Bannockburn, indeed, forms a notable exception to the general rule.

Its result, however, was due not to an attempt to discard the tactics

of Falkirk, but to an unskilful application of them. The forces of

Robert Bruce, much like those of Wallace in composition, consisted of

40,000 pikemen, a certain proportion of light troops, and less than

1000 cavalry. They were drawn up in a very compact position, flanked

by marshy ground to the right, and to the left by a quantity of small

pits destined to arrest the charge of the English cavalry. Edward II

refrained from any attempt to turn Bruce’s army, and by endeavouring to

make 100,000 men cover no more space in frontage than 40,000, cramped

his array, and made manœuvres impossible. His most fatal mistake,

however, was to place all his archers in the front line, without any

protecting body of horsemen. The arrows were already falling among the

Scotch columns before the English cavalry had fully arrived upon the

field. Bruce at once saw his opportunity: his small body of men-at-arms

was promptly put in motion against the bowmen. A front attack on them

would of course have been futile, but a flank charge was rendered

possible by the absence of the English squadrons, which ought to have

covered the wings. Riding rapidly round the edge of the morass, the

Scotch horse fell on the uncovered line, rolled it up from end to end,

and wrought fearful damage by their unexpected onset. The archers were

so maltreated that they took no further effective part in the battle.

Enraged at the sudden rout of his first line, Edward flung his great

masses of cavalry on the comparatively narrow front of the Scotch army.

The steady columns received them, and drove them back again and again

with ease. At last every man-at-arms had been thrown into the _mêlée_,

and the splendid force of English horsemen had become a mere mob,

surging helplessly in front of the enemy’s line, and executing partial

and ineffective charges on a cramped terrain. Finally, their spirit

for fighting was exhausted, and when a body of camp-followers appeared

on the hill behind Bruce’s position, a rumour spread around that

reinforcements were arriving for the Scots. The English were already

hopeless of success, and now turned their reins to retreat. When the

Scotch masses moved on in pursuit, a panic seized the broken army, and

the whole force dispersed in disorder. Many galloped into the pits on

the left; these were dismounted and slain or captured. A few stayed

behind to fight, and met a similar fate. The majority made at once

for the English border, and considered themselves fortunate if they

reached Berwick or Carlisle without being intercepted and slaughtered

by the peasantry. The moral of the day had been that the archery must

be adequately supported on its flanks by troops capable of arresting

a cavalry charge. The lesson was not thrown away, and at Creçy and

Maupertuis the requisite assistance was given, with the happiest of

results.

The next series of campaigns in which the English bowman was to take

part, were directed against an enemy different in every respect from

the sturdy spearman of the Lowlands. In France those absurd perversions

of the art of war which covered themselves under the name of Chivalry

were more omnipotent than in any other country of Europe. The strength

of the armies of Philip and John of Valois was composed of a fiery

and undisciplined aristocracy, which imagined itself to be the most

efficient military force in the world, but was in reality little

removed from an armed mob. A system which reproduced on the battlefield

the distinctions of feudal society, was considered by the French noble

to represent the ideal form of warlike organization. He firmly believed

that, since he was infinitely superior to any peasant in the social

scale, he must consequently excel him to the same extent in military

value. He was, therefore, prone not only to despise all descriptions

of infantry, but to regard their appearance on the field against him

as a species of insult to his class-pride. The self-confidence of the

French nobility--shaken for the moment by the result of Courtray--

had re-asserted itself after the bloody days of Mons-en-Puelle and

Cassel. The fate which had on those occasions befallen the gallant but

ill-trained burghers of Flanders, was believed to be only typical of

that which awaited any foot-soldier who dared to match himself against

the chivalry of the most warlike aristocracy in Christendom. Pride

goes before a fall, and the French noble was now to meet infantry of a

quality such as he had never supposed to exist.

Against these presumptuous cavaliers, their mercenaries, and the

wretched band of half-armed villains whom they dragged with them to the

battlefield, the English archer was now matched. He was by this time

almost a professional soldier, being usually not a pressed man, but

a volunteer, raised by one of those barons or knights with whom the

king contracted for a supply of soldiers. Led to enlist by sheer love

of fighting, desire for adventures, or national pride, he possessed

a great moral ascendancy over the spiritless hordes who followed

the French nobility to the wars. Historians, however, have laid too

much stress on this superiority, real as it was. No amount of mere

readiness to fight would have accounted for the English victories of

the fourteenth century. Self-confidence and pugnacity were not wanting

in the Fleming at Rosbecque or the Scot at Falkirk, yet they did not

secure success. It was the excellent armament and tactics of our

yeomanry, even more than their courage, which made them masters of the

field at Creçy or Poictiers.

The long-bow had as yet been employed only in offensive warfare,

and against an enemy inferior in cavalry to the English army. When,

however, Edward III led his invading force into France, the conditions

of war were entirely changed. The French were invariably superior in

the numbers of their horsemen, and the tactics of the archer had to

be adapted to the defensive. He was soon to find that the charging

squadron presented as good a mark for his shaft as the stationary

column of infantry. Nothing indeed could be more discomposing to a body

of cavalry than a flight of arrows: not only did it lay low a certain

proportion of the riders, but it caused such disorder by setting the

wounded horses plunging and rearing among their fellows, that it was

most effective in checking the impetus of the onset. As the distance

grew shorter and the range more easy, the wounds to horse and man

became more numerous: the disorder increased, the pace continued to

slacken, and at last a limit was reached, beyond which the squadron

could not pass. To force a line of long-bowmen by a mere front attack

was a task almost as hopeless for cavalry as the breaking of a modern

square. This, however, was a fact which the continental world had yet

to learn in the year 1346.

The scientific method of receiving a charge of horsemen by archers

flanked with supporting troops was first practised by Edward III at

Creçy. When he determined to fight, he chose an excellent position on

the gentle slope of a hill, whose flanks were protected by woods and

a little brook, which also ran along the front of the line. Following

the immemorial usage of the middle ages, the army was drawn up in

three ‘battles’, of which the foremost was commanded by the Prince of

Wales, the second by the Earl of Northampton, and the third by the

King himself. In the front ‘battle’, on which the greater part of the

fighting was to fall, 2000 archers were flanked by two bodies of 800

dismounted men-at-arms, who stood in solid phalanx with their lances

before them, to receive cavalry charges directed against the wings of

the archers. The second line was formed in similar order, while between

the two were ranged 1000 Welsh and Cornish light infantry armed with

javelins and long knives. The reserve of 2000 archers and 700 mounted

men occupied the summit of the hill.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF POICTIERS, 1356.

A.A. _Archers._

B. _Prince of Wales with men-at-arms._

C. _Ambush._

D. _Waggons arranged to cover rear._

_a.a.a. French dismounted men-at-arms, in three great ‘battles’._

_b. Vanguard, 300 mounted men._

_c.c. Two small wings composed of mounted German mercenaries._]

[Illustration: BATTLE OF AGINCOURT, 1415.

A.A. _Archers._

B. _Dismounted men-at-arms._

C. _Palisades._

D. _Billmen._

_a.a. Two great ‘battles’ of dismounted men-at-arms._

_b.b. Mounted Men at-Arms._

_c.c. Infantry._]

Nothing could be more characteristic of the indiscipline of the French

army than the fact that it forced on the battle a day sooner than its

leader had intended. On observing the English position, Philip and his

marshals had determined to defer the conflict till the next morning, as

the troops had been marching since daybreak. When, however, the order

to halt reached the vanguard, the nobles at the head of the column

believed that they were to be deprived of the honour of opening the

fight, as they could see that some of the troops in the rear were still

advancing. They therefore pushed on, and, as the main-body persisted

in following them, the whole army arrived so close to the English

position that a battle became unavoidable. The circumstances of that

day have often been described: it is unnecessary to detail the mishap

of the unfortunate Genoese crossbowmen, who were shot down in scores

while going through the cumbrous process of winding up their arbalests.

The fruitless charges of the cavalry against the front of the line

of archers led to endless slaughter, till the ground was heaped with

the bodies of men and horses, and further attempts to advance became

impossible. Only on the flanks was the charge pressed home; but when

the counts of Flanders and Alençon came on the compact masses of

dismounted cavalry who covered the wings of the archery, their progress

was at an end. They fell before the line of lances which they were

unable to break, and fared no better than their comrades in the centre.

At evening the French fell back in disorder, and their whole army

dispersed. The English had won the day without stirring a foot from

their position: the enemy had come to them to be killed. Considerably

more than a third of his numbers lay dead in front of the English line,

and of these far the greater number had fallen by the arrows of the

bowmen.

Creçy had proved that the archer, when adequately supported on his

flanks, could beat off the most-determined charges of cavalry. The

moral, however, which was drawn from it by the French was one of a

different kind. Unwilling, in the bitterness of their class-pride,

to ascribe the victory to the arms of mere peasants, they came to

the conclusion that it was due to the stability of the phalanx of

dismounted knights.

Bearing this in mind, King John, at the battle of Poictiers, resolved

to imitate the successful expedient of King Edward. He commanded the

whole of his cavalry, with the exception of two corps, to shorten their

spears, take off their spurs, and send their horses to the rear. He had

failed to observe that the circumstances of attack and defence are

absolutely different. Troops who intend to root themselves to a given

spot of ground adopt tactics the very opposite of those required for an

assault on a strong position. The device which was well chosen for the

protection of Edward’s flanks at Creçy, was ludicrous when adopted as

a means for storming the hill of Maupertuis. Vigorous impact and not

stability was the quality at which the king should have aimed. Nothing,

indeed, could have been more fatal than John’s conduct throughout the

day. The battle itself was most unnecessary, since the Black Prince

could have been starved into surrender in less than a week. If,

however, fighting was to take place, it was absolutely insane to form

the whole French army into a gigantic wedge--where corps after corps

was massed behind the first and narrowest line--and to dash it against

the strongest point of the English front. This, however, was the plan

which the king determined to adopt. The only access to the plateau of

Maupertuis lay up a lane, along whose banks the English archers were

posted in hundreds. Through this opening John thrust his vanguard, a

chosen body of 300 horsemen, while the rest of his forces, three great

masses of dismounted cavalry, followed close behind. It is needless

to say that the archers shot down the greater part of the advanced

corps, and sent the survivors reeling back against the first ‘battle’

in their rear. This at once fell into disorder, which was largely

increased when the archers proceeded to concentrate their attention

on its ranks. Before a blow had been struck at close quarters, the

French were growing demoralized under the shower of arrows. Seeing his

opportunity, the Prince at once came down from the plateau, and fell on

the front of the shaken column with all his men-at-arms. At the same

moment a small ambuscade of 600 men, which he had placed in a wood to

the left, appeared on the French flank. This was too much for King

John’s men: without waiting for further attacks about two-thirds of

them left the field. A corps of Germans in the second ‘battle’ and the

troops immediately around the monarch’s person were the only portions

of the army which made a creditable resistance. The English, however,

were able to surround these bodies at their leisure, and ply bow and

lance alternately against them till they broke up. Then John, his son

Philip, and such of his nobles as had remained with him, were forced to

surrender.

This was a splendid tactical triumph for the Prince, who secured the

victory by the excellence of the position he had chosen, and the

judicious use made of his archery. John’s new device for attacking an

English army had failed, with far greater ignominy than had attended

the rout of his predecessor’s feudal chivalry at Creçy. So greatly

did the result of the day of Poictiers affect the French mind, that

no further attempt was made to meet the invader in a pitched battle

during the continuance of the war. Confounded at the blow which had

been delivered against their old military system, the noblesse of

France foreswore the open field, and sullenly shut themselves up in

their castles, resolved to confine their operations to petty sieges

and incursions. The English might march through the length and breadth

of the land--as did the Earl of Lancaster in 1373--but they could no

longer draw their opponents out to fight. Intrenched behind walls which

the invader had no leisure to attack, the French allowed him to waste

his strength in toilsome marches through a deserted country. Opposed as

was this form of war to all the precepts of chivalry--which bid the

good knight to accept every challenge--they were on the whole well

suited to the exigencies of the time. The tactics of Charles V and Du

Guesclin won back all that those of King John had lost. The English

found that the war was no longer a means of displaying great feats of

arms, but a monotonous and inglorious occupation, which involved a

constant drain of blood and money, and no longer maintained itself from

the resources of the enemy.

Common sense, and not aphorisms drawn from the customs of the

tournament, guided the campaigns of Du Guesclin. He took the field,

not in the spirit of adventure, but in the spirit of business. His end

being to edge and worry the English out of France, he did not care

whether that consummation was accomplished by showy exploits or by

unobtrusive hard work. He would fight if necessary, but was just as

ready to reach his goal by craft as by hard blows. Night surprises,

ambuscades, and stratagems of every description were his choice, in

preference to open attacks. Provided with a continual supply of men

by his ‘free companies,’ he was never obliged to hazard an engagement

for fear that his forces might melt away without having done any

service. This relieved him from that necessity to hurry operations,

which had been fatal to so many generals commanding the temporary

hosts of feudalism. The English were better fitted for winning great

battles than for carrying on a series of harassing campaigns. Tactics,

not strategy, was their forte, and a succession of petty sieges and

inglorious retreats put an end to their ill-judged attempt to hold by

force a foreign dominion beyond the Channel.

Du Guesclin, however, had only cleared the way for the re-appearance

of the French noblesse on the field. Shut up in their castles while

the free companies were re-conquering the country, they had apparently

‘forgotten nothing and remembered nothing[108].’ With the fear of the

English no longer before their eyes, they at once reverted to their old

chivalrous superstitions. The last years of the century were similar to

the first: if Cassel reproduced itself at Rosbecque, a nemesis awaited

the revived tactics of feudalism, and Nicopolis was a more disastrous

edition of Courtray. Thirty years of anarchy, during the reign of an

imbecile king, fostered the reactionary and unscientific tendency of

the wars of the time, and made France a fit prey to a new series of

English invasions.

If subsequent campaigns had not proved that Henry V was a master of

strategical combinations, we should be inclined to pronounce his march

to Agincourt a rash and unjustifiable undertaking. It is, however,

probable that he had taken the measure of his enemies and gauged their

imbecility, before he sacrificed his communications and threw himself

into Picardy. The rapidity of his movements between the 6th and 24th

of October[109] shows that he had that appreciation of the value of

time which was so rare among mediæval commanders, while the perfect

organization of his columns on the march proved that his genius could

condescend to details[110]. Near St. Pol the French barred Henry’s

further progress with a great feudal army of sixty thousand combatants,

of whom full fifteen thousand were mounted men of gentle blood. Like

the two Edwards at Creçy and Maupertuis, the king resolved to fight

a defensive battle, in spite of the scantiness of his force. He had

with him not more than fourteen thousand men, of whom two-thirds

were archers. The position chosen by Henry was as excellent in its

way as could be desired; it had a frontage of not more than twelve

hundred yards, and was covered by woods on either flank. The land

over which the enemy would have to advance consisted of ploughed

fields, thoroughly sodden by a week of rain. The king’s archers were

sufficient in number not only to furnish a double line along the front

of the army, but to occupy the woods to right and left. Those in the

plain strengthened their position by planting in front of themselves

the stakes which they habitually carried. In rear of the archers were

disposed the rest of the force, the infantry with bills and pikes at

the wings, the small force of men-at-arms in the centre.

The Constable of France committed as many faults in drawing up his

array, as could have been expected from an average feudal nobleman.

He could not resist the temptation of following the example set him

by King John at Poictiers, and therefore dismounted three-fourths

of his cavalry. These he drew up in two deep ‘battles,’ flanked by

small squadrons of mounted men. Behind the first line, where it could

be of no possible use, was stationed a corps of 4000 cross-bowmen.

The reserve was formed by a great mass of 20,000 infantry, who were

relegated to the rear lest they should dispute the honour of the day

with their masters. At eleven o’clock the French began to move towards

the English position: presently they passed the village of Agincourt,

and found themselves between the woods, and in the ploughed land.

Struggling on for a few hundred yards, they began to sink in the deep

clay of the fields: horsemen and dismounted knight alike found their

pace growing slower and slower. By this time the English archery was

commencing to play upon them, first from the front, then from the

troops concealed in the woods also. Pulling themselves together as best

they could, the French lurched heavily on, sinking to the ankle or even

to the knee in the sodden soil. Not one in ten of the horsemen ever

reached the line of stakes, and of the infantry not a man struggled on

so far. Stuck fast in the mud they stood as a target for the bowmen,

at a distance of from fifty to a hundred yards from the English front.

After remaining for a short time in this unenviable position, they

broke and turned to the rear. Then the whole English army, archers and

men-at-arms alike, left their position and charged down on the mass,

as it staggered slowly back towards the second ‘battle.’ Perfectly

helpless and up to their knees in mire, the exhausted knights were cast

down, or constrained to surrender to the lighter troops who poured

among them, ‘beating upon the armour as though they were hammering upon

anvils.’ The few who contrived to escape, and the body of arbalesters

who had formed the rear of the first line, ran in upon the second

‘battle,’ which was now well engaged in the miry fields, just beyond

Agincourt village, and threw it into disorder. Close in their rear the

English followed, came down upon the second mass, and inflicted upon

it the fate which had befallen the first. The infantry-reserve very

wisely resolved not to meddle with their masters’ business, and quietly

withdrew from the field.

Few commanders could have committed a more glaring series of blunders

than did the Constable: but the chief fault of his design lay in

attempting to attack an English army, established in a good position,

at all. The power of the bow was such that not even if the fields

had been dry, could the French army have succeeded in forcing the

English line. The true course here, as at Poictiers, would have been

to have starved the king, who was living merely on the resources of

the neighbourhood, out of his position. If, however, an attack was

projected, it should have been accompanied by a turning movement round

the woods, and preceded by the use of all the arbalesters and archers

of the army, a force which we know to have consisted of 15,000 men.

Such a day as Agincourt might have been expected to break the French

noblesse of its love for an obsolete system of tactics. So intimately,

however, was the feudal array bound up with the feudal scheme of

society, that it yet remained the ideal order of battle. Three bloody

defeats, Crevant, Verneuil, and the ‘Day of the Herrings,’ were the

consequences of a fanatical adherence to the old method of fighting.

On each of those occasions the French columns, sometimes composed of

horsemen, sometimes of dismounted knights, made a desperate attempt

to break an English line of archers by a front attack, and on each

occasion they were driven back in utter rout.

It was not till the conduct of the war fell into the hands of

professional soldiers like Xaintrailles, La Hire, and Dunois, that

these insane tactics were discarded. Their abandonment, however, was

only the first step towards success for the French. The position of

the country was infinitely worse than it had been in the days of Du

Guesclin, since the greater part of the districts north of the Loire

were not only occupied by the English, but had resigned themselves to

their fate, and showed no desire to join the national party. A petty

warfare such as had won back the lands of Acquitaine from the Black

Prince, would have been totally inadequate to rescue France in 1428.

It is on this ground that we must base the importance of the influence

of the Maid of Orleans. Her successes represent, not a new tactical

system, but the awakening of a popular enthusiasm which was to make the

further stay of the English in France impossible. The smaller country

could not hold down the larger, unless the population of the latter

were supine; when they ceased to be so, the undertaking--in spite of

all military superiority--became impossible.

While ascribing the expulsion of the English from France to political

rather than strategical reasons, we must not forget that the

professional officers of the fifteenth century had at last discovered

a method of minimizing the ascendancy of the English soldiery. When

they found the invaders drawn up in a good defensive position, they

invariably refrained from attacking them. There was no object in

making the troops a target to be riddled with arrows, when success

was almost impossible. Accordingly the French victories of the second

quarter of the century will be found to have resulted in most cases

from attacking an English army at a moment when it was on the march or

in some other position which rendered it impossible for an order of

battle to be rapidly formed. Patay is a fair example of a conflict of

this description; the battle was lost because Talbot when attacked was

not immediately ready. Expecting to see the whole French army arrive

on the field and draw itself up in battle array, he paid no attention

to the mere vanguard which was before him, and commenced falling back

on the village of Patay, where he intended to form his line. La Hire,

however, without waiting for the main-body to come up, attacked the

retreating columns, and forced his way among them ‘before the archers

had time to fix their stakes[111].’ The superiority of the bow to the

lance depended on the ability of the bearer of the missile weapon to

keep his enemy at a distance. If once, by any accident, the cavalry got

among their opponents, a mere _mêlée_ ensued, and numbers and weight

carried the day. Such was the case on this occasion: La Hire having

succeeded in closing, the battle resolved itself into a hand-to-hand

struggle, and when the main-body of the French came up, the English

were overpowered by numerical superiority. Such were the usual tactical

causes of English defeats in the fifteenth century.

The fall of the empire which Henry V had established in France was

therefore due, from the military point of view, to the inadequacy of

a purely defensive system to meet all the vicissitudes of a series of

campaigns. The commanders who had received the tradition of Agincourt

and Poictiers disliked assuming the offensive. Accustomed to win

success by receiving the enemy’s attack on a carefully chosen ground,

and after deliberate preparations, they frequently failed when opposed

to officers who refrained on principle from assailing a position, but

were continually appearing when least expected. In the open field or

on the march, in camp or the town, the English were always liable to a

sudden onslaught. They were too good soldiers to be demoralized, but

lost the old confidence which had distinguished them in the days when

the French still persisted in keeping up their ancient feudal tactics.

A fortunate chance has preserved for us, in the pages of Blondel’s

‘Reductio Normanniae’ a full account of the disastrous field of

Formigny, the last battle but one fought by the English in their

attempt to hold down their dominion beyond the Channel. The narrative

is most instructive, as explaining the changes of fortune during the

later years of the Great War. The fight itself--though destined to

decide the fate of all Normandy--was an engagement on a very small

scale. Some five thousand English, half of them archers, the remainder

billmen for the most part, with a few hundred men-at-arms, had been

collected for a desperate attempt to open the way to Caen. In that

town the Duke of Somerset, commander of all the English armies in

France, was threatened by an overwhelming host led by King Charles

in person. To draw together a force capable of taking the field all

the Norman fortresses had been stripped of their garrisons, and such

reinforcements as could be procured, some 2000 men at most, had been

brought across from England. The relieving army succeeded in taking

Valognes and forcing the dangerous fords of the Douve and Vire,

but hard by the village of Formigny it was confronted by a French

corps under the Count of Clermont, one of several divisions which

had been sent out to arrest the march of the English. Clermont’s

troops did not greatly exceed their enemies in number: they appear,

as far as conflicting accounts allow us to judge, to have consisted

of six hundred ‘lances garnis’ (i.e. 3000 cavalry) and three thousand

infantry. The obligation to take the offensive rested with the English,

who were bound to force their way to Caen. Nevertheless Sir Thomas

Kyriel and Sir Matthew Gough, the two veterans who commanded the

relieving army, refused to assume the initiative. The old prejudice in

favour of fighting defensive battles was so strong that, forgetting the

object of their expedition, they fell back and looked for a position

in which to receive the attack of Clermont’s troops. Finding a brook

lined with orchards and plantations, which was well calculated to

cover their rear, they halted in front of it, and drew up their men in

a convex line, the centre projecting, the wings drawn back so as to

touch the stream. Three bodies of archers--each seven hundred strong--

formed the ‘main-battle;’ on the flanks of this force were stationed

two ‘battles’ of billmen, not in a line with the centre but drawn back

from it, while these corps were themselves flanked by the small force

of cavalry, which was formed close in front of the orchards and the

brook. Clermont did not attack immediately, so that the archers had

ample time to fix their stakes, according to their invariable custom,

and the whole force was beginning to cover itself with a trench[112],

when the enemy at last began to move. Through long experience the

French had grown too wary to attack an English line of archers from the

front: after feeling the position, they tried several partial assaults

on the flanks, which were repulsed. Skirmishing had been going on for

three hours without any decisive result, when Giraud ‘master of the

royal ordnance’ brought up two culverins, and placed them in a spot

from which they enfiladed the English line. Galled by the fire of

these pieces, part of the archers rushed out from behind their stakes,

and with the aid of one of the wings of billmen charged the French,

seized the culverins, and routed the troops which protected them. If

the whole of Kyriel’s force had advanced at this moment the battle

would have been won[113]. But the English commander adhered rigidly to

his defensive tactics, and while he waited motionless, the fate of the

battle was changed. The troops who had charged were attacked by one

of the flank ‘battles’ of French men-at-arms, who had dismounted and

advanced to win back the lost cannon: a desperate fight took place,

while the English strove to drag the pieces towards their lines, and

the enemy to recapture them. At last the French prevailed, and pushing

the retreating body before them reached the English position. The

archers were unable to use their arrows, so closely were friend and foe

intermixed in the crowd of combatants which slowly rolled back towards

them. Thus the two armies met all along the line in a hand-to-hand

combat, and a sanguinary _mêlée_ began. The fate of the battle was

still doubtful when a new French force arrived in the field. The Counts

of Richemont and Laval, coming up from St. Lo, appeared on the rear of

the English position with 1200 men-at-arms. All Kyriel’s troops were

engaged, and he was unable to meet this new attack. His men recoiled to

the brook at their backs, and were at once broken into several isolated

corps. Gough cut his way through the French, and reached Bayeux with

the cavalry. But Kyriel and the infantry were surrounded, and the whole

‘main-battle’ was annihilated. A few hundred archers escaped, and

their commander, with some scores more, was taken prisoner, but the

French gave little quarter[114], and their heralds counted next day

three thousand seven hundred and seventy-four English corpses lying on

the field. Seldom has an army suffered such a complete disaster: of

Kyriel’s small force not less than four-fifths was destroyed. What

number of the French fell we are unable to ascertain: their annalists

speak of the death of twelve knights, none of them men of note, but

make no further mention of their losses. ‘They declare what number they

slew,’ sarcastically observes an English chronicler[115], ‘but they

write not how many of themselves were slain and destroyed. This was

well nigh the first foughten field they gat on the English, wherefore I

blame them not; though they of a little make much, and set forth all,

and hide nothing that may sound to their glory.’

The moral of Formigny was evident: an unintelligent application of

the defensive tactics of Edward III and Henry V could only lead to

disaster, when the French had improved in military skill, and were no

longer accustomed to make gross blunders at every engagement. Unless

some new method of dealing with the superior numbers and cautious

manœuvres of the disciplined ‘compagnies d’ordonnance’ of Charles

VII could be devised, the English were foredoomed by their numerical

inferiority to defeat. It was probably a perception of this fact which

induced the great Talbot to discard his old tactics, and employ at his

last fight a method of attack totally unlike that practised in the rest

of the Hundred Years’ War. The accounts of the battle of Chatillon

recall the warfare of the Swiss rather than of the English armies.

That engagement was a desperate attempt of a column of dismounted

men-at-arms and billmen, flanked by archers, to storm an intrenched

camp protected by artillery. The English--like the Swiss at Bicocca--

found the task too hard for them, and only increased the disaster by

their gallant persistence in attempting to accomplish the impossible.

The expulsion of the English from their continental possessions had no

permanent effect in discrediting the power of the bow. The weapon still

retained its supremacy as a missile over the clumsy arbalest with its

complicated array of wheels and levers. It was hardly less superior

to the newly-invented hand-guns and arquebuses, which did not attain

to any great degree of efficiency before the end of the century. The

testimony of all Europe was given in favour of the long-bow. Charles of

Burgundy considered a corps of three thousand English bowmen the flower

of his infantry. Charles of France, thirty years earlier, had made the

‘archer’ the basis of his new militia, in a vain attempt to naturalize

the weapon of his enemies beyond the Channel. James of Scotland, after

a similar endeavour, had resigned himself to ill success, and turned

the archery of his subjects to ridicule.

There are few periods which appear more likely to present to the

enquirer a series of interesting military problems, than the years of

the great struggle, in which the national weapons and national tactics

of the English were turned against each other. The Wars of the Roses

were, however, unfortunate in their historians. The dearth of exact

information concerning the various engagements is remarkable, when we

consider the ample materials which are to be found for the history

of the preceding periods. The meagre annals of William of Worcester,

Warkworth, Fabyan, of the continuer of the Croyland Chronicle, and

the author of the ‘arrival of king Edward IV,’ with the ignorant

generalities of Whethamstede, are insufficiently supplemented by

the later works of Grafton and Hall. When all has been collated, we

still fail to grasp the details of most of the battles. Not in one

single instance can we reconstruct the exact array of a Yorkist or

a Lancastrian army. Enough, however, survives to make us regret the

scantiness of the sources of our information.

That some considerable amount of tactical and strategical skill was

employed by many of the English commanders is evident, when we analyse

the general characteristics of their campaigns. The engagements show

no stereotyped similarity of incident, such as would have resulted

from a general adherence to a single form of attack or defence. Each

combat had its own individuality, resulting from the particular

tactics employed in it. The fierce street-fight which is known as the

first battle of St. Albans, has nothing in common with the irregular

skirmishing of Hedgeley Moor. The stormings of the fortified positions

of Northampton and Tewkesbury bear no resemblance to the pitched

battles of Towton and Barnet. The superiority of tactics which won

Bloreheath contrasts with the superiority of armament which won Edgecot

Field.

Prominent among the features of the war stands out the generalship

of King Edward IV. Already a skilful commander in his nineteenth

year, it was he who at Northampton turned the Lancastrian position,

by forcing the ‘streight places’ which covered the flank of the

‘line of high banks and deep trenches’ behind which the army of King

Henry was sheltered[116]. A year later he saved a cause which seemed

desperate, by his rapid march from Hereford to London; a march executed

in the inclement month of February and over the miry roads of the

South-Midland counties. The decision of mind which led him to attempt

at all hazards to throw himself into the capital, won him his crown

and turned the balance at the decisive crisis of the war. If, when

settled on the throne, he imperilled his position by carelessness and

presumption, he was himself again at the first blast of the trumpet.

His vigorous struggle in the spring of 1470, when all around him were

showing themselves traitors, was a wonderful example of the success of

prompt action[117]. Nor was his genius less marked in his last great

military success, the campaign of Barnet and Tewkesbury.

To have marched from York to London, threading his way among the

hosts of his foes without disaster, was a skilful achievement,

even if the treachery of some of the hostile commanders be taken

into consideration. At Barnet he showed that tactics no less than

strategy lay within the compass of his powers, by turning the casual

circumstance of the fog entirely to his own profit. The unforeseen

chance by which each army outflanked the other was not in itself more

favourable to one party than to the other: it merely tested the

relative ability of the two leaders. But Edward’s care in providing a

reserve rendered the defeat of his left wing unimportant, while the

similar disaster on Warwick’s left was turned to such good account

that it decided the day. Warwick himself indeed, if we investigate

his whole career, leaves on us the impression rather of the political

wire-puller, ‘le plus subtil homme de son vivant,’ as Commines called

him, than of the great military figure of traditional accounts. Barnet

being won, the second half of the campaign began with Edward’s march

to intercept Queen Margaret before she could open communications with

her friends in South Wales. Gloucester was held for the king; his

enemies therefore, as they marched north, were compelled to make for

Tewkesbury, the first crossing on the Severn which was passable for

them. The Lancastrian feint on Chipping Sodbury was not ill-judged, but

Edward rendered its effect nugatory by his rapid movements. Both armies

gathered themselves up for a rush towards the all-important passage,

but the king--although he had the longer distance to cover, and was

toiling over the barren rolling country of the Cotswold plateau--

out-marched his opponents. Men spoke with surprise of the thirty-two

miles which his army accomplished in the day, without halting for a

meal, and in a district where water was so scarce that the men were

able to quench their thirst only once in the twelve hours[118]. By

evening the king was within five miles of the Lancastrians, who had

halted--utterly worn out--in the town of Tewkesbury. As they had not

succeeded in crossing its ferry that night, they were compelled to

fight next day, since there was even greater danger in being attacked

while their forces were half across the Severn, and half still on

the Gloucestershire side, than in turning to meet the king. Queen

Margaret’s generals therefore drew up their forces on the rising ground

to the south of the town, in a good position, where they had the

slope of the hill in their favour, and were well protected by hedges

and high banks. Edward, however, made no rash attempts to force his

enemies’ line: instead of delivering an assault he brought up cannon

and concentrated their fire on one of the hostile wings. Somerset,

who commanded there, was at last so galled that he came down from

his vantage ground to drive off the gunners. His charge was for the

moment successful, but left a fatal gap in the Lancastrian line. The

centre making no attempt to close this opening[119], Edward was enabled

to thrust his ‘main-battle’ into it, and thus forced the position,

and drove his enemies in complete disorder into the _cul-de-sac_

of Tewkesbury town, where they were for the most part compelled to

surrender. It will at once be observed that the king’s tactics on this

occasion were precisely those which had won for William the Norman

the field of Senlac. He repeated the experiment, merely substituting

artillery for archery, and put his enemy in a position where he had

either to fall back or to charge in order to escape the Yorkist

missiles.

King Edward was by no means the only commander of merit whom the

war revealed. We should be inclined to rate the Earl of Salisbury’s

ability high, after considering his manœuvre at Bloreheath. Being at

the head of inferior forces, he retired for some time before Lord

Audley; till continued retreat having made his adversary careless,

he suddenly turned on him while his forces were divided by a stream,

and inflicted two crushing blows on the two isolated halves of the

Lancastrian army. The operations before Towton also seem to show the

existence of considerable enterprise and alertness on both sides.

Clifford was successful in his bold attempt to beat up the camp and

rout the division of Fitzwalter; but on the other hand Falconbridge

was sufficiently prompt to fall upon the victorious Clifford as he

returned towards his main-body, and to efface the Yorkist disaster of

the early morning by a success in the afternoon. The same Falconbridge

gave in the great battle of the ensuing day an example of the kind

of tactical expedients which sufficed to decide the day, when both

armies were employing the same great weapon. A snow-storm rendered

the opposing lines only partially visible to each other: he therefore

ordered his men to advance barely within extreme range, and let fly a

volley of the light and far-reaching ‘flight-arrows,’ after which he

halted. The Lancastrians, finding the shafts falling among them, drew

the natural conclusion that their enemies were well within range, and

answered with a continuous discharge of their heavier ‘sheaf-arrows,’

which fell short of the Yorkists by sixty yards. Half an hour of this

work well-nigh exhausted their store of missiles, so that the billmen

and men-of-arms of Warwick and King Edward were then able to advance

without receiving any appreciable damage from the Lancastrian archery.

A stratagem like this could only be used when the adversaries were

perfectly conversant with each other’s armament and methods of war.

In this respect it may remind us of the device employed by the Romans

against their former fellow-soldiers of the Latin League, at the battle

of Vesuvius.

That the practice of dismounting large bodies of men-at-arms, which

was so prevalent on the continent in this century, was not unknown in

England we have ample evidence. The Lancastrian loss at Northampton,

we are told, was excessive, ‘because the knights had sent their horses

to the rear’ and could not escape. Similarly we hear of Warwick

dismounting to lead a charge, at Towton, and again--but on less

certain authority--at Barnet. This custom explains the importance of

the pole-axe in the knightly equipment of the fifteenth century: it was

the weapon specially used by the horsemen who had descended to fight

on foot. Instances of its use in this way need not be multiplied; we

may, however, mention the incident which of all others seems most to

have impressed the chroniclers in the fight of Edgecott-by-Banbury. Sir

Richard Herbert ‘valiantly acquitted himself in that, on foot and with

his pole-axe in his hand, he twice by main force passed through the

battle of his adversaries, and without any mortal wound returned.’ The

engagement at which this feat of arms was performed was one notable as

a renewed attempt of spearmen to stand against a mixed force of archers

and cavalry. The Yorkists were utterly destitute of light troops,

their bowmen having been drawn off by their commander, Lord Stafford,

in a fit of pique, so that Pembroke and his North Welsh troops were

left unsupported. The natural result followed: in spite of the strong

position of the king’s men, the rebels ‘by force of archery caused them

quickly to descend from the hill into the valley[120],’ where they were

ridden down as they retreated in disorder by the Northern horse.

Throughout the whole of the war artillery was in common use by both

parties. Its employment was decisive at the fights of Tewkesbury and

‘Lose-coat Field.’ We also hear of it at Barnet and Northampton,

as also in the sieges of the Northern fortresses in 1462-63. Its

efficiency was recognised far more than that of smaller fire-arms, of

which we find very scant mention[121]. The long-bow still retained its

supremacy over the arquebus, and had yet famous fields to win, notably

that of Flodden, where the old manœuvres of Falkirk were repeated by

both parties, and the pikemen of the Lowlands were once more shot

down by the archers of Cheshire and Lancashire. As late as the reign

of Edward VI we find Kett’s insurgents beating, by the rapidity of

their archery-fire, a corps of German hackbut-men whom the government

had sent against them. Nor was the bow entirely extinct as a national

weapon even in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Further, however, than the

end of the great English Civil War of the fifteenth century, it is not

our task to trace its use.

The direct influence of English methods of warfare on the general

current of European military science ends with the final loss of

dominion in France in the years 1450-53. From that period the occasions

of contact which had once been so frequent become rare and unimportant.

The Wars of the Roses kept the English soldier at home, and after their

end the pacific policy of Henry VII tended to the same result. Henry

VIII exerted an influence on Continental politics by diplomacy and

subsidies rather than by his barren and infrequent expeditions, while

in the second half of the century the peculiar characteristics of the

English army of the fourteenth and fifteenth century had passed away,

in the general change and transformation of the forms of the Art of

War.

VII.

CONCLUSION.

We have now discussed at length the two systems of tactics which played

the chief part in revolutionising the Art of War in Europe. The one

has been traced from Morgarten to Bicocca, the other from Falkirk to

Formigny, and it has been shown how the ascendancy of each was at last

checked by the development of new forms of military efficiency among

those against whom it was directed. While ascribing to the pikemen of

Switzerland and the English archery the chief part in the overthrow of

feudal cavalry--and to no small extent in that of feudalism itself--

we must not forget that the same work was simultaneously being wrought

out by other methods in other quarters of Europe.

Prominent among the experiments directed to this end was that of

Zisca and his captains, in the great Hussite wars of the first half

of the fifteenth century. In Bohemia the new military departure was

the result of social and religious convulsions. A gallant nation had

risen in arms, stirred at once by outraged patriotism and by spiritual

zeal; moved by a desire to drive the intruding German beyond the

Erzgebirge, but moved even more by dreams of universal brotherhood,

and of a kingdom of righteousness to be established by the sword.

All Bohemia was ready to march, but still it was not apparent how

the overwhelming strength of Germany was to be met. If the fate of

the struggle had depended on the lances of the Tzech nobility it

would have been hopeless: they could put into the field only tens to

oppose to the thousands of German feudalism. The undisciplined masses

of peasants and burghers who accompanied them would, under the old

tactical arrangements, have fared no better than the infantry of

Flanders had fared at Rosbecque. But the problem of utilising those

strong and willing arms fell into the hands of a man of genius. John

Zisca of Trocnov had acquired military experience and hatred of Germany

while fighting in the ranks of the Poles against the Teutonic knights.

He saw clearly that to lead into the field men wholly untrained,

and rudely armed with iron-shod staves, flails, and scythes fixed

to poles, would be madness. The Bohemians had neither a uniform

equipment nor a national system of tactics: their only force lay in

their religious and national enthusiasm, which was strong enough to

make all differences vanish on the day of battle, so that the wildest

fanatics were content to combine and to obey when once the foe came

in sight. It was evident that the only chance for the Hussites was to

stand upon the defensive, till they had gauged their enemies’ military

efficiency and learnt to handle their own arms. Accordingly we hear

of intrenchments being everywhere thrown up, and towns being put in a

state of defence during the first months of the war. But this was not

all; in his Eastern campaigns Zisca had seen a military device which

he thought might be developed and turned to account. There prevailed

among the Russians and Lithuanians a custom of surrounding every

encampment by a portable barricade of beams and stakes, which could be

taken to pieces and transferred from position to position. The Russian

princes habitually utilised in their wars such a structure, which they

called a ‘goliaigorod’ or moving fortress. Zisca’s development of

this system consisted in substituting for the beams and stakes a line

of waggons, at first merely such as the country-side supplied, but

afterwards constructed specially for military purposes, and fitted with

hooks and chains by which they were fastened one to another[122]. It

was evident that these war-waggons, when once placed in order, would

be impregnable to a cavalry charge: however vigorous the impetus of

the mail-clad knight might be, it would not carry him through oaken

planks and iron links. The onset of the German horseman being the chief

thing which the Hussites had to dread, the battle was half won when a

method of resisting it had been devised. With the German infantry they

were competent to deal without any elaborate preparation. It might be

thought that Zisca’s invention would have condemned the Bohemians to

adhere strictly to the defensive in the whole campaign, as well as in

each engagement in it: this, however, was not the case. When fully

worked out, the system assumed a remarkable shape. There was organized

a special corps of waggoners, on whose efficiency everything depended:

they were continually drilled, and taught to manœuvre their vehicles

with accuracy and promptness. At the word of command, we are told,

they would form a circle, a square, or a triangle, and then rapidly

disengage their teams, thus leaving the waggons in proper position,

and only needing to be chained together. This done, they took up

their position in the centre of the enclosure. The organization of

the whole army was grounded on the waggon as a unit: to each was told

off, besides the driver, a band of about twenty men, of whom part were

pike-men and flail-men, while the remainder were armed with missile

weapons. The former ranged themselves behind the chains which joined

waggon to waggon, the latter stood in the vehicles and fired down on

the enemy. From the first Zisca set himself to introduce fire-arms

among the Bohemians: at length nearly a third of them were armed with

‘hand-guns,’ while a strong train of artillery accompanied every force.

A Hussite army in movement had its regular order of march. Wherever the

country was open enough it formed five parallel columns. In the centre

marched the cavalry and artillery, to each side of them two divisions

of waggons accompanied by their complements of infantry. The two outer

divisions were longer than the two which marched next the horsemen and

the guns. The latter were intended--in the case of a sudden attack--

to form the front and rear of a great oblong, of which the longer

divisions were to compose the sides. To enable the shorter columns

to wheel, one forward and the other backward, no great time would be

required, and if the few necessary minutes were obtained, the Hussite

order of battle stood complete. To such perfection and accuracy was the

execution of this manœuvre brought, that we are assured that a Bohemian

army would march right into the middle of a German host, so as to

separate division from division, and yet find time to throw itself into

its normal formation just as the critical moment arrived. The only real

danger was from artillery fire, which might shatter the line of carts:

but the Hussites were themselves so well provided with cannon that they

could usually silence the opposing batteries. Never assuredly were the

tactics of the ‘laager’ carried to such perfection; were the records

of the Hussite victories not before us, we should have hesitated to

believe that the middle ages could have produced a system whose success

depended so entirely on that power of orderly movement which is usually

claimed as the peculiar characteristic of modern armies.

But in the Bohemia of the fifteenth century, just as in the England of

the seventeenth, fanaticism led to rigid discipline, not to disorder.

The whole country, we are assured, was divided into two lists of

parishes, which alternately put their entire adult population in the

field. While the one half fought, the other remained at home, charged

with the cultivation of their own and their neighbours’ lands. A

conscription law of the most sweeping kind, which made every man a

soldier, was thus in force, and it becomes possible to understand the

large numbers of the armies put into the field by a state of no great

extent.

Zisca’s first victories were to his enemies so unexpected and so

marvellous, that they inspired a feeling of consternation. The

disproportion of numbers and the inexperience of the Hussites being

taken into consideration, they were indeed surprising. But instead of

abandoning their stereotyped feudal tactics, to whose inability to

cope with any new form of military efficiency the defeats were really

due, the Germans merely tried to raise larger armies, and sent them

to incur the same fate as the first host which Sigismund had led

against Prague. But the engagements only grew more decisive as Zisca

fully developed his tactical methods. Invasion after invasion was a

failure, because, when once the Bohemians came in sight, the German

leaders could not induce their troops to stand firm. The men utterly

declined to face the flails and pikes of their enemies, even when

the latter advanced far beyond their rampart of waggons, and assumed

the offensive. The Hussites were consequently so exalted with the

confidence of their own invincibility, that they undertook, and often

successfully carried out, actions of the most extraordinary temerity.

Relying on the terror which they inspired, small bodies would attack

superior numbers when every military consideration was against them,

and yet would win the day. Bands only a few thousand strong sallied

forth from the natural fortress formed by the Bohemian mountains,

and wasted Bavaria, Meissen, Thuringia, and Silesia, almost without

hindrance. They returned in safety, their war-waggons laden with the

spoil of Eastern Germany, and leaving a broad track of desolation

behind them. Long after Zisca’s death the prestige of his tactics

remained undiminished, and his successors were able to accomplish feats

of war which would have appeared incredible in the first years of the

war.

When at last the defeat of the Taborites took place, it resulted from

the dissensions of the Bohemians themselves, not from the increased

efficiency of their enemies. The battle of Lipan, where Procopius

fell and the extreme party were crushed, was a victory won not by the

Germans, but by the more moderate sections of the Tzech nation. The

event of the fight indicates at once the weak spot of Hussite tactics,

and the tremendous self-confidence of the Taborites. After Procopius

had repelled the first assaults on his circle of waggons, his men--

forgetting that they had to do not with the panic-stricken hosts of

their old enemies, but with their own former comrades,--left their

defences and charged the retreating masses. They were accustomed to

see the manœuvre succeed against the terrorized Germans, and forgot

that it was only good when turned against adversaries whose spirit

was entirely broken. In itself an advance meant the sacrifice of all

the benefits of a system of tactics which was essentially defensive.

The weakness in fact of the device of the waggon-fortress was that,

although securing the repulse of the enemy, it gave no opportunity for

following up that success, if he was wary and retreated in good order.

This however was not a reproach to the inventor of the system, for

Zisca had originally to seek not for the way to win decisive victories,

but for the way to avoid crushing defeats. At Lipan the moderate

party had been beaten back but not routed. Accordingly when the

Taborites came out into the open field, the retreating masses turned to

fight, while a cavalry reserve which far outnumbered the horsemen of

Procopius, rode in between the circle of waggons and the troops which

had left it. Thus three-quarters of the Taborite army were caught and

surrounded in the plain, where they were cut to pieces by the superior

numbers of the enemy. Only the few thousands who had remained behind

within the waggon-fortress succeeded in escaping. Thus was demonstrated

the incompleteness for military purposes of a system which had been

devised as a political necessity, not as an infallible recipe for

victory.

The moral of the fight of Lipan was indeed the same as the moral of the

fight of Hastings. Purely defensive tactics are hopeless when opposed

by a commander of ability and resource, who is provided with steady

troops. If the German princes had been generals and the German troops

well-disciplined, the careers of Zisca and Procopius would have been

impossible. Bad strategy and panic combined to make the Hussites seem

invincible. When, however, they were met by rational tactics they were

found to be no less liable to the logic of war than other men.

Long before the flails and hand-guns of Zisca’s infantry had turned

to rout the chivalry of Germany, another body of foot-soldiers

had won the respect of Eastern Europe. On the battlefields of the

Balkan Peninsula the Slav and the Magyar had learned to dread the

slave-soldiery of the Ottoman Sultans. Kossova had suggested and

Nicopolis had proved that the day of the unquestioned supremacy of the

horseman was gone in the East as much as in the West. The Janissaries

of Murad and Bayezid had stood firm before desperate cavalry charges,

and beaten them off with loss. It is curious to recognize in the

East the tactics which had won the battles of Creçy and Agincourt.

The Janissaries owed their successes to precisely the same causes as

the English archer. Their great weapon was the bow, not indeed the

long-bow of the West, but nevertheless a very efficient arm. Still

more notable is it that they carried the stakes which formed part of

the equipment of the English bowman, and planted them before their

line whenever an assault by cavalry was expected. Again and again--

notably at Nicopolis and Varna--do we hear of the impetuous charge

which had ridden down the rest of the Turkish array, failing at last

before the ‘palisade’ of the Janissaries, and the deadly fire of arrows

from behind it. The rest of the Janissary’s equipment was very simple:

he carried no defensive arms, and wore only a pointed felt cap and a

flowing grey tunic reaching to the knees. Besides his bow and quiver

he bore a scimitar at his side and a ‘handjar’ or long knife in his

waist-cloth. Though their disciplined fanaticism made them formidable

foes in close combat, it was not for that kind of fighting that the

Janissaries were designed. When we find them storming a breach or

leading a charge, they were going beyond their own province. Their

entire want of armour would alone have sufficed to show that they were

not designed for hand-to-hand contests, and it is a noteworthy fact

that they could never be induced to take to the use of the pike. Like

the English archery, they were used either in defensive positions or

to supplement the employment of cavalry. Eastern hosts ever since the

days of the Parthians had consisted of great masses of horsemen, and

their weakness had always lain in the want of some steadier force to

form the nucleus of resistance and the core of the army. Cavalry can

only act on the offensive, yet every general is occasionally compelled

to take the defensive. The Ottomans, however, were enabled to solve the

problem of producing an army efficient for both alike, when once Orchan

had armed and trained the Janissaries. The Timariot horsemen who formed

the bulk of the Turkish army differed little from the cavalry of other

Oriental states. Not unfrequently they suffered defeats; Shah Ismail’s

Persian cavaliers rode them down at Tchaldiran, and the Mamelukes broke

them at Radama. If it had been with his feudal horse alone that the

Turkish Sultan had faced the chivalry of the West, there is little

reason to suppose that the conquest of the Balkan Peninsula would ever

have been effected. Attacked in its own home the Hungarian--perhaps

even the Servian--state could in the fourteenth century put into the

field armies equal in numbers and individually superior to the Ottoman

horsemen[123]. But the Servian and the Hungarian, like the Persian

and the Mameluke, did not possess any solid and trustworthy body of

infantry. To face the disciplined array of the Janissaries they had

only the chaotic and half-armed hordes of the national levy. To this we

must ascribe the splendid successes of the Sultans: however the tide of

battle might fluctuate, the Janissaries would stand like a rock behind

their stakes, and it was almost unknown that they should be broken.

Again and again they saved the fortune of the day: at those few fights

where they could not, they at least died in their ranks, and saved the

honour of their corps. At the disaster of Angora they continued to

struggle long after the rest of the Turkish army had dispersed, and

were at last exterminated rather than beaten. No steadier troops could

have been found in any part of Europe.

Perhaps the most interesting of Ottoman fights from the tactician’s

point of view was the second battle of Kossova (1448). This was not--

like Varna or Mohacs--an ill-advised attempt to break the Turkish

line by a headlong onset. John Huniades, whom long experience had

made familiar with the tactics of his enemy, endeavoured to turn

against Sultan Murad his own usual scheme. To face the Janissaries he

drew up in his centre a strong force of German infantry, armed with

the hand-guns whose use the Hussites had introduced. On the wings

the chivalry of Hungary were destined to cope with the masses of the

Timariot cavalry. In consequence of this arrangement, the two centres

faced each other for long hours, neither advancing, but each occupied

in thinning the enemy’s ranks, the one with the arbalest-bolt, the

other with the bullet. Meanwhile on the wings desperate cavalry charges

succeeded each other, till on the second day the Wallachian allies

of Huniades gave way before the superior numbers of the Ottomans and

the Christian centre had to draw off and retire. So desperate had the

fighting been, that half the Hungarian army and a third of that of

Murad was left upon the field. The tactical meaning of the engagement

was plain: good infantry could make a long resistance to the Ottoman

arms, even if they could not secure the victory. The lesson however

was not fully realized, and it was not till the military revolution of

the sixteenth century that infantry was destined to take the prominent

part in withstanding the Ottoman. The landsknechts and hackbut-men of

Charles V and Ferdinand of Austria proved much more formidable foes

to the Sultans than the gallant but undisciplined light cavalry[124]

of Hungary. This was to a great extent due to the perfection of

pike-tactics in the West. The Turks, whose infantry could never be

induced to adopt that weapon[125], relied entirely on their firearms,

and were checked by the combination of pike and hackbut.

It is noticeable that the Janissaries took to the use of the firelock

at a comparatively early date. It may have been in consequence of the

effectiveness of Huniades’ hand-guns at Kossova, that we find them

discarding the arbalest in favour of the newer weapon. But at any rate

the Ottoman had fully accomplished the change long before it had been

finally carried out in Europe, and nearly a century earlier than the

nations of the further East[126].

In recognizing the full importance of cannon the Sultans were equally

in advance of their times. The capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II

was probably the first event of supreme importance whose result was

determined by the power of artillery. The lighter guns of previous

years had never accomplished any feat comparable in its results to that

which was achieved by the siege-train of the Conqueror. Some decades

later we find the Janissaries’ line of arquebuses supported by the fire

of field-pieces, often brought forward in great numbers, and chained

together so as to prevent cavalry charging down the intervals between

the guns[127]. This device is said to have been employed with great

success against an enemy superior in the numbers of his horsemen, alike

at Dolbek and Tchaldiran.

The ascendency of the Turkish arms was finally terminated by the

conjunction of several causes. Of these the chief was the rise in

central Europe of standing armies composed for the most part of

disciplined infantry. But it is no less undoubted that much was due to

the fact that the Ottomans after the reign of Soliman fell behind their

contemporaries in readiness to keep up with the advance of military

skill, a change which may be connected with the gradual transformation

of the Janissaries from a corps into a caste. It should also be

remembered that the frontier of Christendom was now covered not by one

isolated fortress of supreme importance, such as Belgrade had been,

but by a double and triple line of strong towns, whose existence made

it hard for the Turks to advance with rapidity, or to reap any such

results from success in a single battle or siege as had been possible

in the previous century.

On the warfare of the other nations of Eastern Europe it will not be

necessary to dwell. The military history of Russia, though interesting

in itself, exercised no influence on the general progress of the Art

of War. With the more important development of new tactical methods in

South-Western Europe we have already dealt, when describing the Spanish

infantry in the chapter devoted to the Swiss and their enemies.

All the systems of real weight and consideration have now been

discussed. In the overthrow of the supremacy of feudal cavalry the

tactics of the shock and the tactics of the missile had each played

their part: which had been the more effective it would be hard to say.

Between them however the task had been successfully accomplished. The

military strength of that system which had embraced all Europe in its

cramping fetters, had been shattered to atoms. Warlike efficiency was

the attribute no longer of a class but of whole nations; and war had

ceased to be an occupation in which feudal chivalry found its pleasure,

and the rest of society its ruin. The ‘Art of War’ had become once more

a living reality, a matter not of tradition but of experiment, and

the vigorous sixteenth century was rapidly adding to it new forms and

variations. The middle ages were at last over, and the stirring and

scientific spirit of the modern world was working a transformation in

military matters, which was to make the methods of mediæval war seem

even further removed from the strategy of our own century, than are the

operations of the ancients in the great days of Greece and Rome.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cf. Vegetius and Maurice.

[2] Lord Mahon in his Life of Belisarius is wrong in asserting that the

legion was no longer known in Justinian’s day. The term is mentioned,

though rarely, in Procopius, who more frequently calls the legionary

troops οἱ ἐκ τῶν καταλόγων {hoi ek tôn katalogôn}.

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

[4] The old legions of the first century are found in full vigour

at the end of the third. The coins of the British usurper Carausius

commemorate as serving under him several of the legions which, as early

as the reign of Claudius, were already stationed in Britain and Gaul.

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

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

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

[8] When the Romans entirely abandoned the offensive an increased army

became necessary, as a frontier held against raids requires to be

protected on every point. Hence the conscriptions and large composition

money of Constantine’s epoch. He is said to have had nearly half a

million of men in his forces.

[9] See ὈΥΡΒΙΚΙΟΥ ἘΠΙΤΗΔΕΥΜΑ {OURBIKIOU EPITÊDEUMA}, a fourth century

work, printed at the end of the Paris, 1598, edition of Arrian.

[10] The Grand Masters of the infantry and cavalry, the Count of the

Palace, and 45 commanders of different corps.

[11] Cf. Ammianus Marcellinus with accounts of the Egyptian crowd at

the first battle of El Teb.

[12] Maurice’s Stratêgikon, vi.

[13] At the still fiercer fight, where the army of the usurper Eugenius

almost defeated Theodosius, we find that it was the barbarian cavalry

of Arbogast, not the native infantry, which had become (only seven

years after Maximus’ defeat) the chief force of the Western Empire.

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

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

[16] Agathias.

[17] Though often called ‘bipennis’ it had not necessarily two blades,

that word having become a mere general name for ‘axe.’

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

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

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

[21] A short weapon like the ‘francisca,’ not the long Danish axe which

afterwards became the national arm.

[22] If these were the ‘lignis imposita saxa’ of which the Norman

chronicler of Hastings spoke, as being English weapons.

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

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

‘Hoem ki od hache volt ferir,

Od sez dous mainz l’estuet tenir.

Ne pot entendre a sei covrir,

S’il velt ferir de grant aïr.

Bien ferir e covrir ensemble

Ne pot l’en fair ço me semble.’

[25] The fate of the only one of Wellington’s squares which attempted

to deploy, in order to drive off the infantry which were annoying it,

may well be compared with that of Harold’s soldiery. ‘The concentrated

fire of this close line of skirmishers was now telling heavily upon the

devoted squares of Alten’s division. It was, however, impossible to

deploy, as in the hollow, near La Haye Sainte, there lay in wait a body

of the enemy’s cavalry. At last the 5th line-battalion of the King’s

German Legion, forsaking its square formation, opened out, and advanced

against the mass of tirailleurs. The French gave way as the line

advanced at the charge; at the next moment the battalion was furiously

assailed by a regiment of cuirassiers, who, taking it in flank, fairly

rolled it up. So severe was the loss sustained, that out of the whole

battalion not more than 30 men and a few officers were gradually

collected in their former position.’ (Siborne’s History of the Waterloo

Campaign, ii. pp. 114-15.)

[26] Πελεκυφóρος {Pelekuphóros} had become such a mere synonym for

Englishmen at Constantinople, that Anna Comnena considers that she

defines Robert of Normandy sufficiently, when she calls him ‘the

brother of the King of the Πελεκυφóροι {Pelekuphóroi}.’

[27] For these details see Anna Comnena’s Life of Alexius. She

calls the commander of the Varangians Ναμéτης {Namétês} or Ναμπéτης

{Nampétês}: what English or Scandinavian name can this represent?

Considering the remote resemblance of some of Anna’s Western names to

their real forms, it is perhaps hopeless to expect an answer.

[28] See especially:--Maurice’s Stratêgikon (Upsala 1664), written

about A.D. 595; Leo’s Tactica (Leyden 1612), written about A.D. 900;

Nicephorus Phocas’ ΠΕΡΙ ΠΑΡΑΔΡΟΜΗΣ ΠΟΛΕΜΟΥ {PERI PARADROMÊS POLEMOU}

(in Migne’s Patrologia), written about A.D. 960.

[29] Gibbon, v. p. 382.

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

[31] Nothing better attests the military spirit of the Eastern

aristocracy than their duels: cf. the cases of Prusian, etc., in

Finlay’s Greece.

[32] Leo, Tactica, § 18. The paragraphs here are a condensation of

Leo’s advice, and sometimes an elucidation, not a literal translation.

[33] σκουτáτοι {skoutátoi}, one of the curious Latin survivals in

Byzantine military terminology. In translitterating Latin words the

Greeks paid no attention to quantity.

[34] Much confusion in military history has been caused by writers

attributing the archery of the Turks to the Saracens: the latter were

not employers of archery-tactics, but lancers. Battles like Dorylæum,

which are given as examples of Saracen warfare, were fought really by

Turks.

[35] Leo, § 18. 124.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid. 120.

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

[39] In Leo’s day the Oriental themes had not been sub-divided, as

was afterwards done by his son Constantine. There were then eight

themes in Asia Minor, each of which contained a military division of

the same name, and could be reckoned on for some 4000 heavy cavalry.

These were ‘Armeniacon, Anatolicon, Obsequium, Thracesion, Cibyrrhœot,

Bucellarion, and Paphlagonia.’ Optimaton, the ninth theme, had (as

Constantine tells us in his treatise on the empire), no military

establishments.

[40] See in the next section of this treatise for the plan of his

formation, p. 45.

[41] Leo, Tactica, 18. 118.

[42] Ibid. 136.

[43] Ibid. 118.

[44] See Colonel Clery’s Minor Tactics.

[45] Leo, Tactica, 18.

[46] Compare with this the stratagem by which the Russian army escaped

from a compromised position during the retreat before the battle of

Austerlitz. ‘In agreeing to an Armistice,’ wrote Kutusoff, in a very

Byzantine tone, ‘I had in view nothing but to gain time, and thereby

obtain the means of removing to a distance from the enemy, and saving

my army.’ Dumas, xiv. 48.

[47] The Middle Ages dimly felt this, and (as Gibbon tells us) the

Italian Chroniclers name him the ‘first of the Greek Emperors.’

[48] As, for example, the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who, in

his book on the ‘Themata Orientis,’ attributes the invention of the

‘Theme’ and ‘tagma’ to Heraclius.

[49] Βάνδον {Bandon}, bandum, had become a common word in Justinian’s

time: it is used as a Teutonic equivalent for ‘vexillum’ in both its

senses.

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

officers alone.

[51] This curious word is first formed in Vegetius, where it is only

applied to the masses of a barbarian army. (Cf. English ‘throng.’)

[52] See the evidence of coins: the title ΠΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΘΕῼ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΤΩΝ

ΡΩΜΑΙΩΝ {PISTOS EN THEÔ BASILEUS TÔN RÔMAIÔN} only becomes common under

the Amorian dynasty.

[53] See Leo’s Tactica, xii.

[54] Ibid. vi.

[55] Leo, Tactica, vi.

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

[57] The century contained 10 decuries, but the ‘decury’ was 16 not 10

men: thus the century was 160 strong. Three centuries went to a ‘band,’

which would thus be about 450 men.

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

[59] Nicephorus Phocas, in his ΠΑΡΑΔΡΟΜΗ ΠΟΛΕΜΟΥ {PARADROMÊ POLEMOU},

says that ‘Armenians must never be placed in this line of picquets, as

their habitual drowsiness at night makes them untrustworthy.’

[60] Leo, Tactica, iv. § 1.

[61] Nothing gives a better idea of the real military character of

the Byzantine aristocracy than a perusal of the curious tenth century

romance of ‘Digenes Akritas,’ a member of the house of Ducas, who is

‘Klissurarch’ of the passes of Taurus, and performs with his mighty

mace all the exploits of a hero of chivalry. He really existed, and

bore the name of Basil Pantherios. See Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. 118.

[62] Eustace de Ribeaumont, for instance, who gave the madly

impractical advice which lost the battle of Poictiers, was, we are

told, an officer of high ability.

[63] The Black Prince’s campaign in South France, for example, before

the battle of Poictiers, was merely an enormous and destructive raid.

He besieged no important town, and did not attempt to establish any

posts to command the country through which he passed.

[64] The difficulty experienced by Edward III and Henry V in crossing

the Somme is equally remarkable.

[65] ‘Capitales barones suos cum paucis secum duxit, solidarios vero

milites innumeros.’ Rob. de Monte, 1159.

[66] The classical instances of the successful employment of the mine

in England are the captures of Rochester Castle in 1215, and Bedford

Castle in 1224, both works of enormous labour.

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

[68] As, for example, did Edward III before Calais. He fortified all

approaches passable for a relieving army, and waited quietly in his

lines.

[69] This was borrowed either from the Byzantine or the Saracen: it is

quite distinct from the rude club occasionally found in the West at an

earlier date, as, for example, in the hands of Bishop Odo at Hastings.

[70] See, for example, the case cited in Von Elgger’s Kriegswesen der

Schweizerischen Eidgenossen, where a patrician of Constance having

refused to accept a Bernese plappert (small coin) in payment of a

wager, and having scornfully called the bear represented on it a cow,

the Confederates took the matter up as a national insult, and ravaged

the territory of Constance without any declaration of war.

[71] At Novara, for instance, they put to death after the battle

several hundred German prisoners.

[72] See Montluc’s Commentaries.

[73] At Morat the contingent of Bern alone brought with them (besides

the great standard of the canton) the flags of twenty-four towns and

districts (Thun, Aarau, Lenzburg, Interlaken, Burgdorf, the Haslithal,

the Emmenthal, etc. etc.) and of eight craft-guilds and six other

associations.

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

a spike.

[75] The ‘Morning-Star’ was a club five feet long, set thickly at its

end with iron spikes. It had disappeared by the middle of the 15th

century. The ‘Lucern Hammer’ was like a halberd, but had three curved

prongs instead of the hatchet-blade: it inflicted a horrible jagged

wound.

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

[77] Macchiavelli even says that the pikemen in his day did not wear

the steel-cap, which was entirely confined to the halberdiers. But this

can be shown from other sources to be an exaggeration.

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

[79] At Morat, according to Commines, they were nearly a third, 10,000

out of 35,000. At Arbedo they were a seventh: among the Confederates

who joined Charles VIII in his march to Naples only a tenth of the

force.

[80] E.g. the Forest Cantons were bitterly opposed to the Bernese

policy of engaging in war with Charles the Bold; but their troops did

no worse service than the rest at Granson or Morat.

[81] Rudolf von Erlach’s position as commander-in-chief at Laupen was

quite exceptional. If we hear in the cases mentioned above of Swiss

commanders, we must remember that they were co-ordinate authorities,

among whom one man might exert more influence than another, but only

by his personal ascendancy, not by legal right. It is a mistake to say

that Réné of Lorraine formally commanded at Morat or Nancy.

[82] Macchiavelli has a very clear account of this form of advance, see

Arte de Guerra, tr. Farneworth, book iii.

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

[84] See Elgger as before.

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

[86] Quoted at length in Elgger.

[87] At Bannockburn, the Scots had made good use of their cavalry,

which, though not strong, gave them an advantage wanting to the Swiss

at Laupen.

[88] Similarly at the battle of the Standard the English knights

dismounted to meet the furious rush of the Galwegians.

[89] The numbers which the Swiss Chroniclers allow to have been present

at Sempach are evidently minimised. The whole force of four cantons

was there, yet we are told of only 1500 men! Yet the _three_ cantons

seventy-one years before put the same number in the field, and the

populous state of Lucern had now joined them.

[90] The Confederates were forming their column in Sempach Wood, when

Leopold’s artillery opened on them--

‘With their long lances levelled before the fight they stood,

And set their cannon firing at those within the wood;

Then to the good Confederates the battle was not sweet,

When all around the mighty boughs dropped crashing at their feet.’

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

[91] Sismondi, who writes entirely from Swiss sources as to this fight,

gives a very different impression from Machiavelli. The later cites

Arbedo as the best known check received by the Swiss, and puts their

loss down at several thousands (Arte de Guerra, tr. Farneworth, p. 33).

Müller evidently tries to minimise the check; but we may judge from

our knowledge of Swiss character how great must have been the pressure

required to make a Confederate officer think of surrender. Forty-four

members of the Cantonal councils of Lucern fell in the fight: ‘The

contingent of Lucern had crossed the lake of the four Cantons in ten

large barges, when setting out on this expedition: it returned in two!’

These facts, acknowledged by the Swiss themselves, seem to show that

the figure of 400 men for their loss is placed absurdly low.

[92] From a Lucern ‘Raths-Protocoll’ of 1422, ‘Da es den Eidgenossen

nicht so wohl ergangen seie,’ etc.

[93] Yet even the Duke said, that ‘Against the Swiss it will never do

to march unprepared.’ Panagirola, quoted by Kirk, vol. iii.

[94] ‘If we attack Romont,’ said Ulrich Kätzy at the Swiss council of

war, ‘while we are beating him the duke will have time and opportunity

to escape; let us go round the hills against the main-body, and when

that is routed, we shall have the rest without a stroke.’ This showed

real tactical skill.

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

[96] Frundsberg, the old captain of landsknechts, gives a cool and

businesslike account of these shocks, ‘Wo unter den langen Wehren

etliche Glieder zu grund gehen, werden die Personen, so dahinter

stehen, etwas zaghaft,’ etc.

[97] The two-handed sword had almost entirely, and the ‘morning-star’

and ‘Lucern hammer’ quite, disappeared from use by the end of the

fifteenth century.

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

[99] It is a curious fact that Chaka, one of Cetywayo’s predecessors as

king of the Zulus, set himself to solve this problem. He took a hundred

men and armed them with the shield and the ‘short assegai,’ a thrusting

weapon resembling a sword rather than a spear in its use. He then set

them to fight another hundred furnished with the shield and the ‘long

assegai,’ the slender javelin which had previously been the weapon of

his tribe. The wielders of the shorter weapon won with ease, and the

king thereupon ordered its adoption throughout the Zulu army. It was

this change which originally gave the Zulus their superiority over

their neighbours.

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

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

[102] E.g. by the diminutive archer who crouches under a thegn’s

shield, like Teucer protected by Ajax.

[103] Giraldus Cambrensis, Itin. Cambriæ, c. 3, speaks of the Welsh

bowmen as being able to send an arrow through an oak door four fingers

thick. The people of Gwent (Monmouth and Glamorgan) were reckoned the

best archers. Those of North Wales were always spearmen, not archers.

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

[105] In the Pay Roll of the garrison of Rhuddlan castle, 1281, we find

‘paid to Geoffrey le Chamberlin for the wages of twelve cross-bowmen,

and thirteen archers, for twenty-four days, £7 8_s._, each cross-bowman

receiving by the day 4_d._, and each archer 2_d._

[106] Nic. Trivet, Annales, 282.

[107] It is surely unnecessary to call in the aid of treachery--as

historians have so frequently done--in order to account for the rout

of a force numbered by hundreds, by one numbered by thousands.

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

the present century.

[109] 320 miles in eighteen days; a rate surpassing any continuous

marching recorded of late years.

[110] See for Henry’s columns of route Viollet-le-Duc’s Tactique des

Armées Françaises au Moyen Age.

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

p. 300.

[112] ‘Gladio ad usum fossarum verso, et ungue verrente tellurem

concavant: et ante se campum equis inadibilem mira hostium astucia

efficiebat.’ Blondel, iv. 6.

[113] ‘Et si Anglici, incaepto conflictu praestantes, Gallos

retrogressos insequi ansi fuissent,’ etc. Blondel, iv. 7.

[114] ‘Fusis enim Anglorum bellis robusti quingenti sagittarii in

hortum sentibus conseptum prosiliunt ... ac inexorabili Gallorum

ferocitate, ut quisque genu flexo arcum traderet, [in sign of

surrender] omnes (nec unus evasit) gladio confodiuntur.’ Blondel, iv. 8.

[115] Grafton, Henry VI, year xxvii.

[116] Hall.

[117] The whole country being disaffected and ready--as the events of

the autumn proved--to revolt in favour of Warwick or Henry VI, the

suppression of the Lincolnshire rebellion and the expulsion of the

King-maker were remarkable achievements.

[118] This must have been in the Stroudwater, as Edward marched from

Wooton-under-Edge by Stroud and Painswick on Cheltenham.

[119] Somerset attributed this to treachery on the part of Lord

Wenlock, commander of the ‘centre-battle,’ who was a follower of

Warwick and not an old Lancastrian. Escaping from the advancing

Yorkists he rode up to Wenlock, and, without speaking a word, brained

him with his battle-axe.

[120] Grafton.

[121] Edward IV is said to have had in his employment in 1470 a small

corps of Germans with ‘hand-guns.’ Better known is the band of 2000

hackbut-men which the Earl of Lincoln brought to Stoke in 1487. The

name of their leader, Martin Schwart, survives in the ballads of the

day.

[122] For an excellent description of Hussite tactics, see Denis, Hus

et la Guerre des Hussites.

[123] At the first battle of Kossova we know that the allied Servians

and Bosnians outnumbered the Turks.

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

[125] Montecuculi notes that even in his day far into the 17th century,

the Turk had not yet taken to the pike.

[126] The arquebus and cannon were novelties to the Mamelukes as late

as 1517, if we are to trust the story of Kait Bey.

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

Bosworth.

Transcriber's Notes:

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant

preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced

quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Inconsistent

hyphenation retained.

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

“ascendancy” and “ascendency”.

Latinized transliterations of Greek are approximate.

Page 22: “develope” was printed that way.

Page 28: “Patrologia” was imperfectly printed.

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