Infantry - A Summary

While the Goths, Lombards, and other races which had settled in the plains of Eastern Europe became nations of horsemen, the races which occupied North Germany and Scandinavia were accustomed to fight on foot. Tacitus says that the chief strength of the Germans was in their infantry ; their cavalry was not well mounted, and had no skill in evolutions.^ It was the same with the Franl^s. As described by Agathias in the sixth century, ” they wear neither mail-shirt nor greaves, and their legs are only protected by strips of linen or leather. They have hardly any horsemen, but their foot soldiery are bold and well practised in war. They bear swords and shields, but never use the sling or bow. Their missiles are axes and barbed javelins.” ^ The francisca was their special weapon, as the seax or short sword was the weapon of the Saxons. It was a single-bladed axe with a curved edge, which could be either thrown or wielded, like a tomahawk.

Theodebert, the grandson of Clovis, invaded Italy with an army of 100,000 men in 539 a.d., when Belisarius was at war with the Goths. Both sides made overtures to the king of the Franks, but he fell upon both and scattered them. Fifteen years afterwards the Franks again descended into Italy, but Narses obtained a complete victory over them at Casilinum by means of his mounted archers. Formed in a dense mass, checked in front, and threatened on both flanks, they were a helpless target for arrows for some hours, but at length broke and were cut to pieces. They fared better at the battle of Poictiers (732 a.d.). They stubbornly resisted, “as if they were frozen to the ground,” all the assaults of the Moorish cavalry, and turned back the tide of Saracen invasion.

But in two or three centuries this sturdy infantry had become a thing of the past. Mounted men-at-arms were the only soldiers of any account in France; and it was nearly a thousand years before French infantry recovered their reputation. General Susane begins his history of it by remarking that infantry always shares the lot of the mass of the population. When men are slumbering, careless or brutalised, under the weight of their chains, it is abject and despised ; and it only shows what it is capable of when privilege and inequality have been displaced by a social system which pays more respect to the dignity of man. Whether or not this is true as an universal proposition, it is certainly true of French infantry. It declined with the growth of the feudal system, and was at its best after the Revolution.

With this we may compare the rules given by Vegetius three centuries afterwards for the drawing up of infantry. It is true that he habitually ” mixes up and confuses the rules and habits of his own and of earlier times” (Lipsius), but in this case he had evidently the warfare of his own day in view. The men were to be formed in six ranks. The two front ranks should be armed and armoured for hand-to-hand fighting, but the men of the second rank should also have bows. Light-armed men with bows, darts, &c., formed the third and fourth ranks, and slingers the fifth ; while the sixth, like the triarii of old, was to consist of the most trusty and best-equipped men, as a reserve. The light-armed troops should run out and engage the enemy, but if they failed to drive him back they should take shelter behind the front ranks, whose duty it was to stand immovable as a Avail.

Such a formation would hardly resist a very serious shock. A happier combination was tried by Narses at Tagina; (5.52 a.d.). He dismounted his heavy cavalry  Lombards, Heruli, &c.  and placed them in the centre of his line, between wings of foot archers wheeled up to cross fire in their front. Repeated charges of the Gothic horsemen were repulsed, and when at length they gave way, the Roman cavalry, which had been held in reserve, completed the victory.^ This was an anticipation of the English tactics of the fourteenth century, but it stands alone. Infantry continued to decline in general estimation, and came to be regarded as only fit for mountain warfare or garrison duty.

Vegetius  complained that the armour which had been cheerfully borne in earlier times was discarded in his day. It was probably found to give only partial protection from missiles, and to be seldom needed for anything else ; but its discontinuance became a reason for avoiding hand-tohand combat.

The provinces were crushed under the burden of such a provision for defence, aggravated as it was by lavish expenditure on public works and public sports. Hope, energy, courage, and enterprise died out, and the people looked to Ceasar for everything. The increase of cavalry was partly to make up for the deterioration of the infantry, partly to meet the swarms of barbarian horsemen, but it did not always serve its purpose. At Adrianople (378 A.D.) the emperor Valens met the fate of Decius, and his army was cut to pieces by the Goths. His successor, Theodosius, adopted the dangerous expedient of enhsting the Gothic horsemen, not as individual recruits, but as bands under their own chiefs, and with their help he subdued the Gallic legions which had rebelled against him.

The Goths themselves were worsted by Belisarius a century and a half afterwards, but he attributed his success to his mounted archers, borrowed from Asiatic warfare. Procopius has described these troops : ” They come to the fight cuirassed and greavcd to the knee. They bear bow and sword, and for the most part a lance also, and a little shield slung on the left shoulder, worked with a strap, not a handle. They are splendid riders, can shoot while galloping at full speed and keep up the arrow flight with equal ease whether they are advancing or retreating. They draw the bow-cord not to the breast, but to the face or even to the right ear, so that the missile flies so strongly as always to inflict a deadly wound, piercing both the shield and cuirass with ease.” ^

The bow was also becoming more and more the weapon of the foot soldier, and foimd its way into the ranks of the legion. A fragment of Arrian, who was governor of Cappadocia in the time of Hadrian, shows how he proposed to draw up his troops to meet a Scythian enemy. His two legions were to be formed eight deep, the four front ranks armed with the pilum, the others with spears. Behind them there was to be a rank of foot archers, and in rear of these the horse archers, who were to shoot over their heads. There were to be bodies of light troops (Armenian archers, &c.) on each wing, with heavy infantry in front of them. The cavalry which was armed with lance and sword was to be in rear, prepared to meet flank attacks. The enemy’s charge was to be met with a general volley of arrows, darts, and stones. If it was nevertheless pushed home, the second and third ranks must close up, and with the first rank must present the points of their pila to the horses, while those behind them threw their weapons.

Auxiliary troops raised in the provinces were attached to the legions and were commanded by their legates. They were cohorts of .500 or 1000 men, some wholly of foot, others including horsemen to the extent of one fourth. Some were armed according to the custom of their country with bows, slings, &c. ; others were equipped and trained in the Roman manner. There were also bodies of horsemen of about the same strength as the cohorts.

In the armies of the Republic there had been a bodyguard for the commander-in-chief which was styled the praatorian cohort. This corps was raised to nine cohorts by Augustus, and did guard duty in Rome, and at the imperial residences elsewhere. It comprised horse and foot, grew by degrees to 50,000 men, and played a prominent part in the making and unmaking of emperors till it was abolished by Constantine.

Under the system adopted by Augustus and his successors, the empire ” presented to its foes a hard shell and a soft kernel.” There were no reserves of troops in the interior, and when legions were drawn from the frontier to support rival claimants to the imperial title, the outer barbarians broke through the shell. The Goths crossed the Danube, stormed Philippopolis, and destroyed the emperor Decius and his army (a.d. 251). A few years afterwards another emperor, Valerian, had to surrender to the Persians, who overran Syria and stormed Antioch.

When order was restored by Diocletian at the end of the century, new corps were formed to serve as an imperial field force. The legions of these Palatini and Coviitatenses numbered only 1000 men, and comprised both horse and foot. They had auxiliary cohorts attached to them, and themselves contained a large barbarian element which increased as time went on. They were moved from one region to another as occasion arose. The older legions, left as garrison troops on the frontiers, gradually became bodies of military colonists rather than soldiers. Service in them was unpopular, for the work was hard, discipline severe, and rewards tardy.i The cavalry was again withdrawn from them and separately organised. From one-tenth it rose to about one-third of the infantry. The strength of the frontier army is reckoned at 060,000 by Mommsen, and the field force, or emperor’s army, at something under 200,000, making a total of more than half a million of men, of whom nearly 160,000 were mounted.

The army of Crassus, attacked in similar fashion by the Parthians near Carrha; (53 B.C.), was not so fortunate. It consisted of seven legions with 4000 cavalry and 4000 slingers and archers. It was in the open desert between the Euphrates and Tigris, when it found itself un- expectedly in presence of the Parthian army, which consisted wholly of mounted archers and lancers. The legions were formed into a square, and the archers were sent forward ; but they were soon overpowered, not only, by numbers, but by the greater range of the Parthian bow. P. Crassus with a select corps of 6000 horse and foot charged the enemy as they were closing round the square. The Parthians fled before him, and when his ardour had carried him far from the main body, they turned upon his corps, surrounded it and destroyed it. Then going back to the square, they poured arrows into it for the rest of the day. At night they left it, and the remains of the Roman army escaped to Carrhte, where there was a Roman garrison. Further losses were incurred in continuing the retreat from Carrhfe, and only one-fourth of the army reached Syria.^

The professional army initiated by Marius extended the Roman dominion to the Rhine and the Euphrates, but it inflicted on the commonwealth two generations of civil war. It was an instrument in the hands of ambitious leaders who took sides for or against class privilege. The soldiers were no longer the soldiers of the Re- public, but the soldiers of Sylla or Marius, Pompey or Caesar. The establishment of the empire brought about a change in this respect. Following the example of Julius, Augustus took the title of Imperator, and the army had henceforward a permanent commander-in-chief to whom it swore obedience. He appointed permanent chiefs, his legates, to the several legions, instead of letting the command fall to the military tribunes in rotation.

The aim of Augustus was to consolidate, not to enlarge, the empire; and though some annexations were found necessary to obtain a scientific frontier, the army became a means of defence rather than a means of conquest. It became a standing army, for it had to meet an ever- present danger from the peoples beyond the frontier. The legions had grown numerous during the civil wars ; they were reduced to twenty-five, and were practically localised. Under Tiberius there were eight on the Rhine, six in the countries south of the Danube, four in Syria, four in Africa, and three in Spain. To make them fit to act separately, 120 horsemen were added to each legion.

Sometimes Ceasar had to check the ardour of his men, sometimes to reprove their rashness, greed for booty, and disregard of orders.” Occasionally, they gave way to panic which even he was unable to overcome, or broke out into mutiny {e.g. the legions in Campania, when ordered to Africa). But on the whole, as Mommsen says, “perhaps there never was an army which was more perfectly what an army ought to be.”

Its quality was shown at Pharsalia (48 B.C.), where it encountered an army of more than twice its numbers, trained in the same fashion, and commanded by a general whom some people are disposed to rank even higher than Caesar. Pompey had 7000 horsemen, Caesar only 1000 ; but the latter intermixed infantry with his cavalry, and formed a corps of six cohorts to support them. These cohorts, using their pila as spears, charged Pompey’s cavalry as it was preparing to fall upon the flank of the legions, and drove it off the field. Then they wheeled round the enemy’s left, and assisted Ca3sar’s front attack by an attack in rear.

Pompey, distrusting his infantry, kept them halted, that they might be fresh and in good order when Caesar’s men arrived fatigued and out of breath. But, as Caesar says, ” there is a certain alacrity and ardour of mind planted by nature in every man which is inflamed by the desire of fighting, and which commanders ought not to repress, but to excite. Nor was it idly laid down of old that the trumpets should sound, and the whole army raise a shout, whereby, as they reckoned, the enemy would be struck with terror and our own men en- couraged.” ^ He had the advantage of this stimulus without disordering his troops, for they were well enough in hand to halt and recover breath before closing. The Pompeian legions, assailed on both sides, held their ground for a time, but at length fled to their camp. The battle had lasted till noon and the weather was extremely hot, yet Caesar persuaded his troops to storm the camp, and to pursue the enemy for several miles, twice intrenching themselves in the course of their advance.

The reduction of the legionaries to a single type, a ” handy man “fit for any job, even to attack cavalry, was not without its drawbacks. The auxiliaries on whom dependence was placed for cavalry and light troops often failed, and the legionary had to deal with a more mobile enemy whom he could not bring to close combat. In his second invasion of Britain Ctesar found this the case, and shortly afterwards the troops under Sabinus and Gotta were destroyed on the march by the desultory tactics of Ambiorix,^ as the legions of Varus were afterwards destroyed by Arminius. In the African war (4G B.C.) Caesar found himself enveloped in an open plain near Ruspina by a great force of cavalry and light troops, chiefly Numidian. He had oO cohorts, but only 400 horsemen and 1.50 archers. The enemy closed in and threw darts into the cohorts. When the latter charged, the horsemen retired, and waited for their opportunity when the ranks should be broken in pursuit or in combat with the light troops. C;esar had to check the sallies of his men, and they were gradually pressed together into a circle ; a good target for missiles. Caesar saw that he must break the enemy’s ring surrounding him ; so he drew his troops out in as long a line as he could, made alternate cohorts face about, burst the ring with his flank cohorts, and then charged the two halves of it. He was then able to make good his retreat to his camp.

Nothing tests troops more than a surprise. Six legions were intrenching their camp on the Sambre (57 B.C.), two others with the baggage train were still on the march in rear, the cavalry and light troops had been sent over the river and were skirmishing on the fringe of a wood in which the Nervii and their allies, numbering some 60,000, lay concealed. Suddenly the Gauls issued from the wood, forded the Sambre, driving the Roman horse before them, and fell upon the legions at work. “So short was the time allowed us, and so eager for fight was the enemy, that the men not only could not fix their plumes, but could not even put on their helmets and take the covers off their shields. Each man joined the nearest ensign rather than search for his own company when he might be fighting.”

The two legions in the centre soon repulsed their assailants and followed them to the river. The two on the left did more ; they crossed the river in pursuit, and took the enemy’s camp. But meanwhile the Nervii, the bravest of the tribesmen, had enveloped the legions on the right (Seventh and Twelfth) and gained possession of the unfinished camp of the Romans. Ctesar, on joining his right wing, found the men crowded together and discouraged, with no reserve to help them. He retired them a little and placed them back to back, to show a double front to the enemy. The two legions that formed the rearguard hurried up, and the Tenth legion (one of those which had taken the enemy’s camp) was sent back to give assistance. The cavalry rallied, and at length by united efforts the Nervii were overpowered and cut to pieces, after fighting obstinately behind a i-ampart of dead bodies.

Each cohort, being made up of three maniples or six centuries, had six centurions, who might rise to the position of primipUus, or first centurion of the legion, but seldom obtained any further promotion. Each cohort had its own ensign, and a silver eagle was given to the legion. On the march the legionary was loaded “like a sumpter mule,” with clothing, rations, cooking implements, and intrenching tools. To carry these more conveniently, Marius provided him with a forked pole, which was known as Marius’s mule, and is represented on Trajan’s column. The soldier had often to carry also three or four stakes, with side shoots that might be intertwisted, to form a stout palisade. Yet he was expected to march twenty miles or more in a day.

If the professional soldier of the later days of the Republic was inferior in some respects to the citizensoldier of earlier times, if he was less patriotic and religious, and looked more to plunder and promotion, he was as enduring and stout-hearted as ever, and he knew his business better. He was incessantly employed either in military exercises or on civil works. Josephus, a century after the downfall of the Republic, was full of admiration of the Roman soldiers that Titus led against Jerusalem. “Neither can any disorder remove them from their usual regularity, nor can fear affright them out of it, nor can labour tire them.” Body and soul were strengthened by exercises and hardened by fear; for death was the penalty, not only of running away, but of sloth. ” When they come to a battle the whole army is but one body, so well coupled together are their ranks, so sudden are their turnings about, so sharp their hearing as to what orders are given them, so quick their sight of the ensigns, and so nimble are their hands when they set to work; whereby it comes to pass that what they do is done quickly, and what they suffer they bear with the greatest patience.”

Examples of their behaviour under all conditions of warfare are to be found in Csesar’s Commentaries. Their readiness to endure privation was shown at Avaricum (52 B.C.). When Cajsar offered to raise the siege if they found the scarcity of food intolerable, they assured him they would rather bear anything than fail to avenge the slaughter of their fellow-countrymen. The labours they would undertake were exemplified at Alesia (52 B.C.), where the lines of circumvallation and contravallation were together 25 miles in length, and had to be guarded by 50,000 men against a more numerous enemy within, and a very much larger relieving army outside. Even bolder, though less successful, were the lines by which Cffisar invested Pompey’s army at Dyrrhachium, shortly before Pharsalia : a chain of twenty-four redoubts with a circuit of 15 miles, to which an outer chain was afterwards added.

While Greece and Spain, North Africa and Asia Minor were being gradually brought under Roman rule, the Roman army underwent a change. The small farmers who had been its backbone disappeared from its ranks. War had lessened their numbers and mterfered with their work, especially prolonged war in foreign lands. The population of the city increased, food was imported and sold at a low price, money became plentiful, and the small farmers found themselves forced to sell their land to wealthy men who cultivated it by slave labour, or turned it into pasture.

While the middle class was disappearing, the upper class, grown rich and luxurious, disliked military service except in high command. Subject provinces furnished special troops : heavy cavalry from Thrace, light cavalry from Africa, light infantry from Liguria and the Balearic Isles ; and the poorer townsfolk were ready and eager to serve in the legions. The property qualification had been lowered by the middle of the second century B.C., and by the end of that century it was done away with altogether. When Marius raised an army for the war against Jugurtha, the senate allowed him to accept all free-born citizens who offered themselves. A few years later, Roman citizenship was conferred on all Italians, and the distinction between Romans and aUies was no longer maintained in the legions.

This changed the character of the Roman soldiery. The farmer or burgess militiaman had been eager to get back to civil life; the enlisted proletarian depended on his pay, the camp wfid his home, and he prolonged his service to the utmost. The usual term was twenty-five years, and he was not allowed to marry. As Gibbon put it: “War was gradually improved into an art and degraded into a trade.” The soldiers looked to their own general, and based their hopes on him, without concerning themselves much about the Republic.

As the army became more professional, a more thorough drill was introduced, based on the training of gladiators. The organisation of the legion was altered by Marius, or rather the Roman legions were brought into conformity with those of the allies. Instead of thirty maniples, they were made to consist of ten cohorts. The distinction of velites, hastati, principes, and triarii was swept away; henceforward there was only one kind of legionary soldier for all purposes, armed with sword and pilum, and only one standard, the eagle. Cavalry ceased to form part of the legion. The cohorts were disposed in three lines according to the general’s discretion. The number of ranks in a cohort was sometimes increased to ten, and the tiles were made closer ; so that a legion with four cohorts in lirst line might occupj onl}a quarter of a mile of front, instead of half a mile. The larger units and the closer formation may have been the result of Marius’s experience against the hordes of Cimbri and Teutones, or of the greater numbers which it had become habitual to bring into the Held.

It was by Hannibal’s advice that Carthage at once submitted after this defeat; we may be sure, therefore, that she had no alternative. The nation of shopkeepers had not the staying power of the nation of farmers. She was not of one mind : there was a peace party as well as a war party. There was a wide interval between rich and poor, and small love between herself and her subjects. Above all, her citizens had learnt to depend on hiring others to fight for them, instead of fighting for themselves. ” I do affirm,” says Machiavelli, ” ’tis not money (as the common opinion will have it) but good soldiers that is the sinews of war; for money cannot find good soldiers, but good soldiers will be sure to find money.” Hannibal’s own career shows that this is too absolute; but at all events mercenaries must not be able to despise those who hire them.

The submission of Carthage left the Romans free to turn their attention to Greece. Philip V. of Macedon had made a treaty with Hannibal after Canna3, and a small contingent of his troops had taken part in the battle of Zama. Rome declared war against him, and at Cynoscephalee (197 B.C.) the legion was again pitted against the phalanx. The battle developed itself accidentally out of an encounter of light troops, and on hilly ground ill suited to the phalanx. Philip had formed only part of his army on the top of the hill, when the approach of the legions, driving his light troops before them, obliged him to attack. Their arms and the depth and closeness of their formation, together with the fall of the ground, gave the Macedonians the advantage in the first onset, and they forced back the Romans in their front. But the Roman right wing, headed by some elephants, pushed up to the top of the hiil where the rest of the Macedonians were in the act of forming, and easily dispersed them. A tribune with twenty maniples then fell on the rear of the division which was pressing the Roman left. ” The nature of the phalanx is such that the men cannot face round singly and defend themselves: this tribune, therefore, charged them and killed all he could get at ; until, being unable to defend themselves, they were forced to throw down their shields and fly; whereupon the Romans in their front, who had begun to yield, faced round again and charged them too.”‘

Polybius follows up his account of this battle by a comparison of the Roman and Macedonian modes of fighting. A charge of the phalanx was irresistible so long as it kept its order ; for the Romans being at 6 feet, the others at 3 feet intervals, each legionary of the front rank had ten spears to encounter. But the ground must be level and free from obstacles, and even on such ground the order of the phalanx was apt to be broken by success as well as by failure, and it was no longer fit to meet an attack. Besides it must be used as a whole, and was unsuited to the emergencies of war, to seizing points of vantage, to haphazard collisions, and to siege warfare. “The Roman order, on the other hand, is flexible: for every Roman, once armed and on the field, is equally well equipped for every plan, time, or appearance of the enemy. He is, moreover, quite ready and needs to make no change, whether he is required to light in the main body, or in detachment, or in a single maniple, or even by himself.”  These remarks were borne out by the battle of Pydna (168 B.C.), when Perseus, the son of Philip, met with a crushing defeat from L. milius PauUus. The phalanx, fighting on level ground, bore all before it, and drove the legions back upon a hill near the Roman camp. Here the fortune of the day changed. The ranks of the phalanx had become disordered in the hurry of pursuit; small bodies of the Romans broke in at the gaps, while others attacked it m flanks and rear. In hand-to-hand fighting the Macedonians were at a disadvantage both as to sword and shield, and in the end they were routed.