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 ^ These bands of retainers were better equipped and more serviceable than the men of the fyrd, and superseded it in the time of stress caused by the inroads of the Norsemen.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.
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.