Infantry - A Summary

The French men-at-arms charged through the crossbowmen by the king’s orders, spearing and trampling them, but they were themselves shot down by English arrows, or overthrown by one another in the press. As King Edward wrote, there died more than 1500 knights and esquires in the part of the field where the armies first came together. Nevertheless “the battle was very tough and lasted long, for it lasted from before the hour of vespers till evening, and the enemy bore themselves very nobly and often rallied.”  They made three main attacks, directing their efforts against the English, and apparently neglecting the archors. The Prince’s ” battle ” was so hard pressed that Northampton moved up to its assistance, and the king also sent some twenty or thirty knights in reply to an urgent appeal. But the “battles” remained unbroken, the English losses were trifling, and in the course of the night the French army melted away, leaving many thousands on the field.

It was not the first time that crossbow and longbow had been pittied one against the other, but the conditions at Crecy made the most of the advantages which bel opged to the lat ter. The six-foot bow had longer range than the ordinary crossbow, and three or four times tEielrate15T Hre. A good archer could shoot two arrows . in a minute ; he would seldom miss at 2:0 yards (the standard practice range) and could send his arrows twice that distance. On the other hand, the crossbow required less strength and skill; it could be used lying down or Uadeir cover; its bolts were much cheaper than arrows, and much more plentiful. The archer in the field had only his sheaf of twenty-four arrows, and in provisioning a place for a siege the allowance of bolts for each crossbow was ten times that of arrows for each longbow. At .short ranges the crossbow was reckoned the more accurate weapon, and Edward III. told the Sherifi’s of London in 1349 to encourage the use of it, as well as the use of the longbow.

The French learnt at Crecy that they must be ready to fight on foot; but they did not learn to choose the defensive, nor did they provide themselves with better shot. In the army of 50,000 men with which Philip’s successor, John, attacked the Black Prince near Poitiers (September 19, 1356) there seem to have been only 2000 crossbowmen, and their shooting had no great fi-o.t Fdward was returning from his raid to the loS: Hetad only BOOO men (English d Gas.n of whom 3000 were men-at-arms and 2000 archers Findtg himself overtaken, he chose a strong position on the richt bank of the Miosson, ” among hedges, vines ad bush;.” The English were short of food and migh Tave been starved out, if John had sent a force to he left side of the stream to bar their hne of retreat. Appth n ive of this, they were in the act of crossing the r’am when the battle began, and the rearguard was continuous hedge along front of  position except for one gap where the road o the ford pa sed trough it. The hedge was lined with archer . Td a stone-rthrow behind the gap Salisbury’s men-at ..0.S were drawn up on foot, with their archers n f.n of them ” in manner of a herse.” On the left was War ik’ “battle,” while that of the Prince was held m eserve The French army was also in three mam bod es the right under Orleans, the left under Normandy, afd L reserve under the king. Most of the men arms were dismounted, but mounted corps of a few Tndred men on barded horses were sent aW t “, th. archers The horse-armour proved ot httle eTvL r he :hers extended and struck the horses rrnk They became unmanageable, and caused conLion n the rinks of foot behind them The Prince made better use of his cavalry, sending -a 1 corps f to charge the enemy in flank and rear, while they were en.ageS There were collisions between the bodies of UsXntecl men-at-arms, but on a narrow front where personal strength told for more than  English were nearly worn out by repeated assaults and many of the archers had spent all their arrows, before the battle was won.’

The victories of Cceur de Lion were due to skilful cooperation of heavy cavalry and crossbowmen, whose bolts were further ranging and more deadly than the Turkish arrows.*^ So deadly were they that in 1139 A.D. the second Lateran Council condemned the use of the crossbow, except against infidels ; but it spread nevertheless, especially in France, Italy, and Germany. Borrowed from the balista, it seems to have been made available as a hand weapon only about the beginning of the eleventh century.

About this time a burgher militia began to grow up in the French towns. They obtained charters, either by purchase from their lords, who were in want of money for Crusades, or by appeals to the king. “The king has been said to be the founder of the communes, but the reverse is more nearly the truth ; it is the communes that established the king,” says Michelet. They were enabled by their charters to maintain a well-armed force, which was liable to be summoned for the king’s service, though it was seldom willing to go far from home. The towns of Picardy sent companies of crossbowmen to the army with which Philip Augustus won the battle of Bouvines (1214 a.d.). But he owed his victory to his men-at-arms. The French communal troops proved no match for the Flemish foot. The men who distinguished themselves most were some Braban9on mercenaries in King John’s pay, who refused to surrender and were cut to pieces.

The wealthy and turbulent cities of Flanders provided a sturdy militia, whose reputation gained greatly by their victory at Courtrai (1302 a.d.). It was something new and marvellous, as Villani says, for a feudal army of 50,000 men, including 7500 cavalry and 10,000 crossbowmen, to be beaten by 20,000 burghers. The result was due to that arrogance and eagerness to be foremost which was so often fatal to the French chivalry. The flanks as well as the front of the Flemings were covered by a ditch. The leaders of the Italian mercenaries proposed to march round and post their men where they could intercept supplies. ” The Flemings,” they said, ” are great eaters and drinkers ; if we keep them long fasting, they will grow faint. They will quit their ground ; and then the cavalry can charge and rout them without risk.” But these ” Lombard counsels ” were scouted. The foot were not to be allowed to have the honour of the victory. The men-at-arms dashed to the front, floundered into the ditch, and were speared or struck down by ” godendags,” long-handled maces with iron spikes, like the Swiss ” morning-star.” *

But two years afterwards it was shown near Lille that a much larger number of Flemish burghers was no match for a feudal army properly handled, and this was confirmed at Cassel in 1328, and again at Roosebecke in 1382, when Van Artevelde was killed with 25,000 men. If infantry was to recover its old position it must combine excellence in the use of missiles with excellence in handto-hand fighting, and it was the association of the English archer with the dismounted man-at-arms that gave the first real shock to the feudal military system.

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.

A normal Latin township was reckoned to consist of ten wards {curim), eachcomprising ten families (gentes) or one hundred households. Each household had to furnish one foot soldier (miles, one of a thousand), and each family one horseman (eques). But in the earliest days the three tribes of Rome yielded a levy (legio) of three times that strength, 3000 foot and 300 horse.Before long the one legion was increased to four. The reforms which bear the name of Servius extended the duty of military service, and its privileges, from the original burgher families to later comers. A property classification was introduced : the first three classes formed the heavy infantry, but only the first class was bound to be fully equipped with arras and armour. It furnished the front ranks of the legions, which were drawn up for battle six deep in continuous line, like the Greek phalanx. The fourth and fifth classes served as light troops (rorarii), armed with slings and darts. Men were liable to military service from seventeen to sixty years of ago, but the seniors (those over forty-six) were reserved as a rule for garrison duty. The liability of the juniors was discharged by sixteen campaigns on foot or ten on horseback. The cavalry, which was held in high estimation, was increased to 1800, or 15 per cent, of the heavy infantry. The poorest class (proletarii) was exempt from taxation, and from military service, except in great emergencies, when they were equipped at the cost of the State. Carpenters, smiths, and musicians were attached to the legions, and also a certain number of light-armed substitutes to take the place of disabled legionaries.

It is supposed to have been during the Samnite wars that the Romans made a fundamental change in their tactical formation. The extended line was ill adapted to mountain warfare. The disaster of the Caudine forks (321 B.C.) was the result of an attempt to march a Roman army through the Southern Apennines into Apulia. It found itself caught in a trap, with defiles which it could not force before and behind it. Whether as a result of this disaster or not, continuous lines were given up, and the legion was subdivided into thirty maniples which were placed chequerwise in three lines (luistati, principes, triarii) so that the maniples of the second line were opposite intervals in the first line. It was a handy flexible formation which adapted itself readily to broken ground, and aftordud strong reserves. It was in fact something like that which Xenophon’s Greeks had to improvise in forcing their way through the mountains of Kurdistan.

The maniples of the first two lines were normally 120 strong, those of the third line 60. The men seem to have been drawn up six deep, as before ; but after a time light troops, better armed and organised than before, and renamed velitcs, were incorporated in the maniples, and formed a seventh and eighth rank when not detached. They numbered 1200.