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

CHAPTER II.

The Early Middle Ages (A.D. 476-1066).

From the Fall of the Western Empire to the Battles of Hastings and Durazzo.

Franks, Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, etc.

In leaving the discussion of the military art of the later Romans in order to investigate that of the nations of Northern and Western Europe, we are stepping from a region of comparative light into one of doubt and obscurity. The data which in the history of the empire may occasionally seem scanty and insufficient are in the history of the Teutonic races often entirely wanting. To draw up from our fragmentary authorities an estimate of the military importance of the Eastern campaigns of Heraclius is not easy: but to discover what were the particular military causes which settled the event of the day at Vouglé or Tolbiac, at Badbury or the Heavenfield, is absolutely impossible. The state of the Art of War in the Dark Ages has to be worked out from monkish chronicles and national songs, from the casual references of Byzantine historians, from the quaint drawings of the illuminated manuscript, or the mouldering fragments found in the warrior's barrow.

It is fortunate that the general characteristics of the period render its military history comparatively simple. Of strategy there could be little in an age when men strove to win their ends by hard fighting rather than by skilful operations or the utilizing of extraneous advantages. Tactics were stereotyped by the national organizations of the various peoples. The true interest of the centuries of the early Middle Ages lies in the gradual evolution of new forms of warlike efficiency, which end in the establishment of a military class as the chief factor in war, and the decay among most peoples of the old system which made the tribe arrayed in arms the normal fighting force. Intimately connected with this change was an alteration in arms and equipment, which transformed the outward appearance of war in a manner not less complete. This period of transition may be considered to end when, in the eleventh century, the feudal cavalier established his superiority over all the descriptions of troops which were pitted against him, from the Magyar horse-archers of the East to the Anglo-Danish axe-men of the West. The fight of Hastings, the last attempt made for three centuries by infantry to withstand cavalry, serves to mark the termination of the epoch.

The Teutonic nation of North-Western Europe did not—like the Goths and Lombards—owe their victories to the strength of their mail-clad cavalry. The Franks and Saxons of the sixth and seventh centuries were still infantry. It would appear mat the moors of North Germany and Schleswig, and the heaths and marshes of Belgium, were less favourable to the growth of cavalry than the steppes of the Ukraine or the plains of the Danube valley. The Frank, as pictured to us by Sidonius Apollinaris, Procopius, and Agathias, still bore a considerable resemblance to his Sigambrian ancestors. Like them he was destitute of helmet and body-armour; his shield, however, had become a much more effective defence than the wicker frame-work of the first century : it was a solid oval with a large iron boss and rim. The 'framea' had now been superseded by the 'angon' — a dart neither very long nor very short, which can be used against the enemy either by grasping it as a pike or hurling it. The iron of its head extended far down the shaft; at its 'neck' were two barbs, which made its extraction from a wound or a pierced shield almost impossible. The 'francisca', however, was the great weapon of the people from whom it derived its name. It was a single-bladed battle-axe with a heavy head composed of a long blade curved on its outer face and deeply hollowed in the interior. It was carefully weighted, so that it could be used, like an American tomahawk, for hurting at the enemy. The skill with which the Franks discharged this weapon, just before closing with the hostile line, was extraordinary, and its effectiveness made it their favourite arm. A sword and dagger ('scramasax') completed the normal equipment of the warrior; the last was a broad thrusting blade, 18 inches long, the former a two-edged cutting weapon of about 2,1/5 feet in length.

Such was the equipment of the armies which Theodebert, Buccelin, and Lothair led down into Italy in the middle of the sixth century. Procopius informs us that the first-named prince brought with him some cavalry; their numbers, however, were insignificant, a few hundreds in an army of 90,000 men. They carried the lance and a small round buckler, and served as a body-guard round the person of the king. Their presence, though pointing to a new military departure among the Franks, only serves to show the continued predominance of infantry in their armies.

A problem interesting to the historian was worked out, when in A.D. 553 the footmen of Buccelin met the Roman army of Narses at the battle of Casilinum. The superiority of the tactics and armament of the imperial troops was made equally conspicuous. Formed in one deep column the Franks advanced into the centre of the semicircle in which Narses had ranged his men. The Roman infantry and the dismounted heavy cavalry of the Herule auxiliaries held them in play in front, while the horse-archers closed in on their flanks, and inflicted on them the same fate which had befallen the army of Crassus. Hardly a man of Buccelin’s followers escaped from the field : the day of infantry was gone, for the Franks as much as for the rest of the world.

We are accordingly not surprised to find that from the sixth to the ninth century a steady increase in the proportion of cavalry in the Frank armies is to be found; corresponding to it is an increased employment of defensive arms. A crested helmet of classical shape becomes common among them, and shortly after a mail-shirt reaching to the hips is introduced. The Emperor Charles the Great himself contributed to the armament of his cavalry, by adopting defences for the arms and thighs. This protection, however, was at first rejected by many of the Franks, who complained that it impaired their seat on horseback.

At Tours a considerable number of horsemen appear to have served in the army of Charles Martel : the general tactics of the day, however, were not those of an army mainly composed of cavalry. The Franks stood rooted to the spot and fought a waiting battle, till the light-horse of the Saracens had exhausted their strength in countless unsuccessful charges : then they pushed forward and routed such of the enemy as had spirit to continue the fight. In the time of Charles the Great we are told that all men of importance, with their immediate followers, were accustomed to serve on horseback. The national forces, however, as opposed to the personal retinues of the monarch and his great officials and nobles, continued to form the infantry of the army, as can be seen from the list of the weapons which the 'Counts' are directed to provide for them. The Capitularies are explicit in declaring that the local commanders are to be careful that the men whom they have to lead to battle are fiddly equipped : that is, that they possess spear, shield, helm, mail-shirt ('brunia'), a bow, two bow-strings, and twelve arrows. The Franks had therefore become heavy infantry at the end of the eighth century : in the ninth century they were finally to abandon their old tactics, and to entrust all important operations to their cavalry.

This transformation may be said to date from the law of Charles the Bald. Whether merely ratifying an existing state of things, or instituting a new one, this order is eminently characteristic of the period, in which the defence of the country was falling into the hands of its cavalry force alone. Of the causes which led to this consummation the most important was the character of the enemies with whom the Franks had to contend in the ninth and tenth centuries. The Northman in the Western kingdom, the Magyar in the Eastern, were marauders bent on plunder alone, and owing their success to the rapidity of their movements. The hosts of the Vikings were in the habit of seizing horses in the country which they invaded, and then rode up and down the length of the land, always distancing the slowly-moving local levies. The Hungarian horse-archers conducted forays into the heart of Germany, yet succeeded in evading pursuit. For the repression of such inroads infantry was absolutely useless; like the Romans of the fourth century, the Franks, when obliged to stand upon the defensive, had to rely upon their cavalry.

This crisis in the military history of Europe coincided with the breaking up of all central power in the shipwreck of the dynasty of Charles the Great. In the absence of any organized national resistance, the defence of the empire fell into the hands of the local counts, who now became semi-independent sovereigns. To these petty rulers the landholders of each district were now 'commending' themselves, in order to obtain protection in an age of war and anarchy. At the same time, and for the same reason, the poorer freemen were 'commending' themselves to the landholders. Thus the feudal hierarchy was established, and a new military system appears, when the 'count' or 'duke' leads out to battle his vassals and their mounted retainers.

Politically retrogressive as was that system it had yet its day of success: the Magyar was crushed at Merseberg and the Lechfeld, and driven back across the Leith, soon to become Christianised and grow into an orderly member of the European commonwealth. The Viking was checked in his plundering forays, expelled from his strongholds at the river-mouths, and restricted to the single possession of Normandy, where he—like the Magyar — was assimilated to the rest of feudal society. The force which had won these victories, and saved Europe from a relapse into the savagery and Paganism of the North and East, was that of the mail-clad horseman. What wonder then if his contemporaries and successors glorified him into the normal type of warriorhood, and believed that no other form of military efficiency was worth cultivating? The perpetuation of feudal chivalry for four hundred years was the reward of its triumphs in the end of the Dark Ages.

Beyond the English Channel the course of the history of war is parallel to that which it took in the lands of the Continent, with a single exception in the form of its final development. Like the Franks, the Angles and Saxons were at the time of their conquest of Britain a nation of infantry soldiers, armed with the long ashen javelin, the broadsword, the seax or broad stabbing dagger, and occasionally the battle-axe. Their defensive weapon was almost exclusively the shield, the 'round war-board,' with its large iron boss. Ring-mail, though known to them at a very early date, was, as all indications unite to show, extremely uncommon. The 'grey war-sark' or 'ring-locked byrnie' of Beowulf was obtainable by kings and princes alone. The helmet also, with its 'iron-wrought boar-crest', was very restricted in its use. If the monarch and his gesiths wore such arms, the national levy, which formed the main fighting force of a heptarchic kingdom, was entirely without them.

Unmolested for many centuries in their island home, the English kept up the old Teutonic war customs for a longer period than other European nations. When Mercia and Wessex were at strife, the campaign was fought out by the hastily-raised hosts of the various districts, headed by their aldermen and reeves. Hence war bore the spasmodic and inconsequent character which resulted from the temporary nature of such armies. With so weak a military organization, there was no possibility of working out schemes of steady and progressive conquest. The frays of the various kingdoms, bitter and unceasing though they might be, led to no decisive results. If in the ninth century a tendency towards unification began to show itself in England, it was caused, not by the military superiority of Wessex, but by the dying out of royal lines and the unfortunate internal condition of the other states.

While this inclination towards union was developing itself, the whole island was subjected to the stress of the same storm of foreign invasion which was shaking the Frankish empire to its foundations. The Danes came down upon England, and demonstrated, by the fearful success of their raids, that the old 'Teutonic military system was inadequate to the needs of the day. The Vikings were in fact superior to the forces brought against them, alike in tactics, in armament, in training, and in mobility. Personally the Dane was the member of an old war-band contending with a farmer fresh from the plough, a veteran soldier pitted against a raw militiaman. As a professional warrior he had provided himself with an equipment which only the chiefs among the English army could rival, the mail 'byrnie' being a normal rather than an exceptional defence, and the steel cap almost universal. The 'fyrd', on the other hand, came out against him destitute of armour, and bearing a motley array of weapons, wherein the spear and sword were mixed with the club and the stone-axe. If, however, the Danes had been in the habit of waiting for the local levies to come up with them, equal courage and superior numbers might have prevailed over these advantages of equipment. Plunder, however, rather than fighting, was the Viking's object : the host threw itself upon some district of the English coast, 'was there a-horsed', and then rode far and wide through the land, doing all the damage in its power. The possession of the horses they had seized gave them a power of rapid movement which the fyrd could not hope to equal : when the local levies arrived at the spot where the invaders had been last seen, it was only to find smoke and ruins, not an enemy. When driven to bay — as, in spite of their habitual retreats, was sometimes the case — the Danes showed an instinctive tactical ability by their use of entrenchments, with which the English were unaccustomed to deal. Behind a ditch and palisade, in some commanding spot, the invaders would wait for months, till the accumulated force of the fyrd had melted away to its homes.

Of assaults on their positions they knew no fear : the line of axemen could generally contrive to keep down the most impetuous charge of the English levies : Reading was a more typical field than Ethandun. For one successful storm of an intrenched camp there were two bloody repulses.

Thirty years of disasters sealed the fate of the old national military organization : something more than the fyrd was necessary to meet the organized war-bands of the Danes. The social results of the invasion in England had been similar to those which, we have observed in the Frankish empire. Everywhere the free 'ceorls' had been 'commending' themselves to the neighbouring landowners. By accepting this 'commendation' the thegnhood had rendered itself responsible for the defence of the country. The kingly power was in stronger hands in England than across the Channel, so that the new system did not at once develope itself into feudalism. Able to utilise, instead of bound to fear, the results of the change, Alfred and Eadward determined to use it as the basis for a new military organization. Accordingly all holders of five hides of land were subjected to 'Thegn-service, and formed a permanent basis for the national army. To supplement the force thus obtained, the fyrd was divided into two halves, one of which was always to be available. These arrangements had the happiest results: the tide of war turned, and England reasserted itself, till the tenth century saw the culmination of her new strength at the great battle of Brunanburh. The thegn, a soldier by position like the Frankish noble, has now become the leading figure in war: arrayed in mail shirt and steel cap, and armed with sword and long pointed shield, the 'bands of chosen ones' were ready to face and hew down the Danish axemen. It is, however, worth remembering that the military problem of the day had now been much simplified for the English by the settlement of the invaders within the Danelaw. An enemy who has towns to be burnt and homesteads to be harried can have pressure put upon him which cannot be brought to bear on a marauder whose basis of operations is the sea. It is noteworthy that Eadward utilised against the Danes that same system of fortified positions which they had employed against his predecessors; the stockades of his new burghs served to hold in check the 'heres' of the local jarls of the Five Towns, while the king with his main force was busied in other quarters.

A century later than the military reforms of Alfred the feudal danger which had split up the Frankish realm began to make itself felt in England. The great ealdormen of the reign of Ethelred correspond to the counts of the time of Charles the Fat, in their tendency to pass from the position of officials into that of petty princes. Their rise is marked by the decay of the central military organization for war; and during the new series of Danish invasions the forces of each ealdormanry are seen to fight and fall without any support from their neighbours. England was in all probability only saved from the fate of France by the accession of Canute. That monarch, besides reducing the provincial governors to their old position of delegates of the crown, strengthened his position by the institution of the House-Carles, a force sufficiently numerous to be called a small standing army rather than a mere royal guard.

These troops are not only the most characteristic token of the existence of a powerful central government, but represent the maximum of military efficiency to be found in the Anglo-Danish world. Their tactics and weapons differed entirely from those of the feudal aristocracy of the continent, against whom they were ere long to be pitted. They bore the long Danish battle-axe, a shaft five feet long fitted with a single-bladed head of enormous size. It was far too ponderous for use on horse-back, and being wielded with both arms precluded the use of a shield in hand to hand combat. The blows delivered by this weapon were tremendous : no shield or mail could resist them; they were even capable, as was shown at Hastings, of lopping off a horse's head at a single stroke. The house-carle in his defensive equipment did not differ from the cavalry of the lands beyond the Channel : like them he wore a mail shirt of a considerable length, reaching down to the lower thigh, and a pointed steel cap fitted with a nasal.

The tactics of the English axemen were those of the column : arranged in a compact mass they could beat off almost any attack, and hew their way through every obstacle. Their personal strength and steadiness, their confidence and ésprit de corps made them the most dangerous adversaries. Their array, however, was vitiated by the two defects of slowness of movement and vulnerability by missiles. If assailed by horsemen, they were obliged to halt and remain fixed to the spot, in order to keep off the enemy by their close order. If attacked from a distance by light troops, they were also at a disadvantage, as unable to reach men who retired before them.

The battle of Hastings, the first great mediaeval fight of which we have an account clear enough to give us an insight into the causes of its result, was the final trial of this form of military efficiency. Backed by the disorderly masses of the fyrd, and by the thegns of the home counties, the house-carles of King Harold stood in arms to defend the entrenchments of Senlac. Formidable as was the English array, it was opposed precisely by those arms which, in the hands of an able general, were competent to master it. The Norman knights, if unsupported by their light infantry, might have surged for ever around the impregnable palisades. The archers, if unsupported by the knights, could easily have been driven off the field by a general charge. United, however, by the skilful tactics of William, the two divisions of the invading army won the day. 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 were alternated with a destructive fire of missiles. Nothing can be more maddening than such an ordeal to the infantry soldier, rooted to the spot by the necessities of his formation. After repelling charge after charge : with the greatest steadiness, the axemen could no longer bear the rain of arrows. When at last the horsemen drew back in apparent disorder, a great part of Harold's troops stormed down into the valley after them, determined to finish the battle by an advance which should not allow the enemy time to rally. This mistake was fatal: the Norman retreat had been the result of the Duke's orders, not of a wish to leave the field. The cavalry turned, rode down the scattered mass which had pursued them, and broke into the gap in the English line which had been made by the inconsiderate charge. Desperate as was their position, the English still held out: the arrows fell thickly among them, the knights were forcing their way among the disordered ranks of the broken army, but for three hours longer the fight went on. This exhibition of courage only served to increase the number of the slain : the day was hopelessly lost, and, as evening fell, the few survivors of the English army were glad to be able to make their retreat under cover of the darkness. The tactics of the phalanx of axemen had been decisively beaten by William's combination of archers and cavalry.

Once more only — on a field far away from its native land — did the weapon of the Anglo-Danes dispute the victory with the lance and bow. Fifteen years after Harold's defeat another body of English axe-men — some of them may well have fought at Senlac — were advancing against the army of a Norman prince. They were the Varangian guard of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus. That prince was engaged in an attempt to raise the siege of Dyrrhachium, then invested by Robert Guiscard. The Norman army was already drawn up in front of its lines, while the troops of Alexius were only slowly arriving on the field. Among the foremost of his corps were the Varangians, whom his care had provided with horses, in order that they might get to the front quickly and execute a turning movement. This they accomplished; but when they approached the enemy, they were carried away by their eagerness to begin the fray. Without waiting for the main attack of the Greek army ta be developed, the axemen sent their horses to the rear, and advanced in a solid column against the Norman flank. Rushing upon the division commanded by Count Amaury of Bari, they drove it, horse and foot, into the sea. Their success, however, had disordered their ranks, and the Norman prince was enabled, since Alexius' main body was still far distant, to turn all his forces against them. A vigorous cavalry charge cut off the greater part of the English ; the remainder collected on a little mound by the sea-shore, surmounted by a deserted chapel. Here they were surrounded by the Normans, and a scene much like Senlac, but on a smaller scale, was enacted. After the horsemen and the archers had destroyed the majority of the Varangians, the remainder held out obstinately within the chapel. Sending for fascines and timber from his camp, Robert heaped them round the building and set fire to the mass. The English sallied out to be slain one by one, or perished in the flames: not a man escaped; the whole corps suffered destruction, as a consequence of their misplaced eagerness to open the fight. Such was the fate of the last attempt made by infantry to face the feudal array of the eleventh century. No similar experiment was now to be made for more than two hundred years : the supremacy of cavalry was finally established.

CHAPTER III

The Byzantines and their Enemies. A.D. 582-1071.

From the accession of Maurice to the battle of Manzikert.