Infantry - A Summary

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 The ” huscaiies ” or bodyguard of Canute were armed with the two-handed Danish axe, and that weapon largely superseded the Saxon spear.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.

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.