the nobility, the one offensive and the other defensive; that of the
_Gauerbinate_ or _Gauerbschaften_, by virtue of which the
petty nobility formed family pacts for transmitting their fiefs by
indirect line when the direct line should fail, and for reconstructing
or repairing their castles out of a common fund; and that of the
_Teutonic Hanse_, the league of the prince-archbishops and
electors with sixty towns upon the Rhine. Rodolph of Hapsburg (Fig.
30), a monarch as resolute as he was able, put a stop to proceedings
which were full of danger to the imperial authority, compelled his
vassals to do him homage, and razed to the ground seventy fortresses
whose feudal brigandage had scattered desolation and ruin; but, after
his death, the usurpation of the suzerain lords began afresh, and the
_Bulle d’Or_, which was the basis of public right in Germany,
confirmed the downfall of the imperial suzerainty (1378).
[Illustration: Fig. 30.--Equestrian Stone Statue of Rodolph of
Hapsburg, Emperor of Germany, by Erwin de Steinbach, placed above
the Grand Portal of Strasburg Cathedral (Thirteenth Century).]
[Illustration: Fig. 31.--Maximilian of Austria, with Mary of
Burgundy, his wife, only daughter of Charles the Bold, and
their young son Philip, afterwards King of Castile.--“Abridged
Chronicles of Burgundy,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in
the Library of M. Ambroise-Firmin Didot.]
In France, on the other hand, as each convocation of the States-General
was attended with the creation or levying of some new tax, the third
estate attempted to exact all the more from royalty in proportion as
it gratified the latter’s pecuniary demands, claiming to have a voice
in the question of peace or war, to direct the financial affairs of
the kingdom, to be convoked every year, and to share, with the two
other orders, the weight of the charges the profit of which ought to be
shared by all. The feudal nobility resisted the exorbitant pretensions
of the third estate, but when they saw this class forming a secret
alliance with the clergy, and setting on foot a formidable league,
the password of which was the destruction of the castles and the
annihilation of the nobles, they hesitated, and did nothing until the
horrible excesses committed by the league in the country districts
had given the feudal reaction a character of legality. In 1383, after
the battle of Rosebecque, which inflicted a heavy blow upon the
communal cause in Flanders and in France, it seemed as if the power of
suzerainty was about to revive once more. Froissart, in his Chronicles,
rejoiced at this fact, because he believed that social order was
threatened with utter ruin (see his Chronicles, year 1383); but French
chivalry succumbed in its turn at Agincourt beneath the onslaught of
the English archers. This was the final condemnation of feudal armies,
as well as of the system which these armies represented, and which
they had failed in sustaining. French feudalism had already ceased to
be anything more than a storehouse of traditions which were still held
in respect, and of old customs which had fallen into disuse among the
ancient nobility.
In England, Scotland, and Ireland, high feudalism was rapidly in course
of decay, before Henry VIII. dealt it its death-blow; in Germany it
struggled for existence during the reign of Maximilian (Fig. 31); in
France it was crushed by Louis XI. with the help of the third estate.
Beyond the Alps, in Italy, its existence was prolonged for a short
period, partly under a clerical disguise, partly by the hired help of
the _condottieri_, and in some places by the support of the urban
democracy, that is the industrial and trading part of the population.
Everywhere, however, it disappeared with the Middle Ages, of which,
both in its acts and in its first principles, it bore the ineffaceable
imprint (Fig. 32).
[Illustration: Fig. 32.--Doorways of the Old Castle of Loches, in
Touraine, a favourite Manor of Louis XI. (Fifteenth Century).]
WAR AND ARMIES.
The Invasions of the Barbarians.--Attila.--Theodoric
seizes Italy.--Organization of Military Fiefs.--Defences
of Towns.--Totila and his Tactics.--The Military
Genius of Charlemagne.--Military Vassalage.--Communal
Militia.--Earliest Standing Armies.--Loss of Technical
Tradition.--The Condottieri.--The Gendarmerie.--The
_Lances Fournies_.--Weakening of Feudal Military
Obligations.--The French Army in the Time of Louis
XI. and his Successors.--Absence of Administrative
Arrangement.--Reforms.--Mercenary Troops.--Siege Operations and
Engines.
The art of war had attained its highest degree of perfection among
the Romans, when the successive invasions of the barbarians began to
burst like an overflowing river over the richest of the Roman colonies.
These barbarians, most of whom were natives of the Caucasian mountains,
were the Iberians, who never halted till they had reached Spain; the
Celts or Cimbrians, who installed themselves among the Gauls; and the
Sarmatians and the Scythians, who inhabited the vast forests of Germany
before the great wars of Julius Cæsar (Fig. 33). Suddenly, in the
fourth century of the Christian era, a movement which commenced in the
centre of Asia caused an irruption of a race hitherto unknown upon the
Caucasian races. These were the Huns, before whom the terrified Goths
retreated, but who at first made but a brief apparition in Europe;
for if Rome at that time was wanting in seasoned legions, she could
rely, at least in the provinces of her empire, upon many numerous and
powerful auxiliaries who were accustomed to fight under her standard
(Fig. 34), some for the sake of pay, others to defend their own hearths.
[Illustration: Fig. 33.--War Trophy and Barbarian
Prisoners.--From Sculptures on the Triumphal Arch of Orange
(Second Century).]
In 451, in the reign of the Emperor Valentinian III., who had bribed
the barbarians instead of repulsing them with the sword, Attila, the
King of the Huns, bore down upon Europe at the head of seven hundred
thousand fighting men of various races. In less than three months he
had overrun and laid waste Moravia, Bohemia, Hesse, and Wurtemburg,
crossed the Rhine below Strasburg, the Moselle at Trèves and at Metz,
the Meuse at Tongres, the Scheldt at Tournay; and after two sanguinary
raids into Burgundy and the country around Orleans, pitched his tents
in the plains of Champagne. The tactics of Attila were to avoid pitched
battles, to give a wide berth to the fortresses, contenting himself
with sacking and plundering their outskirts. He laid waste the open
country, burnt villages, put their inoffensive inhabitants to the
sword, and making it his chief object to divide and isolate the Roman
legions, finally crushed them by the weight of numbers.
[Illustration: Fig. 34.--German and Gallic Auxiliaries, one
wearing Trousers (_Braccæ_), and the other a Tunic.--From a
Roman Monument of the Second Century.]
The whole West was stirred up at the tidings of this terrible invasion.
Ætius, the Roman leader among the Gauls, had called to his aid the
confederates of Amorica, the Frank-Salians, whose leader was Merovius,
the Burgundians, the Saxons, and the southern Visigoths, whose king
was Theodoric. This numerous army, composed of excellent troops under
the orders of Ætius, marched to meet the barbarians, and encountered
them in the neighbourhood of Châlons-sur-Marne. The battle lasted three
days, and the defeat of the Huns was complete.
The ferocious Attila, who had called himself the Scourge of God, and
who had run his course like some fatal meteor, leaving in his track
nothing but conflagrations and ruins, expired in the midst of an
orgie in 455. A truceless, unceasing war was still being waged all
over Europe, a sanguinary and implacable war of race and of party.
Political chaos, a chaos that Christianity alone was destined to
regenerate, was at its height in the old world, when, towards the close
of the sixth century, Theodoric, King of the Eastern Goths, who had
protected Byzantium when threatened by the Bulgarians, and who had
remained in the pay of the Emperor Zeno, determined to find occupation
for his warlike and restless subjects by leading them against Odoacer,
the sovereign of the Herulians, who at that time united under his sway
Sicily and the Italian peninsula, but whose subjects were at best but
a ferocious and turbulent mob. The young King of the Goths (he was
only thirty-four years of age) started from the depths of Mœsia (now
Servia), with the consent of the chief of the empire, at the head
of an entire warlike population, to whom he promised the conquest
of Italy. He easily overcame the King of the Herulians; and, having
conquered Italy, he posted his soldiers in the various provinces of
the peninsula, in such a manner that their pay and their rations might
continue to be supplied to them as regularly in peace as in war.
The system of government and administration established by Theodoric
had the advantage of distributing two hundred thousand excellent troops
in the midst of a population which, glad to find itself uncalled
upon for military service, and but little taxed, allowed the work of
the conquest to be consolidated. The _millénaires_ (soldiers of
a battalion numbering a thousand men) occupied with their families
distinct portions of territory, and were bound to hold themselves
under arms, and ready to march, whenever the defence of the country
required it (Fig. 35). Theodoric had already recognised the utility
of urban garrisons. The flower of the country’s youth, organized in
a military manner, flocked to the gymnasium of Ravenna, and the king
himself presided over their exercises. His levies, as regards their
discipline, their instruction, and their equipment, resembled the
ancient legions of Rome. The iron cap, the shield, the broadsword, and
the arrow of the Goths had been replaced by the spear, the javelin,
the helmet, and the cuirass of the Romans. The old soldiers received
from the royal treasury for their services as instructors a particular
grant, which was annually paid to them till they retired altogether
from the profession of arms. When the troops were about to take the
field, the intendants, under the orders of the counts, superintended
the commissariat and the gathering and the march of the different army
corps. The provincial officers had to distribute arms, food, and hay
on the different points of the road that the troops were expected to
follow, and the inhabitants had to provide lodgings--this was the only
military service expected of them, but none could escape it.
[Illustration: Fig. 35.--Military Costume from the Sixth to the
Tenth Centuries.--From a Miniature in the “Dialogues de Saint
Grégoire,” Manuscript of the Eleventh Century (National Library
of Paris).]
The towns were at this time almost always fortified, and entrenched
camps covered nearly the whole of Italy. The castles in the rural
districts, constructed to protect the frontiers, were usually full of
troops, whose support was part of the duty of the pretorial prefect,
and whose insubordination often necessitated severe measures of
repression. “Keep up a spirit of military discipline; it is often
difficult to enforce it under civil rule,” said Theodoric to Servatus,
one of his generals.
If it is a matter of surprise to meet with such a right moral feeling
in the sovereign of reputed barbarians, barbarians half civilised,
however, by their contact with the Latin race, it is not the less so
to find, in the wars which occurred in the years 507, 508, and 509,
other barbarian kings, namely, Alaric, Clovis, Gondebaud, and Thierry,
make use of and apply with skill the rules of Greco-Roman strategy,
either in executing long military manœuvres, or in displaying all the
strategic science that sieges then required, in attacking or defending
the fortified towns of Avignon, of Carcassonne, and of Arles.
[Illustration: Fig. 36.--St. Benedict reproaches Totila with
having deceived him, and predicts his death.--Fresco in the
Church of San Miniato, Florence, painted by Spinelli of Arezzo
(Thirteenth Century).]
[Illustration: Fig. 37.--Moorish Arms from the Eleventh to the
Fourteenth Century: Armlet.--From the Armeria Real, Madrid.]
[Illustration: Fig. 38.--Moorish Arms: Daggers.--Armeria Real,
Madrid.]
[Illustration: Fig. 39.--Moorish Arms: Trident.--Armeria Real,
Madrid.]
In proportion as the preponderance of the Goths (Fig. 36), of the
Ostrogoths, and of the Visigoths diminished in Europe, that of the
Franks and of the Lombards increased. The latter were the first to
institute in Italy the feudal system, founded on the possession of
conquered territory. The conquerors established their camp in the
midst of the vanquished country, seized half the land, reduced into
servitude a portion of the colons, and imposed heavy taxes on those
whom they had not despoiled. The king having at first distributed the
great fiefs among his principal officers, these great vassals then made
a subdivision of the land granted them by their suzerains in favour of
their own men-at-arms and satellites, and these latter, in their turn,
ceded a portion of their lands to the common soldiers. The obligation
of personal service, the hierarchic subordination of vassalage, were
the necessary consequence of feudal institutions.
[Illustration: Fig. 40.--Dagger with Moorish Blade and Flemish
Handle (Fourteenth Century).--Collection of M. Onghena, Ghent.]
In all probability the establishment of the _arrière-ban_, or
the _ban-fieffe_, dates from the sixth century. It was a call to
arms of the vassals that the suzerain alone had a right to command. A
century later, feudalism, which was beginning to establish itself in
Gaul as in Italy, as a consequence of the successful invasion of the
Franks, was nearly stamped out by the Mahometan invasion of the Spanish
Moors, who had been led by their chief, Abderamus, as far as the banks
of the Loire, where they were stopped by Charles Martel, who routed
them with great slaughter.
After the brilliant victory of Poitiers (732), where the repulse of
Arab civilisation left the field open to the defenders of the Christian
faith, and to the originators of the feudal régime, the victorious
army underwent a sudden change. The Frankish knights adopted as an
inheritance of conquest the rich Saracen armour (Figs. 37, 38, 39,
40); the feudal troopers donned a coat of mail, and, henceforward, a
full suit of armour became a necessary accessory to a warrior of high
rank. The bow, which had long been thrown aside, was once more taken
into favour, and became the special arm of the footmen. But we have
exhaustively treated of the armament and equipment of the soldiery of
the period (see the chapter on Armoury in “Art in the Middle Ages”),
and we can only here deal with military tactics and organization; in a
word, with the theoretical part of the art of war.
The reign of Charlemagne, which was one long series of expeditions and
conquests, was naturally favourable to the progress and development of
this art. The Emperor of the Franks, like a man of genius, understood
how to profit by the inventions and creations of his predecessors.
To the warlike traditions of Greece and Rome he added, step by step,
the improvements that were rendered necessary by the nature of the
enemies with whom he had to contend, namely, the Lombards, the Saxons,
&c. He kept up the feudal service of the _ban_; he established
permanent orders of militia, composed of his own serfs and vassals;
but, as soon as he undertook a distant expedition, his auxiliaries,
ten times as numerous as his vassals, rendered his army rather a
German than a French one. He caused a number of fortresses to be
constructed everywhere throughout his vast empire, but he never allowed
his subjects to build any on their own account. Yet he never seems
to have attached any importance, as a protection to his territory,
to the larger enclosed towns, in which he might have held in reserve
considerable depôts of troops. He himself usually resided in rural
residences and in open and unprotected villages, barely guarded by a
few military pickets. At the slightest signal, it is true, a whole
army of _fidèles_ and servitors would have arisen as one man to
defend him; but under no circumstances would he have consented to
await his enemy under the shelter of fortifications; he was always the
true primeval German, seeking for his field of battle the open plain
rather than the hillside, preferring cavalry to infantry, and a direct
struggle, a hand-to-hand fight, to encounters at a distance, waged
and won by the missiles of the slinger and the shafts of the bowmen.
His principal victories were gained in the open country, where he was
enabled to deploy his masses of mailed horsemen; he never willingly
sat down before a stronghold, a circumstance which shows that he was
aware of his want of skill in the conduct of a siege; and he was never
fortunate in mountain warfare, as was evidenced in the disastrous day
of Roncevaux (778), which cast a shadow over the last years of his life.
Thirty years after the death of the great emperor, the treaty of
Mersen (847) freed the great vassals from the obligation of answering
the summonses of the sovereign, and of rushing to arms at his appeal,
unless for the purpose of defending the State, and substituted the
practice of furnishing armed contingents, whose services were to
be rendered for a fixed period, settled beforehand. Infeudation--a
kind of political and pecuniary contract, in virtue of which a fief
was subdivided into several smaller ones--perpetuated the feudal
_régime_, each man becoming _the man_ of another man, bound
to place himself at his disposal in time of war, and to be ready to
start on any expedition at his command, and according to the wishes of
his immediate seignior.
[Illustration: Fig. 41.--Bishop Eudes, holding his baton of
office, encouraging the young soldiers of the Duke of Normandy
at the Battle of Hastings.--Military Costumes of the Eleventh
Century, from the Bayeux Tapestry.]
During the tenth century this régime grew stronger and stronger. The
oath of infeudation, or the act of homage, remained a sacred tie
between the seignior and the vassal. This homage involved the rendering
of numerous feudal services, such as those of the _ban_, and of
the _arrière-ban_, those rendered by the servitors of different
ranks, known as bachelors, clients, esquires, bannerets, men-at-arms,
barons, &c., names already ancient, but whose rank and place in battle
were only determined on the day when they were all grouped and posted,
each under his special banner or _gonfanon_, a distinction that
implied a separate kind of equipment for each.
Thus the vassals were in the power of the seignior, who, having the
right to dispose of their military services, enjoyed the right of
_reize_--a right that gave him the power of assembling and leading
to battle a certain number of feudal groups. “Obey my summons, or I
will burn you!”[2] were the words of the seignior in the _ban_
published by the crier, and, at the second summons, the sound of the
trumpet rang out in the cross roads, in the streets, and in the country
places, calling the men to arms. To fail to answer the call of the
_ban_ was to commit a crime of the worst character.
[Illustration: Fig. 42.--After the Battle of Hastings (14th
October, 1066), the relatives of the vanquished came to carry
away their dead. The body of the Saxon King, Harold, is taken
to Waltham by the monks of that monastery. In the background
is seen Battle Abbey, founded by Duke William on the site of
the battle.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Chroniques
de Normandie.” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the
possession of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]
In the great expedition of William, Duke of Normandy, against the
Anglo-Saxons (1066), he had no other auxiliaries than his Norman
vassals and subjects. He conquered Harold and took possession of
England with a numerous and trained army, furnished with terrible
warlike machines and engines (Figs. 41 and 42). The Norman Conquest
was, to a certain extent, a prelude to the Crusades, for those
raids across the seas, repeated from time to time for more than two
centuries, bore no resemblance to the barbarian invasions, either
Saracen or Norman, which had been previously recorded in history.
New measures, inspired by the circumstances of the times, were the
consequence of the general crumbling to pieces of all the Eastern
nations; among these may be mentioned the establishment of the communal
militia, which set out for a campaign accompanied by its spiritual
pastors, and received the last offices of religion at their hands
on the field of battle; the regular pay allowed to those who were
destitute of private resources (a knight received at first ten sous a
day--equivalent to ten francs of modern money--and a squire received
five); the chartering of ships intended for the transport of troops;
the system of commissariat for armies in the field; and the supply of
military equipments, arms, &c.
This communal militia, sprung from the freeing of the communes, and
detachments of _soudoyers_, or paid troops, soon grew into a standing
army, which was formally incorporated for the first time by Louis le
Jeune about 1140, and increased by Philip Augustus, who added to it
the affiliated knights. Under the latter sovereign, an army in the
field presented three ranks of combatants--_bannerets_, _knights_,
and _squires_, to whom were added the _men-at-arms_. A motley crew of
_varlets_ on foot, without officers or discipline, followed the troops,
and hovered about them during an engagement, picking up the spoil of
the conquered, and killing the wounded with clubs or battle-axes,
called _glaives de mercy_.
The disasters of the Crusaders in the East, after two centuries of
useless heroism and tremendous efforts, were principally due to the
defects in their military administration, which foresaw nothing, and
was incapable of adjusting itself to the difficulties inherent to a
war in a distant and almost unknown land whither the enthusiastic
crowds who wore the cross bent their adventurous steps. Famine, plague,
leprosy, and fever destroyed the Christian armies on their journey to
Palestine, and during their stay there; and these evils would have
been greater still had it not been for the creation of the different
military orders which sprang into existence under the pressure of these
almost inevitable calamities, and which supplied hospital attendants,
chaplains, and soldiers. The continuation of the feudal wars (Fig. 43)
in Europe gave the last blow to the disorganization of the armies of
Christ.
[Illustration: Fig. 43.--Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England
and Duke of Normandy, mortally wounded by an arrow shot by
Bertrand de Gourdon, at the Siege of the Castle of Chalus, in
Limousin (1199).--“Chroniques de Normandie,” Manuscript of the
Fifteenth Century (Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot).]
[Illustration: Fig. 44.--Soldier of the Time of Philippe le
Bel.--Miniature in a Manuscript of the Period (National Library
of Paris).]
[Illustration: Fig. 45.--Man-at-arms with a _pot de fer_
with nose-piece, a coat of mail over his leather tunic, and armed
with a short broadsword.--From a Miniature in the “Dialogues de
Saint Grégoire,” a Manuscript of the Eleventh Century, in the
National Library of Paris.]