BOOK II CHAPTER I

Five years after the battle of Agincourt the religious wars in Bohemia had given birth to one of the great soldiers of the world's history, John Zizka, the blind general of the Hussites. His military genius, quickened by fanaticism and spurred by the stern necessity of encountering an enemy always superior in numbers and equipment, had led him to ideas which were far in advance of his age. A master in organisation and discipline, he had evolved literally out of nothing the most famous army of its day in Europe, and by inexhaustible activity and resource had rendered it invincible. Beginning with such rude material of war as waggons and flails, and with no more skilful men than poor Bohemian peasants, he matured a system of tactics which defeated not only the chivalry of Europe but even the light irregular cavalry, soon to become famous as hussars, of Hungary. As victory supplied him with the means of procuring better arms, he rose rapidly to the occasion. Throwing all military pedantry to the winds he fought as his own genius dictated, and in the rapidity of his movements and unrelenting swiftness with which he followed up a victory he bears comparison with Napoleon. He was the first man to make artillery a man?uvrable arm, the first to execute complicated evolutions in the face of an enemy, and the first to handle cavalry, infantry, and artillery in efficient tactical combination. The employment of waggons for defence we have already seen copied by the English[82] at the battle of the Herrings, but Zizka's influence[42] spread far wider than this by breaking down the strength of European chivalry, and showing that drill, discipline, and mobility could make the poorest peasant more than a match for the armoured knight.
1382.

Zizka, however, had not been the first to deal a blow at the supremacy of feudal cavalry. The English archers and dismounted men-at-arms had been before him, and another power, which was destined to abolish that supremacy for ever, had been in some respects the predecessor even of the English. Allusion has already been made to the victory of the Swiss over the Austrian chivalry at Sempach; from that day it may be said that they began their advance to the highest military reputation of Europe. Appointed from the ruggedness of their country as well as by their own poverty to fight rather on their own feet than on horseback, cut off in great measure by the same causes from the feudalism that had overrun the rest of Europe, they were by nature destined to be infantry, and as infantry they developed their fighting system. Beginning like all primitive foot-men in all countries with the simple weapons of shield, spear, and axe, they improved upon them to meet their own peculiar wants. The problem before them was, how to defeat mounted men mailed from head to foot in the open field, how to keep the horses at a distance and cut through the iron shells that protected the men. The instinct of a Teutonic nation led them to give first attention to the cutting weapon. The English had turned their axes into broad-bladed bills; the Flemings had gone further and produced the godendag, a weapon good alike for cut and thrust; the Swiss, improving upon the godendag, invented the halberd, which combined a hook for pulling men out of the saddle, a point to thrust between the joints of their armour, and a broad heavy blade, the whole being set on the head of an eight-foot shaft.[83] The weight of the halberd made it, as an old chronicler[43] says, a terrific weapon, "cleaving men asunder like a wedge and cutting them into small pieces." Altogether it was calculated to surprise galloping gentlemen who thought themselves invulnerable in their armour.
1422.
1444.
1476.
1477.
1515.
1522, 1525.

But the halberd did not solve the problem of keeping horses at a distance. For this purpose the primitive spear was lengthened more and more till it finally issued in the long pike, the pike of the eighteen-foot shaft, which for nearly two centuries ruled the battlefields of Europe. The birthplace of the long pike is obscure,[44] but it was undoubtedly first brought into prominence by the Swiss, and that by a series of brilliant actions. Arbedo attested the firmness of the new infantry in the field; St. Jacob-en-Birs, where the Swiss detached sixteen hundred men to fight against fifty thousand, its boundless confidence; and finally the three crushing defeats of Charles the Bold at Granson, Morat, and Nancy, established its reputation as invincible. For action the Swiss were generally formed in three bodies, van, battle, and rear—the van and rear being each of half the strength of the battle or main body. These bodies were always of a very deep formation, and if not actually square were very solidly oblong. Occasionally the whole were massed into one gigantic battalion in order that the proportion of pikes to halberds, which was about one to three, might go further in securing immunity from the attack of cavalry. The van, from the desperate nature of its work, was called the Verlorener Hauf, from which is derived our own term, not yet wholly extinct, forlorn hope.[45] As regards discipline [84]the Swiss appear to have been orderly and sober men until spoiled by the multitude of their successes, but at the last they became intolerably insubordinate. The cantons indeed were so deeply bitten with the military mania, that all great occasions, feasts, fairs, and even weddings, were made the occasion of some form of military display, while the very children turned out with drums, flags, and pikes, and marched with all the order and regularity of full-grown soldiers. In fact fighting became the regular trade of Switzerland, and as her people enjoyed for a time a practical monopoly of that trade they soon became grasping and avaricious, and would dictate to generals under threat of mutiny when and where they should fight, select their own position in the order of battle, and open the action at such time as they thought proper. Their officers lost control of them, and would plaintively say that if they could but enforce obedience in their men they would march through France from end to end. This insubordination was their ruin. The French, who were their chief employers, at last lost all patience with them, and gave them at Marignano a lesson which they did not speedily forget. The suppression of this mutiny, which was in fact a two days' battle of the most desperate description, cost the Swiss twelve thousand men; and it speaks volumes for the fine qualities that were in them that the defeat attached them more closely than ever to the cause of France. But the spell of their invincibility was broken, and two more severe defeats at the hands of a rival infantry at Bicocca and Pavia destroyed their prestige for ever. Nevertheless they were superb soldiers, and as their good fortune delivered them from a meeting with the English archers, who would certainly have riddled their huge bristling battalion through and through, they became as they deserved the fathers of modern infantry. Let it be noted that they marched in step to the music of fife and drum, that they carried[85] a colour in each company, and that several of the cantons carried a huge horn, whose sound was the signal for all to rally around it.

It was not to be expected that the Swiss should long enjoy their monopoly as the infantry of Europe without exciting competition. In the last quarter of the fifteenth century arose the rivals who were to wrest their supremacy from them, namely, the landsknechts of Swabia, or as the contemporary English called them, the lance-knights of Almain, who were the direct forerunners of the modern German infantry. The records that survive of them are very full, and as it was through them that the teaching of the Swiss was carried into England, with results that are visible to this day, a brief study of their history is essential to the right understanding of the history of our own army.

The Swabian infantry was called into existence by the imperative necessity for preventing any potentate who might be so fortunate as to enlist the Swiss, from dictating his will to Europe. Swabia being the province next adjoining Switzerland was not unnaturally the first to learn the methods of her neighbour; and though at first all fighting men who imitated the tactics and equipment of the mountaineers were known by the generic name of Swiss, yet the Swabians, as if from the first to point the distinction between them and their rivals, took the name of landsknechts, men of the plain, as opposed to men of the mountains. Maximilian the First, seeing how valuable such a force would be in the eternal contest of the House of Hapsburg against the House of Valois, more particularly since the Swiss were the firm allies of the French, gave them all possible countenance and encouragement; and very soon the landsknechts grew into one of the weightiest factors on the battlefields of Europe. Though mercenaries like the Swiss and the still earlier bands of Braban?ons, and as such engaged on all sides and in all countries, they yet cherished not a little national sentiment; and[86] the greatest of all their work was done in the service of the Empire.

When therefore the emperor needed infantry he issued a commission to some leader of repute to enlist for him a corps of landsknechts. The colonel[46] thus chosen thereupon selected a deputy or lieutenant-colonel and captains[47] according to the number of men required, and bade them help him to raise his regiment. Then the fifes and drums were sent into the district, with a copy of the Emperor's commission, to gather recruits. The recruits came, gave in their names and birthplaces to the muster-master, were informed of the time and place of assembly, and received a piece of money,[48] conduct-money as the English called it, to pay the expense of his journey thither and to bind the bargain. Here we draw a step closer to the Queen's shilling. At the assembly the men were formed in two ranks, facing inwards. An arch[49] was built by planting two halberds into the ground and laying a pike across them, and then every man passed singly beneath it under the eye of the muster-master and of his assistants, who watched every one sharply, rejecting all who were physically deficient or imperfectly armed, and above all taking care that no man should pass through twice, nor the same arms be shown by two different men. For captains were still unscrupulous, and were ever striving to show more men on their roll than they could produce in the flesh, and put the pay that they drew for them into their own pockets. So old was the trick and so deep-rooted the habit, that even in Hawkwood's bands the legitimate method of increasing a captain's pay was to allow him a certain number of fictitious men, called mortes payes (dead heads), and permit him to draw wages for them. [87]This practice in a legitimised form continued in our own army within the memory of living men.

Four hundred men was the usual number assigned to a company[50] of landsknechts, but there was as yet no certainty either in the strength of companies themselves or in the number of them that were comprised within a regiment. The muster[51] over, the men formed a ring round the colonel, who read aloud to them the conditions of service and the rate of pay, including under the former all the ordinary points of discipline. The men thereupon raised their hands, and with three fingers uplifted, swore by the Trinity that they would obey. The colonel then called into the ring the officers whom he had selected to be ensigns,[52] and delivered to each the colour of his company, exhorting him to defend it to the death. Nor must it be supposed that the ensign was then the beardless boy with which our own later experience has accustomed us to identify the title. He was rather a hardened, grizzled old warrior, who could be trusted at all critical times to rally the men around him. Pursuant to Oriental tradition, the fife and drum of each company were under the ensign's immediate orders, so that the position of the colour might always be known by sound if not by sight. The flag itself, which gave the officer his title, bore some colour or device chosen by the colonel, and among the landsknechts was always very large and voluminous, probably to contrast with the flags of the Swiss, which were the smallest in Europe. The landsknechts prided themselves on the grace and skill with which they handled these huge banners, and indeed all the dandyism (if the term may be allowed) observable in later years in the manipulation of the colour may be traced to them.

This ceremony over, the various companies separated [88]and formed each a distinct ring round its captain and ensign. The captain then selected his lieutenant,[53] and calling him under the colours bade the men obey him. He then chose also his chaplain and quartermaster, and having added to these a surgeon his patronage was exhausted. The men were then handed over to the senior non-commissioned officer,[54] a very important person, who was responsible for all drill and for the posting of all guards, and received his appointment directly from the colonel. Under his guidance the company elected a sergeant, who then in turn selected himself an assistant;[55] the assistant then chose a reconnoitrer,[56] and the reconnoitrer a quartermaster-sergeant. Finally, the company was distributed into files[57] of ten men apiece, which selected each of them a file-leader,[58] who, though he received no extra pay, enjoyed certain privileges within his file, such as the right to a bed to himself in quarters and the like. With his election, the file being the unit of the company, the hierarchy was complete.

It is unnecessary to trouble the reader with a list of the regimental staff, but a word must be said of the provost. His principal function was the maintenance of discipline, for which purpose he was provided with a staff of gaolers and an executioner, and his title is still attached to the same duties in the English army of to-day. But apart from this, it was his office to fix the tariff of prices of goods sold by the sutlers who accompanied the regiment. It was a most difficult and dangerous duty, for if he fixed the price too high the men became discontented and mutinous, and if too low the sutlers deserted the camp and left it to provide for itself, which was an alternative little less [89]formidable than the other. In consideration of the perils of his office the provost received certain perquisites in addition to his salary, such as the tongue of every beast slaughtered and an allowance for every cask broached, and even so was none too well paid.[59] It is hardly necessary to point out that in this commercial side of the provost's duties there lies the germ of our modern canteen, wherein the practice of taking perquisites, though strictly forbidden, still prevails among canteen-stewards.

The duties of another officer, whose name must be written down in the original, the Hurenweibel, show the early methods of coping with a difficulty which particularly besets our Indian army. Every regiment of landsknechts was accompanied by a number of followers on the march; and although by strict rule no woman was allowed to accompany a man except his lawful wife, yet we hear without surprise that there were many women following the colours whose status was not recognised by the rule above referred to. The poor creatures led a hard life. The washing, cooking, scavenging, and all manner of unpleasant duties, as well as the more congenial task of nursing the sick and wounded, was entrusted to them, and in case of a siege they were required to make the fascines and gabions. Their masters treated them very brutally, and as every colonel naturally wished to cut down their numbers as low as possible, no pains were spared to make their lives a burden to them. Over all this rabble the Hurenweibel was king, the sceptre of his office being a thick stick called a "straightener,"[60] which he used unmercifully. Yet these followers loved the life and tramped after their lords all over Europe, increasing their numbers as they went; the boys as they grew up being employed to carry [90]the men's weapons or harness on the march. Such boys, or rather fags, were called in French goujats, and are a curious feature in the armies of the time. The greatest of all goujats, if legend may be trusted, was Thomas Cromwell, the Hammer of the Monks.

For the trial of military offences a board of justices accompanied each distinct body, but there were some corps of landsknechts that enjoyed the privilege of the trial of the long pikes,[61] which gave the rank and file sole jurisdiction in respect of crimes that brought disgrace on the regiment. In such cases the provost laid his complaint; and the ensigns, thrusting their flags point downward into the ground, vowed that they would never fly them again until the blot on the fair name of the regiment was removed. The culprit was then tried according to a certain fixed procedure by his comrades alone, without the intervention of any officer. If he were found guilty, the men drew themselves up in two ranks, north and south, facing inwards; the ensigns, with colours flying, posted themselves at the east end of the lane thus formed, and the prisoner was brought to the west. The ensigns then exhorted him to play the man and make bravely for the colours, and the provost, clapping him thrice on the shoulder in the name of the Trinity, bade him run. Then the doomed man plunged into the lane, and every comrade plied pike and halberd and sword on him as he passed. The swifter he ran the sooner came the end, and as he lay hewn, mangled, and bleeding, gasping out his life, his comrades kneeled down together and prayed God to rest his soul. Then all rose and filed in silence three times round the corpse, and at the last the musketeers fired over it three volleys in the name of the Trinity.

The strength of a regiment of landsknechts varied very greatly. There might be thirty companies or there might be ten; the total force sometimes reached ten or twelve thousand men, and in such a case was frequently strengthened by a contingent of artillery. The weapons[91] were the pike, the halberd, and a proportion of firearms, which last tended constantly to increase. Every man found his own arms, and the dress of the landsknechts, being that which it pleased each man best to wear, was generally both fantastic and extravagant, for they had all the soldier's ambition to let their light shine before women. Maximilian's courtiers were so jealous of their gorgeous apparel that they begged him to forbid it, but the emperor was far too sensible to do anything so foolish. "Bah!" he said, "this is the cheese with which we bait our trap to catch such mice," a sentiment which English officers will still endorse. Not all the prejudices of dying feudalism could induce Maximilian to discourage his new infantry; on the contrary, meeting a regiment once on the march he dismounted, shouldered a pike, and marched with them for the rest of the day. It is worth noting that the drum-beat of the landsknechts, whereof they were extremely proud, probably the selfsame beat as that to which Maximilian strode along that day, still preludes the marches of our own military bands.[62]

The drill of the landsknechts was probably crude enough. There was no exercise for pike or halberd, and there is no sign of the complicated man?uvres that were so common at the opening of the seventeenth century; but as they always fought, like the Swiss, in huge masses, there was probably little occasion for these. The men fell in by files, probably at sufficient distance and interval to allow every man to turn right or left about on his own ground; but for action they were closed up tight in vast battalions far too unwieldly for any evolution. Moreover, few of the officers knew anything of drill. They were selected for bravery and experience, no doubt, in some cases, but not for military knowledge; and it is the more probable that the colonels, according to custom, sold the position of officer to the highest bidder, since Maximilian could[92] rarely furnish them with money for their preliminary expenses. The one duty expected without fail of officers was that they should be foremost in the fight, and as a rule they one and all took their place in the front rank with the colonel for centre, and, armed like their men, showed the way into the enemy's battalion. Not one remained on a horse in action, though he might ride regularly on the march; and indeed the landsknechts disliked to see an officer mounted on anything larger than a pony at any time, admitting no reason for an infantry-man to ride a good horse except that he might run away the faster. The duties of officers being thus defined, it is easy to see why the colonel reserved to himself the appointment of the colour-sergeants, for they were practically the only men who knew anything of drill or man?uvre. The colonel might prescribe the formation of his battalion for action, but only the colour-sergeants could execute it; and hence arose the rule that sergeants should be armed with no weapon but a halberd, since any heavier weapon would impede them in the eternal running up and down the ranks which was imposed on them by their peculiar duty. The influence of these traditions was still visible in our army until quite recently. But a few years have passed since sergeants shouldered their rifles as though they carried a different weapon from the men, and officers have only lately ceased to depend on them greatly in matters of drill.

Such was the new infantry of Europe at the close of the fifteenth and the opening of the sixteenth centuries, not yet perfected, but advancing rapidly to an efficiency and importance such as had for many centuries been unknown in Europe. And now the nations poured down into the fair land of Italy to teach each other in that second birthplace of all arts the new-born art of war. France was the first that came; and few armies have caused greater wonder in Europe than that which marched with Charles the Eighth through Florence in 1496. The work begun for the expulsion of the[93] English from France had been steadily continued. Louis the Eleventh had hired Swiss sergeants to drill his infantry, and Picardie, the senior regiment of the old French line, was already in potential existence. But it was not these, but other men who set the Florentines at gaze. For there were to be seen the Scottish archers, the finest body-guard alike for valour and for stature in the world, the Swiss, marching by with stately step and incredible good order, the chivalrous gentlemen of France, mailed from top to toe and gorgeous in silken tabards, riding in all the pride of Agincourt avenged, mounted archers less heavy but more workmanlike as befitted light cavalry, and lastly a great train of brass artillery, cannons and culverins, and falcons, the largest weighing six thousand pounds and mounted on four wheels, the smallest made for shot no bigger than a doctor's pills and travelling on two wheels only. Already the quick-witted French had thought out the principle of the limber, and had made two wheels of their heavy guns removable. Already too they had trained the drivers of the lighter ordnance to move as swiftly as light cavalry.[63]

We cannot follow this army through the triumphs and the disasters of the next half century, but we must needs glance briefly at the rapid progress of French military organisation. Louis the Twelfth took the improvement of his foot-soldiers seriously in hand and increased the number of the companies, or bands as they were called, that had been begun by the bands of Picardy. The number of these bands, permanent and temporary, demanded the appointment of an officer who should be intermediary between the general and the captains of independent companies. About the year 1524 such an officer was established with the new title of colonel,[64] and [94]the companies placed under his command were said, in French, to be under his regiment. The word soon grew to be used in a collective sense, and such and such companies under Colonel A.'s regiment became known simply as Colonel A.'s regiment. The colonel had a company of his own, but having no leisure to attend to it made it over to a captain, who was called the colonel's lieutenant or lieutenant-colonel. Another company was commanded by the sergeant-major, the word sergeant, which we met with first at the very beginning, having come into use in France with a new meaning in the year 1485. As already mentioned in speaking of the landsknechts, the name of sergeant became for some reason bound up with the functions of drill, and the sergeant-major was to the regiment what the sergeant was to the company. He was therefore the only officer who remained on his horse in action, his duties compelling him continually to gallop from company to company for the correction of bad formation, and for the ordering of ranks and files. It will be seen that the sergeant-major, or as we now call him major, originally did the work which is now performed in England by the adjutant.

Captain was of course an old title, and had been used for the chief of a band in France ever since 1355, having been borrowed possibly from the free companies. The captain's locum tenens or lieutenant had been instituted by the reforms of Charles the Seventh in 1444, and together with him his standard-bearer or ensign,[65] but there were other junior officers who came later even than the colonels to supplement the new military vocabulary. In 1534 we encounter for the first time fouriers, caps d'escouade, and lancepessades. The first of these, which existed for a time in the corrupted form furrier,[95] has passed from the English language.[66] The second is the French form of the Italian capo de squadra, head of the square, a reminiscence of the days when men were formed into square blocks, squads or squadrons, which passed into caporal and so into our English corporal. The third, again a French form of the Italian lanz pesato, signified originally a man-at-arms whose horse had been killed and who was therefore compelled to march with the foot. Being a superior person, he was not included among the common infantry-men but held this distinctive and superior rank, whence in due time was derived the prefix of lance to the titles of sergeant and corporal. Finally, in the year 1550 foot-soldiers in France began to be called by the collective name of fanterie or infanterie. This word, too, was a corruption from the Italian, for Italian commanders used to speak of their troops as their boys, fanti, and collectively as fanteria; and from them the term passed into all the languages of Europe. Nothing could better commemorate the situation of Italy in the sixteenth century as at once the cockpit of the nations and the school of the new art of war.

But before leaving France there is another aspect of her military institutions to be touched on. After the death of Francis the First, and particularly during the period of the religious wars, the discipline and tone of the French army underwent woeful deterioration. Captains from the first had been proprietors of their companies, which indeed were sometimes sold at auction by the colonel to the highest bidder; and, as they received a bounty in proportion to the numbers that they could show on their rolls, the rascality and corruption were appalling. The enforcement of strict discipline was bound to cause desertion, and every deserter meant a man the less on the captain's roll and a sum the less in the captain's pocket. No effort therefore was made to restrain the misbehaviour of soldiers when[96] off duty; they were allowed to rob and plunder at their own sweet will, and they had the more excuse since they were encouraged thus to indemnify themselves for the pay stolen from them by their officers. This recognised system of pillage was known as picorée,[67] a word which has passed through the English language in the form of pickeer. Yet another method there was among many of falsifying the muster-rolls, namely on the day of inspection to collect any yokels or men that could be found, thrust a pike into their hands, and present them as soldiers. They were duly passed by the muster-master, and as soon as his back was turned were dismissed, having served their purpose of securing their pay for the illicit gain of the captain till next muster. Such men were called passe-volans, a word which also was received into the military terminology of Europe, and like mortes-payes received at last official recognition. It must not be thought that such abuses were confined to France, but it is significant that she was the country to find names for them.[68] Nor must the reader be unduly impatient over the mention of these details in the military history of foreign nations. The English soldier for the next century and more is going to school, where like all pupils he will learn both good and evil; and it is impossible to follow his progress unless we know something of his schoolfellows as well as of his tutors.
1495.
Atella, 1496.
1503.
1512.

Last of the nations let us glance at Spain, at the close of the fifteenth century just emerging triumphant from eight centuries of warfare against the Moors and girding herself for a great and magnificent career. Her training in war had been against an Oriental foe, swift, active, and cunning, and it is not surprising that when first she entered the field of Italy and met the massive columns of the Swiss at Seminara she should [97]have given way before them. But at the head of the Spanish troops was a man of genius, Gonsalvo of Cordova, who was quick to learn from his enemies. Confining himself for a time to the guerilla warfare which he understood the best, he mingled pikes among the short swords and bucklers which were the distinctive weapons of the Spanish infantry, and within a year had gained his first victory over the Swiss. His next campaign found him with a body of landsknechts in his pay, when he quickly perceived the possibilities that lay not only in the pikes but still more in the fire-arms which they brought with them. Before the year was past he had routed Swiss infantry and French cavalry in two brilliant actions at Cerignola and on the Garigliano, and fairly driven them out of Naples. He then set himself to remodel the Spanish foot by the experience which he had gathered in his later campaigns, and this with full appreciation of the moral and physical peculiarities of his countrymen. Thus though it was in the Spanish tongue that the pike was first named the queen of weapons, yet the value of the sword in the hand of a supple active people was never overlooked, and at Ravenna no less than Cerignola the rush of nimble stabbing Spaniards under the hedge of pikes had proved fatal to the lumbering unwieldy Teuton.
1522.
1525.

Still more remarkable was the rapid development of the power of musketry in Spanish hands. At Bicocca the Marquis Pescayra met the attack of a gigantic Swiss battalion by drawing up a number of small squares or squadrons of Spanish arquebusiers in front of his own battalion of pikes. His instructions were that not a shot should be fired without orders, a fact that points to early excellence in what is now called fire-discipline, but that each front rank should fire a volley by word of command and having done so should file away to the rear to reload, leaving the remaining ranks to do the like in succession. The results of this man?uvre were disastrous to the Swiss; and this ingenious method of maintaining a continuous fire of[98] musketry was the law in Europe for the next century and a half. In fact, if it were necessary to fix an arbitrary date for the first really effective use of small fire-arms in the battlefield the day of Bicocca might well be selected. But we must not fail to note concurrently the drill and discipline which made Pescayra's evolution possible. Three years later, at the famous battle of Pavia, this same skilful soldier attempted a still bolder innovation with his arquebusiers, and with astonishing success. Being threatened with a charge of French heavy cavalry (men-at-arms) he deployed fifteen hundred of his marksmen in skirmishing order before his front, who, taking advantage of every shelter and moving always with great nimbleness and activity, maintained a galling fire as the cavalry advanced, and finally, taking refuge under the pikes of the battalions which were drawn up in their support, smashed the unfortunate French as effectively as the English archers at Cre?y. In truth, the effect of this daring experiment on military minds in Europe was hardly less than that of Cre?y itself. Henry, Duke of Guise,[69] an excellent soldier, was so much struck by its success that he showed how the principle might be indefinitely extended and find ultimate shape, as many years later it did, in the formation of distinct corps of light-infantry. His own attempt to organise such a body in France was however a failure, and the Spanish arquebusiers long held their own as the first in Europe, a proud position which they had most worthily gained.

The remarkable prowess of the Spanish infantry soon made it popular with the nation. The cavalry, in the palmy days of chivalry the most gorgeous in Europe, lost its attraction for the young nobles, who enrolled themselves as private soldiers in the ranks of the foot, and carried pike and arquebus with the meanest of the people. Charles the Fifth himself once shouldered a piece, and marched, like Maximilian, in[99] the ranks, until ordered by the commander-in-chief[70] of his own appointment not to expose himself to unnecessary danger, when like a good soldier he at once obeyed orders. And this leads us to another eminent feature of the Spaniards, the excellence of their discipline. English and French contemporary writers[71] agreed that they owed their victories to nothing else but obedience and good order, for that they were not in themselves remarkable as a fighting people. "I am persuaded," says Roger Williams, "that ten thousand of our nation would beat thirty thousand of theirs out of the field, excepting some three thousand [the choicest of the army] that are in the Low Countries." Gonsalvo was the man who had laid the foundation of this discipline, and it was worthily maintained by his successors. Charles the Fifth went so far in his respect for it as always to salute the gallows whenever he happened to pass them. And yet there are no signs of extraordinary brutality in the Spanish army, but on the contrary most remarkable tokens of good fellowship between officers and men, and of healthy esprit de corps. There was a system of comradeship which was the envy of all Europe. The two officers of each company, the captain and ensign,[72] would each take to themselves and entertain from three to six comrades from the young nobles who served in the ranks; sergeants would also take one or two such comrades, and the privates formed little messes among themselves in like manner, with the result, unique in those days, that fighting and brawling were unknown in a Spanish camp. Quite as striking was the pride which the old soldiers took in themselves and their profession. It is recorded that a party of Spanish recruits, who had arrived at Naples, ragged, slovenly, and unkempt, and were staring about them in a clownish and unsoldierly fashion, were at once taken in hand by the old soldiers, who lent them [100]good clothes, made them tidy, and taught them proper manners.[73]

For the rest the Spaniards originated a system which, though it now seems obvious enough, was in those days a new thing. It consisted simply in the maintenance of a nucleus, or as we should now call it a dep?t, of trained men sufficiently numerous to teach recruits their duty. All recruits were trained in the garrisons at home, and from thence passed into the ranks of the regiment wherein they were needed; and every draft so disposed of was immediately replaced by an equal number of new recruits. When it is remembered that, according to the ideas of the time, seven thousand trained infantry and three thousand cavalry were judged sufficient to leaven an army of fifty thousand men, the strength which her system of recruiting gave to Spain is not easily exaggerated. The trained regiments of Spanish infantry were but four, and their united strength did not exceed seven thousand men, but their ranks were always full. The number of companies into which they were distributed was uncertain, and the strength of the companies themselves varied from one hundred and fifty to three hundred men, a curious defect in the most perfect organisation of the time. Lastly, the Spanish regiments were known by the name of tercios,[74] a term with which the reader must not quarrel, as he will encounter it on the battlefield of Naseby.
1475.
1567.

Not less remarkable than their forwardness in organisation and discipline was the ready quickness of the Spaniard in the improvement of fire-arms. The primitive hand-gun, as I have already said, differed little except in size from the smaller cannon of the time. It consisted simply of a barrel with a vent at the top, and though indeed attached to a wooden stock had no lock of any description. Hand-guns were often made so [101]short that they could be held even by a mounted man with one hand and fired with the other. Match-cord or tinder for purposes of firing the charge by the vent was already in full use. The next step was to increase the length of the barrel and support it on a forked rest, a plan introduced by the Spaniards at Charles the Fifth's invasion of the Milanese in 1521. Ten years later a vast stride was made by the substitution of a pan at the side of the barrel for a vent at the top, and by the addition of a grip to the stock to hold the match-cord, which was brought in contact with the pan by pressing a trigger. In a word, the barrel was fitted with a lock. An extremely ingenious Italian in the French service, Filippo Strozzi, then took the improvement of fire-arms in hand, copying however, as always, from the Spanish model. The bore of the harquebus (for the primitive German hakenbuchse had by this time found its permanent corrupted form) was by him enlarged to bear a heavier charge and carry a larger bullet; and so perfect was the workmanship of the Milanese gunsmiths whom he employed that he succeeded in killing a man at four hundred and a horse at five hundred paces. The stock being long and the recoil very severe, men suffered not a little from bruises and contusions with this weapon; but its efficiency was proved. Strozzi also introduced another Spanish improvement, namely the practice of making all his arquebuses of one bore, which, though it now sounds obvious enough, waited for some years to find general acceptance in Europe. Hence the weapons were known as arquebuses of calibre, which phrase in England was soon shortened simply to calivers. These however were arms of small bore:[75] it was, as usual, the Spaniards who were the first to arm their infantry with muskets[76] of large calibre. Alva was the man who [102]introduced them, and the rebels of the Low Countries the first who felt their power. It needed but the substitution of a flint-lock for a match, and the abolition of the rest, to turn this weapon into Brown Bess, never so famous in English hands as in the battlefields of Alva's home. Bandoliers and cartridges had long been known to the Spaniards, and even to the French[77] before the middle of the sixteenth century, so that the general progress in arms and equipment was rapid.

But the weapons had hardly been improved for infantry before cavalry also began to crave for them. The simplest method of course was to place pike and arquebus in the hands of mounted men and turn them into mounted infantry, which was duly done in the French army by Piero Strozzi in 1543, and has earned him the title of the father of dragoons.[78] But still earlier in the century there had grown up in Germany a new kind of cavalry, called by the simple name of Reiters, which had perfected the smaller fire-arms, the petronel[79] and the pistol, and had finally adopted the latter for its principal weapon. The result was an important revolution in the whole tactics of cavalry.
1554.

Mention has already been made of the abandonment, at the close of the fifteenth century, of the dense column of mounted men-at-arms in favour of the less cumbrous formation in line, or as it was called en haye. The lance being still the principal arm of the cavalry, the freedom of movement gained by the change brought the attack of horse much nearer to the shock-action which is the rule at the present day. The new formation had, however, its disadvantages, for in the imperfect state of military discipline there was no certainty that the whole line would charge home. Retirement was so easy that cowards would drop back, feigning to bleed at the nose, to have lost a stirrup or cast a shoe,[80] while men of spirit, [103]and this was especially true of the impetuous French, would race to be the first into the enemy's squadron, and from premature increase of speed would arrive at the shock in loose order, and with horses blown and exhausted. So well was this defect realised that a shrewd French officer, Gaspard de Tavannes, at the battle of Renty deliberately reverted to the old dense column and overthrew every line that he met.

Yet another cause was contributing to restore the column as the favourite formation for the attack of cavalry. With the steady improvement in fire-arms, the bullet became more and more potent in velocity and penetration, and increasingly difficult to fend off by means of armour. It must never be forgotten that a bullet-wound, for a century and more after the introduction of fire-arms, generally meant death. The primitive surgery of the time, misled by the livid appearance of the edges of the wound, pronounced bullets to be in their nature venomous, and treated the hurt somewhat as a snake's bite, with such tortures of boiling oil and other descriptions of cautery as are sickening even to read of. Wise men took refuge in the virtues of cold water, and kept the surgeons at a safe distance. "Trust a doctor and he will kill you; mistrust him and he will insult you," wrote a Frenchman[81] who had suffered much from the profession. But above all, men relied on prevention rather than cure; so to keep bullets out of their bodies they made their armour heavier and heavier, covering themselves with stithies, to use the words of contemptuous critics,[82] till they could neither endure swift movements themselves nor find horses that could maintain any pace under the burden.[83] It was obvious therefore that if cavalry was to act by shock, the shock must be, as in former days, that of ponderous weight rather than of high speed.

[104]

Moreover, quite apart from all questions of formation there was much in the prevailing tactics of infantry to encourage cavalry to change the lance for the pistol. Huge square battalions, bristling with eighteen-foot pikes and garnished with musketeers, were not easily to be broken by a charge, but presented a large mark at a fairly safe range to the mounted pistolier. Thus all circumstances conspired to favour a great and radical reform in the tactics of cavalry, the change not only from line to column, but from shock to missile action. When once the pistol was recognised as the principal weapon of the horsemen, it was obvious that all other tactical considerations must give way to the maintenance of a continuous fire. To this end there was but one system known, namely the old method of Pescayra, that the front rank should fire first and file away to the rear to reload, leaving successive ranks to come up in its place, and go through the same performance in turn. Plainly, therefore, a reversion to the old dense column, as great in depth as in breadth of front, was imperative. It was accordingly re-introduced, and from its quadrate outline was called by the name of a squadron, which from this period tends to become a term applied exclusively to cavalry. Massed together in such squadrons men could move slowly and steadily, willingly sacrificing speed that they might take the better and surer aim.
1557.

Such was the new principle brought forward early in the sixteenth century by the mounted mercenary bands of Germany, and with ever-increasing success. Very soon the reiters become recognised as a valuable force, and received from Charles the Fifth something of the encouragement that the landsknechts had gained from Maximilian. The military aspirants of the Empire, forsaking the ranks of the once honoured infantry, hastened to enrol themselves among the new horse, and the landsknechts decayed that the reiters might flourish. That the new service was as honourable[105] as the old may be doubted, for the reiters were proverbial for brutality, and their practice of blackening their faces betokens something of a ruffianly spirit; but, be that as it might, they forced their system, in spite of bitter opposition, upon the cavalry of Europe, and from the day of the battle of St. Quentin may be said to have assured their evil supremacy.

It is therefore necessary to glance briefly at their organisation. The tactical unit was the squadron, which was of uncertain strength, varying from one hundred to three or even five hundred men. The officers were a captain,[84] lieutenant, ensign,[85] and quartermaster,[86] and the staff was completed by a chaplain, a sergeant[87] and a trumpeter. As every man brought his own equipment there was no precise uniformity, but it may be assumed as certain that all wore complete defensive armour to the waist, and some even to mid-thigh. For offensive purposes a pistol, or rather a brace of pistols, was indispensable. As in the case of the landsknechts, all matters of drill were the business of the sergeant, but it does not appear that the reiters ever attained great proficiency in man?uvre. Thus in action the successive ranks of the squadron seem to have been unable to file to the rear except to their left, so that it was impossible to post them on the right wing without bringing them into collision with the centre of their own line of battle. The trumpeters, it is worth noting, were required to be masters of but six calls,—Saddle, Mount, Mess, March, Alarm, Charge,—of which the French employed the first two and last two only. We shall presently make further acquaintance with these six calls, but it is sufficient meanwhile to call attention to their existence in the middle of the sixteenth century. The reiters however, should not be forgotten, for though not comparable to the landsknechts for quality as troops, they furnished [106]the model for the first famous regiment of English cavalry.[88]

Lastly, let me close this necessarily brief and imperfect account of the renascence of the art of war by a remark which should perhaps have come first rather than last. Amid all the innovations which went forward during the sixteenth century in the province of armament, classical models reigned supreme in organisation and man?uvre. The whole story of the renascence resembles, if I may be allowed to use the metaphor, a long musical passage in pedal point, on the deep bass note of classical tradition. For this the revival of classical learning was doubtless responsible. When generals celebrated a triumph, as more than one general did, in the Roman manner after a victory, the pageant could hardly be complete without the presence of legions; and when Machiavelli declared that the Swiss tactics were those of the Macedonian phalanx, military students could be in no doubt where to seek out models for their own imitation. Francis the First adopted in 1534 both the name and organisation of the Roman legions for a time, while no military writer omitted to recommend the Roman ideal to aspirants of his profession. Every soldier steeped himself in ancient military lore, and quoted the Hipparchicus of Xenophon[89] and the Tactics of ?lian, the Commentaries of C?sar and the expeditions of Alexander, Epaminondas' heavy infantry and Pompey's discipline. A Frenchman could not even praise the merits of the Englishman as a marine without calling him epibates. In a word Europe for two centuries, went forth to war with the newest pattern of musket in hand, and a brain stocked with maxims from Frontinus and Vegetius and ?neas Poliorceticus, and with examples from Plutarch and Livy and Arrian. She might well have found [107]worse instructors; but their lessons were for the most part imperfectly understood, and their broad principles seldom correctly deduced or intelligently applied. An opportunity was thus afforded for the demon of pedantry, which was eagerly and joyfully seized. Nevertheless, the present armies of Europe still double their ranks and files, by whatever name they may designate the evolution, after the manner prescribed by ?lian, and by him borrowed, it is likely, from the stern martinets of ancient Laced?mon.

Authorities.—The chief authorities for Zizka's campaigns and organisation are ?neas Sylvius, Balbinus, Miscellanea Rerum Bohem. 1679; Dubravius, Hist. Bohem. 1602; Palacky, Gesch. v. B?hmen. His articles of war will be found in Neuere Abhandlungen der k?nigl. B?hm. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaft, Band I. p. 375. For the Swiss, Simler, de Repub. Helvet; John of Winterthur, Pirckheimer, and the Chronicle of Berne. All the authorities for the battle of Sempach have been collected in Liebenau's memorial volume. A fantastic work, but not without useful information, is Karl Bürkli's Der wahre Winkelried, 1886. K?hler has handled both Bohemians and Swiss with his wonted thoroughness. For the landsknechts there are Adam Reissner's Georg von Frundsberg (1st ed. 1568, 3rd ed. 1620); Fronsperger's Kriegsbuch; Hortleder's Der r?mischen Kaiser, etc.; Adelspiegel, von Cyriack Spangenberg, 1594; the whole of which are more or less summarised in Barthold's Georg von Frundsberg, 1833, and in a still more compact form by Dr. Friedrich Blau, Die deutschen Landsknechte, 1882. The Spanish military reforms are more difficult to ascertain. I have relied principally on Roger Williams's brief account, sundry notices in Brant?me's Vie des hommes illustres; Paul Jove's Vita Gonsalvi Magni, and, perhaps most valuable of all, Reissner. For the French there are Daniel's Ancien milice; Susanne's Hist. de l'ancienne infanterie fran?aise; Paul Jove, and the Memoires of Vieilleville, Du Bellay, Villars, de Mergey, de la Noue, Tavannes, Onosandre, Brant?me, Monluc, and others. I have also consulted, among Italian writers, Julius Ferrettus, De re militari, 1575; Domenico Mora, Il soldato, 1570; Savorgnano's Arte militare; and of course Machiavelli. Lastly, I have not failed to study the classical authorities quoted in the text.