Infantry - A Summary

The coming of the Normans brought depression of the peasantry. A good deal of the land became the lord’s domain-land, and “churls” mostly saiak into “villeins,” serfs bound to the soil. Nevertheless, the divisions between classes were less sharp than in France. Between lords and villeins there were sokemen, who were freemen and freeholders in a limited sense; they served in the wars, and formed the yeoman class, described by Raleigh as “an order of men which generally have composed our better sort of foot soldiers, and with which few parts of the world besides England are acquainted.”  The Norman kings were not obliged or disposed to give their great vassals the independence and power which they enjoyed in France. William and his successors always had mercenary troops in their pay, which might be used against rebellious lords, and they encouraged the payment of scutage in lieu of military service as it furnished them with the means of hiring knights. Private war was restricted, and few nobles had strong castles except during the years of anarchy which preceded the rule of Henry II. The barons, when resisting aggressions of the crown, and the king, when upholding the royal authority, felt the need of help from the lower classes, and had to buy it by concessions. As time went on the status of the villeins improved, the services due from them to their lords were defined, they became well-to-do, and were able to commute their obligations for money which was readily accepted by lords bound on Crusades or distant expeditions. By the middle of the fourteenth century a large proportion of the peasantry had become hired labourers instead of villeins. There is a ring of good fellowship which would have seemed strange to a French prince in the speech of the Black Prince to his archers before the battle of Poitiers.

The armies which Edward III. led to France were national armies of paid soldiers. The drawbacks of feudal service had been keenly felt by Edward I. m his Welsh and Scottish wars. It yielded an ill-trained and undisciplined host which was not bound to remain more than forty days in the field. The twelfth century alternative, to accept scutage and hire foreign mercenaries, had been checked by Magna Carta, and could only be adopted on a small scale, as in the case of Gascon crossbowuien. The king might bargain with his vassals that they should furnish him with a reduced number of knights for an increased period, and so obtain a more useful force ; but this method did jiot prove sufficient, and Edward I. introduced thesystem of payment in spite of the opposition of the greater lords.i Of the 2400 men-at-arms which he took with him to Scotland in 1298, more than half were receiving wages from him.In the fourteenth century this developed into the indenture system, under which tEe king made contracts with certain leaders to furnish so many men at fixed rates of pay.

In England armies had passed through the same changes as in France, but the soil was less congenial to feudalism. Jutes and Anglo-Saxons came over in bands from different districts, and were only by slow degrees amalgamated into a nation. The Britons were mostly driven westward, instead of forming a subject population. The “folk” of each tribe controlled its affairs, and imposed restrictions on the right of private war. For war with other tribes, or defence against a foreign enemy, there was a general levy, the ” fyrd.” ” The folk-moot was in fact the war-host, the gathering of every freeman of the tribe in arms. . . . But the strength of an English army lay not only in these groups of villagers. Mingled with them were the voluntary war bands that gathered round distinguished chiefs.” ^ These bands of retainers were better equipped and more serviceable than the men of the fyrd, and superseded it in the time of stress caused by the inroads of the Norsemen. The sufferings of the people added to the power of the kings, who gave grants of land to their companions or ” thegns,” subject to the obligation of military service. The larger landlords made similar grants to their ” cnihts ” ; ‘^ sometimes weapons were provided as well as land. In Alfred’s time it was enacted that all owners of 5 hides of land. In England “knight” came to stand for the highest class of soldiery, while in Germany it dropped down to campfollowers. The knight was miles, not cqucs, while his equivalent abroad was ” Ritter ” or ” chevalier.” (probably 600 acres) should be reckoned as thegns and bound to thegn service, while smaller owners must combine to furnish an armed man for every 5 hides.

In England as in France, danger led the smaller land^ owners tojlace themselves under the protection of greater men, and to take an oath of fealty pledging themselves to be faithful and true, to love all that their lord loves and eschew all that he eschews.* The overlords took a similar oath to the king, and the king looked to them to bring the due number of armed men into the field. In this way something very like the feudal system was to be found in England before the Conquest, but it was developed by William I., who made grants to his followers on feudal tenure, and fixed the number of knights they were to furnish without much regard to hidage, by units of five or ten. The feudal force of England a century after the Conquest is estimated at 5000 knights.

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.

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.

One result of the battle of Pydna was that a number of leading members of the Achaean league were exiled to Italy, on a charge of hostility to Rome. Among these was Polybius, to whom we owe the best account of the Roman army. He was tutor of the younger Scipio Africanus, and was afterwards with him at the destruction of Carthage. He set himself to write the history of the half-century in the course of which ” almost the Avhole inhabited world ” had been brought under the dominion of Rome, and he talked with men who had fought against Hannibal.

When Polybius describes the army which conquered Carthage and Greece we are on firm ground. How it came to be what it was is a more obscure matter, but one which cannot be altogether passed over. There is a significant contrast between Athenian and Roman names, between Themistocles or Pericles and C. Julius Csesar or M. TuUius Cicero. At Athens personality was developed ; at Rome the individual was one of a clan and existed for the State. The son was bound to reverence the father, the citizen to reverence the ruler, and all to reverence the gods. Religion was of a practical kind, an affair of ritual, the due discharge of which would bring its reward to the community. It supplemented police regulations, and powerfully reinforced the claims of the State on the individual.

These features were not peculiar to Rome : they were common to the Latin peoples of Central Italy. But Rome enjoyed special advantages which helped to give her predominance. Planted on hills on the northern border of Latium and on the banks of the Tiber, she became both a frontier fortress and a centre for trade. The unhealthiness of the Campagna may have tended also to increase her population, by drawing to the city farmers who would otherwise have lived on their land.i Owing to some such causes Rome grew, and the Romans got the better of neighbours of the same sturdy stock as themselves. But to maintain and extend their authority all their energies had to be bent towards military efficiency. Only on one point did they sacrifice it: they changed their commanders frequently, and substituted untried for tried men, lest the too successful leader should become a danger to the State. Their native sense of law and order gave stability to their institutions, and laid a firm foundation for their future empire, a foundation which grew broader with each successive conquest.

Alexander had to do with an enemy vastly superior in numbers, but inferior in quality and in manoeuvring powers. This determined him to deliver his attack on one wing, that he might not be enveloped. Alike at the Granicus, at Issus, and at Arbela, he struck with his right. At Issus the supporting brigades of the phalanx had a severe struggle with the Greek mercenaries in Persian pay until the Hypaspists and cavalry, having routed the Persian left, took the mercenaries in flank. At Arbela the defensive wing was so hardly pressed by Indian and Persian cavalry that Parmenio had to send to Alexander for help. In the battle on the Hydaspes against Porus the left of the enemy was again selected for attack; Hypaspists and light troops seem to have been the only infantry engaged. When Alexander reorganised his army after his return from India, he proposed to use Orientals for the phalanx to the extent of three-fourths. Only the three leading men and the last man of each file were to be Macedonians; the rest were armed with bows and javelins.

In the wars of Alexander’s successors armies were more alike in numbers and quality, and mobility lost some of its importance. But the increasing use of elephants went along with a deterioration of infantry. Posted at intervals of 50 yards or so along the whole front of each army with shot between them, they made any general advance and engagement of the foot difficult. Practically the fighting was done by the cavalry on the wings, and the infantry of the line only served to fill the space between them. What had hitherto been the best elements of the infantry were attracted to the cavalry, and their places were taken by mercenaries or subject races.

In Europe this was not the case to the same extent as in Asia. Value continued to be attached in Greece to heavy infantry, but it was concentrated upon the phalanx. ” What had formed in the time of Philip and Alexander merely a solid base for the free activity of the other kinds of foot, now came to be regarded as the instrument for deciding the issue, and obtaining the victory.” i Men tried in vain to make it flexible and mobile without forfeiting its own special characteristic, impenetrability. The impossibility of this was shown at Cynos-cephaLe (197 B.C.) and Pydna (168 B.C.) when the Macedonian phalanx was worsted by the Roman legions ; but these actions may be better dealt with as incidents of Roman history.

The victory gave the Thebans a primacy which lasted only up to the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea (362 B.C.). In that battle nearly all the Greek peoples had a share. Athenians and Lacedaemonians fought side by side, but the Thebans with their allies outnumbered them. Epaminondas’ tactics were in the main the same as at Leuctra, but this time he surprised the enemy by leading them to believe that he had no intention of fighting that day. Under cover of a hill he drew files from his wings and moved them to the front to form his “ram.” Then he led his army forward, using his cavalry and light troops to occupy the attention of the Athenians who were on the left, and prevent their sending assistance to the Lacedemonians on the right. He reserved a body of horse and foot intermixed to cover the left flanks of his column.

The charge of that column is likened by Xenophon to the impact of a trireme end-on. Where it struck the enemy’s line it shattered it, as at Leuctra, and their whole army took to flight. But Epaminondas’ death in the moment of victory paralysed his troops, and the battle was practically a drawn one. It is doubtful whether Xenophon’s metaphor is to be taken to imply that the head of the column was wedge-shaped, like the beak of a ship. We know that later, among the Romans, there was a formation known as cuneus or caput porcinum which was really wedge-shaped, although the word cuneus was also constantly used for troops in mass irrespective of shape. ” Column ” in its military sense is a modern term, but it seems safe to say that it was a column rather than a wedge that won the victories of Leuctra and Mantinea.

Philip of Macedon spent some years in Thebes while Epaminondas lived, and afterwards turned to account not only the lesson of those victories, but the improvements in the military art which more than half a century of war had developed in Greece. The Macedonian tribes, when they had been welded into a nation, furnished him an abundance of hardy and docile recruits, as Russia did to Peter the Great. His wars with his immediate neighbours gave his troops field training, enlarged his territories and his recruiting ground, and enriched him with gold and silver mines. His wealth enabled him to maintain a standing force. The world was familiar with armies that were national but not standing, such as the Greek burgher levies, and with armies that were standing but not national, such as the mercenaries in Persian or Carthaginian service ; but a national standing army, a professional army with a national spirit, was something new.

His standing force of infantry, known as Jlypaists, corresponded to the medium infantry of Iphicrates, but had short spears which allowed of greater activity. They numbered perhaps 6000 men (six battalions) in time of war. For “shot,” to use the old expression, he had Macedonian bowmen and Thracian javelin-men. His heavy uafantry of the line was furnished by a general levy of freemen not of noble birth, organised in six territorial brigades of 3000 to 4000 men. It was a provincial militia called out for war and bound to serve for a fixed time. This was the famous Macedonian phalanx. The normal depth of formation was sixteen ranks, and the units were the file of sixteen men, the section of four files, the company of sixteen files, and the battalion (ehiliarchia) of sixty-four files. If the numbers fell short, the depth was reduced to perhaps twelve men in a file.

After the recovery of the Cadmea the Sacred Band was formed, a military brotherhood of 300 chosen Thebans, quartered there and maintained at the public expense, that they might devote themselves to military exercises. In 375 B.C. Pelopidas at the head of this band encountered two Lacedaemonian battalions, as he was marching along the shore of the Copais Lake. Forming his men in column, he boldly charged them, though they were three times his own number, and not content with breaking through, he completely routed them.

Epaminondas, then, had troops on whom he could rely, and who were accustomed to fight in deep formation, when he persuaded his colleagues to risk a pitched battle in the open field near Leuctra (371 B.C.) He had only 6000 hoplites, Cleombrotus had 10,000, but only 4000 were Lacedaemonians. Of these, the Spartans, who had been one-half at Platijea, were now little more than onesixth. But if the Theban column was no novelty, Epaminondas used it in a way that was new. Hitherto battle after battle had followed the same course : each side successful on the right wing, each side defeated on the left. In the final collision between the two victorious wings the better discipline of the Lacediemonians had always prevailed. To obtain something more than a local and temporary success, Epaminondas determined to direct his column, while it was fresh and in good order, against the best troops of the enemy. These were always on the right, or near it, and were in this case drawn up twelve deep. So he placed the Theban column on the left of his line, and he gave it a depth of fifty ranks. But this massing of troops on the left weakened the centre and right, especially as he was largely outnumbered. To postpone collision with the enemy on that side, he adopted an echelon formation, an ” oblique phalanx,” introducing for the first time the distinction of an offensive and a defensive wing. Vegetins compares this order of battle to a builder’s level, or in other words to a right-angled triangle of which one side would be in the original alignment.’

Such dispositions would be of no avail unless they took the enemy by surprise. Accordingly Epaminondas began the battle by a cavalry engagement, not as usual upon the wings, but in the space between the two armies. The Lacedemonian cavalry, according to Xenophon, had never been in wor.se condition. They were soon driven in upon the infantry of the centre, causing some confusion ; and before the mischief was repaired the Theban column was at hand. It struck, not upon the extreme right of the enemy, but upon the junction of right and centre, that is to say, the left of the Lacedaemonian corps.

This necessarily exposed the column to attack on its outer flank while checked in front, as the Imperial Guard was attacked by the Fifty-Second at Waterloo. The Spartan king, Cleombrotus, attempted such a movement, but Epaminondas had provided against it by detaching the Sacred Band under Pelopidas. These picked troops fell upon the Lacedaemonians while they were wheeling, and the Theban column, pressing on unhindered, broke through and separated them from their allies, who were ready enough to leave the field. One-fourth of the Macedonians and more than half of the Spartans fell.

It has been suggested that the long spear and long sword were not given to the same men ; that there were two classes of peltasts, one armed with spears and the other with javelins and swords for hand-to-hand fighting. But there is no positive evidence of this distinction. They seem to have formed a medium infantry, available as light troops or as infantry of the line, and they may have chosen their weapons according to the occasion.

As light troops came to play a more important part, so also did cavalry. Greek horsemen had no stirrups and were easily unhorsed. They could do nothing against unbroken hoplites except annoy them with darts. They fought in loose order and made little use of shock, but tried to fall unawares upon a flank. Thessaly and Bceotia with their more open valleys furnished the best cavalry ; that of the Lacedemonians was the worst. The Boeotians attached a footman to each horseman, and the intermixture of horse and foot by placing small parties of light-armed men in the intervals between the troops was a recognised practice. The strength of a troop was about sixty men. The best weapons for horsemen, according to Xenophon, were a short stabbing sword and a pair of cornel-wood spears, one of which might be hurled as a javelin.

However serviceable the new type of infantry might be for minor warfare, the Laceda3monian hoplite retained his supremacy in pitched battles in the open field. Even to repulse him was reckoned a great achievement. The Athenians put up a statue to Chabrias to celebrate such a success. In 378 b.c. their troops in concert with the Thebans awaited the attack of the Lacedasmonian phalanx. The front ranks dropped on the right knee and propped their shields against the left, and such a hedge of spearpoints was presented by the long spears that Agesilaus thought it prudent to draw off his men. But seven years afterwards, at Leuctra, Thebes won a very difterent sort of victory, and robbed the Spartans of their pro-eminence.

A well-fed race, with rich pastures and no commerce, the Bceotians had always shown themselves strong and stubborn soldiers.’ Three hundred of them had turned the scale at Syracuse. Thebans were Boeotians and something more. They were ” a conquering caste in an alien land,” with an infusion of Phoenician, or at all events nonHellenic blood. The military organisation of Sparta is said to have owed much to Timomachus, who came from Thebes, and claimed descent from Cadmus. There was perhaps some far-off kinship between Hannibal and Epaminondas.

It was a Theban custom, of which the origin is unexplained, to fight in deep formation. At Delium (424 B.C.) their phalanx was formed in twenty-five ranks, and this massive column broke through the Athenian left, while the Athenian right got the better of the other Boeotians. The timely appearance of some cavalry, which the Theban commander had sent round a hill unperceived to support the left wing, decided the day. At Corinth and at Coronea (394 B.C.) the Thebans had to deal with the Lacedaemonians. Placed on the right of the army, in each case they defeated the allies of Sparta, but were themselves defeated by the Lacedicmonians, who had been equally successful on the other wing, and whose discipline enabled them to wheel promptly and attack their enemies in succession. At Coronea the Thebans, abandoned by their allies and hard pressed by Agesilaus, succeeded in cutting their way through, though with heavy loss.