own

acknowledgment, many more if Italian accounts are to be received.

Carmagnola’s loss, though numerically larger, bore no such proportion

to his whole force, and had indeed been mainly incurred in the

unsuccessful cavalry charge which opened the action.

From the results of Sempach and Arbedo it seems natural to draw the

conclusion that a judicious employment of dismounted men-at-arms might

have led to success, if properly combined with the use of other arms.

The experiment, however, was never repeated by the enemies of the

Swiss: indeed almost the only consequence which we can attribute to it

is a decree of the Council of Lucern, that ‘since things had not gone

altogether well with the Confederates’ a larger proportion of the army

was in future to be furnished with the pike[92], a weapon which, unlike

the halberd, could contend on superior terms with the lance.

Putting aside the two battles which we have last examined, we may

say that for the first 150 years of their career the Swiss were so

fortunate as never to meet either with a master of the art of war,

or with any new form of tactical efficiency which could rival their

own phalanx. It was still with the mailed horsemen or the motley and

undisciplined infantry-array of the middle ages that they had to deal.

Their tactics had been framed for successful conflict with such forces,

and continued to preserve an ascendancy over them. The free lances of

Enguerrand de Coucy, the burghers and nobles of Swabia, the knights

who followed Frederick or Leopold or Sigismund of Hapsburg, were none

of them exponents of a new system, and served each in their turn to

demonstrate yet more clearly the superiority of the Confederates in

military skill.

Even the most dangerous attack ever aimed against Switzerland, the

invasion by the ‘Armagnac’ mercenaries of the Dauphin Louis in 1444,

was destined to result in the increase of the warlike reputation of

its soldiery. The battle of St. Jacob, mad and unnecessary though it

was, might serve as an example to deter the boldest enemy from meddling

with men who preferred annihilation to retreat. Possessed by the single

idea that their phalanx could bear down any obstacle, the Confederates

deliberately crossed the Birs in face of an army of fifteen times their

strength. They attacked it, broke its centre, and were then surrounded

by its overwhelming numbers. Compelled to ‘form the hedgehog’ in order

to resist the tremendous cavalry charges directed against them, they

remained rooted to the spot for the remainder of the day. The Dauphin

launched squadron after squadron at them, but each in its turn was

hurled back in disorder. In the intervals between these onsets the

French light troops poured in their missiles, but though the clump of

pikes and halberds grew smaller it still remained impenetrable. Not

until the evening was the fighting ended, and then 6000 Armagnacs lay

dead around the heap of Swiss corpses in the centre. Louis saw that a

few such victories would destroy his whole army, and turned back into

Alsace, leaving Switzerland unmolested.

From that day the Confederates were able to reckon their reputation

for obstinate and invincible courage, as one of the chief causes which

gave them political importance. The generals and armies who afterwards

faced them, went into battle without full confidence in themselves. It

was no light matter to engage with an enemy who would not retire before

any superiority in numbers, who was always ready for the fight, who

would neither give nor take quarter. The enemies of the Swiss found

these considerations the reverse of inspiriting before a combat: it may

almost be said that they came into the field expecting a defeat, and

therefore earned one. This fact is especially noticeable in the great

Burgundian war. If Charles the Rash himself was unawed by the warlike

renown of his enemies[93], the same cannot be said of his troops. A

large portion of his motley army could not be trusted in any dangerous

crisis: the German, Italian, and Savoyard mercenaries knew too well the

horrors of Swiss warfare, and shrank instinctively from the shock of

the phalanx of pikes. The duke might range his men in order of battle,

but he could not be sure that they would fight. The old proverb that

‘God was on the side of the Confederates’ was ever ringing in their

ears, and so they were half beaten before a blow was struck. Charles

had endeavoured to secure the efficiency of his army, by enlisting from

each warlike nation of Europe the class of troops for which it was

celebrated. The archers of England, the arquebusiers of Germany, the

light cavalry of Italy, the pikemen of Flanders, marched side by side

with the feudal chivalry of his Burgundian vassals. But the duke had

forgotten that, in assembling so many nationalities under his banner,

he had thrown away the cohesion which is all-important in battle.

Without mutual confidence or certainty that each comrade would do his

best for the common cause, the soldiery would not stand firm. Granson

was lost merely because the nerve of the infantry failed them at the

decisive moment, although they had not yet been engaged.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF GRANSON, 1476.]

[Illustration: BATTLE OF MORAT, 1476.

A. _Burgundian Entrenched Position, weakly held._

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

the Position._

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

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

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

In that fight the unskilful generalship of the Swiss had placed the

tactical advantages on the side of Charles: he had both outflanked

them and attacked one division of their army before the others came

up. He had, however, to learn that an army superior in _morale_ and

homogeneity, and thoroughly knowing its weapon, may be victorious

in spite of all disadvantages. Owing to their eagerness for battle

the Confederate vanguard (’vorhut’), composed of the troops of Bern,

Freiburg, and Schwytz, had far outstripped the remainder of the force.

Coming swiftly over the hill side in one of their usual deep columns,

they found the whole Burgundian army spread out before them in battle

array on the plain of Granson. As they reached the foot of the hill

they at once saw that the duke’s cavalry was preparing to attack

them. Old experience had made them callous to such sights: facing

outwards the column awaited the onset. The first charge was made by the

cavalry of Charles’ left wing: it failed, although the gallant lord of

Chateauguyon, who led it, forced his horse among the pikes and died at

the foot of the Standard of Schwytz. Next the duke himself led on the

lances of his guard, a force who had long been esteemed the best troops

in Europe: they did all that brave men could, but were dashed back in

confusion from the steady line of spear-points. The Swiss now began

to move forward into the plain, eager to try the effect of the impact

of their phalanx on the Burgundian line. To meet this advance Charles

determined to draw back his centre, and when the enemy advanced against

it, to wheel both his wings round upon their flank. The manœuvre

appeared feasible, as the remainder of the Confederate army was not

yet in sight. Orders were accordingly sent to the infantry and guns

who were immediately facing the approaching column, directing them to

retire; while at the same time the reserve was sent to strengthen the

left wing, the body with which the duke intended to deliver his most

crushing stroke. The Burgundian army was in fact engaged in repeating

the movement which had given Hannibal victory at Cannæ: their fortune,

however, was very different. At the moment when the centre had begun

to draw back, and when the wings were not yet engaged, the heads of

the two Swiss columns, which had not before appeared, came over the

brow of Mont Aubert; moving rapidly towards the battlefield with the

usual majestic steadiness of their formation. This of course would

have frustrated Charles’ scheme for surrounding the first phalanx; the

_échelon_ of divisions, which was the normal Swiss array, being now

established. The aspect of the fight, however, was changed even more

suddenly than might have been expected. Connecting the retreat of their

centre with the advance of the Swiss, the whole of the infantry of the

Burgundian wings broke and fled, long before the Confederate masses

had come into contact with them. It was a sheer panic, caused by the

fact that the duke’s army had no cohesion or confidence in itself; the

various corps in the moment of danger could not rely on each others’

steadiness, and seeing what they imagined to be the rout of their

centre, had no further thought of endeavouring to turn the fortune of

the day. It may be said that no general could have foreseen such a

disgraceful flight; but at the same time the duke may be censured for

attempting a delicate manœuvre with an army destitute of homogeneity,

and in face of an enterprising opponent. ‘Strategical movements to the

rear’ have always a tendency to degenerate into undisguised retreats,

unless the men are perfectly in hand, and should therefore be avoided

as much as possible. Granson was for the Swiss only one more example

of the powerlessness of the best cavalry against their columns: of

infantry fighting there was none at all.

In the second great defeat which he suffered at the hands of the

Confederates the duke was guilty of far more flagrant faults in his

generalship. His army was divided into three parts, which in the event

of a flank attack could bring each other no succour. The position which

he had chosen and fortified for the covering of his siege-operations,

only protected them against an assault from the south-east. Still

more strange was it that the Burgundian light troops were held back so

close to the main-body, that the duke had no accurate knowledge of the

movements of his enemies till they appeared in front of his lines. It

was thus possible for the Confederate army to march, under cover of the

Wood of Morat, right across the front of the two corps which virtually

composed the centre and left of Charles’ array. As it was well known

that the enemy were in the immediate vicinity, it is hard to conceive

how the duke could be content to wait in battle-order for six hours,

without sending out troops to obtain information. It is nevertheless

certain that when the Swiss did not show themselves, he sent back his

main-body to camp, and left the carefully entrenched position in the

charge of a few thousand men. Hardly had this fault been committed,

when the Confederate vanguard appeared on the outskirts of the Wood of

Morat, and marched straight on the palisade. The utterly inadequate

garrison made a bold endeavour to hold their ground, but in a few

minutes were driven down the reverse slope of the hill, into the arms

of the troops who were coming up in hot haste from the camp to their

succour. The Swiss following hard in their rear pushed the disordered

mass before them, and crushed in detail each supporting corps as

it straggled up to attack them. The greater part of the Burgundian

infantry turned and fled,--with far more excuse than at Granson. Many

of the cavalry corps endeavoured to change the fortune of the day by

desperate but isolated charges, in which they met the usual fate of

those who endeavoured to break a Swiss phalanx. The fighting, however,

was soon at an end, and mere slaughter took its place. While the van

and main-body of the Confederates followed the flying crowd who made

off in the direction of Avenches, the rear came down on the Italian

infantry, who had formed the besieging force south of the town of

Morat. These unfortunates, whose retreat was cut off by the direction

which the flight of the main-body had taken, were trodden under foot or

pushed into the lake by the impact of the Swiss column, and entirely

annihilated, scarcely a single man escaping out of a force of six

thousand. The Savoyard corps, under Romont, who had composed the duke’s

extreme left, and were posted to the north of Morat, escaped by a

hazardous march which took them round the rear of the Confederates.

Though Charles had done his best to prepare a victory for his enemies

by the faultiness of his dispositions, the management of the Swiss

army at Morat was the cause of the completeness of his overthrow. A

successful attack on the Burgundian right would cut off the retreat

of the two isolated corps which composed the duke’s centre and left;

the Confederate leaders therefore determined to assault this point,

although to reach it they had to march straight across their opponent’s

front[94]. Favoured by his astonishing oversight in leaving their

march unobserved, they were able to surprise him, and destroy his army

in detail, before it could manage to form even a rudimentary line of

battle.

At Nancy the Swiss commanders again displayed considerable skill in

their dispositions: the main battle and the small rear column held

back and attracted the attention of the Burgundian army, while the van

executed a turning movement through the woods, which brought it out

on the enemy’s flank, and made his position perfectly untenable. The

duke’s troops assailed in front and on their right at the same moment,

and having to deal with very superior numbers, were not merely defeated

but dispersed or destroyed. Charles himself refusing to fly, and

fighting desperately to cover the retreat of his scattered forces, was

surrounded, and cleft through helmet and skull by the tremendous blow

of a Swiss halberd.

The generalship displayed at Nancy and Morat was, however, exceptional

among the Confederates. After those battles, just as before, we find

that their victories continued to be won by a headlong and desperate

onset, rather than by the display of any great strategical ability.

In the Swabian war of 1499 the credit of their successes falls to the

troops rather than to their leaders. The stormings of the fortified

camps of Hard and Malsheide were wonderful examples of the power of

unshrinking courage; but on each occasion the Swiss officers seem to

have considered that they were discharging their whole duty, when they

led their men straight against the enemy’s entrenchments. At Frastenz

the day was won by a desperate charge up the face of a cliff which the

Tyrolese had left unguarded, as being inaccessible. Even at Dornach--

the last battle fought on Swiss soil against an invader till the

eighteenth century--the fortune of the fight turned on the superiority

of the Confederate to the Swabian pikemen man for man, and on the fact

that the lances of Gueldres could not break the flank column by their

most determined onset. Of manœuvring there appears to have been little,

of strategical planning none at all; it was considered sufficient to

launch the phalanx against the enemy, and trust to its power of bearing

down every obstacle that came in its way.

(4) _Causes of the Decline of Swiss Ascendency._

Their disregard for the higher and more delicate problems of military

science, was destined to enfeeble the power and destroy the reputation

of the Confederates. At a time when the great struggle in Italy was

serving as a school for the soldiery of other European nations, they

alone refused to learn. Broad theories, drawn from the newly-discovered

works of the ancients, were being co-ordinated with the modern

experience of professional officers, and were developing into an art

of war far superior to anything known in mediæval times. Scientific

engineers and artillerists had begun to modify the conditions of

warfare, and feudal tradition was everywhere discarded. New forms of

military efficiency, such as the sword-and-buckler men of Spain, the

Stradiot light cavalry, the German ‘black bands’ of musketeers, were

coming to the front. The improvement of the firearms placed in the

hands of infantry was only less important than the superior mobility

which was given to field artillery.

The Swiss, however, paid no attention to these changes; the world

around them might alter, but they would hold fast to the tactics of

their ancestors. At first, indeed, their arms were still crowned with

success: they were seen in Italy, as in more northern lands, to ‘march

with ten or fifteen thousand pikemen against any number of horse, and

to win a general opinion of their excellence from the many remarkable

services they performed[95].’ They enjoyed for a time supreme

importance, and left their mark on the military history of every nation

of central and southern Europe. But it was impossible that a single

stereotyped tactical method, applied by men destitute of any broad and

scientific knowledge of the art of war, should continue to assert an

undisputed ascendancy. The victories of the Swiss set every officer of

capacity and versatile talent searching for an efficient way of dealing

with the onset of the phalanx. Such a search was rendered comparatively

easy by the fact that the old feudal cavalry and the worthless mediæval

infantry were being rapidly replaced by disciplined troops, men capable

of keeping cool and collected even before the desperate rush of the

Confederate pikemen. The standing army of Charles of Burgundy had been

rendered inefficient by its want of homogeneity and cohesion, as well

as by the bad generalship of its leader. The standing armies which

fought in Italy thirty years later were very different bodies. Although

still raised from among various nations, they were united by the bonds

of old comradeship, of _esprit de corps_, of professional pride, or

of confidence in some favourite general. The Swiss had therefore to

face troops of a far higher military value than they had ever before

encountered.

The first experiment tried against the Confederates was that of

the Emperor Maximilian, who raised in Germany corps of pikemen and

halberdiers, trained to act in a manner exactly similar to that of

their enemies. The ‘Landsknechts’ soon won for themselves a reputation

only second to that of the Swiss, whom they boldly met in many a bloody

field. The conflicts between them were rendered obstinate by military

as well as national rivalry: the Confederates being indignant that any

troops should dare to face them with their own peculiar tactics, while

the Germans were determined to show that they were not inferior in

courage to their Alpine kinsmen. The shock of the contending columns

was therefore tremendous. The two bristling lines of pikes crossed,

and the leading files were thrust upon each other’s weapons by the

irresistible pressure from behind. Often the whole front rank of each

phalanx went down in the first onset, but their comrades stepped

forward over their bodies to continue the fight[96]. When the masses

had been for some time ‘pushing against each other,’ their order

became confused and their pikes interlocked: then was the time for the

halberdiers to act[97]. The columns opened out to let them pass, or

they rushed round from the rear, and threw themselves into the mêlée.

This was the most deadly epoch of the strife: the combatants mowed each

other down with fearful rapidity. Their ponderous weapons allowed of

little fencing and parrying, and inflicted wounds which were almost

invariably mortal. Everyone who missed his blow, or stumbled over a

fallen comrade, or turned to fly, was a doomed man. Quarter was neither

expected nor given. Of course these fearful hand-to-hand combats could

not be of great duration; one party had ere long to give ground, and

suffer the most fearful losses in its retreat. It was in a struggle of

this kind that the Landsknechts lost a full half of their strength,

when the Swiss bore them down at Novara. Even, however, when they were

victorious, the Confederates found that their military ascendancy was

growing less: they could no longer sweep the enemy from the field by a

single unchecked onset, but were confronted by troops who were ready

to turn their own weapons against them, and who required the hardest

pressure before they would give ground. In spite of their defeats the

Landsknechts kept the field, and finally took their revenge when the

Swiss recoiled in disorder from the fatal trenches of Bicocca.

There was, however, an enemy even more formidable than the German, who

was to appear upon the scene at a slightly later date. The Spanish

infantry of Gonsalvo de Cordova displayed once more to the military

world the strength of the tactics of old Rome. They were armed, like

the men of the ancient legion, with the short thrusting sword and

buckler, and wore the steel cap, breast- and back-plates and greaves.

Thus they were far stronger in their defensive armour than the Swiss

whom they were about to encounter. When the pikeman and the swordsman

first met in 1502, under the walls of Barletta, the old problem of

Pydna and Cynoscephalæ was once more worked out. A phalanx as solid

and efficient as that of Philip the Macedonian was met by troops whose

tactics were those of the legionaries of Æmilius Paullus. Then, as in

an earlier age, the wielders of the shorter weapon prevailed. ‘When

they came to engage, the Swiss at first pressed so hard on their enemy

with the pike, that they opened out their ranks; but the Spaniards,

under the cover of their bucklers, nimbly rushed in upon them with

their swords, and laid about them so furiously, that they made a

great slaughter of the Swiss, and gained a complete victory[98].’

The vanquished, in fact, suffered at the hands of the Spaniard the

treatment which they themselves had inflicted on the Austrians at

Sempach. The bearer of the longer weapon becomes helpless when his

opponent has closed with him, whether the arms concerned be lance and

halberd or pike and sword. The moment a breach had been made in a

Macedonian or Swiss phalanx the great length of their spears became

their ruin. There was nothing to do but to drop them, and in the

combat which then ensued troops using the sword alone, and without

defensive armour, were at a hopeless disadvantage in attacking men

furnished with the buckler as well as the sword, and protected by a

more complete panoply. Whatever may be the result of a duel between

sword and spear alone, it is certain that when a light shield is added

to the swordsman’s equipment, he at once obtains the ascendancy. The

buckler serves to turn aside the spear-point, and then the thrusting

weapon is free to do its work[99]. It was, therefore, natural that

when Spanish and Swiss infantry met, the former should in almost every

case obtain success. The powerlessness of the pike, however, was most

strikingly displayed at a battle in which the fortune of the day had

not been favourable to Spain. At the fight of Ravenna Gaston de Foix

had succeeded in driving Don Ramon de Cardona from his intrenchments,

and was endeavouring to secure the fruits of victory by a vigorous

pursuit. To intercept the retreat of the Spanish infantry, who were

retiring in good order, Gaston sent forward the pikemen of Jacob

Empser, then serving as auxiliaries beneath the French banner. These

troops accordingly fell on the retreating column and attempted to

arrest its march. The Spaniards, however, turned at once and fell

furiously on the Germans, ‘rushing at the pikes, or throwing themselves

on the ground and slipping below the points, so that they darted in

among the legs of the pikemen,’--a manœuvre which reminds us of the

conduct of the Soudanese Arabs at El Teb. In this way they succeeded in

closing with their opponents, and ‘made such good use of their swords

that not a German would have escaped, had not the French horse come up

to their rescue[100].’ This fight was typical of many more, in which

during the first quarter of the sixteenth century the sword and buckler

were proved to be able to master the pike. It may, therefore, be asked

why, in the face of these facts, the Swiss weapon remained in use,

while the Spanish infantry finally discarded their peculiar tactics. To

this question the answer is found in the consideration that the sword

was not suited for repulsing a cavalry charge, while the pike continued

to be used for that purpose down to the invention of the bayonet in

the end of the seventeenth century. Machiavelli was, from his studies

in Roman antiquity, the most devoted admirer of the Spanish system,

which seemed to bring back the days of the ancient legion. Yet even he

conceded that the pike, a weapon which he is on every occasion ready to

disparage, must be retained by a considerable portion of those ideal

armies for whose guidance he drew up his ‘Art of War.’ He could think

of no other arm which could resist a charge of cavalry steadily pressed

home, and was therefore obliged to combine pikemen with his ‘velites’

and ‘buckler-men.’

The rapid development of the arts of the engineer and artillerist

aimed another heavy blow at the Swiss supremacy. The many-sided energy

of the Renaissance period not unfrequently made the professional

soldier a scholar, and set him to adapt the science of the ancients

to the requirements of modern warfare. The most cursory study of

Vegetius Hyginus or Vitruvius, all of them authors much esteemed at

the time, would suffice to show the strength of the Roman fortified

camp. Accordingly the art of Castramentation revived, and corps of

pioneers were attached to every army. It became common to intrench

not merely permanent positions, but camps which were to be held for

a few days only. Advantage was taken of favourable sites, and lines

of greater or less strength with emplacements for artillery were

constructed for the protection of the army which felt itself inferior

in the field. Many of the greatest battles of the Italian wars were

fought in and around such positions; Ravenna, Bicocca, and Pavia are

obvious examples. Still more frequently a general threw himself with

all his forces into a fortified town and covered it with outworks

and redoubts till it resembled an intrenched camp rather than a mere

fortress. Such a phase in war was most disadvantageous to the Swiss:

even the most desperate courage cannot carry men over stone walls or

through flooded ditches, if they neglect the art which teaches them

how to approach such obstacles. The Confederates in their earlier days

had never displayed much skill in attacking places of strength; and

now, when the enemy’s position was as frequently behind defences as

in the open plain, they refused to adapt their tactics to the altered

circumstances. Occasionally, as for example at the storming of the

outworks of Genoa in 1507, they were still able to sweep the enemy

before them by the mere vehemence of their onset. But more frequently

disaster followed the headlong rush delivered against lines held by an

adequate number of steady troops. Of this the most striking instance

was seen in 1522, when the Swiss columns attempted to dislodge the

enemy from the fortified park of Bicocca. Under a severe fire from the

Spanish hackbut-men they crossed several hedges and flooded trenches,

which covered the main position of the imperialists. But when they came

to the last ditch and bank, along which were ranged the landsknechts of

Frundsberg, they found an obstacle which they could not pass. Leaping

into the deep excavation the front ranks endeavoured to scramble up

its further slope; but every man who made the attempt fell beneath

the pike-thrusts of the Germans, who, standing on a higher level in

their serried ranks, kept back the incessant rushes with the greatest

steadiness. Three thousand corpses were left in the ditch before the

Swiss would desist from their hopeless undertaking; it was an attack

which, for misplaced daring, rivals the British assault on Ticonderoga

in 1758.

The improved artillery of the early sixteenth century worked even

more havoc with the Confederates. Of all formations the phalanx is

the easiest at which to aim, and the one which suffers most loss from

each cannon ball which strikes it. A single shot ploughing through

its serried ranks might disable twenty men, yet the Swiss persisted

in rushing straight for the front of batteries and storming them in

spite of their murderous fire. Such conduct might conceivably have been

justifiable in the fifteenth century, when the clumsy guns of the day

could seldom deliver more than a single discharge between the moment at

which the enemy came within range and that at which he reached their

muzzles. Scientific artillerists, however, such as Pietro Navarro and

Alphonso D’Este, made cannon a real power in battles by increasing its

mobility and the rapidity of its fire. None the less the Confederates

continued to employ the front attack, which had become four or five

times more dangerous in the space of forty years. A fearful lesson

as to the recklessness of such tactics was given them at Marignano,

where, in spite of the gallantry of the French gendarmerie, it was the

artillery which really won the day. The system which Francis’ advisers

there employed was to deliver charge after charge of cavalry on the

flanks of the Swiss columns, while the artillery played upon them from

the front. The onsets of the cavalry, though they never succeeded in

breaking the phalanx, forced it to halt and ‘form the hedgehog.’ The

men at arms came on in bodies of about five hundred strong, one taking

up the fight when the first had been beaten off. ‘In this way more than

thirty fine charges were delivered, and no one will in future be able

to say that cavalry are of no more use than hares in armour,’ wrote

the king to his mother. Of course these attacks would by themselves

have been fruitless; it was the fact that they checked the advance of

the Swiss, and obliged them to stand halted under artillery fire that

settled the result of the battle[101]. At last the columns had suffered

so severely that they gave up the attempt to advance, and retired in

good order, unbroken but diminished by a half in their size.

Last but not least important among the causes of the decline of

the military ascendancy of the Confederates, was the continual

deterioration of their discipline. While among other nations the

commanders were becoming more and more masters of the art of war, among

the Swiss they were growing more and more the slaves of their own

soldiery. The division of their authority had always been detrimental

to the development of strategical skill, but it now began to make

even tactical arrangements impossible. The army looked upon itself

as a democracy entitled to direct the proceedings of its ministry,

rather than a body under military discipline. Filled with a blind

confidence in the invincibility of their onset, they calmly neglected

the orders which appeared to them superfluous. On several occasions

they delivered an attack on the front of a position which it had been

intended to turn; on others they began the conflict, although they

had been directed to wait for the arrival of other divisions before

giving battle. If things were not going well they threw away even the

semblance of obedience to their leaders. Before Bicocca the cry was

raised, ‘Where are the officers, the pensioners, the double-pay men?

Let them come out and earn their money fairly for once: they shall

all fight in the front rank to-day.’ What was even more astonishing

than the arrogance of the demand, was the fact that it was obeyed. The

commanders and captains stepped forward and formed the head of the

leading column; hardly one of them survived the fight, and Winkelried

of Unterwalden, the leader of the van-guard, was the first to fall

under the lances of Frundsberg’s landsknechts. What was to be expected

from an army in which the men gave the orders and the officers executed

them? Brute strength and heedless courage were the only qualities now

employed by the Swiss, while against them were pitted the scientific

generals of the new school of war. The result was what might have been

expected: the pike tactics, which had been the admiration of Europe,

were superseded, because they had become stereotyped, and the Swiss

lost their proud position as the most formidable infantry in the world.

VI.

THE ENGLISH AND THEIR ENEMIES.

A.D. 1272-1485.

[From the accession of Edward I to the end of the Wars of the Roses.]

The use of the long-bow is as much the key to the successes of the

English armies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as that of

the pike is to the successes of the Swiss. Dissimilar as were the

characters of the two weapons, and the national tactics to which their

use led, they were both employed for the same end of terminating the

ascendancy in war of the mailed horseman of the feudal _régime_. It is

certainly not the least curious part of the military history of the

period, that the commanders who made such good use of their archery,

had no conception of the tendencies of their action. Edward the Black

Prince and his father regarded themselves as the flower of chivalry,

and would have been horrified had they realised that their own tactics

were going far to make chivalrous warfare impossible. Such, however,

was the case: that unscientific kind of combat which resembled a huge

tilting match could not continue, if one side persisted in bringing

into the field auxiliaries who could prevent their opponents from

approaching near enough to break a lance. The needs of the moment,

however, prevented the English commanders being troubled by such

thoughts; they made the best use of the material at their disposal,

and if they thus found themselves able to beat the enemy, they were

satisfied.

It is not till the last quarter of the thirteenth century that we

find the long-bow taking up its position as the national weapon of

England. In the armies of our Norman and Angevin kings archers were

indeed to be found, but they formed neither the most numerous nor the

most effective part of the array. On this side of the Channel, just as

beyond it, the supremacy of the mailed horseman was still unquestioned.

It is indeed noteworthy that the theory which attributes to the Normans

the introduction of the long-bow is difficult to substantiate. If we

are to trust the Bayeux Tapestry--whose accuracy is in other matters

thoroughly borne out by all contemporary evidence--the weapon of

William’s archers was in no way different to that already known in

England, and used by a few of the English in the fight of Senlac[102].

It is the short-bow, drawn to the breast and not to the ear. The bowmen

who are occasionally mentioned during the succeeding century, as, for

example, those present at the Battle of the Standard, do not appear

to form any very important part of the national force. Nothing can be

more conclusive as to the insignificance of the weapon than the fact

that it is not mentioned at all in the ‘Assize of Arms’ of 1181. In the

reign of Henry II, therefore, we may fairly conclude that the bow did

not form the proper weapon of any class of English society. A similar

deduction is suggested by Richard Cœur de Lion’s predilection for the

arbalest: it is impossible that he should have introduced that weapon

as a new and superior arm, if he had been acquainted with the splendid

long-bow of the fourteenth century. It is evident that the bow must

always preserve an advantage in rapidity of fire over the arbalest; the

latter must therefore have been considered by Richard to surpass in

range and penetrating power. But nothing is better established than the

fact that the trained archer of the Hundred Years’ War was able to beat

the cross-bowmen on both these points. It is, therefore, rational to

conclude that the weapon superseded by the arbalest was merely the old

short-bow, which had been in constant use since Saxon times.

However this may be, the cross-bowmen continued to occupy the first

place among light troops during the reigns of Richard and John. The

former monarch devised for them a system of tactics, in which the

pavise was made to play a prominent part. The latter entertained great

numbers both of horse- and foot-arbalesters among those mercenary bands

who were such a scourge to England. It would appear that the Barons,

in their contest with John, suffered greatly from having no adequate

provision of infantry armed with missiles to oppose the cross-bowmen of

Fawkes de Breauté and his fellows. Even in the reign of Henry III, the

epoch in which the long-bow begins to come into use, the arbalest was

still reckoned the more effective arm. At the battle of Taillebourg, in

1242, a corps of 700 men armed with it were considered to be the flower

of the English infantry.

To trace the true origin of the long-bow is not easy: there are reasons

for believing that it may have been borrowed from the South Welsh, who

were certainly provided with it as early as A.D. 1150[103]. Against

this derivation, however, may be pleaded the fact that in the first

half of the thirteenth century it appears to have been in greater

vogue in the northern than in the western counties of England. As a

national weapon it is first accepted in the Assize of Arms of 1252,

wherein all holders of 40_s._ in land or nine marks in chattels are

desired to provide themselves with sword, dagger, bow and arrows[104].

Contemporary documents often speak of the obligation of various

manors to provide the king with one or more archers ‘when he makes an

expedition against the Welsh.’ It is curious to observe that even as

late as 1281 the preference for the cross-bow seems to have been kept

up, the wages of its bearer being considerably more than those of the

archer[105].

To Edward I the long-bow owes its original rise into favour: that

monarch, like his grandson and great-grandson, was an able soldier,

and capable of devising new expedients in war. His long experience in

Welsh campaigns led him to introduce a scientific use of archery, much

like that which William the Conqueror had employed at Hastings. We are

informed that it was first put in practice in a combat fought against

Prince Llewellin at Orewin Bridge, and afterwards copied by the Earl of

Warwick in another engagement during the year 1295. ‘The Welsh, on the

earl’s approach, set themselves fronting his force with exceeding long

spears, which, being suddenly turned toward the earl and his company,

with their ends placed in the earth and their points upward, broke the

force of the English cavalry. But the earl well provided against them,

by placing archers between his men-at-arms, so that by these missive

weapons those who held the lances were put to rout[106].’

The battle of Falkirk, however (1298), is the first engagement of real

importance in which the bowmen, properly supplemented by cavalry,

played the leading part. Its circumstances, indeed, bore such striking

witness to the power of the arrow, that it could not fail to serve as a

lesson to English commanders. The Scots of the Lowlands, who formed the

army of Wallace, consisted mainly of spearmen; armed, like the Swiss,

with a pike of many feet in length. They had in their ranks a small

body of horse, a few hundred in number, and a certain proportion of

archers, mainly drawn from the Ettrick and Selkirk district. Wallace,

having selected an excellent position behind a marsh, formed his

spearmen in four great masses (or ‘schiltrons,’ as the Scotch called

them) of circular form, ready to face outward in any direction. The

light troops formed a line in the intervals of these columns, while the

cavalry were placed in reserve. Edward came on with his horsemen in

three divisions, and his archers disposed between them. The foremost

English ‘battle,’ that of the Earl Marshal, rode into the morass, was

stopped by it, and suffered severely from the Scotch missile weapons.

The second division, commanded by the Bishop of Durham, observing this

check, rode round the flank of the marsh, in order to turn Wallace’s

position. The small body of Scotch cavalry endeavoured to stay

their advance, but were driven completely off the field by superior

numbers[107]. Then the Bishop’s horsemen charged the hostile line from

the rear. The squadrons opposed to the light troops succeeded in riding

them down, as Wallace’s archers were only armed with the short-bow,

and were not particularly skilled in its use. Those of the English,

however, who faced the masses of pikemen received a sanguinary check,

and were thrown back in disorder. The Bishop had therefore to await the

arrival of the King, who was leading the infantry and the remainder of

the cavalry round the end of the marsh. When this had been done, Edward

brought up his bowmen close to the Scotch masses, who were unable to

reply (as their own light troops had been driven away) or to charge,

on account of the nearness of the English men-at-arms. Concentrating

the rain of arrows on particular points in the columns, the king

fairly riddled the Scotch ranks, and then sent in his cavalry with a

sudden impetus. The plan succeeded, the shaken parts of the masses

were pierced, and the knights, having once got within the pikes, made

a fearful slaughter of the enemy. The moral of the fight was evident:

cavalry could not beat the Scotch tactics, but archers supplemented by

horsemen could easily accomplish the required task. Accordingly, for

the next two centuries, the characteristics of the fight of Falkirk

were continually repeated whenever the English and Scotch met. Halidon

Hill, Neville’s Cross, Homildon, Flodden, were all variations on

the same theme. The steady but slowly-moving masses of the Lowland

infantry fell a sacrifice to their own persistent bravery, when they

staggered on in a vain endeavour to reach the line of archers, flanked

by men-at-arms, whom the English commander opposed to them. The

bowman might boast with truth that he ‘carried twelve Scots’ lives at

his girdle;’ he had but to launch his shaft into the easy target of the

great surging mass of pikemen, and it was sure to do execution.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN, 1314.

A. _English Archers considerably in advance of main body._

B. _English Main Body in ten divisions._

_a. Scotch Infantry in four columns._

_b.b. Scotch Cavalry turning the marsh._]

[Illustration: BATTLE OF CRESSY, 1346.

A. _Dismounted men-at-arms._

B.B. _Archers._

C. _Welsh and Irish light Infantry._

D.D. _Cavalry in reserve._

_a.a. Genoese Crossbowmen._

_b.b. Counts of Alençon and Flanders._

_c. King Philip._]