Infantry - A Summary

According to Baker of Swynbrook, the archers were placed, not in front of the men-at-arms, but at the sides of the king’s army, like wings, so that they might not get in the way of the men-at-arms, nor meet the enemy face to face, but discharge their arrows at his flanks. Similarly a Valenciennes chronicler says that King Edward “ne fist que deux batailles d’archiers a deux costes en la maniere d’un escut ; et au milieu d’eulx se tenoit le prince de Galles.”  Froissart, on the contrary, says of the Prince’s “battle” that the archers were placed in front in the form of a “herse,” and the men-at-arms at the back. He mentions that in the course of the fight some of the French knights went round the archers, and others broke through them, and fought hand to hand with the Prince’s men-at-arms. King Philip would gladly have done the same, but there was such a great hedge of archers and men-atarms in front that he could not.

Sir John Smythe, who wrote when archers were still to be seen in the field, and described how they were drawn up by “our most skilful and warlike ancestors,” helps us to reconcile these conflicting statements. He says they were formed ” into hearses  that is broad in front and narrow in flank, as for example if there were 25, 30, 35, or more or fewer archers in front, the flanks did consist but of seven or eight ranks at the most. . . . They placed their hearses of archers either before the front of their armed footmen, or else in wings upon the corners of their battles, and sometimes both in front and wings.”  A contemporary plate of the battle of Pinkie (1547) shows the archers extended across the whole front of the three corps which are advancing to attack the Scots. George Monk, writing during the Civil War, shows how musketeers forming wings to a body of pikemen should be moved forward and spread out across its front for more eft’ective fire. We may conclude that the archers at Crecy were formed by companies of 100 men in oblongs not more than eight men deep, with open ranks and files, that their normal position was on the flanks of the men-at-arms and a little in advance of them, but that they may also have formed a continuous screen in their front, at all events at the beginning of the action. Shallow pits were dug in front of the line of battle, and would give the archers some protection from charging horsemen. ‘

It was late in the afternoon when the French army came up, but the impetuosity of the lords, each eager to be foremost, disregarded Philip’s orders to halt. The Genoese crossbowmen were sent forward, weary from a long march, and their bowstrings wet from rain, for they could not be taken off’ and put under cover like the string of the longbow. As they came on they gave great shouts at intervals to scare the English, and when they reckoned themselves within range they shot fiercely; but their bolts fell short. ” Then the English archers stept forth one pace and let fly their arrows so wholly and so thick that it seemed snow. When the Genoese felt the arrows piercing through heads, arms, and breasts, many of them cast down their crossbows and did cut their strings and returned discomfited.”

For the foot English kings depended mainly on county levies. Military service, which was tending to become a matter of privilege abroad, was insisted on as the duty of all freemen. The arms and equipment which they were bound to have, according to their means, were specified by Henry II. in the Assize of Arms of 1181. The rules were revised by Henry III. in 1252, and by the Statute of Wmchester (1285); the bow was introduced among the weapons, and periodical inspection of arms was provided for. When a war broke out, commissioners of array were sent to the counties to take over from the sherifts the number of men called for, and to see that they were well chosen. Acts of Parliament provided that men sent abroad on the king’s service should be at the king’s wages (1344), and that no one should be forced to serve without the sanction of Parliament, unless he was bound by the terms of his tenure (1351). The foot were formed into bands of a score, a hundred, or a thousand, under vintcnars, centenars, and millenars. The muster rolls of 1339 show that out of a levy of 11,200 men (exclusive of men-at-arms) half were armed with hand weapons and the other half were archers.”

The bow was little used in England before the Conquest. It always played an important part in naval warfare, and just as the Athenians and the Genoese were quick to recognise its value, so the Vikings of the north made it one of their weapons, and prided themselves on their skill with it.i They seem to have dropped it when they settled in England. The ” huscaiies ” or bodyguard of Canute were armed with the two-handed Danish axe, and that weapon largely superseded the Saxon spear. At Hastings Harold’s best troops fought in the Danish fashion, on foot, armed with axes, and awaiting attack behind a stockade.They may have hung their shields on the stockade, as was done on the bulwarks of ships. But William was well provided with bowmen and crossbowmen, as well as with mailed horsemen, and it was by the co-operation of archers and cavalry that the battle was won. ” The Saxon mass was subjected to exactly the same trial which befell the British squares in the battle of Waterloo  incessant charges by a gallant cavalry mixed with a destructive hail of missiles.”  The stockade gave little protection against the curved flight of arrows, especially when they were aimed high, as the duke directed. Darts, axes, and stones made a feeble reply to them ; and sorties upon the assailants, sometimes provoked by feigned flights, ended in the rout of the men who made them. At length the Norman horsemen forced an entrance, and the English broke up.

From that time forward archers formed an important part of English armies, and archery was encouraged as a national sport. Fitzstephen speaks of it as one of the pastimes of Londoners in the time of Henry 11. Richard I. took a thousand bowmen with him when he went to Palestine. Henry III. m the Assize of Arms of 1252 required all forty-shilling freeholders to provide themselves with bow and arrows, and arrows were sometimes exacted for the tenure of lands. But the Norman bow was under live feet in length, and had no great range or penetration. The early Plantagenets preferred the crossbow. The six-foot long-bow with its cloth-yard shaft dates from the time of Edward I, and probably from his wars in Wales.

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.

Something more mobile and efficient was required to meet sudden descents of the Danes upon the coasts which formed the chief danger to the peace of the kmgdom. In 86G a.d. Charles the Bald issued an edict that all freeholders who had or might have horses should jom the host mounted, but by the end of the tenth century it had become exclusively a feudal host, made up of the contingents of lords who had received grants of land as fiefs or benefices, and were under contract to bring their quota of mounted men into the field.

Fiefs and offices (dukes, counts, &c.) which were at first revocable or for life only, became hereditary, and the inroads of the Northmen gave the holders of them an opportunity to buUd strongholds in which they could defy the king himself. CivU wars among the Carolingian prmces weakened their authority, and enabled some of their vassals to become stronger and more independent. In the general struggle for existence the weaker lords sought safety by “commending themselves” to the stronger lords, surrendermg their lands, and receiving them back as fiefs. The freemen of the conquered (GalloRoman) race fared worse. Some of them were allowed to contmue to hold land subject to a quit-rent, but the bulk of them became serfs. After a time there was no land without its lord, and the lords took care not to aive arms or training to an alien and oppressed peasantry. Froissarts description of the Jacquerie^ shows how the pea.sants, unarmed as they were except with knives and staves, would now and then rise, and revenge themselves on theulords by fearful outrages.

Besides the valets of the men-at-arms, foot archers and crossbowmen were required, especially for garrisons and sieges. These were mostly mercenaries drawn from various quarters, and the term solidarii (soldiers) came into use for hired men early in the eleventh century .^ The army of adventurers with which William of Normandy invaded England comprised not only bowmen, but some mail-clad infantry armed with spears and swords. The Crusader armies also were largely composed of foot, and they had the more need for missile weapons as they had to deal with an enemy skilled in the use of the bow. The, earlier Crusaders suffered much from their inferiority in this respect. In 1104 a.d. they met with a disaster on the very ground, near Carrhie, where the Parthians had routed Crassus’s legions.

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.

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.

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.

In the following year (217 B.C.) Hannibal surprised a Roman army in the defile of Trasimene. It found itself blocked in front and rear, as in the Caudine valley a century before. Here again 6000 men succeeded in breaking through the troops enveloping them, though they were overtaken and forced to surrender next day. The Libyan infantry was rearmed in the Roman manner from the spoils of this battle.

The moral effect of these victories and confidence in his own skill made Hannibal gladly accept battle against odds of nearly two to one. At Cannae (216 B.C.) he had 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry. The two consuls opposed to him had eight Roman legions with their quota of allies, numbering 80,000 foot and 6000 horse ; but the heavy losses of the two previous years must have told severely on their quality. Each consul commanded in chief on alternate days, milius Paullus, a tried soldier, was resolved to avoid battle in the open plain on account of the enemy’s superiority in horse ; but Terentius Varro, who was rash and inexperienced, thought otherwise, and played into Hannibal’s hands. He left 10,000 men in a camp on the left bank of the Aufidus, took the rest of the army across, and drew it up facing south with its right resting on the river. Hannibal followed suit, and drew up his army opposite, with Cannto to his loft roar.i The Numidian cavalry was on the Carthaginian right, the Spanish and Gallic cavalry on the left. Of the infantry, the Gauls and Spaniards were intermixed in the centre, and the Libyans were to right and left of them. He pushed forward his centre and made his line of battle convex, in order that the Gauls and Spaniards might be first engaged, and the African troops be held in reserve. The Gauls were armed with a broad sword, and used the edge only, not the point. Open order was necessary for them to wield their weapon, and their line was long and thin. The Roman order on the contrary was very deep. The maniples were closer together than usual, and the depth of each maniple was several times greater than its front.” This was probably due to want of space for their large numbers. It seems to imply that their frontage was not more than one-fourth of what was customary, so that the whole of their infantry would not occupy more than two miles.

While the cavalry were engaged with one another on the wings, there was a skirmish of light-armed troops in the centre. When these fell back, the Roman line began to press upon the convex front of the Gauls and Spaniards. It yielded and gradually became concave ; the maniples of the Roman centre pushed onward, and those of the wings drew towards the centre, where the stress of the battle lay. It seemed as though the Carthaginian army would be cut in two, as at the Trebia. But the Libyans on the wings were now faced left and right, and wound inwards and rearwards as the Gauls and Spaniards fell back, until as pincers they had fairly enclosed the Roman wedge, when they fell with fury upon its flanks.

By this time the Carthaginian cavalry on the left wing had routed the Roman cavalry opposed to it, had joined the Numidians on the right, and defeated the allied cavalry. Leaving the Numidians to pursue, it had then fallen upon the rear of the legions. Surrounded on all sides, the Romans seem to have lost hope. They made no vigorous effort to break through, but were pressed together and gradually cut down. Five-sixths of their whole army perished, while the Carthaginian loss was under 6000. Polybius regards the battle as “a lesson to posterity that in actual war it is better to have half the number of infantry, and the superiority in cavalry, than to engage your enemy with an equality in both,” but he recognises elsewhere that it was to the skill and genius of Hannibal that the Romans owed their defeats.

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.