THE ART OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES A.D. 378—1515

CHAPTER VI

The English and their Enemies. A.D. 1272-1485.

From the accession of Edward I to the end of the War of the Roses.

The use of the long-bow is as much the key to the successes of the English armies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as that of the pike is to the successes of the Swiss. Dissimilar as were the characters of the two weapons, and the national tactics to which their use led, they were both employed for the same end of terminating the ascendancy in war of the mailed horseman of the feudal régime. It is certainly not the least curious part of the military history of the period, that the commanders who made such good use of their archery, had no conception of the tendencies of their action. Edward the Black Prince and his father regarded themselves as the flower of chivalry, and would have been horrified had they realised that their own tactics were going far to make chivalrous warfare impossible. Such, however, was the case : that unscientific kind of combat which resembled a huge tilting match could not continue, if one side persisted in bringing into the field auxiliaries who could prevent their opponents from approaching near enough to break a lance. The needs of the moment, however, prevented the English commanders being troubled by such thoughts; they made the best use of the material at their disposal, and if they thus found themselves able to beat the enemy, they were satisfied.

It is not till the last quarter of the thirteenth century that we find the long-bow taking up its position as the national weapon of England. In the armies of our Norman and Angevin kings archers were indeed to be found, but they formed neither the most numerous nor the most effective part of the array. On this side of the Channel, just as beyond it, the supremacy of the mailed horseman was still unquestioned. It is indeed noteworthy that the theory which attributes to the Normans the introduction of the long-bow is difficult to substantiate. If we are to trust the Bayeux Tapestry — whose accuracy is in other matters thoroughly borne out by all contemporary evidence — the weapon of William's archers was in no way different to that already known in England, and used by a few of the English in the fight of Senlac. It is the short bow, drawn to the breast and not to the ear. The bowmen who are occasionally mentioned during the succeeding century, as, for example, those present at the Battle of the Standard, do not appear to form any very important part of the national force. Nothing can be more conclusive as to the insignificance of the weapon than the fact that it is not mentioned at all in the ‘Assize of Arms’ of 1181. In the reign of Henry II, therefore, we may fairly conclude that the bow did not form the proper weapon of any class of English society. A similar deduction is suggested by Richard Coeur de Lion's predilection for the arbalest : it is impossible that he should have introduced that weapon as a new and superior arm, if he had been acquainted with the splendid long-bow of the fourteenth century. It is evident that the bow must always preserve an advantage in rapidity of fire over the arbalest; the latter must therefore have been considered by Richard to surpass in range and penetrating power. But nothing is better established than the fact that the trained archer of the Hundred Years' War was able to beat the cross-bowmen on both these points. It is, therefore, rational to conclude that the weapon superseded by the arbalest was merely the old short-bow, which had been in constant use since Saxon times.

However this may be, the cross-bowmen continued to occupy the first place among light troops during the reigns of Richard and John. The former monarch devised for them a system of tactics, in which the pavise was made to play a prominent part. The latter entertained great numbers both of horse- and foot-arbalesters among those mercenary bands who were such a scourge to England. It would appear that the Barons, in their contest with John, suffered greatly from having no adequate provision of infantry armed with missiles to oppose the cross-bowmen of Fawkes de Breauté, and his fellows. Even in the reign of Henry III, the epoch in which the long-bow begins to come into use, the arbalest was still reckoned the more effective arm. At the battle of Taillebourg, in 1242, a corps of 700 men armed with it were considered to be the flower of the English infantry.

To trace the true origin of the long-bow is not easy : there are reasons for believing that it may have been borrowed from the South Welsh, who were certainly provided with it as early as AD 1150. Against this derivation, however, may be pleaded the fact that in the first half of the thirteenth century it appears to have been in greater vogue in the northern than in the western counties of England. As a national weapon it is first accepted in the Assize of Arms of 1252, wherein all holders of 40s. in land or nine marks in chattels are desired to provide themselves with sword, dagger, bow and arrows. Con- temporary documents often speak of the obligation of various manors to provide the king with one or more archers when he makes an expedition against the Welsh. It is curious to observe that even as late as 1281 the preference for the cross-bow seems to have been kept up, the wages of its bearer being considerably more than those of the archer.

To Edward I the long-bow owes its original rise into favour : that monarch, like his grandson and great-grandson, was an able soldier, and capable of devising new expedients in war. His long experience in Welsh campaigns led him to introduce a scientific use of archery, much like that which William the Conqueror had employed at Hastings. We are informed that it was first put in practice in a combat fought against Prince Llewellin at Orewin Bridge, and afterwards copied by the Earl of Warwick in another engagement during the year 1295. The Welsh, on the earl's approach, set themselves fronting his force with exceeding long spears, which, being suddenly turned toward the earl and his company, with their ends placed in the earth and their points upward, broke the force of the English cavalry. But the earl well provided against them, by placing archers between his men-at-arms, so that by these missive weapons those who held the lances were put to rout.

The battle of Falkirk, however (1298), is the first engagement of real importance in which the bowmen, properly supplemented by cavalry, played the leading part. Its circumstances, indeed, bore such striking witness to the power of the arrow, that it could not fail to serve as a lesson to English commanders. The Scots of the Lowlands, who formed the army of Wallace, consisted mainly of spearmen; armed, like the Swiss, with a pike of many feet in length. They had in their ranks a small body of horse, a few hundred in number, and a certain proportion of archers, mainly drawn from the Ettrick and Selkirk district. Wallace, having selected an excellent position behind a marsh, formed his spearmen in four great masses (or ‘schiltrons’, as the Scotch called them) of circular form, ready to face outward in any direction. The light troops formed a line in the intervals of these columns, while the cavalry were placed in reserve. Edward came on with his horsemen in three divisions, and his archers disposed between them. The foremost English 'battle', that of the Earl Marshal, rode into the morass, was stopped by it, and suffered severely from the Scotch missile weapons. The second division, commanded by the Bishop of Durham, observing this check, rode round the flank of the marsh, in order to turn Wallace's position. The small body of Scotch cavalry endeavoured to stay their advance, but were driven completely off the field by superior numbers. Then the Bishop's horsemen charged the hostile line from the rear. The squadrons opposed to the light troops succeeded in riding them down, as Wallace's archers were only armed with the short-bow, and were not particularly skilled in its use. Those of the English, however, who faced the masses of pikemen received a sanguinary check, and were thrown back in disorder. The Bishop had therefore to await the arrival of the King, who was leading the infantry and the remainder of the cavalry round the end of the marsh. When this had been done, Edward brought up his bowmen close to the Scotch masses, who were unable to reply (as their own light troops had been driven away) or to charge, on account of the nearness of the English men-at-arms. Concentrating the rain of arrows on particular points in the columns, the king fairly riddled the Scotch ranks, and then sent in his cavalry with a sudden impetus. The plan succeeded, the shaken parts of the masses were pierced, and the knights, having once got within the pikes, made a fearful slaughter of the enemy. The moral of the fight was evident : cavalry could not beat the Scotch tactics, but archers supplemented by horsemen could easily accomplish the required task. Accordingly, for the next two centuries, the characteristics of the fight of Falkirk were continually repeated whenever the English and Scotch met. Halidon Hill, Neville’s Cross, Homildon, Flodden, were all variations on the same theme. The steady but slowly-moving masses of the Lowland infantry fell a sacrifice to their own persistent bravery, when they staggered on in a vain endeavour to reach the line of archers, flanked by men-at-arms, whom the English commander opposed to them. The bowman might boast with truth that he carried twelve Scots' lives at his girdle; he had but to launch his shaft into the easy target of the great surging mass of pike-men, and it was sure to do execution.

Bannockburn, indeed, forms a notable exception to the general rule. Its result, however, was due not to an attempt to discard the tactics of Falkirk, but to an unskilful application of them. The forces of Robert Bruce, much like those of Wallace in composition, consisted of 40,000 pikemen, a certain proportion of light troops, and less than 1000 cavalry. They were drawn up in a very compact position, flanked by marshy ground to the right, and to the left by a quantity of small pits destined to arrest the charge of the English cavalry. Edward II refrained from any attempt to turn Bruce's army, and by endeavouring to make 100,000 men cover no more space in frontage than 40,000, cramped his array, and made manoeuvres impossible. His most fatal mistake, however, was to place all his archers in the front line, without any protecting body of horsemen. The arrows were already falling among the Scotch columns before the English cavalry had fully arrived upon the field. Bruce at once saw his opportunity: his small body of men-at-arms was promptly put in motion against the bowmen. A front attack on them would of course have been futile, but a flank charge was rendered possible by the absence of the English squadrons, which ought to have covered the wings. Riding rapidly round the edge of the morass, the Scotch horse fell on the uncovered line, rolled it up from end to end, and wrought fearful damage by their unexpected onset. The archers were so maltreated that they took no further effective part in the battle. Enraged at the sudden rout of his first line, Edward flung his great masses of cavalry on the comparatively narrow front of the Scotch army. The steady columns received them, and drove them back again and again with ease. At last every man-at-arms had been thrown into the melée, and the splendid force of English horsemen had become a mere mob, surging helplessly in front of the enemy's line, and executing partial and ineffective charges on a cramped terrain. Finally, their spirit for fighting was exhausted, and when a body of camp-followers appeared on the hill behind Bruce's position, a rumour spread around that reinforcements were arriving for the Scots. The English were already hopeless of success, and now turned their reins to retreat. When the Scotch masses moved on in pursuit, a panic seized the broken army, and the whole force dispersed in disorder. Many galloped into the pits on the left; these were dismounted and slain or captured. A few stayed behind to fight, and met a similar fate. The majority made at once for the English border, and considered themselves fortunate if they reached Berwick or Carlisle without being intercepted and slaughtered by the peasantry. The moral of the day had been that the archery must be adequately supported on its flanks by troops capable of arresting a cavalry charge. The lesson was not thrown away, and at Crecy and Maupertuis the requisite assistance was given, with the happiest of results.

The next series of campaigns in which the English bowman was to take part, were directed against an enemy different in every respect from the sturdy spearman of the Lowlands. In France those absurd perversions of the art of war which covered themselves under the name of Chivalry were more omnipotent than in any other country of Europe. The strength of the armies of Philip and John of Valois was composed of a fiery and undisciplined aristocracy, which imagined itself to be the most efficient military force in the world, but was in reality little removed from an armed mob. A system which reproduced on the battlefield the distinctions of feudal society, was considered by the French noble to represent the ideal form of warlike organization. He firmly believed that, since he was infinitely superior to any peasant in the social scale, he must consequently excel him to the same extent in military value. He was, therefore, prone not only to despise all descriptions of infantry, but to regard their appearance on the field against him as a species of insult to his class-pride. The self-confidence of the French nobility—shaken for the moment by the result of Courtray—had re-asserted itself after the bloody days of Mons-en-Puelle and Cassel. The fate which had on those occasions befallen the gallant but ill-trained burghers of Flanders, was believed to be only typical of that which awaited any foot-soldier who dared to match himself against the chivalry of the most warlike aristocracy in Christendom. Pride goes before a fall, and the French noble was now to meet infantry of a quality such as he had never supposed to exist.

Against these presumptuous cavaliers, their mercenaries, and the wretched band of half-armed villains whom they dragged with them to the battlefield, the English archer was now matched. He was by this time almost a professional soldier, being usually not a pressed man, but a volunteer, raised by one of those barons or knights with whom the king contracted for a supply of soldiers. Led to enlist by sheer love of fighting, desire for adventures, or national pride, he possessed a great moral ascendancy over the spiritless hordes who followed the French nobility to the wars. Historians, however, have laid too much stress on this superiority, real as it was. No amount of mere readiness to fight would have accounted for the English victories of the fourteenth century. Self-confidence and pugnacity were not wanting in the Fleming at Rosbecque or the Scot at Falkirk, yet they did not secure success. It was the excellent armament and tactics of our yeomanry, even more than their courage, which made them masters of the field at Crecy or Poitiers.

The long-bow had as yet been employed only in offensive warfare, and against an enemy inferior in cavalry to the English army. When, however, Edward III led his invading force into France, the conditions of war were entirely changed. The French were invariably superior in the numbers of their horsemen, and the tactics of the archer had to be adapted to the defensive. He was soon to find that the charging squadron presented as good a mark for his shaft as the stationary column of infantry. Nothing indeed could be more discomposing to a body of cavalry than a flight of arrows : not only did it lay low a certain proportion of the riders, but it caused such disorder by setting the wounded horses plunging and rearing among their fellows, that it was most effective in checking the impetus of the onset. As the distance grew shorter and the range more easy, the wounds to horse and man became more numerous : the disorder increased, the pace continued to slacken, and at last a limit was reached, beyond which the squadron could not pass. To force a line of long-bowmen by a mere front attack was a task almost as hopeless for cavalry as the breaking of a modern square. This, however, was a fact which the continental world had yet to learn in the year 1346.

The scientific method of receiving a charge of horsemen by archers flanked with supporting troops was first practised by Edward III at Crecy. When he determined to fight, he chose an excellent position on the gentle slope of a hill, whose flanks were protected by woods and a little brook, which also ran along the front of the line. Following the immemorial usage of the middle ages, the army was drawn up in three battles, of which the foremost was commanded by the Prince of Wales, the second by the Earl of Northampton, and the third by the King himself. In the front battle, on which the greater part of the fighting was to fall, 2000 archers were flanked by two bodies of 800 dismounted men-at-arms, who stood in solid phalanx with their lances before them, to receive cavalry charges directed against the wings of the archers. The second line was formed in similar order, while between the two were ranged 1000 Welsh and Cornish light infantry armed with javelins and long knives. The reserve of 2000 archers and 700 mounted men occupied the summit of the hill. Nothing could be more characteristic of the indiscipline of the French army than the fact that it forced on the battle a day sooner than its leader had intended. On observing the English position, Philip and his marshals had determined to defer the conflict till the next morning, as the troops had been marching since daybreak. When, however, the order to halt reached the vanguard, the nobles at the head of the column believed that they were to be deprived of the honour of opening the fight, as they could see that some of the troops in the rear were still advancing. They therefore pushed on, and, as the main-body persisted in following them, the whole army arrived so close to the English position that a battle became unavoidable. The circumstances of that day have often been described : it is unnecessary to detail the mishap of the unfortunate Genoese cross-bowmen, who were shot down in scores while going through the cumbrous process of winding up their arbalests. The fruitless charges of the cavalry against the front of the line of archers led to endless slaughter, till the ground was heaped with the bodies of men and horses, and further attempts to advance became impossible. Only on the flanks was the charge pressed home; but when the counts of Flanders and Alençon came on the compact masses of dismounted cavalry who covered the wings of the archery, their progress was at an end. They fell before the line of lances which they were unable to break, and fared no better than their comrades in the centre. At evening the French fell back in disorder, and their whole army dispersed. The English had won the day without stirring a foot from their position : the enemy had come to them to be killed. Considerably more than a third of his numbers lay dead in front of the English line, and of these far the greater number had fallen by the arrows of the bowmen.

Crecy had proved that the archer, when adequately supported on his flanks, could beat off the most-determined charges of cavalry. The moral, however, which was drawn from it by the French was one of a different kind. Unwilling, in the bitterness of their class-pride, to ascribe the victory to the arms of mere peasants, they came to the conclusion that it was due to the stability of the phalanx of dismounted knights.

Bearing this in mind, King John, at the battle of Poitiers, resolved to imitate the successful expedient of King Edward. He commanded the whole of his cavalry, with the exception of two corps, to shorten their spears, take off their spurs, and send their horses to the rear. He had failed to observe that the circumstances of attack and defence are absolutely different. Troops who intend to root themselves to a given spot of ground adopt tactics the very opposite of those required for an assault on a strong position. The device which was well chosen for the protection of Edward's flanks at Crecy, was ludicrous when adopted as a means for storming the hill of Maupertuis. Vigorous impact and not stability was the quality at which the king should have aimed. Nothing, indeed, could have been more fatal than John's conduct throughout the day. The battle itself was most unnecessary, since the Black Prince could have been starved into surrender in less than a week. If, however, fighting was to take place, it was absolutely insane to form the whole French army into a gigantic wedge—where corps after corps was massed behind the first and narrowest line—and to dash it against the strongest point of the English front. This, however, was the plan which the king determined to adopt. The only access to the plateau of Maupertuis lay up a lane, along whose banks the English archers were posted in hundreds. Through this opening John thrust his vanguard, a chosen body of 300 horsemen, while the rest of his forces, three great masses of dismounted cavalry, followed close behind. It is needless to say that the archers shot down the greater part of the advanced corps, and sent the survivors reeling back against the first 'battle' in their rear. This at once fell into disorder, which was largely increased when the archers proceeded to concentrate their attention on its ranks. Before a blow had been struck at close quarters, the French were growing demoralized under the shower of arrows. Seeing his opportunity, the Prince at once came down from the plateau, and fell on the front of the shaken column with all his men-at-arms. At the same moment a small ambuscade of 600 men, which he had placed in a wood to the left, appeared on the French flank. This was too much for King John's men : without waiting for further attacks about two-thirds of them left the field. A corps of Germans in the second battle and the troops immediately around the monarch's person were the only portions of the army which made a creditable resistance. The English, however, were able to surround these bodies at their leisure, and ply bow and lance alternately against them till they broke up. Then John, his son Philip, and such of his nobles as had remained with him, were forced to surrender.

This was a splendid tactical triumph for the Prince, who secured the victory by the excellence of the position he had chosen, and the judicious use made of his archery. John's new device for attacking an English army had failed, with far greater ignominy than had attended the rout of his predecessor's feudal chivalry at Crecy. So greatly did the result of the day of Poitiers affect the French mind, that no further attempt was made to meet the invader in a pitched battle during the continuance of the war. Confounded at the blow which had been delivered against their old military system, the noblesse of France foreswore the open field, and sullenly shut themselves up in their castles, resolved to confine their operations to petty sieges and incursions. The English might march through the length and breadth of the land—as did the Earl of Lancaster in 1373—but they could no longer draw their opponents out to fight. Intrenched behind walls which the invader had no leisure to attack, the French allowed him to waste his strength in toilsome marches through a deserted country. Opposed as was this form of war to all the precepts of chivalry —which bid the good knight to accept every challenge—they were on the whole well suited to the exigencies of the time. The tactics of Charles V and Du Guesclin won back all that those of King John had lost. The English found that the war was no longer a means of displaying great feats of arms, but a monotonous and inglorious occupation, which involved a constant drain of blood and money, and no longer maintained itself from the resources of the enemy.

Common sense, and not aphorisms drawn from the customs of the tournament, guided the campaigns of Du Guesclin. He took the field, not in the spirit of adventure, but in the spirit of business. His end being to edge and worry the English out of France, he did not care whether that consummation was accomplished by showy exploits or by unobtrusive hard work. He would fight if necessary, but was just as ready to reach his goal by craft as by hard blows. Night surprises, ambuscades, and stratagems of every description were his choice, in preference to open attacks. Provided with a continual supply of men by his 'free companies', he was never obliged to hazard an engagement for fear that his forces might melt away without having done any service. This relieved him from that necessity to hurry operations, which had been fatal to so many generals commanding the temporary hosts of feudalism. The English were better fitted for winning great battles than for carrying on a series of harassing campaigns. Tactics, not strategy, was their forte, and a succession of petty sieges and inglorious retreats put an end to their ill-judged attempt to hold by force a foreign dominion beyond the Channel.

Du Guesclin, however, had only cleared the way for the re-appearance of the French noblesse on the field. Shut up in their castles while the free companies were reconquering the country, they had apparently 'forgotten nothing and remembered nothing'. With the fear of the English no longer before their eyes, they at once reverted to their old chivalrous superstitions. The last years of the century were similar to the first: if Cassel reproduced itself at Rosbecque, a nemesis awaited the revived tactics of feudalism, and Nicopolis was a more disastrous edition of Courtray. Thirty years of anarchy, during the reign of an imbecile king, fostered the reactionary and unscientific tendency of the wars of the time, and made France a fit prey to a new series of English invasions.

If subsequent campaigns had not proved that Henry V was a master of strategical combinations, we should be inclined to pronounce his march to Agincourt a rash and unjustifiable undertaking. It is, however, probable that he had taken the measure of his enemies and gauged their imbecility, before he sacrificed his communications and threw himself into Picardy. The rapidity of his movements between the 6th and 24th of October shows that he had that appreciation of the value of time which was so rare among mediaeval commanders, while the perfect organization of his columns on the march proved that his genius could condescend to details. Near St. Pol the French barred Henry's further progress with a great feudal army of sixty thousand combatants, of whom full fifteen thousand were mounted men of gentle blood. Like the two Edwards at Crecy and Maupertuis, the king resolved to fight a defensive battle, in spite of the scantiness of his force. He had with him not more than fourteen thousand men, of whom two-thirds were archers. The position chosen by Henry was as excellent in its way as could be desired; it had a frontage of not more than twelve hundred yards, and was covered by woods on either flank. The land over which the enemy would have to advance consisted of ploughed fields, thoroughly sodden by a week of rain. The king's archers were sufficient in number not only to furnish a double line along the front of the army, but to occupy the woods to right and left. Those in the plain strengthened their position by planting in front of themselves the stakes which they habitually carried. In rear of the archers were disposed the rest of the force, the infantry with bills and pikes at the wings, the small force of men-at-arms in the centre.

The Constable of France committed as many faults in drawing up his array, as could have been expected from an average feudal nobleman. He could not resist the temptation of following the example set him by King John at Poitiers, and therefore dismounted three-fourths of his cavalry. These he drew up in two deep battles, flanked by small squadrons of mounted men. Behind the first line, where it could be of no possible use, was stationed a corps of 4000 cross-bowmen. The reserve was formed by a great mass of 20,000 infantry, who were relegated to the rear lest they should dispute the honour of the day with their masters. At eleven o'clock the French began to move towards the English position : presently they passed the village of Agincourt, and found themselves between the woods, and in the ploughed land. Struggling on for a few hundred yards, they began to sink in the deep clay of the fields : horsemen and dismounted knight alike found their pace growing slower and slower. By this time the English archery was commencing to play upon them, first from the front, then from the troops concealed in the woods also. Pulling themselves together as best they could, the French lurched heavily on, sinking to the ankle or even to the knee in the sodden soil. Not one in ten of the horsemen ever reached the line of stakes, and of the infantry not a man struggled on so far. Stuck fast in the mud they stood as a target for the bow-men, at a distance of from fifty to a hundred yards from the English front. After remaining for a short time in this unenviable position, they broke and turned to the rear. Then the whole English army, archers and men-at-arms alike, left their position and charged down on the mass, as it staggered slowly back towards the second battle. Perfectly helpless and up to their knees in mire, the exhausted knights were cast down, or constrained to surrender to the lighter troops who poured among them, 'beating upon the armour as though they were hammering upon anvils'. The few who contrived to escape, and the body of arbalesters who had formed the rear of the first line, ran in upon the second battle, which was now well engaged in the miry fields, just beyond Agincourt village, and threw it into disorder. Close in their rear the English followed, came down upon the second mass, and inflicted upon it the fate which had befallen the first. The infantry-reserve very wisely resolved not to meddle with their masters' business, and quietly withdrew from the field.

Few commanders could have committed a more glaring series of blunders than did the Constable : but the chief fault of his design lay in attempting to attack an English army, established in a good position, at all. The power of the bow was such that not even if the fields had been dry, could the French army have succeeded in forcing the English line. The true course here, as at Poitiers, would have been to have starved the king, who was living merely on the resources of the neighbourhood, out of his position. If, however, an attack was projected, it should have been accompanied by a turning movement round the woods, and preceded by the use of all the arbalesters and archers of the army, a force which we know to have consisted of 15,000 men.

Such a day as Agincourt might have been expected to break the French noblesse of its love for an obsolete system of tactics. So intimately, however, was the feudal array bound up with the feudal scheme of society, that it yet remained the ideal order of battle. Three bloody defeats, Crevant, Verneuil, and the Day of the Herrings, were the consequences of a fanatical adherence to the old method of fighting. On each of those occasions the French columns, sometimes composed of horsemen, sometimes of dismounted knights, made a desperate attempt to break an English line of archers by a front attack, and on each occasion they were driven back in utter rout.

It was not till the conduct of the war fell into the hands of professional soldiers like Xaintrailles, La Hire, and Dunois, that these insane tactics were discarded. Their abandonment, however, was only the first step towards success for the French. The position of the country was infinitely worse than it had been in the days of Du Guesclin, since the greater part of the districts north of the Loire were not only occupied by the English, but had resigned themselves to their fate, and showed no desire to join the national party. A petty warfare such as had won back the lands of Aquitaine from the Black Prince, would have been totally inadequate to rescue France in 1428. It is on this ground that we must base the importance of the influence of the Maid of Orleans. Her successes represent, not a new tactical system, but the awakening of a popular enthusiasm which was to make the further stay of the English in France impossible. The smaller country could not hold down the larger, unless the population of the latter were supine; when they ceased to be so, the undertaking—in spite of all military superiority — became impossible.

While ascribing the expulsion of the English from France to political rather than strategical reasons, we must not forget that the professional officers of the fifteenth century had at last discovered a method of minimizing the ascendancy of the English soldiery. When they found the invaders drawn up in a good defensive position, they invariably refrained from attacking them. There was no object in making the troops a target to be riddled with arrows, when success was almost impossible. Accordingly the French victories of the second quarter of the century will be found to have resulted in most cases from attacking an English army at a moment when it was on the march or in some other position which rendered it impossible for an order of battle to be rapidly formed. Patay is a fair example of a conflict of this description; the battle was lost because Talbot when attacked was not immediately ready. Expecting to see the whole French army arrive on the field and draw itself up in battle array, he paid no attention to the mere vanguard which was before him, and commenced falling back on the village of Patay, where he intended to form his line. La Hire, however, without waiting for the main-body to come up, attacked the retreating columns, and forced his way among them before the archers had time to fix their stakes. The superiority of the bow to the lance depended on the ability of the bearer of the missile weapon to keep his enemy at a distance. If once, by any accident, the cavalry got among their opponents, a mere melée ensued, and numbers and weight carried the day. Such was the case on this occasion : La Hire having succeeded in closing, the battle resolved itself into a hand-to-hand struggle, and when the main-body of the French came up, the English were overpowered by numerical superiority. Such were the usual tactical causes of English defeats in the fifteenth century.

The fall of the empire which Henry V had established in France was therefore due, from the military point of view, to the inadequacy of a purely defensive system to meet all the vicissitudes of a series of campaigns. The commanders who had received the tradition of Agincourt and Poitiers disliked assuming the offensive. Accustomed to win success by receiving the enemy's attack on a carefully chosen ground, and after deliberate preparations, they frequently failed when opposed to officers who refrained on principle from assailing a position, but were continually appearing when least expected. In the open field or on the march, in camp or the town, the English were always liable to a sudden onslaught. They were too good soldiers to be demoralized, but lost the old confidence which had distinguished them in the days when the French still persisted in keeping up their ancient feudal tactics.

A fortunate chance has preserved for us, in the pages of Blondel’s ‘Reductio Normanniae’ a full account of the disastrous field of Formigny, the last battle but one fought by the English in their attempt to hold down their dominion beyond the Channel. The narrative is most instructive, as explaining the changes of fortune during the later years of the Great War. The fight itself — though destined to decide the fate of all Normandy — was an engagement on a very small scale. Some five thousand English, half of them archers, the remainder billmen for the most part, with a few hundred men-at-arms, had been collected for a desperate attempt to open the way to Caen. In that town the Duke of Somerset, commander of all the English armies in France, was threatened by an overwhelming host led by King Charles in person. To draw together a force capable of taking the field all the Norman fortresses had been stripped of their garrisons, and such reinforcements as could be procured, some 2000 men at most, had been brought across from England. The relieving army succeeded in taking Valognes and forcing the dangerous fords of the Douve and Vire, but hard by the village of Formigny it was confronted by a French corps under the Count of Clermont, one of several divisions which had been sent out to arrest the march of the English. Clermont's troops did not greatly exceed their enemies in number : they appear, as far as conflicting accounts allow us to judge, to have consisted of six hundred lances garnis (i e. 3000 cavalry) and three thousand infantry. The obligation to take the offensive rested with the English, who were bound to force their way to Caen. Nevertheless Sir Thomas Kyriel and Sir Matthew Gough, the two veterans who commanded the relieving army, refused to assume the initiative. The old prejudice in favour of fighting defensive battles was so strong that, forgetting the object of their expedition, they fell back and looked for a position in which to receive the attack of Clermont's troops. Finding a brook lined with orchards and plantations, which was well calculated to cover their rear, they halted in front of it, and drew up their men in a convex line, the centre projecting, the wings drawn back so as to touch the stream. Three bodies of archers—each seven hundred strong—formed the main-battle; on the flanks of this force were stationed two battles of billmen, not in a line with the centre but drawn back from it, while these corps were themselves flanked by the small force of cavalry, which was formed close in front of the orchards and the brook. Clermont did not attack immediately, so that the archers had ample time to fix their stakes, according to their invariable custom, and the whole force was beginning to cover itself with a trench when the enemy at last began to move. Through long experience the French had grown too wary to attack an English line of archers from the front: after feeling the position, they tried several u partial assaults on the flanks, which were repulsed. Skirmishing had been going on for three hours without any decisive result, when Giraud, master of the royal ordnance, brought up two culverins, and placed them in a spot from which they enfiladed the English line. Galled by the fire of these pieces, part of the archers rushed out from behind their stakes, and with the aid of one of the wings of billmen charged the French, seized the culverins, and routed the troops which protected them. If the whole of Kyriel’s force had advanced at this moment the battle would have been won. But the English commander adhered rigidly to his defensive tactics, and while he waited motionless, the fate of the battle was changed. The troops who had charged were attacked by one of the flank 'battles' of French men-at-arms, who had dismounted and advanced to win back the lost cannon: a desperate fight took place, while the English strove to drag the pieces towards their lines, and the enemy to recapture them. At last the French prevailed, and pushing the retreating body before them reached the English position. The archers were unable to use their arrows, so closely were friend and foe intermixed in the crowd of combatants which slowly rolled back towards them. Thus the two armies met all along the line in a hand-to-hand combat, and a sanguinary melée began. The fate of the battle was still doubtful when a new French force arrived in the field. The Counts of Richemont and Laval, coming up from St. Lo, appeared on the rear of the English position with 1200 men-at-arms. All Kyriel’s troops were engaged, and he was unable to meet this new attack. His men recoiled to the brook at their backs, and were at once broken into several isolated corps. Gough cut his way through the French, and reached Bayeux with the cavalry. But Kyriel and the infantry were surrounded, and the whole main-battle was annihilated. A few hundred archers escaped, and their commander, with some scores more, was taken prisoner, but the French gave little quarter, and their heralds counted next day three thousand seven hundred and seventy-four English corpses lying on the field. Seldom has an army suffered such a complete disaster: of Kyriel’s small force not less than four-fifths was destroyed. What number of the French fell we are unable to ascertain : their annalists speak of the death of twelve knights, none of them men of note, but make no further mention of their losses. “They declare what number they slew”, sarcastically observes an English chronicler, but they write not how many of themselves were slain and destroyed. This was well-nigh the first foughten field they get on the English, wherefore I blame them not; though they of a little make much, and set forth all, and hide nothing that may sound to their glory.

The moral of Formigny was evident : an unintelligent application of the defensive tactics of Edward III and Henry V could only lead to disaster, when the French had improved in military skill, and were no longer accustomed to make gross blunders at every engagement. Unless some new method of dealing with the superior numbers and cautious manoeuvres of the disciplined compagnies d'ordonnance of Charles VII could be devised, the English were foredoomed by their numerical inferiority to defeat. It was probably a perception of this fact which induced the great Talbot to discard his old tactics, and employ at his last fight a method of attack totally unlike that practised in the rest of the Hundred Years' War. The accounts of the battle of Chatillon recall the warfare of the Swiss rather than of the English armies. That engagement was a desperate attempt of a column of dismounted men-at-arms and billmen, flanked by archers, to storm an intrenched camp protected by artillery. The English —like the Swiss at Bicocca—found the task too hard for them, and only increased the disaster by their gallant persistence in attempting to accomplish the impossible.

The expulsion of the English from their continental possessions had no permanent effect in discrediting the power of the bow. The weapon still retained its supremacy as a missile over the clumsy arbalest with its complicated array of wheels and levers. It was hardly less superior to the newly-invented hand-guns and arquebuses, which did not attain to any great degree of efficiency before the end of the century. The testimony of all Europe was given in favour of the long-bow. Charles of Burgundy considered a corps of three thousand English bowmen the flower of his infantry. Charles of France, thirty years earlier, had made the archer the basis of his new militia, in a vain attempt to naturalize the weapon of his enemies beyond the Channel. James of Scotland, after a similar endeavour, had resigned himself to ill success, and turned the archery of his subjects to ridicule.

There are few periods which appear more likely to present to the enquirer a series of interesting military problems, than the years of the great struggle, in which the national weapons and national tactics of the English were turned against each other. The Wars of the Roses were, however, unfortunate in their historians. The dearth of exact information concerning the various engagements is remarkable, when we consider the ample materials which are to be found for the history of the preceding periods. The meagre annals of William of Worcester, Warkworth, Fabyan, of the continuer of the Croyland Chronicle, and the author of the arrival of king Edward IV, with the ignorant generalities of Whethamstede, are insufficiently supplemented by the later works of Grafton and Hall. When all has been collated, we still fail to grasp the details of most of the battles. Not in one single instance can we reconstruct the exact array of a Yorkist or a Lancastrian army. Enough, however, survives to make us regret the scantiness of the sources of our information.

That some considerable amount of tactical and strategical skill was employed by many of the English commanders is evident, when we analyse the general characteristics of their campaigns. The engagements show no stereotyped similarity of incident, such as would have resulted from a general adherence to a single form of attack or defence. Each combat had its own individuality, resulting from the particular tactics employed in it. The fierce street-fight which is known as the first battle of St. Albans, has nothing in common with the irregular skirmishing of Hedgeley Moor. The stormings of the fortified positions of Northampton and Tewkesbury bear no resemblance to the pitched battles of Towton and Barnet. The superiority of tactics which won Bloreheath contrasts with the superiority of armament which won Edgecot Field.

Prominent among the features of the war stands out the generalship of King Edward IV. Already a skilful commander in his nineteenth year, it was he who at Northampton turned the Lancastrian position, by forcing the ‘streight places’ which covered the flank of the 'line of high banks and deep trenches'; behind which the army of King Henry was sheltered. A year later he saved a cause which seemed desperate, by his rapid march from Hereford to London; a march executed in the inclement month of February and over the miry roads of the South-Midland counties. The decision of mind which led him to attempt at all hazards to throw himself into the capital, won him his crown and turned the balance at the decisive crisis of the war. If, when settled on the throne, he imperilled his position by carelessness and presumption, he was himself again at the first blast of the trumpet. His vigorous struggle in the spring of 1470, when all around him were showing themselves traitors, was a wonderful example of the success of prompt action. Nor was his genius less marked in his last great military success, the campaign of Barnet and Tewkesbury.

To have marched from York to London, threading his way among the hosts of his foes without disaster, was a skilful achievement, even if the treachery of some of the hostile commanders be taken into consideration. At Barnet he showed that tactics no less than strategy lay within the compass of his powers, by turning the casual circumstance of the fog entirely to his own profit. The unforeseen chance by which each army outflanked the other was not in itself more favourable to one party than to the other : it merely tested the relative ability of the two leaders. But Edward's care in providing a reserve rendered the defeat of his left wing unimportant, while the similar disaster on Warwick's left was turned to such good account that it decided the day. Warwick himself indeed, if we investigate his whole career, leaves on us the impression rather of the political wire-puller, 'le plus subtil homme de son vivant,' as Commines called him, than of the great military figure of traditional accounts. Barnet being won, the second half of the campaign began with Edward's march to intercept Queen Margaret before she could open communications with her friends in South Wales. Gloucester was held for the king; his enemies therefore, as they marched north, were compelled to make for Tewkesbury, the first crossing on the Severn which was passable for them. The Lacastrian feint on Chipping Sodbury was not ill-judged, but Edward rendered its effect nugatory by his rapid movements. Both armies gathered themselves up for a rush towards the all-important passage, but the king—although he had the longer distance to cover, and was toiling over the barren rolling country of the Costwold Plateaur—out-marched his opponents. Men spoke with surprise of the thirty-two miles which his army accomplished in the day, without halting for a meal, and in a district where water was so scarce that the men were able to quench their thirst only once in the twelve hours. By evening the king was within five miles of the Lancastrians, who had halted—utterly worn out—in the town of Tewkesbury. As they had not succeeded in crossing its ferry that night, they were compelled to fight next day, since there was even greater danger in being attacked while their forces were half across the Severn, and half still on the Gloucestershire side, than in turning to meet the king. Queen Margaret's generals therefore drew up their forces on the rising ground to the south of the town, in a good position, where they had the slope of the hill in their favour, and were well protected by hedges and high banks. Edward, however, made no rash attempts to force his enemies’ line : instead of delivering an assault he brought up cannon and concentrated their fire on one of the hostile wings, Somerset, who commanded there, was at last so galled that he came down from his vantage ground to drive off the gunners. His charge was for the moment successful, but left a fatal gap in the Lancastrian line. The centre making no attempt to close this opening, Edward was enabled to thrust his main-battle into it, and thus forced the position, and drove his enemies in complete disorder into the cul-de-sac of Tewkesbury town, where they were for the most part compelled to surrender. It will at once be observed that the king's tactics on this occasion were precisely those which had won for William the Norman the field of Senlac. He repeated the experiment, merely substituting artillery for archery, and put his enemy in a position where he had either to fall back or to charge in order to escape the Yorkist missiles.

King Edward was by no means the only commander of merit whom the war revealed. We should be inclined to rate the Earl of Salisbury’s ability high, after considering his manoeuvre at Bloreheath. Being at the head of inferior forces, he retired for some time before Lord Audley; till continued retreat having made his adversary careless, he suddenly turned on him while his forces were divided by a stream, and inflicted two crushing blows on the two isolated halves of the Lancastrian army. The operations before Towton also seem to show the existence of considerable enterprise and alertness on both sides. Clifford was successful in his bold attempt to beat up the camp and rout the division of Fitzwalter; but on the other hand Falconbridge was sufficiently prompt to fall upon the victorious Clifford as he returned towards his main-body, and to efface the Yorkist disaster of the early morning by a success in the afternoon. The same Falconbridge gave in the great battle of the ensuing day an example of the kind of tactical expedients which sufficed to decide the day, when both armies were employing the same great weapon. A snow-storm rendered the opposing lines only partially visible to each other : he therefore ordered his men to advance barely within extreme range, and let fly a volley of the light and far-reaching 'flight-arrows' after which he halted. The Lancastrians, finding the shafts falling among them, drew the natural conclusion that their enemies were well within range, and answered with a continuous discharge of their heavier 'sheaf- arrows', which fell short of the Yorkists by sixty yards. Half an hour of this work well-nigh exhausted their store of missiles, so that the billmen and men-of-arms of Warwick and King Edward were then able to advance without receiving any appreciable damage from the Lancastrian archery. A stratagem like this could only be used when the adversaries were perfectly conversant with each other's armament and methods of war. In this respect it may remind us of the device employed by the Romans against their former fellow-soldiers of the Latin League, at the battle of Vesuvius.

That the practice of dismounting large bodies of men-at-arms, which was so prevalent on the continent in this century, was not unknown in England we have ample evidence. The Lancastrian loss at Northampton, we are told, was excessive, because the knights had sent their horses to the rear and could not escape. Similarly we hear of Warwick dismounting to lead a charge at Towton, and again—but on less certain authority—at Barnet. This custom explains the importance of the pole-axe in the knightly equipment of the fifteenth century : it was the weapon specially used by the horsemen who had descended to fight on foot. Instances of its use in this way need not be multiplied; we may, however, mention the incident which of all others seems most to have impressed the chroniclers in the fight of Edgecott-by-Banbury. Sir Richard Herbert valiantly acquitted himself in that, on foot and with his pole-axe in his hand, he twice by main force passed through the battle of his adversaries, and without any mortal wound returned. The a engagement at which this feat of arms was performed was one notable as a renewed attempt of spearmen to stand against a mixed force of archers and cavalry. The Yorkists were utterly destitute of light troops, their bowmen having been drawn off by their commander, Lord Stafford, in a fit of pique, so that Pembroke and his North Welsh troops were left unsupported. The natural result followed : in spite of the strong position of the king's men, the rebels by force of archery caused them quickly to descend from the hill into the valley, where they were ridden down as they retreated in disorder by the Northern horse.

Throughout the whole of the war artillery was in common use by both parties. Its employment was decisive at the fights of Tewkesbury and 'Lose-coat Field'. We also hear of it at Barnet and Northampton, as also in the sieges of the Northern fortresses in 1462-63. Its efficiency was recognised far more than that of smaller fire-arms, of which we find very scanty mention. The long-bow still retained its supremacy over the arquebus, and had yet famous fields to win, notably that of Flodden, where the old manoeuvres of Falkirk were repeated by both parties, and the pikemen of the Lowlands were once more shot down by the archers of Cheshire and Lancashire. As late as the reign of Edward VI we find Kett’s insurgents beating, by the rapidity of their archery-fire, a corps of German hackbutmen whom the government had sent against them. Nor was the bow entirely extinct as a national weapon even in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Further, however, than the end of the great English Civil War of the fifteenth century, it is not our task to trace its use.

The direct influence of English methods of warfare on the general current of European military science ends with the final loss of dominion in France in the years 1450-53. From that period the occasions of contact which had once been so frequent become rare and unimportant. The Wars of the Roses kept the English soldier at home, and after their end the pacific policy of Henry VII tended to the same result. Henry VIII exerted an influence on Continental politics by diplomacy and subsidies rather than by his barren and infrequent expeditions, while in the second half of the century the peculiar characteristics of the English army of the fourteenth and fifteenth century had passed away, in the general change and transformation of the forms of the Art of War.

Conclusion