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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Armour Plates" to "Arundel, Earls of"

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Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Armour Plates" to "Arundel, Earls of"

Author: Various


        
Release date: October 29, 2010 [eBook #34162]

Language: English

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Transcriber's notes:

(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally
      printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an
      underscore, like C_n.

(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript.

(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective
      paragraphs.

(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not
      inserted.

(5) The following typographical errors have been corrected:

    ARTICLE ARMY: "The infantry brigade consists, in the British
      service, of the brigadier and his staff, four battalions of
      infantry, and administrative and medical units, the combatant
      strength being about 4000 men." 'administrative' amended from
      'adminstrative'.

    ARTICLE ARMY: "The question of the value of auxiliary forces, then,
      as between the continuous work of, say, English territorials, and
      the permanent though dwindling influence of an original period of
      active soldiering, is one of considerable importance." 'continuous'
      amended from 'continous'.

    ARTICLE ARMY: "Louvois, who was minister of Louis XIV., was the
      true creator of the French royal army." Added 'who' after
      'Louvois'.




          ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA

  A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE
           AND GENERAL INFORMATION

              ELEVENTH EDITION


            VOLUME II, SLICE VI

     Armour Plates to Arundel, Earls of




ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:



  ARMOUR PLATES                        ARRONDISSEMENT
  ARMS AND ARMOUR                      ARROWROOT
  ARMSTEAD, HENRY HUGH                 ARROWSMITH
  ARMSTRONG, ARCHIBALD                 ARROYO
  ARMSTRONG, JOHN (British physician)  ARSACES
  ARMSTRONG, JOHN (American diplomat)  ARS-AN-DER-MOSEL
  ARMSTRONG, SAMUEL CHAPMAN            ARSCHOT, PHILIPPE DE CROY, DUKE OF
  ARMSTRONG, WILLIAM GEORGE            ARSENAL
  ARMY                                 ARSENIC
  ARNAL, ETIENNE                       ARSENIUS
  ARNALDUS DE VILLA NOVA               ARSENIUS AUTORIANUS
  ARNAUD, HENRI                        ARSES
  ARNAULD                              ARSINOE
  ARNAULT, ANTOINE VINCENT             ARSINOITHERIUM
  ARNDT, ERNST MORITZ                  ARSON
  ARNDT, JOHANN                        ARSONVAL
  ARNE, THOMAS AUGUSTINE               ARSOT
  ARNETH, ALFRED                       ARSUF
  ARNHEM                               ARSURE
  ARNICA                               ARSURES
  ARNIM, ELISABETH                     ART
  ARNIM, HARRY KARL KURT EDUARD VON    ARTA
  ARNIM, LUDWIG ACHIM (JOACHIM) VON    ARTA, GULF OF
  ARNIM-BOYTZENBURG, HANS GEORG VON    ARTABANUS
  ARNO (bishop of Salzburg)            ART AND PART
  ARNO (river of Italy)                ARTAPHERNES
  ARNOBIUS (early Christian writer)    ARTAXERXES
  ARNOBIUS (Christian priest)          ARTEDI, PETER
  ARNOLD                               ARTEGA
  ARNOLD, BENEDICT                     ARTEL
  ARNOLD, SIR EDWIN                    ARTEMIDORUS
  ARNOLD, GOTTFRIED                    ARTEMIS
  ARNOLD, MATTHEW                      ARTEMISIA (daughter of Lygdamis)
  ARNOLD, SAMUEL                       ARTEMISIA (wife of Mausolus)
  ARNOLD, THOMAS                       ARTEMON
  ARNOTT, NEIL                         ARTENA
  ARNOULD-PLESSY, JEANNE SYLVANIE      ARTERIES
  ARNSBERG                             ARTERN
  ARNSTADT                             ARTESIAN WELLS
  ARNSWALDE                            ARTEVELDE, JACOB VAN
  ARNULF                               ARTEVELDE, PHILIP VAN
  AROIDEAE                             ART GALLERIES
  AROLSEN                              ARTHRITIS
  ARONA                                ARTHROPODA
  ARPEGGIO                             ARTHUR
  ARPI                                 ARTHUR I
  ARPINO                               ARTHUR III
  ARQUA PETRARCA                       ARTHUR, CHESTER ALAN
  ARQUEBUS                             ARTHURIAN LEGEND
  ARQUES-LA-BATAILLE                   ARTICHOKE
  ARRACK                               ARTICLE
  ARRAH                                ARTICLES OF ASSOCIATION
  ARRAIGNMENT                          ARTICULATA
  ARRAN, EARLS OF                      ARTICULATION
  ARRAN                                ARTILLERY
  ARRANT                               ARTIODACTYLA
  ARRAS                                ARTISAN
  ARRAY                                ARTOIS
  ARRENOTOKOUS, ARRENOTOKY             ART SALES
  ARREST                               ARTS AND CRAFTS
  ARRESTMENT                           ART SOCIETIES
  ARRETIUM                             ART TEACHING
  ARRHENIUS, SVANTE AUGUST             ARTUSI, GIOVANNI MARIA
  ARRIA                                ARU ISLANDS
  ARRIAN                               ARUNDEL, EARLDOM OF
  ARRIS                                ARUNDEL, EARLS OF




ARMOUR PLATES.

  Defence for ships.

  History.

The earliest recorded proposal to employ armour for ships of war (for
body armour, &c., see ARMS AND ARMOUR) appears to have been made in
England by Sir William Congreve in 1805. In _The Times_ of the 20th of
February of that year reference is made to Congreve's designs for an
armoured, floating mortar battery which the inventor considered would be
proof against artillery fire. Among Congreve's unpublished papers there
is also a suggestion for armour-plating the embrasures of casemates.
Nothing, however, seems to have come of these proposals, and a similar
lack of appreciation befell the next advocate of armour, John Stevens of
New Jersey, U.S.A., who submitted the plans of an armoured vessel to
Congress in 1812. The Stevens family, however, continued to work at the
subject, and by 1841 had determined by actual experiment the thickness
of wrought-iron armour which was proof against the projectiles then in
use. The necessity for armouring ships as a protection against shell
fire was again pointed out by General Paixhans in 1841, and in 1845
Dupuy de Lome had prepared the designs of an armoured frigate for the
French government. During the period between 1827 and 1854, experiments
in connexion with the proposed application of armour to both ships and
forts were carried out in England, the United States and France, but the
question did not get beyond the experimental stage until the latter
year, when armoured floating batteries were laid down in all three
countries, probably as the immediate outcome of the destruction of the
Turkish fleet by shell fire at Sinope on the 30th of November 1853.

Three of the French floating batteries were in action at the bombardment
of Kinburn in 1855, where they achieved a conspicuous success, silencing
the Russian forts after a four hours' engagement, during which they
themselves, although frequently struck, were practically uninjured,
their loss in personnel being but trifling. To quote Very: "This
comparatively insignificant action, which had little if any effect upon
the course of the Crimean War, changed the whole condition of armour for
naval use from one of speculation to one of actual and constant
necessity." The military application of armour for the protection of
guns mounted in permanent fortifications followed. Its development,
however, took rather a different course, and the question of armour
generally is of less importance for the military engineer than for the
naval constructor. For the employment of armour in ship construction and
in permanent works on land, see the articles SHIPBUILDING; FORTIFICATION
AND SIEGECRAFT; the present article is concerned solely with the actual
armour itself.


  Construction and testing.

The earliest armour, both for ships and forts, was made of wrought iron,
and was disposed either in a single thickness or in successive layers
sandwiched with wood or concrete. Such armour is now wholly obsolete,
though examples of it may still be found in a few forts of early date.
The chief application of armour in modern land defences is in the form
of shields for the protection of guns mounted _en barbette_. Examples of
such shields are shown in figs. 1 and 2. Fig. 1 shows a 4.5-in. steel
shield for the U.S.A. government, face-hardened by the Harvey process,
to which reference is made below. It was attacked by 5-in. and 6-in.
armour-piercing shot, and proved capable of keeping out the 5-in. up to
a striking velocity of nearly 1800 ft. per second, but was defeated by a
6-in. capped A.P. shot with a striking velocity of 1842 ft. per second.
The mounting was not seriously damaged by the firing, but could be
operated after the impact of one 3.2-in., five 5-in. and three 6-in.
projectiles. Fig. 2 shows a gun-shield, manufactured by Messrs Hadfield
of Sheffield, after attack by 4.1-in., 4.7-in. and 6-in. armour-piercing
and other projectiles. The limit of the shield's resistance was just
reached by an uncapped 4.7-in. A.P. shell with a striking velocity of
2128 ft. per second. The shield (the average maximum thickness of which
was 5.8 in.) showed great toughness, and although subjected to a severe
battering, and occasionally outmatched by the attacking projectiles,
developed no visible crack. It is chiefly remarkable for the fact that
it was cast and not forged. As is evident from the fringing around the
hole made by the 6-in. A.P. shell, the shield was not face-hardened. A
more highly developed form of the gun-shield is to be found in the
armoured cupola, which has been employed to a very considerable extent
in permanent fortifications, and whose use is still strongly advocated
by continental European military engineers. The majority of the cupolas
to be found in continental forts are not, however, of very recent date,
those erected in 1894 at Molsheim near Strassburg being comparatively
modern instances. Any cupolas constructed nowadays would be of steel,
either forged or cast, and would probably be face-hardened, but a large
number of those extant are of compound or even of iron armour. Many of
those on sea-fronts are made of chilled cast iron. Such armour, which
was introduced by Gruson of Magdeburg in 1868, is extremely hard, and
cannot be perforated, but must be destroyed by fracture. It is thus the
antithesis of wrought iron, which, when of good quality, does not break
up under the impact of the shot but yields by perforation. Armour of the
Gruson type is well adapted for curved surfaces such as cupolas, which
on account of their shape are scarcely liable to receive a direct hit,
except at distant ranges, and its extreme hardness would greatly assist
it to throw off shot striking obliquely, which have naturally a tendency
to glance. Chilled iron, on account of its liability to break up when
subjected to a continuous bombardment by the armour-piercing steel
projectiles of guns of even medium calibre, was usually considered
unsuitable for employment in inland forts, where wrought iron, mild
steel or compound armour was preferred. On the other hand, as pointed
out by the late Captain C. Orde Browne, R.A., it was admirably adapted
to resist the few rounds that the heavy guns of battleships might be
expected to deliver during an attack of comparatively limited duration.

Chilled iron was never employed for naval purposes, and warship armour
continued to be made exclusively of wrought iron until 1876 when steel
was introduced by Schneider. In an important trial at Spezzia in that
year the superiority in resisting power of steel to wrought iron was
conclusively proved, but, on the other hand, steel showed a great
tendency to through-cracking, a defect which led Messrs Cammell of
Sheffield in 1877 to introduce compound armour consisting of a steel
surface in intimate union with a wrought-iron foundation plate. In
Cammell plates, which were made by the Wilson process, the steel face
was formed by running molten steel on to a white-hot foundation plate of
iron, while in the compound plates, made by Messrs John Brown & Co.
according to the patent of J.D. Ellis, a thin steel surface plate was
cemented on to the wrought-iron foundation by running in molten steel
between. Compound armour possessed the advantages of a harder face than
was then possible in a homogeneous steel plate, while, on the other
hand, the back was softer and less liable to crack. Its weak point was
the liability of the surface plate to crack through under fire and
become detached from its iron backing. The manufacture of steel,
however, continued to improve, so that in 1890 we find steel plates
being made which were comparatively free from liability to
through-cracking, while their power to resist perforation was somewhat
greater than that of the best compound. The difference, however, was at
no time very marked, and between 1880 and 1890 the resistance to
perforation of either steel or compound as compared with wrought iron
may be taken as about 1.3 to 1.

Compound armour required to be well backed to bring out its best
qualities, and there is a case on record in 1883 when a 12-in. Cammell
plate weighing 10-1/2 tons, backed by granite, stopped a 16-in. Palliser
shot with a striking energy of nearly 30,000 foot tons and a calculated
perforation of 25 inches of wrought iron. As steel improved, efforts
were made to impart an even greater hardness to the actual surface or
skin of compound armour, and, with this object in view, Captain T.J.
Tresidder, C.M.G., patented in 1887 a method of chilling the heated
surface of a plate by means of jets of water under pressure. By this
method it was found possible to obtain a degree of hardness which was
prevented in ordinary plunging by the formation of a layer of steam
between the water and the heated surface of the plate. Compound plates
face-hardened on this system gave excellent results, and forged-steel
armour-piercing projectiles were in some cases broken up on their
surfaces as if they had been merely chilled iron. Attempts were also
made to increase the toughness of the back by the substitution of mild
nickel steel for wrought iron. The inherent defect of compound armour,
however--its want of homogeneity,--remained, and in the year 1891 H.A.
Harvey of Newark, N.J., introduced a process whereby an all steel plate
could be face-hardened in such a way that the advantages of the compound
principle were obtained in a homogeneous plate. The process in question
consisted in carburizing or cementing the surface of a steel plate by
keeping it for a fortnight or so at a high temperature in contact with
finely divided charcoal, so that the heated surface absorbed a certain
amount of carbon, which penetrated to a considerable depth, thus causing
a difference in chemical composition between the front and back of the
plate. After it had been left a sufficient time in the cementation
furnace, the plate was withdrawn and allowed to cool slowly until it
reached a dull red heat, when it was suddenly chilled by the application
of water, but by a less perfect method than that employed by Tresidder.
Steel plates treated by the Harvey and Tresidder processes, which
shortly became combined, possessed about twice the resisting power of
wrought iron. The figure of merit, or resistance to penetration as
compared with wrought iron, varied with the thickness of the plate,
being rather more than 2 with plates from 6 to 8 in. thick and rather
less for the thicker plates. In 1889 Schneider introduced the use of
nickel in steel for armour plates, and in 1891 or 1892 the St Chamond
works employed a nickel steel to which was added a small percentage of
chromium.

All modern armour contains nickel in percentages varying from 3 to 5,
and from 1.0 to 2.0% of chromium is also employed as a general rule.
Nickel in the above quantities adds greatly to the toughness as well as
to the hardness of steel, while chromium enables it to absorb carbon to
a greater depth during cementation, and increases its susceptibility to
tempering, besides conducing to a tough fibrous condition in the body of
a plate. Alloy steels of this nature appear to be very susceptible to
thermal treatment, by suitable variation of which, with or without oil
quenching, the physical condition of the same steel may be made to vary
to an extraordinary extent, a peculiarity which is turned to good
account in the manufacture of the modern armour plate.

The principal modern process is that introduced by Krupp in 1893.
Although it is stated that a few firms both in Great Britain and in
other countries use special processes of their own, it is probable that
they differ only in detail from the Krupp process, which has been
adopted by the great majority of makers. Krupp plates are made of
nickel-chrome steel and undergo a special heat treatment during
manufacture which is briefly described below. They can either be
cemented or, as was usual in England until about 1902 in the case of the
thinner plates (4 in. and under) and those used for curved structures
such as casemates, non-cemented. They are in either case face-hardened
by chilling. Messrs Krupp have, however, cemented plates of 3 in. and
upward since 1895. Although the full process is now applied to plates of
as little as 2 in. in thickness, there is some difference of opinion
between manufacturers as to the value of cementing these very thin
plates. The simple Harvey process is still employed to some extent in
the case of plates between 5 and 3 in. in thickness, and excellent
results are also stated to have been obtained with plates from 2 to 4
in. in thickness, manufactured from a special steel by the process
patented by M. Charpy of the St Jacques steel works at Montlucon. A
Krupp cemented (K.C.) plate is not perhaps harder as regards surface
than a good Harveyed plate, but the depth of hard face is greater, and
the plate is very much tougher in the back, a quality which is of
particular importance in the thicker plates. The figure of merit varies,
as in Harveyed plates, with the thickness of the armour, being about 2.7
in the case of good 6-in. plates while for the thicker plates the value
gradually falls off to about 2.3 in the case of 12-in. armour. This
figure of merit is as against uncapped armour-piercing shot of
approximately the same calibre as the thickness of the plate. The
resisting power of the non-cemented Krupp plates is usually regarded as
being considerably less than that of the cemented plates, and may be
taken on an average to be 2.25 times that of wrought iron.

Figs. 3, 4 and 5 are illustrations of good cemented plates of the Krupp
type. Fig. 3 shows an 11.8-in. plate, tried by Messrs Krupp in 1895,
after attack by three 12-in. steel armour-piercing projectiles of from
712.7 to 716.1 lb. in weight. In the third round the striking velocity
of the projectile was 1993 ft. per second, the calculated perforation of
wrought iron by Tresidder's formula being 25.9 in. The attack was
successfully resisted, all the projectiles being broken up without
effecting perforation, while there were no serious cracks. The figure of
merit of the plate was thus well in excess of 2.2. The great toughness
of the plate is perhaps even more remarkable than its hardness; its
width was only 6.28 ft., so that each shot head formed a wedge of
approximately one-sixth of its width. The excellence of the metal which
is capable of withstanding such a strain is apparent.

Fig. 4 is of a 9-in. K.C. plate, made by Messrs Armstrong, Whitworth &
Co. for the Japanese government, after undergoing an unusually severe
official test. The fourth round was capable of perforating 22 in. of
wrought iron, so that the figure of merit of the plate must have been
considerably in excess of 2.45, as there were no through-cracks, and the
limit of resistance was far from being reached.

Fig. 5 shows the front of an excellent 6-in. cemented plate of Messrs
Beardmore's manufacture, tried at Eskmeals on the 11th of October 1901.
It withstood the attack of four armour-piercing 6-in. shot of 100 lb.
weight, with striking velocities varying from 1996 to 2177 ft. per
second. Its limit of resistance was just passed by the fifth round in
which the striking velocity was no less than 2261 ft. per second. The
projectile, which broke up in passing through the plate, did not get
through the skin plate behind the wood backing, and evidently had no
surplus energy left. The figure of merit of this plate was between 2.6
and 2.8, but was evidently much closer to the latter than to the former
figure. A sixth round fired with a Johnson capped shot weighing 105.9
lb. easily perforated both plate and backing with a striking velocity of
1945 ft. per second, thus reducing the figure of merit of the plate to
below 2.2 and illustrating very clearly the advantage given by capping
the point of an armour-piercing projectile. There were no through-cracks
in the plate after this severe trial, the back being evidently as tough
as the face was hard.

Fig. 6 shows a 3-in. K.N.C. plate of Messrs Vickers, Sons & Maxim's
manufacture, tested privately by the firm in November 1905. It proved to
be of unusual excellence, its limit of resistance being just reached by
a 12-1/2-lb. armour-piercing shell of 3 in. calibre with a striking
velocity of 2558 ft. per second, a result which, even if the projectiles
used were not relatively of the same perforating power as those used in
the proof of 6-in. and thicker plates, shows that its resisting power
was very great. At a low estimate its figure of merit against 3-in. A.P.
_shot_ may be taken as about 2.6, which is exceptionally high for a
non-cemented, or indeed for any but the best K.C. plates.

The plate also withstood the attack of a 4.7-in. service pattern steel
armour-piercing shell of 45 lb. weight striking the unbacked portion
with a velocity of 1599 ft. per second, and was only just beaten by a
similar shell with a velocity of 1630 ft. per second. The effect of all
the above-mentioned rounds is shown in the photograph. The same plate
subsequently kept out two 6-in. common shell filled up to weight with
salt and plugged, with striking velocities of 1412 and 1739 ft. per
second respectively, the former being against the unbacked and the
latter against the backed half of the plate,--the only effect on the
plate being that round 6 caused a fragment of the right-hand top corner
of the plate to break off, and round 7 started a few surface cracks
between the points of impact of rounds 1, 2 and 3.

Within the limitations referred to below, the resisting power of all
hard-faced plates is very much reduced when the armour-piercing
projectiles used in the attack are capped, the average figure of merit
of Krupp cemented plates not being more than 2 against capped shot as
compared with about 2.5 against uncapped. So long ago as 1878 it was
suggested by Lt.-Col. (then Captain) T. English, R.E., that
armour-piercing projectiles would be assisted in attacking compound
plates if caps of wrought iron could be fitted to their points.
Experiments at Shoeburyness, however, did not show that any advantage
was gained by this device, and nothing further was heard of the cap
until 1894, when experiments carried out in Russia with so-called
"magnetic" shot against plates of Harveyed steel showed that the
perforating power of an armour-piercing projectile was considerably
augmented where hard-faced plates were concerned, if its point were
protected by a cap of wrought iron or mild steel. The conditions of the
Russian results (and of subsequent trials in various parts of the world
which have confirmed them) differed considerably from the earlier
English ones. The material of both projectiles and plates differed, as
did also the velocities employed--the low velocities in the earlier
trials probably contributing in large measure to the non-success of the
cap. The cap, as now used, consists of a thimble of comparatively soft
steel of from 3 to 5% of the weight of the projectile, attached to the
point of the latter either by solder or by being pressed hydraulically
or otherwise into grooves or indentations in the head. Its function
appears to be to support the point on impact, and so to enable it to get
unbroken through the hard face layers of the plate. Once through the
cemented portion with its point intact, a projectile which is strong
enough to remain undeformed, will usually perforate the plate by a true
boring action if its striking velocity be high enough. In the case of
the uncapped projectile, on the other hand, the point is almost
invariably crushed against the hard face and driven back as a wedge into
the body of the projectile, which is thus set up so that, instead of
boring, it acts as a punch and dislodges or tends to dislodge a coned
plug or disk of metal, the greatest diameter of which may be as much as
four times the calibre of the projectile. The disproportion between the
maximum diameter of the disk and that of the projectile is particularly
marked when the calibre of the latter is much in excess of the thickness
of the plate. When plate and projectile are equally matched, e.g. 6"
versus 6", the plug of metal dislodged may be roughly cylindrical in
shape, and its diameter not greatly in excess of that of the projectile.
In all cases the greatest width of the plug or disk is at the back of
the plate.

A stout and rigid backing evidently assists a plate very much more
against this class of attack than against the perforating attack of a
capped shot. Fig. 7 shows the back of a 6-in. plate attacked in 1898,
and affords an excellent illustration of the difference in action of
capped and uncapped projectiles. In round 7 the star-shaped opening made
by the point of a capped shot boring its way through is seen, while
rounds 2, 3, 4 and 5 show disks of plate partially dislodged by uncapped
projectiles. The perforating action of capped armour-piercing
projectiles is even better shown in fig. 8, which shows a 250-mm. (9.8
in.) Krupp plate after attack by 150-mm. (5.9 in.) capped A.P. shot. In
rounds 5 and 6 the projectiles, with striking velocities of 2302 and
2281 ft. per second, perforated. Round 7, with a striking velocity of
2244 ft. per second, just got its point through and rebounded, while
round 8, with a striking velocity of 2232, lodged in the plate. In many
cases a capped projectile punches out a plug, usually more or less
cylindrical in shape and of about the same diameter as the projectile,
from a plate, and does not defeat it by a true boring action. In such
cases it will probably be found that the projectile has been broken up,
and that only the head, set up and in a more or less crushed condition,
has got through the plate. This peculiarity of action can best be
accounted for by attributing either abnormal excellence to the plate or
to that portion of it concerned--for plates sometimes vary considerably
and are not of uniform hardness throughout,--or comparative inferiority
to the projectile. Whichever way it may be, what has happened appears to
be that after the cap has given the point sufficient support to get it
through the very hard surface layers, the point has been flattened in
the region of extreme hardness and toughness combined, which exists
immediately behind the deeply carburized surface. The action from this
point becomes a punching one, and the extra strain tends to break up the
projectile, so that the latter gets through wholly or partially, in a
broken condition, driving a plug of plate in front of it. At low
striking velocities, probably in the neighbourhood of 1700 ft. per
second, the cap fails to act, and no advantage is given by it to the
shot. This is probably because the velocity is sufficiently low to give
the cap time to expand and so fail to grip the point as the latter is
forced into it. The cap also fails as a rule to benefit the projectile
when the angle of incidence is more than 30 deg. to the normal.

[Illustrstion: PLATE I.

  FIG. 1.--HARVEYIZED SHIELD, 4.5 INCHES THICK, ON 6-INCH PEDESTAL
  MOUNT, AFTER ATTACK BY 5-INCH AND 6-INCH CAPPED ARMOUR-PIERCING SHOT.

  FIG. 2.--GUN SHIELD, 6 INCHES THICK, AFTER ATTACK. (HADFIELD.)

  FIG. 3.--KRUPP-CEMENTED PLATE, 11.8 INCHES THICK, AFTER ATTACK.
  (KRUPP, MEPPEN.)

  FIG. 4.--KRUPP-CEMENTED PLATE, 9 INCHES THICK, AFTER ATTACK.
  (ARMSTRONG, WHITWORTH & CO.)]

[Illustrstion: PLATE II.

  FIG. 5.--BEARDMORE CEMENTED PLATE, 6-INCHES THICK, AFTER ATTACK BY
  6-INCH SHOT. (From Brassey's Naval Annual, 1902 by permission)

  FIG 6.--KRUPP-CEMENTED PLATE, 3 INCHES THICK, AFTER ATTACK. (VICKERS,
  SONS & MAXIM)

  FIG. 7.--BACK OF A 6-INCH PLATE SHOWING ACTION OF CAPPED AND UNCAPPED
  PROJECTILES.

  FIG. 8.--BACK OF KRUPP PLATE 9.8 INCHES THICK, AFTER ATTACK, WITH
  CAPPED PROJECTILE. (KRUPP, MEPPEN.)

  (From Brassey's Naval Annual, by permission.)]


  Laws of Resistance.

The laws governing the resistance of armour to perforation have been the
subject of investigation for many years, and a considerable number of
formulae have been put by means of which the thickness of armour
perforable by any given projectile at any given striking velocity may be
calculated. Although in some cases based on very different theoretical
considerations, there is a general agreement among them as far as
perforation proper is concerned, and Tresidder's formula for the
perforation of wrought iron, t^2 = wv^3/dA, may be taken as typical.
Here t represents the thickness perforable in inches, w the weight of
the projectile in pounds, v its velocity in foot seconds, d its diameter
in inches and A the constant given by log A = 8.8410.

For the perforation of Harveyed or Krupp cemented armour by capped
armour-piercing shot, this formula may be employed in conjunction with a
suitable constant according to the nature of armour attacked. In the
case of K. C. armour the formula becomes t^2 = wv^(3)/4dA. A useful
rough rule is t/d = v/1900.

Hard armour, such as chilled cast iron, cannot be perforated but must be
destroyed by fracture, and its destruction is apparently dependent
solely upon the striking energy of the projectile and independent of its
diameter. The punching of hard-faced armour by uncapped projectiles is
intermediate in character between perforation and cracking, but
approaches the former more nearly than the latter. The formula most used
in England in this case is Krupp's formula for K.C., viz. t^2 =
wv^2/dA^1, where t, w, v and d are the same as before, and log A^1 =
6.3532. This, if we assume the sectional density (w/d^3) of projectiles
to be constant and equal to 0.46, reduces to the very handy rule of
thumb t/d = v/2200, which, within the limits of striking velocity
obtainable under service conditions, is sufficiently accurate for
practical purposes. For oblique attack up to an angle of 30 deg. to the
normal, the same formula may be employed, t sec [theta] being
substituted for t, where [theta] is the angle of incidence and t the
normal thickness of the plate attacked. More exact results would be
obtained, however, by the use of Tresidder's W.I. formula, given above,
in conjunction with a suitable figure of merit, according to the nature
and thickness of the plate. It should be remembered in this connexion
that the figure of merit of a plate against a punching attack falls off
very much when the thickness of the plate is considerably less than the
calibre of the attacking projectile. For example, the F.M. of a 6-in.
plate may be 2.6 against 6-in. uncapped A.P. projectiles, but only 2.2
against 9.2-in. projectiles of the same character. In the case of the
perforating action of capped projectiles, on the other hand, the ratio
of d and t does not appear to affect the F.M. to any great extent,
though according to Tresidder, the latter is inclined to fall when d is
considerably less than t, which is the exact opposite of what happens
with punching.

Another method of measuring the quality of armour, which is largely
employed upon the continent of Europe, is by the ratio, r, between the
velocity requisite to perforate any given plate and that needed to
pierce a plate of mild steel of the same thickness, according to the
formula of Commandant Jacob de Marre, viz. v = Ae^(0.7).a^(0.75)/p^(0.5)
where e = the thickness of the plate in centimetres, a = the calibre of
the projectile in centimetres, p = the weight of the projectile in
kilogrammes, v = the striking velocity of the projectile in metres per
second, and log A = 1.7347. Converted into the usual English units and
notation, this formula becomes v = A^1t^(0.7).d^(0.75)/w^(0.5), in
which log A^1 = 3.0094; in this form it constitutes the basis of the
ballistic tests for the acceptance of armour plates for the U.S. navy.

Common shell, which are not strong enough to remain undeformed on
impact, derive little benefit from the cap and usually defeat a plate by
punching rather than by perforation. Their punching power may be taken
roughly as about 2/3 that of an uncapped armour-piercing shot. Shells
filled with high explosives, unless special arrangements are made to
deaden the bursting charge and so obviate detonation upon impact, are
only effective against the thinnest armour.


  Manufacture.

With regard to manufacture, a brief account of the Krupp process as
applied in one of the great English armour plate works (omitting
confidential details of temperature, &c.) will illustrate the great
complexity of treatment which the modern armour plate has to undergo
before its remarkable qualities of combined hardness and toughness can
be developed. The composition of the steel probably differs slightly
with the manufacturer, and also with the thickness of the armour, but it
will usually contain from 3 to 4% of nickel, from 1.0 to 2.0% of
chromium and about 0.25 to 0.35% of carbon, together with from 0.3 to
0.7% of manganese. After being cast, the ingot is first heated to a
uniform degree of temperature throughout its mass and then generally
forged under the hydraulic forging press. It is then reheated and passed
through the rolls. After rolling, the plate is allowed to cool, and is
then subjected to a thermal treatment preparatory to surfacing and
cutting. Its surface is then freed from scale and planed. After planing,
the plate is passed into the cementation furnace, where its face remains
for some weeks in contact with specially prepared carbon, the
temperature being gradually raised to that required for cementation and
as gradually lowered after that is effected. After cementation the plate
is heated to a certain temperature and is then plunged into an oil bath
in order to toughen it. After withdrawal from the oil bath, the plate is
cooled, reheated to a lower temperature, quenched again in water,
reheated and passed to the bending press, where it is bent to shape
while hot, proper allowance being made for the slight change of curve
which takes place on the final chilling. After bending it is again
heated and then allowed to get cold, when the final machining, drilling
and cutting are carried out. The plate is now placed in a furnace and
differentially heated so that the face is raised to a higher temperature
than the back. After being thus heated for a certain period the plate is
withdrawn, and both back and face are douched simultaneously with jets
of cold water under pressure, the result being that the face is left
glass-hard while the back is in the toughest condition possible for such
hard steel.

The cast-steel armour made by Hadfield has already been alluded to. That
made by Krupp (the only other maker at present of this class of armour)
is of face-hardened nickel steel. A 5.9-in. plate of this material tried
in 1902 had a figure of merit of more than 2.2 against uncapped 5.9-in.
armour-piercing projectiles of 112 lb. in weight. The main advantage of
cast armour is that it is well adapted to armoured structures of
complicated design and of varying thickness, which it would be difficult
or impossible to forge in one piece. It should also be cheaper than
forged armour, and, should time be a consideration, could probably be
turned out more quickly; on the other hand, it is improbable that heavy
castings such as would be required could be as regular in quality and as
free from flaws as is possible when forged material is used, and it is
unlikely that the average resistance to attack of cast-steel armour will
ever be equal to that of the best forged steel.


  Defence against small-arms.

Of recent years there has been a considerable demand for thin steel
plating proof against small-arm bullets at close ranges. This class of
steel is used for field-gun shields and for sap shields, to afford cover
for men in field-works, for armoured trains, motor-cars and ambulances,
and also very largely for armouring shallow-draught river-gunboats.
Holtzer made chrome steel breastplates in 1890, 0.158 in. of which was
proof against the 0.43-in. hard lead bullet of the Gras rifle at 10
metres range, while 0.236 in. was proof against the 0.32 in. 231-grain
Lebel bullet at the same distance, the striking velocities being
approximately 1490 and 2070 ft. per second respectively. The
bullet-proof steel made by Messrs Cammell, Laird & Co. in Great Britain
may be taken as typical of that produced by the best modern
manufacturers. It is proof against the 215-grain Lee-Enfield bullet of
0.303 in. calibre striking directly, as under:

   Range.      Thickness of Plate.     Striking Velocity.
   10 yards        0.187 inch              2050 f.s.
  100   "          0.167   "               1865  "
  560   "          0.080   "               1080  "

The weight of the 0.08 in. plating is only 3.2 lb. per sq. ft. The
material is stated to be readily adaptable to the ordinary operation of
bending, machining, drilling, &c., and is thus very suitable for the
purposes indicated above.     (W. E. E.)




ARMS AND ARMOUR (Lat. _arma_, from the Aryan root _ar_, to join or fit;
cf. Gr. [Greek: armos], joint; the form _armour_, from Lat. _armatura_,
should strictly be _armure_). Under this heading are included weapons of
offence (arms) and defensive equipment (armour). The history of the
development of arms and armour begins with that of the human race;
indeed, combined with domestic implements, the most primitive weapons
which have been found constitute the most important, if not the only,
tangible evidence on which the history of primitive man is based. It is
largely from the materials and characteristics of the weapons and
utensils found in caves, tombs and various strata of the earth's crust,
coupled with geological considerations, that the ethnological and
chronological classifications of prehistoric man have been deduced. For
a detailed account of this classification and the evidence see
ARCHAEOLOGY; BRONZE AGE; FLINT IMPLEMENTS, &c., and articles on special
weapons.


  Classification.

Offensive weapons may be classified roughly, according to their shape
(i.e. the kind of blow or wound which they are intended to inflict), and
the way in which they are used, as follows:--(1) Arms which are wielded
by hand at close quarters. These are subdivided into (a) _cleaving_
weapons, e.g. axes; (b) _crushing_, e.g. clubs, maces and all
hammer-like arms; (c) _thrusting_, e.g. pointed swords and daggers; (d)
_cutting_, e.g. sabres (such weapons frequently combine both the cut and
the thrust, e.g. swords with both edge and point); (e) those weapons
represented by the spear, lance, pike, &c., which deal a thrusting blow
but are distinguished from (c) by their greater length. (2) Purely
missile weapons, e.g. darts, javelins and spears. Frequently these
weapons are used also at close quarters as thrusting weapons; the
typical example of these is the medium-length spear of not more than
about 6 ft. in length. (3) Arms which discharge missiles, e.g. bows,
catapults and fire-arms generally. (See ARCHERY and section _Fire-arms_
below.) The weapons in (2) and (3) are designed to avoid hand-to-hand
fighting.

Weapons are also classified in a variety of other ways. Thus we have
_small-arms_, i.e. all weapons in classes (1) and (2) with those in (3)
which do not require carriages. _Side-arms_ are those which, when not in
use, are worn at the side, e.g. daggers, swords, bayonets. _Armes
blanches_ is a term used for offensive weapons of iron and steel which
are used at close quarters.

Defensive armour consists of body armour, protections for the head and
the limbs, and various types of shield.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Leaf-shaped Flint Dagger.]


  History.

1. _Stone Age._--One of the chief problems which have perplexed
archaeologists is that of finding a criterion which will enable them to
distinguish the most primitive products of human skill from similar
objects whose form is due to the forces of nature. It is often
impossible to say precisely whether a rough piece of flint is to be
regarded as a weapon (except so far as it could be used as a missile) or
merely as a fragment of rock. Passing over these doubtful cases, we come
first to indubitable examples of weapons deliberately fashioned in stone
for offensive purposes. The use of stone weapons appears to have been
universally characteristic of the earliest races of mankind, as it is
still distinctive of those savage races which are most nearly allied to
primitive man. These weapons were naturally simple in form and
structure. The earliest examples (Palaeolithic) found in river-drift
gravel in various parts of Europe are merely chipped flints, celts, &c.
Later on we find polished implements (Neolithic) progressively more
elaborate in design and workmanship, such as socketed stones with wooden
handles and knives or daggers of flaked flint with handles. Besides
flint the commonest materials are diorite, greenstone, serpentine and
indurated clay-slate; there are also weapons of horn and bone (daggers
and spear-heads). Spear-heads and arrow-points (leaf-shaped,
lozenge-shaped, tanged and triangular) were chipped in flint with such
skill as to be little inferior to their metal successors. They have
accurately flaked barbs and tangs, and in some cases their edges are
minutely chipped. The heads appear to have been fastened to the shafts
by vegetable fibre and bitumen. Knife-daggers of flint, though
practically of one single type, exhibit much variety of form. They vary
in size also, but seldom exceed 12 in. in length. They are sometimes
obtuse-edged like a scraping-tool, sometimes delicately chipped to a
straight edge, while the flakes are so regularly removed from the convex
part of the blade as to give a wavy surface, and the corners of the
handle are delicately crimped. The daggers attain their highest
perfection in the short, leaf-shaped form,--the precursor of the
leaf-shaped sword which is peculiarly characteristic of the Bronze
Age,--and the curved knives found especially in Great Britain and
Russia, and also in Egypt. The precise object of the sharpening of both
convex and concave edges in the curved variety is not clear. There have
also been found sling-stones, and, in Scotland and Ireland, balls of
stone with their "surfaces divided into a number of more or less
projecting circles with channels between them." These latter, Sir John
Evans suggests, were attached to a thong which passed through the
surface channels, and used like the _bolas_ of South America. The weapon
could thus deal a blow at close quarters, or could be thrown so as to
entangle the limbs of an enemy. Of defensive armour of stone there is
none. The only approximation is to be found in the small rectangular
plates of slate, &c., perforated with holes at the corners, which are
supposed to have been bound on to the arm to protect it from the recoil
of the bow-string. Similar wristlets or bracers are in use among the
Eskimos (of bone) and in India (of ivory). These plates measure
generally about 4 in. by 1-1/2 in.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Leaf-shaped Bronze Sword.]

2. _Bronze Age._--It is impossible to assign any date as the beginning
of the Bronze Age; indeed, archaeology has shown that the adoption of
metal for weapons was very gradual. The stone weapon perseveres
alongside the bronze, and there exist stone axes which, by their shape,
suggest that they have been copied from metal axes. In the earliest
interments in which the weapons deposited with the dead are of other
materials than stone, a peculiar form of bronze dagger occurs. It
consists of a well-finished, thin, knife-like blade, usually about 6 in.
in length, broad at the hilt and tapering to the point, and attached to
the handle by massive rivets of bronze. It has been found associated
with stone celts; both of the roughly chipped and the highly polished
kind, showing that these had not been entirely disused when bronze
became available. A later type of bronze dagger is a broad, heavy,
curved weapon, usually from 9 to 15 in. in length, with massive rivets
for attachment to an equally massive handle. The leaf-shaped sword,
however, is the characteristic weapon of the Bronze Age. It is found all
over Europe, from Lapland to the Mediterranean. No warlike weapon of any
period is more graceful in form or more beautifully finished. The finish
seems to have been given in the mould without the aid of hammer or file,
the edge being formed by suddenly reducing the thickness of the metal,
so as to produce a narrow border of extreme thinness along both sides
of the blade from hilt to point. The handle-plate and blade were cast in
one piece, and the handle itself was formed by side plates of bone, horn
or wood, riveted through the handle-plates. There was no guard, and the
weapon, though short, was well balanced, but more fitted for stabbing
and thrusting than for cutting with the edge. The Scandinavian variety
is not so decidedly leaf-shaped, and is longer and heavier than the
common British form; and instead of a handle-plate, it was furnished
with a tang on which a round, flat-topped handle was fastened, like that
of the modern Highland dirk, sometimes surmounted by a crescent-like
ornament of bronze. A narrow, rapier-shaped variety, tapering from hilt
to point, was made without a handle-plate, and attached to the hilt by
rivets like the bronze daggers already mentioned. This form is more
common in the British Isles than in Scandinavia, and is most abundant in
Ireland. The spear-heads of the Bronze Age present a considerable
variety of form, though the leaf-shaped predominates, and barbed
examples are extremely rare. Some British weapons of this form
occasionally reach a length of 27 in. The larger varieties are often
beautifully designed, having segmental openings on both sides of the
central ridge of the blade, and elaborately ornamented with chevron
patterns of chased or inlaid work both on the socket and blade.
Arrow-points are much rarer in bronze than in flint. In all probability
the flint arrow-point (which was equally effective and much more easily
replaced when lost) continued to be used throughout the Bronze Age.
Shields of bronze, circular, with hammered-up bosses, concentric ridges
and rows of studs, were held in the hand by a central handle underneath
the boss. The transition period between the Bronze and Iron Ages in
central Europe is well defined by the occurrence of iron swords, which
are simple copies of the leaf-shaped weapon, sometimes with flat
handle-plate of bronze. These have been found associated with articles
assigned to the 3rd or 4th century B.C.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Bronze Spear-Head, length 19 inches.]


  Hallstatt Weapons.

An important distinction between the characteristic bronze swords
peculiar to southern peoples and the swords both of iron and of bronze
found together in the Hallstatt cemeteries (in the Salzkammergut,
Austria, ancient Noricum) is that whereas the former invariably have
short handles (2-1/4 to 2-1/2 in.), the latter are provided with handles
from 3 to 3-1/2 in. long, terminating in a round or oval pommel; the
grip of one of the bronze swords even reaches a length of 4 in. The
hilts are decorated with ivory, amber, wood, bronze, horn, and the
decoration of blade and scabbard is often elaborate. The length of these
swords is sometimes as much as 30 to 33 in. Again at La Tene on Lake
Neuchatel iron swords have been found to the number of one hundred, with
handles of 4 to 7-1/2 in. long and a total length varying from 30 to 38
in. Similar remains have been found in France at Bibracte and Alesia,
and even in Ireland (cf. Munro, _The Lake-dwellings of Europe_, pp. 282,
383).

The occurrence at Hallstatt of bronze swords together with iron, having
the characteristic long handle, has led to the hypothesis that the
graves are those of an immigrant (probably Celtic) people of northern
extraction which had conquered and overlaid a smaller-framed Bronze Age
people, and had introduced the use of iron while continuing to use the
bronze of their predecessors with the necessary modifications. This
theory derived from tangible remains is corroborated by literary
evidence. Thus Polybius (ii. 33, iii. 114) describes the Celtic peoples
as fighting with a long pointless iron sword, which easily bent and was
in any case too large to be used easily in a melee.

The graves at Hallstatt yielded in addition to these important swords a
much larger number of spears. Of these two only were of bronze, the head
of the larger being 7-1/2 in. long. The much more numerous iron heads
range up to as much as 2 ft. in length, and are all fastened to the
shaft by rivets. All the arrow-heads found are of bronze, while of the
axes the great majority are of iron; a few have iron edges fitted in a
bed of bronze.

These examples are sufficient to show that the transition from bronze to
iron was very slow. The fact that they were found in a district which is
known to have been directly in the line of march pursued by invaders
from the north tends to confirm the theory that the introduction of iron
was the work of such invaders.

  See Sir John Evans, _Ancient Stone Implements_ (2nd. ed., 1897),
  _Bronze Implements_; W. Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_; and works
  quoted under ARCHAEOLOGY.


  Mycenaean and Homeric.

3. _Early Greek Weapons._--The character of the weapons used by the
early peoples of the Aegean in the periods known as Minoan, Mycenaean
and Homeric is a problem which has given rise of recent years to much
discussion. The controversy is an important part of the Homeric question
as a whole, and the various theories of the weapons used in the Trojan
War hinge on wider theories as to the date and authorship of the Homeric
poems. One widely accepted hypothesis, based on the important monograph
by Dr Wolfgang Reichel, _Uber homerische Waffen. Archaologische
Untersuchungen_ (Vienna, 1894), is that the Homeric heroes, like those
who created the civilization known as Mycenaean, had no defensive armour
except the Mycenaean shield, and used weapons of bronze. This view is
derived to a great extent from the Homeric poems themselves, in which
the metal most frequently mentioned is [Greek: chalkos] (bronze), and
involves the assumption that all passages which describe the use of
corslets, breastplates, small shields and greaves are later
interpolations. It is maintained on the other hand (e.g. by Prof. W.
Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, i. chap. 3), that the Homeric Achaeans
(whom he regards as the descendants of the central European peoples, the
makers of the Hallstatt iron swords) were far advanced into the Iron
Age, and that the use of bronze weapons is merely another instance of
the fact that the introduction of a new element does not necessarily
banish the older. This theory would separate the Homeric from the
Mycenaean altogether, and is part of a much more comprehensive
ethnological hypothesis. According to another hypothesis, the Homeric
poems are true descriptions of a single age, or, in other words, the
weapons of the Homeric age were far more diverse and elaborate than is
supposed by Reichel.

Very few traces of iron have been found in the Mycenaean settlements,
nor have any examples of body armour been found except the ceremonial
gold breastplates at Mycenae. The Mycenaean soldiers carried apparently
a bronze spear, a bronze sword and a bow and arrows. The arrow-heads are
first of obsidian and later of bronze. It would appear that only the
chief warriors used spear and shield, while the majority fought with
bows. The swords found at Mycenae are two-edged, of rigid bronze, and as
long as 3 ft. or even more; from representations of battles it would
seem that they were perhaps used for thrusting mainly. They are highly
ornamented and some have hilts of wood, bone or ivory, or even gold
mounting. Later swords became shorter and of a type like that of early
iron swords found in Greece. Moreover in a few cases there have been
found in pre-Mycenaean (late Minoan III.) tombs a few examples of short
iron swords together with bronze remains. All Mycenaean spears are of
bronze and, apparently, their shafts, unlike the Homeric, had no
butt-piece. In the absence of any metal helmets in the tombs we may
perhaps assume that the Mycenaean helmet was a leather cap, possibly
strengthened with tusks, such as appears in Homer (_Iliad_, x.) also.
The Mycenaean shield (generally, perhaps, made of leather) has given
rise to much controversy, which hinges largely on the interpretation of
the evidence provided by the representation on the Warrior Vase and the
Painted Stele from Mycenae and pottery found at Tiryns. Professor
Ridgeway regards these as describing post-Mycenaean conditions, and
maintains that the true Mycenaean shield was always long (from neck to
feet), and that it was either in the form of a figure-of-eight targe, or
rectangular and sometimes incurved like the section of a cylinder;
whereas the Homeric shield was round (e.g. [Greek: kukloteros,
eukuklos], &c.). Dr Reichel's followers believe that the Homeric shield
was long ("like a tower") and incurved in the centre like the
Mycenaean, that Homer knew nothing of the small round shield, and that
the epithets implying roundness used in the poems are to be explained as
meaning "well-balanced" or as late interpolations. On the whole we must
conclude that the Mycenaean age is by no means a single homogeneous
whole (see AEGEAN CIVILIZATION), and that the weapons are not
exclusively of bronze, nor of any single type.

The Homeric warrior in full armour, according to the Homeric poems,
wore: (1) shield ([Greek: aspis, sakos]), (2) greaves ([Greek:
knaemides]), (3) band ([Greek: zoma]), (4) belt ([Greek: zostaer])and
_mitre_, (5) tunic ([Greek: chiton]), (6) helmet ([Greek: korus]), (7)
breastplate ([Greek: thorex]), (8) sword ([Greek: xiphos]). The [Greek:
laisaeion] was a protection worn by the archers in place of a shield.
According to the usual view, the Homeric shield was, as we have seen,
bent in about half way up each side (in the form of a figure-of-eight)
to give freedom to the arms, and large enough to protect the whole body.
The two curves were held rigid by two Wooden (probably) staves inside.
It was composed of layers of ox-hide overlaid with bronze, forming a
boss in the centre, and sometimes had studs upon it. Reichel's view is
that it was the weight of these huge shields which led to the use of the
chariot as a means of going rapidly from one part of the field to
another (though Professor Ridgeway and others contest this, and Helbig
mentions more than one case of long journeys on foot under shield), and
further that the round shield is entirely unknown to Homer. This large
shield was clearly the natural protection against showers of missiles,
rather than against enemies fighting with the sword.

The greaves were, no doubt, generally of hide, protected the leg all
round, and were fastened at the knee with cords. On the other hand
Mycenaean bronze greaves have been found at Enkomi (Cyprus) and at
Glassinatz (Glasinac), and therefore it is not necessary, following
Reichel, to cut out Homer's references to the "bronze-greaved" Achaeans
(_Iliad_, vii. 41), a phrase which has been taken as evidence for
regarding the passage as spurious. The tin greaves of Achilles are
obviously exceptional.

The _thorex_ again is the subject of controversy. Reichel, arguing that
the great shield rendered any breastplate unnecessary, regarded the word
as a general term for body clothing, but Ridgeway strongly maintains the
older theory that it was a bronze breastplate, and Andrew Lang points
out that, on Reichel's theory, a word which originally meant the
"breast" was transferred to mean "loin-cloth" (which, to judge from the
artistic representations, was all that the Mycenaean warrior wore), and
subsequently in historic times returned to its natural use for the
breastplate--a most unlikely evolution. The passages in Homer which
describe it as a breastplate are regarded by Reichel's school as later
interpolations. Gilbert Murray thinks that the Homeric poems must be
regarded as belonging to different periods of development, and therefore
attributes the more elaborate armour to the "surface" (late Ionian)
stratum. The _zoma_ was probably a loin-cloth, and the _mitre_ a metal
band about a foot wide in front and narrow behind to protect the lower
part of the body. As a matter of fact, however, the big shield does not
exclude the use of body armour, and it is quite likely that the Homeric
warrior wore a bronze corslet, i.e. a somewhat improved form of the
[Greek: linothorex], or stiffened shirt. On the other hand, it is
probable, as we gather from the poems, that this corslet was not strong
enough to do more than stop a spent spear. The _chiton_ was worn over
the _mitre_, and reached the knees; it was held to the body by the
_zoster_, a metal-plated belt. Helmets were both of metal on leather,
and of leather throughout; the crests were of horsehair (not of metal
like the later Greek helmets) and there were no cheek-pieces.

The sword has already been mentioned. Ridgeway, in spite of the almost
invariable mention of bronze as the material of the Homeric weapons,
believes that it was generally of iron, but, while the presence of iron
in the Homeric age is admitted in the case of implements, it is
generally held that weapons were all of bronze. Except for one
arrow-head (_Iliad_, iv. 123), and the mace of Areithous, mentioned as a
unique example by Nestor (_Iliad_, vii. 141), no reference to an iron
weapon proper occurs in the Homeric poems. But the sword was used only
when the favourite spear or javelin had failed to decide the contest.

It must be admitted that the problem of pre-Homeric armour and Homeric
armour must always be largely a matter of inference, based on a
comparative study of the evidence literary and archaeological. Unless we
are prepared to adopt the theory that the Homeric poems consist of a
mosaic of interpolation informed by an archaizing editor, we must assume
that they describe a single period of transition intermediate between
the Mycenaean prime and the dawn of history proper. In this case we
shall believe that the Homeric warrior has so far adapted to changing
conditions the simple appliances of the Mycenaean that he has evolved a
feeble corslet with minor pieces of body armour, while retaining the big
double-bellied shield as a protection against the arrows which are still
the chief weapon of the rank and file and are even used on occasion by
the chiefs. If we further believe that the iron at his disposal was
similar to that used by the Celts of Polybius, it is natural to believe
also that he preferred the harder bronze for his weapons, though iron
was common for domestic and other implements.

  On early Greek arms in general see, besides Reichel and Ridgeway _op.
  cit._: A. Lang, _Homer and his Age_ (London, 1906; and criticisms in
  _Classical Review_, February 1907); G.G.A. Murray, _The Rise of the
  Greek Epic_ (Oxford, 1907), chap. vi; R.M. Burrows, _Discoveries in
  Crete_ (2nd ed., London, 1907); Leaf and Bayfield, _Iliad_, i.-xii.
  Appendix A (follows Reichel); W. Helbig, _Homerische Epos_ (1884 and
  1899), and _La Question mycenienne_ (1896); C. Robert, _Studien zur
  Ilias_ (Berlin, 1901); Chr. Tsountas and J.I. Manatt, _The Mycenaean
  Age_ (1897); V. Berard, _Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssee_ (Paris, 1902);
  Cauer, _Grundfrager d. Homerkritik_ (Leipzig, 1895); much valuable
  discussion will be found in articles in _Journ. Hell, Stud., Classical
  Rev._ and _Journ. of Anthropol. Instit_.; see also editions of _Iliad_
  and _Odyssey_ (espec. D.B. Monro), and works quoted under AEGEAN
  CIVILIZATION; HOMER; MYCENAE.

4. _Greek, Historical._--The equipment does not differ generically from
that described in the Homeric poems, except when we come to the reforms
of the Macedonians. The hoplites, who formed the main army, wore helmet,
body armour, greaves and shield, and fought with pike and sword. The
helmets were (1) the Corinthian, which covered the face to the chin,
with slits for the eyes, and often had no plume or crest; (2) the
Athenian, which did not cover the face (though sometimes it had
cheek-plates which could be turned up if necessary), had crests,
sometimes triple, with plumes of feathers, horsehair or leather; (3) a
steel cap ([Greek: pilos]) without crest, plumes or cheek-plates. The
last seems to have been most common in the Spartan army. The body armour
consisted of breast and back plates fastened together by thongs or
straps and buckles; sometimes poverty compelled a man to be content with
a leather jerkin ([Greek: spolas]) partly strengthened by metal plates,
or even a quilted linen or stuffed shirt. Greaves were of pliant bronze
fastened at the back above the ankle and below the knee. Shields were of
the small round or oval type, adapted to the new conditions in which the
bow and arrow had given place to hand-to-hand fighting. They were held
by means of two handles ([Greek: ochana]), the left hand being thrust
through the first and grasping the second. In the 5th and 4th centuries
the shield bore a device or initial representing the state and also the
individual's own crest. The hoplite's pike, about 8 ft. long, unlike the
Homeric weapon, was hardly ever thrown. In the Macedonian phalanx a pike
([Greek: sarissa]), certainly 18 ft., and perhaps later in the 3rd and
and 2nd centuries even 24 ft. long, was introduced. The sword was
straight, sharp-pointed, short, sometimes less than 20 in., and rarely
more than 2 ft. long. It was double-edged and used for both cut and
thrust. A less common type was the [Greek: machaira] or curved sabre
used by the Spartans, with one sharp edge. The hoplite had no other
offensive weapons.

The cavalry were heavy-armed like the hoplites except that they carried
a smaller shield, or, more usually, none at all. They were armed with a
lance which they wielded freely (i.e. not "in rest") and occasionally
threw. The Macedonian cavalry had a [Greek: sarissa]. The light-armed
([Greek: gymnaetes, psiloi]) were (1) [Greek: akontistai], armed with a
javelin (3 to 5 ft. long) and a small shield; (2) [Greek: toxotai],
archers; and (3) [Greek: sphendonaetai], slingers, whose missiles were
balls of lead, stones and hardened clay pellets. Between the heavy and
the light armed were the peltasts. The _pelta_, from which they took the
name, was a light shield or target, made of skin or leather on a wooden
or wickerwork frame. The Athenian Iphicrates armed them with linen
corslet and a larger spear and sword than those of the hoplites; he also
invented a new footgear (called after him _iphicratides_) to replace the
older greaves.

5. _Roman._--The equipment of the Roman soldier, like the organization
of the army (see ROMAN ARMY), passed through a great number of changes,
and it is quite impossible to summarize it as a single subject. In the
period of the kings the legion was the old Greek phalanx with Greek
armour; the front ranks wore the Greek panoply and fought with long
spears and the circular Argolic shield. The early Roman sword, like that
of the Greeks, Egyptians and Etruscans, was of bronze. We have no direct
statement as to its form, but in all probability it was of the ordinary
leaf-shape. We gather from the monuments that, in the 1st century B.C.,
the Roman sword was short, worn on the right side (except by officers,
who carried no shield), suspended from a shoulder-belt (_balteus_) or a
waist-belt (_cingulum_), and reaching from the hollow of the back to the
middle of the thigh, thus representing a length of from 22 in. to 2 ft.
The blade was straight, double-edged, obtusely-pointed. On the Trajan
column (A.D. 114) it is considerably longer, and under the Flavian
emperors the long, single-edged _spatha_ appears frequently along with
the short sword.

The second period ending with the Punic wars witnessed a change. The
_hastati_ and the _principes_ are both heavily armed, but the round
shield has given way to the oblong (_scutum_), except for one-third of
the _hastati_ who bore only the spear and the light javelin (_gaesa_).
The third period--that described by Polybius--is characterized by
greater complexity of armour, due no doubt in part to the experience
gained in conflicts with a wider range of peoples, and in part to the
assimilation of the methods peculiar to the new Italian allies. Thus we
find the skirmishers (_velites_) armed with a light javelin 3 ft. long
and 3/4 in. thick, with an iron point 9 in. long; this point was so
fragile that it was rendered useless by the first cast. For defence they
wore a hide-covered headpiece and a round buckler 3 ft. in diameter. The
heavy-armed carried a _scutum_ formed of two boards glued together,
covered with canvas and skin, and incurved into the shape of a
half-cylinder; its upper and lower edges were strengthened with iron
rims and its centre with a boss (_umbo_). A greave was worn on the right
leg, and the helmet was of bronze with a crest of three feathers. The
wealthier soldiers wore the full cuirass of chain armour (_lorica_), the
poorer a brass plate 9 in. square. For offence they carried a sword and
two javelins. The former was the Spanish weapon, straight, double-edged
and pointed, for both thrust and cut, in place of the old Greek sword.

The characteristic weapon, however, was the _pilum_ (Gr. [Greek:
ussos]). The form of this weapon and the mode of using it have been
minutely described by Polybius (vi. 23), but his description has been
much misunderstood in consequence of the rarity of representations or
remains of the _pilum_. It is shown on a monument of St Remy in
Provence, assigned to the age of the first emperors, and in a bas-relief
at Mainz, on the grave-stone of Quintus Petilius Secundus, a soldier of
the 15th legion. A specimen of the actual weapon is in the museum at
Wiesbaden. It is a javelin with a stout iron head (7 in.), carried on an
iron rod, about 20 in. in length, which terminates in a tang for
insertion in the wooden shaft. As represented on the monuments, the iron
part of the weapon is about one-third of its entire length (6-3/4 ft.).
It was used primarily as a missile. When the point pierced the shield
the weight of the stave pulled the shield downwards and rendered it
useless. At close quarters it answered all the purposes, offensive and
defensive, of the modern bayonet when "fixed." Vegetius, in his _Rei
militaris instituta_, describes it in a modified form as used in the
armies of the lower empire, and in a still more modified form it
reappears as the "argon" of the Franks. This equipment was
characteristic of _hastati, principes_ and _triarii_ (save that the
latter used the _hasta_ instead of the _pilum_). We thus see how great
is the change from the time when the _hastati_ were the light-armed
(from _hasta_) of the Greek phalanx.

The cavalry, which had originally been protected only by a light ox-hide
shield and the most fragile spears, adopted, about Polybius's time, the
full Greek equipment of buckler, strong spear and breastplate.

In the last period of the republic the _pilum_ became the universal
weapon of the heavy-armed, while the auxiliaries (all foreigners, the
_velites_ having disappeared) used the _hasta_ and the long single-edged
sword (_spatha_). Under the empire the heavy-armed, according to
Josephus, had helmet, cuirass, a long sword worn on the left side, and a
dagger on the right, _pilum_ and _scutum_. The special detachment
detailed to attend the commander had a round shield (_clipeus_) and a
long spear. The cavalry wore armour like that of the infantry, with a
broadsword, a buckler slung from the horse's side, a long pole for
thrusting, and several javelins, almost as large as spears, in a sheath
or quiver. Arrian, writing of a period some fifty years later, gives
further particulars from which we gather that of the cavalry some were
bowmen, some polemen, while others wielded lances and axes.

  For the arms and armour of other peoples of antiquity see e.g. PERSIA:
  _History, Ancient_, section v. "The Persian Empire of the
  Achaemenids"; BRITAIN, _Anglo-Saxon_, section v. "Warfare"; ETRURIA;
  EGYPT, &c.     (J. M. M.)

6. _English from the Norman Conquest._--It is unnecessary here to trace
in detail the history of European armour in the middle ages and after,
but its use and fashion in England may illustrate the broad lines of the
gradual perfection and the hurried abandonment of the ancient
war-harness. Each country gave its armour something of the national
character, the Spanish harness being touched with the Moorish taste, the
Italian with the classical note borrowed from the monuments of old time,
and the German with the Teutonic feeling for the grotesque.

[FIG. 4.--From the Bayeux Tapestry.]


  11th-century Bayeux tapestry.

To understand the development of English arms and armour it is well for
us to consider carefully the fashion of these things at the time of that
landmark of history, the Norman Conquest. Poets, chroniclers and
law-makers give us material for their description, and in the great
embroidery of Bayeux, with its more than six hundred lively figures, we
have pictured all the circumstances of war. We find that weapons and war
gear have advanced little or nothing beyond the age which saw the Dacian
warrior armed from crown to foot. A knight is reckoned fully armed if he
have helmet, hawberk and shield; his weapons are sword and lance,
although he sometimes carries axe or mace and, more rarely, a bow. The
coat of fence, which the Norman called _hawberk_ and the English
_byrnie_, hangs from neck to knee, the sleeves loose and covering the
elbow only, the skirt slit before and behind for ease in the saddle. The
Bayeux artists (see fig. 4) commonly show these skirts as though they
were short breeches, the hawberk taking the fashion at first sight of a
man's swimming dress, but other authorities set us right, and towards
the end of the tapestry we see men stripping hawberks from the slain by
pulling them over the head. Back and front are so much alike that he who
armed Duke William for the fight slipped on the armour hind side before,
an omen that he should change his state of a duke for that of a king.
The hawberk might be mail of woven rings, of rings sewn upon leather or
cotton, of overlapping scales of leather, horn or iron, of that jazerant
work which was formed of little plates sewn to canvas or linen, or of
thick cotton and old linen padded and quilted in lozenges, squares or
lines. There are indications that the hawberk was sometimes reinforced
at the breast probably by a small oblong plate fastened underneath. Its
weight is shown in the scene where William's men carry arms to the
ships, each hawberk being borne between two men upon a pole thrust
through the sleeves.

The helmet is a brimless and pointed cap, either all of metal or of
leather or even wood framed and strengthened with metal. Its
characteristic piece is the guard which protects the nose and brow from
swinging cuts, so disguising the knight that William must needs take off
his helmet to show his men that he had not fallen. Such a nasal appears
in a 10th-century illumination; at the time of the Conquest it was all
but universal. It grows rare and all but disappears in the 13th century,
although examples are found to the end of the middle ages. The helmet is
laced under the chin, and under it the knight often wore a hood of mail
or quilting which covered the top of the head, the ears and neck, but
left the chin free--in two or three cases he has this hood without the
helmet. A close coif was probably worn beneath it when it was of ringed
mail, to spare the fretting of the metal on the head.

The knights' legs are shown in most cases as unprotected save by stout
hose or leg-bands: only in two or three instances does the tapestry
picture a warrior with armed legs, and it is perhaps significant of the
rarity of this defence that the duke is so armed. The feet are covered
only by the leather boot, the heels having prick spurs.

Broad-bladed swords with cross-hilts of straight or drooping quills are
fastened with a strap and buckle girdle to the left side. They have a
short grip, and the blade would seem to be from 2-1/2 to 3 ft. in
length. The chieftain unarmed in his house is often seen with unbuckled
and sheathed sword sceptre-wise in his hands, carrying it as an Indian
raja will nurse his sheathed tulwar. The ash spears brandished or
couched by the knights as they charge seem from 7 to 8 or 9 ft. in
length. In a few cases a three-forked pennon flutters at the end. The
axe, a weapon which the Normans, in spite of their Norse ancestry, do
not carry in the battle, is of the type called the Danish axe,
long-shafted, the large blade boldly curved out. Maces, such as that
with which the bishop of Bayeux rallies his young men, seem knotted
clubs of simple form. Short and strong bows are drawn to the breast by
the Norman archers.

Of the shields in the fight, four or five borne by the English are of
the old English form--large, round bucklers of linden-wood, bossed and
ribbed with iron. For the rest the horsemen bear the Norman shield,
kite-shaped, with tapering foot, and long enough to carry a dead warrior
from the field. On the inner side are straps for the hand to grip and a
long strap allowed the knight to hang the shield from his neck. Let us
note that although wyvern-like monsters, crosses, roundels and other
devices appear on these shields, none of them has any indication of true
armory, whose origins must be placed in the next century.


  12th Century.

The 12th century, although an age of riding and warring, affects but
little the fashion of armour. The picture of a king on his seal may well
stand for the full-armed knight of his age, but Henry Beauclerc, Stephen
and Henry II. are shown in harness not much unlike that of the Bayeux
needlework. But the sleeve of the hawberk goes to the wrist, and the
kite shield grows less, Stephen's shield being 30 in. long at the most.
On Stephen's second seal the mail hood is drawn over the point of the
chin, and Henry II.'s seals show the chin covered to the lips. At least
one seal of this king has the legs and feet armed with hose of ringed
mail, probably secured by lacing at the back of the leg as a modern boot
is laced. The first seal of Richard Lionheart marks an important
movement. His hawberk, hood and hose clothe him, like his father, from
crown to toe, and to this equipment he adds gloves of mail. Under the
hawberk flows out to the heels the skirt of a long gown slit in front.
But helm and shield are the most remarkable points. The shield has
become flatter at the top, and at last the shield of an English king
bears those armorial devices whose beginnings are seen elsewhere a
generation before. The earlier seal has the shield with a rampant lion
ramping to the sinister side and closely resembling that on the shield
of Philip of Alsace, long believed to be the earliest example of true
armory. But the shield in the second seal bears the three leopards which
have been ever since the arms of the kings of England, and from this
time to the end of the middle ages armorial devices become the common
decorations of the knight's shield, coat, saddle and horse-trapper. The
helmet of the first seal is a high thimble-topped cap, without a nasal
guard, but the second has the king's head covered with the great helm,
barrel-shaped and reinforced in front with a flat ventaile pierced in
slits for the sight. This helm is crested with a semicircular ridge from
which spring two wings, or rows of feathers fan-wise. On its side the
ridge bears a single leopard, the forerunner of the coming crests.


  13th Century.

For 13th-century arms, although but poor scraps remain of original
material, we have authority in plenty--pictures, seals and carving, and,
above all, the effigies in stone or brass which give us each visible
link, strap and ornament. All these have for a commentary chronicles,
poems and account books, so that the history of armour may be followed
in detail.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Knights' Armour, c. 1250.

From _The Ancestor_, by permission of A Constable & Co. Ltd.]

The long, sleeveless surcoat seen over King John's mail on his broad
seal goes through the century and is often embroidered with arms. The
shield becomes flat-topped the better to receive armorial charges. The
great helm is common, although many knights on the day of battle like
better the freedom of the mail hood with a steel cap worn over or under
its crown, keeping for the tourney-yard the great helm which towards the
century-end begins to carry its towering crest. Great variety is seen in
the forms of the flat or round-topped helm, some being in one piece,
pierced for sight and air, others having hinged or movable ventailes. At
the end of the century a sugar-loaf type is the established form. The
knight's hawberk is worn over a gambeson of linen, quilted linen or
cotton, which lesser men wear with a steel cap for all defence. Breast
and back plates also are sometimes borne under the hawberk, and the
first plates in sight at last appear in those knee-cops which protect
the joining of the upper and lower hose, and in a few examples of
bainbergs or greaves of metal or leather. At the end of Henry III.'s
reign we have the admirable illustrations of a manuscript of Matthew
Paris's _Lives of the Offas_, with many pictures of knights. (See fig
5.) Here we see knights with knee-cop and greave and a plenty of curious
headpieces, the plain mail hood and mail hoods with a plate ventaile to
cover the face, barrel-helms and round-topped helms and even
round-topped helmets with the Norman nose-guard.

In the last half of the 13th century appears the curious defence known
as _alettes_. This name is given to a pair of leather plates generally
oblong in form and tagged to the back of the shoulder. As a rule they
are borne to display the wearer's arms, but being sometimes plain they
may have had some slight defensive value, covering a weak spot at the
armpit and turning a sweeping sword-cut at the neck. They disappear in
the earlier years of Edward III.

Surcoat, shield and trapper have the arms of their owner. The rowel-spur
makes a rare appearance. Weapons change little. although the sword is
often longer and heavier. Richard I. had favoured the cross-bow, in
spite of papal denunciations of that weapon hateful to God, and its use
is common through all the 13th century, after which it makes way for the
national weapon of the long-bow.


  14th century.

In the 14th century, the high-day of chivalry, the age of Crecy and
Poitiers, of the Black Prince and Chandos, the age which saw enrolled
the noble company of the Garter, the art of the armourer and
weapon-smith strides forward. At its beginning we see many knights still
clad in chain mail with no visible plate. At its end the knight is often
locked in plates from head to foot, no chainwork showing save the camail
edge under the helm and the fringe of the mail skirt or hawberk.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Brass of Sir John de Creke.

From Waller's _Monumental Brasses._]

Before the first quarter of the 14th century is past many of these
plates are in common use. Sir John de Creke's brass, about 1325-1330, is
a fair example (fig. 6). His helmet is a basinet, pointed at the top,
probably worn over a complete hood of mail flowing to the mid-breast.
This hood was soon to lose its crown, the later basinets having the
camail, a defence of mail covering neck, cheeks and chin and secured to
the basinet with eyelet holes and loops through which a lace was passed.
A rerebrace of plate defends the outer side of the upper arm, plain
elbow-cops the elbow, and round bosses in the form of leopard heads
guard the shoulder and the crook of the elbow. The fore-arm is covered
with the plates of a vambrace which appears from under the hawberk
sleeve. Large and decorated knee-cops cover the knees, ridged greaves
the shins, and the upper part of the foot from pointed toe to ankle is
fenced with those articulated and overlapping plates the perfection of
which in the next century enabled the full-harnessed knight to move his
body as freely as might an unarmed man. Under the plates the mail hose
show themselves and the heels have rowelled spurs. He has a hawberk of
mail whose front skirt ends in a point between the knees, the loose
sleeves between wrist and elbow. Under this is a haketon of some soft
material whose folds fall to a line above the height of the knee. Over
the hawberk is a garment, perhaps of leather with a dagged skirt-edge,
and over this again is a sleeveless gambeson or pourpoint of leather or
quilted work, studded and enriched. Over all is the sleeveless surcoat,
the skirt before cut squarely off at the height of the fork of the leg,
the skirt behind falling to below the knee. The loose folds of this
surcoat are gathered at the waist by a narrow belt, the sword hanging
from a broader belt carried across the hip. Before 1350 the long surcoat
of the 13th century was still further shortened, the tails being cut off
squarely with the front. The fate of Sir John Chandos, who in 1369
stumbled on a slippery road, his long coat "armed with his arms"
becoming tangled with his legs, points to the fact that an old soldier
might cling to an old fashion.

The desire for a better defence than a steel cap and camail and a less
cumbrous one than the great helm, in which the knight rode half stifled
and half blind, brought in as a fighting headpiece the basinet with a
movable viser. This is found throughout this century, disappearing in
the next when the salet and its varieties displaced it. But there were
many knights who still fought with the great helm covering basinet and
camail, a fact which speaks eloquently of the mighty blows given in this
warlike age. The many monumental brasses of the last half of the 14th
century show us for the most part knights in basinet and camail with the
face exposed, but their heads are commonly pillowed on the great helm
and in any case the viser would hinder the artist's desire to show the
knight's features.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Brass of Sir John de Foxley.

From Waller's _Monumental Brasses_.]

The fully-armed man of the latter half of the 14th century seems to have
worn a rounded breastplate and a back-plate over his chain hawberk.
Chaucer's Sir Thopas must always be cited for the defences of this age,
the hero wearing the quilted haketon next his shirt, and over that the
habergeon, a lesser hawberk of chain mail. His last defence is a fine
hawberk "full strong of plate" showing that "hawberk" sometimes served
as a word for the body plates. Over all this is the "cote-armure" or
surcoat. Many passages from the chroniclers show that the three coats of
fence one over the other were in common use in the field, and Froissart
tells a tale of a knight struck by a dart in such wise that the head
pierced through his plates, his coat of mail and his haketon stuffed
with twisted silk. The surcoat in the age of Edward III. became a scanty
garment sitting tightly to the body, laced up the back or sides, the
close skirts ending at the fork of the leg with a dagged or slittered
edge. The waistbelt is rarely in sight, but the broad belt across the
hips, on which the dagger comes to hang as a balance to the sword, grows
richer and heavier, the best work of the goldsmith or silversmith being
spent upon it. Arms and legs and feet become cased in plate of steel or
studded leather, and before the mid-century the shoulder-plates, like
the steel shoes, are of overlapping pieces and the elbow also moves
easily under the same defence. (See fig. 7.)


  15th century.

Such harness, ever growing more beautiful in its rich details, serves
our champions until the beginning of the 15th century, when the fashion
begins to turn. The scanty surcoat tends to disappear. It may be that
during the bitter feuds and fierce slaughters of the Wars of the Roses
men were unwilling to display on their breasts the bearings by which
their mortal foe might know them afar. The horseman's shield went with
the surcoat, its disuse hastened by the perfection of armour, and the
banners of leaders remained as the only armorial signs commonly seen in
war. But at jousts and tourneys, where personal distinction was eagerly
sought, the loose tabard, which, after the middle of the century, bore
the arms of the wearer on back, front and both sleeves, was still to be
seen, with the crest of parchment or leather towering above a helm whose
mantle, from the ribbon-like strip of the early 13th century, had grown
into a fluttering cloak with wildly slittered edge streaming out behind
the charging knight.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Brass of Sir John Lisle at Thruxton.]

When a score of years of this 15th century had run we find the knight
closed in with plates, no edge of chain mail remaining in sight. The
surcoat being gone we see him armed in breast and back plate, his loins
covered by a skirt of "tonlets," as the defence of overlapping
horizontal bands comes to be named (fig. 8). The chain camail has gone
out of fashion, the basinet continuing itself with a chin and cheek
plate which joins a gorget of plate covering the collar-bone, a movable
viser shutting in the whole head with steel. The gussets of chain mail
sewn into the leathern or fustian doublet worn below the body armour are
unseen even at the gap at the hollow of the arm where the plates must be
allowed to move freely, for a little plate, round, oval or oblong, is
tagged to each side to fence the weak point. These plates often differ
in size and shape one from the other, the sword-arm side carrying the
smaller one.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Gothic Style of Armour. Monument of Count Otto
IV. of Henneberg.]

Soon after this the six or eight "tonlets" grow fewer, being continued
on the lower edge by the so-called tuilles, small plates strapped to the
tonlets and swinging with the movement of the legs. A fine suit of
armour is shown in the monument of Count Otto IV. of Henneberg (fig. 9).
Knightly armour takes perhaps its last expression of perfection in such
a noble harness as that worn by Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick,
whose armed effigy was wrought between 1451 and 1454 (fig. 10). In this
we see the characteristic feature of the great elbow-cops, whose
channelled and fluted edges overlapping vambrace and rerebrace become
monstrous fan-like shapes in the brass of Richard Quartremayns, graven
about 1460. At this time the harness of the left shoulder is often
notably reinforced, as compared with that of the sword-arm shoulder.
Towards the latter part of the century chain mail reappears as a skirt
or breech of mail, showing itself under the diminished tonlets, and,
when helm and gorget are removed, as a high-standing collar. The
articulation by overlapping plates extends even to the breastplate,
whose front is thus in two or more pieces. Very long-necked rowel-spurs
are often found, and the toes of the sabbatons or steel shoes are
sharply pointed. The characteristic helmet of the latter half of the
century is the salet or salade, a large steel cap, whose edge is carried
out from the brows and still more boldly at the back of the neck.

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Brass of Richard Beachamp, earl of Warwick.

From Stothard's _Monumental Effigies_.]

Knights abandon the great helm in war, but it is perfected for use in
the tilt-yard, taking for that purpose an enormous size, to enable two
good inches of stuffing to come between head or face and the steel
plate. Such a helm sits well down on the shoulders, to which it is
locked before and behind by strong buckles or rivets. The note of the
15th century in armour is that of fantastically elaborate forms boldly
outlined and a splendour of colour which gained much from the custom of
wearing over the full harness short cloaks or rich coats turned up with
furs, or from another fashion of covering the body plates or brigandines
with rich velvets studded with gold. The details of the harness take a
thousand curious shapes, and even amongst the simpler jacks and steel
caps of the archers the same glorious variety is seen.

[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Meeting of Henry VIII. and Maximilian.

From Hewitt's _Arms and Armour_.]


  16th century.

If the note of the 15th century be variety of form, that of the 16th
century, the last important chapter in the history of armour, is surface
decoration, the harness of great folk atoning in some measure for loss
of the beautiful medieval sense of line by elaborate enrichment. Plain
engraving, niello, russet work, golden inlay and beaten ornament are
common methods of enrichment. The great plume of ostrich feathers flows
from the helmet crown of leaders in war. As in the reign of Edward III.,
costume's fashion affects the forms of armour, the broad toe of the
Henry VIII. shoe being imitated in steel, as the wide fluted skirts of
the so-called Maximilian armour imitate the German fashion in civil
dress which the Imperial host popularized through northern Europe (fig.
11). These skirts have been called "lamboys" by modern writers on
military antiquities, but the word seems an antiquarianism of no value,
apparently a misreading of the word "jambeis" in some early document. So
many notable examples of the armour of this 16th century are accessible
in European collections, other illustrations occurring in great plenty,
that its details call for little discussion; a fine and characteristic
suit is that by the famous English armourer, Jacob Topf (fig. 12), which
belonged to Sir Christopher Hatton. Into this century the arquebusier
marches, demanding a chief place in the line of battle, although it is a
common error that the improvement in fire-arms drove out the fully armed
warrior, whose plates gave him no protection. Until the rifle came to
the soldier's hands, plate armour could easily be made shot-proof. It
was driven from the field by the new strategy which asked for long
marches and rapid movements of armies. This century's armour for the
tilt-yard gives such protection to the champion, with its many
reinforcing pieces, that unless the caged helm were used--the same which
cost Henry II. of France his life--the risks of the tilt-yard must have
fallen much below those of the polo-field. The horse with crinet,
chafron and bards of steel was as well covered from harm.

[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Suit by Jacob Topf, nearly complete, the gorget
does not belong to it. Below is the placcate.]

Before the end of the 16th century the full suit of war harness is an
antique survival. Long boots take the place of greaves and steel shoes,
and early in the 16th century the military pedants are heard to bewail
the common laying aside of other pieces. The mounted cavalier--cuirassier
or pistolier--might take the field, even as late as the Great Rebellion,
armed at all points save the backs of the thighs and the legs below the
knee; but a combed and brimmed cap, breast and back plate and tassets
equipped the pikeman, and the musketeer would march without any metal on
him save his headpiece, for it was soon found that heavily armed
musketeers, after a long trudge through summer dust or winter mud, were
readier to rest than to shoot. Everywhere there was revolt against the
burden of plates, and as early as 1593 Sir Richard Hawkins found that his
adventurers would not use even the light corslets provided by him,
"esteeming a pot of wine a better defence." Gervase Markham, in his
_Souldier's Accidence_ of 1645, asks that at least the captain of
cuirassiers should be armed "at all peeces, cap a pee," but he would have
found few such captains, and Markham is a great praiser of noble old
custom. The famous figure of a pikeman of 1668 (fig. 13) in Elton's _Art
Military_ has steel cap, corslet and tassets, but he stands for a fashion
dead or dying. The last noteworthy helmet was what is now termed the
lobster-tail helmet, a headpiece with round top, flat brim before, a
broad articulated brim behind, cheek-pieces hanging by straps and a grate
of upright bars to cover the face, some having in place of the grate a
movable nose-guard to be raised or lowered at will. The close resemblance
of this helmet to that worn by the Japanese, with whom the Dutch were
then trading, is worth remark, although each of the two pieces seems to
have had its separate origin. Thus, save for a steel cap here and a
corslet there, especially to be found amongst the guards of sovereigns
who must cling to something of antique tradition, armour departs out of
the civilized world.

[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Pikeman.

From _The Compleat Body of the Art Military_, by Lieut. Col. Elton
(1668).]


  Survival of armour.

When in the reign of Queen Victoria her mounted guardsmen were given
back their breast and back plates, the last piece of body armour had
been the tiny gilt crescent worn at the throat by officers of foot,
which crescent was the shrunken symbol of that great gorget of plate
that came in with the 13th century. The shining plates of the Guards are
parade pieces only, but a curious revival of an old defence was carried
by English cavalry in the field at the end of the 19th century, when
small gussets of chain mail were attached to the shoulders of certain
cavalrymen as a defence against sword cuts. Through all the age of
modern warfare inventors have pressed the claims of various bullet-proof
breastplates, but where they have been effective against rifle fire
their weight has made them too heavy an addition to the soldier's
burden. (See, however, ARMOUR PLATES, _ad fin_.) Last of all we may
reckon those secret coats of mail which are said to be worn on occasion
by modern rulers in dread of the assassin. The London detective
department has such coats of fence in its armoury; and on the other side
it may be remembered that the Kelly gang of bushrangers, driven to bay,
were found to have forged suits of plate for themselves out of sheets of
boiler-iron.


  Collections.

Ancient arms and armour are now eagerly sought by European and American
collectors, and high prices are paid down for every noteworthy piece.
The supply is assisted by the efforts of many forgers of false pieces,
the most cunning of whom bring all archaeological skill to their aid,
and few great national or private collections are free from some example
of this industry. For the genuine pieces competition runs high. Suits of
plate of the earliest period may be sought in vain, and the greatest
collectors may hardly hope for such a panoply of the late Gothic period
as that which is the ornament of the Wallace collection. Even this
famous harness is not wholly free from suspicion of restoration. Armour
of the latter half of the 16th century, however, often appears in the
sale-rooms and is found in many private collections, although the
"ancestral armour" which decorates so many ancient halls in England is
generally the plates and pots which served the pikemen of the
17th-century militia.

It is not hard to understand this scarcity of ancient pieces. In the
first place it must be remembered that the fully armed man was always a
rare figure in war, and only the rich could engage in the costly follies
of the later tournaments. The novelists have done much to encourage the
belief that most men of gentle rank rode to the wars lance in hand,
locked up in full harness of plate; but the country gentleman, serving
as light horseman or mounted archer, would hold himself well armed had
he a quilted jack or brigandine and a basinet or salet. Men armed _cap a
pee_ crowd the illuminations of chronicle books, the artists having the
same tastes as the boy who decorates his Latin grammar with battles
which are hand-to-hand conflicts of epauletted generals. Monuments and
brasses also show these fully armed men, but here again we must
recognize the tendency which made the last of the cheap miniaturists
endow their clients lavishly with heavy watch-chains and rings. As late
as the 18th century the portrait painters drew their military or naval
sitters in the breastplates and pauldrons, vambraces and rerebraces of
an earlier age. Ancient wills and inventories, save those of great folk
or military adventurers, have scanty reference to complete harnesses.
Ringed hawberks, in a damp northern climate, will not survive long
neglect, and many of them must have been cut in pieces for burnishers or
for the mail skirts and gussets attached to the later arming doublets.
As the fashion of plate armour changed, the smith might adapt an old
harness to the new taste, but more often it would be cast aside. Men to
whom the sight of a steel coat called up the business of their daily
life wasted no sentimentality over an obsolete piece. The early
antiquaries might have saved us many priceless things, but it was not
until a few _virtuosi_ of the 18th century were taken with the Gothic
fancy that popular archaeology dealt with aught but Greek statuary and
Roman inscriptions. The 19th century was well advanced before an
interest in medieval antiquities became common amongst educated men, and
for most contemporaries of Dr Johnson a medieval helm was a barbarous
curiosity exciting the same measure of mild interest as does the Zulu
knobkerry seen by us as we pass a pawnbroker's window. (O. Ba.)

7. _Fire-arms._ (For the development of cannon, see ARTILLERY and
ORDNANCE.)--Hand-cannons appear almost simultaneously with the larger
_bombards_. They were made by the Flemings in the 14th century. An early
instance of the use of hand fire-arms in England is the siege of
Huntercombe Manor in 1375. These were simply small cannon, provided with
a stock of wood, and fired by the application of a match to the
touch-hole. During the 15th century the hand-gun was steadily improved,
and its use became more general. Edward IV., landing in England in 1471
to reconquer his throne, brought with him a force of Burgundian hand-gun
men (mercenaries), and in 1476 the Swiss at Morat had no less than 6000
of their men thus armed. The prototype of the modern military weapon is
the _arquebus_ (q.v.), a form of which was afterwards called in England
the _caliver_. Various dates are given for the introduction of the
arquebus, which owed many of its details to the perfected crossbow which
it superseded. The Spanish army in the Italian wars at the beginning of
the 16th century was the first to make full and effective use of the new
weapon, and thus to make the fire action of infantry a serious factor in
the decision of battles. The Spaniards also took the next step in
advance. The _musket_ (q.v.) was heavier and more powerful than the
arquebus, and, in the hands of the duke of Alva's army in the
Netherlands, so conclusively proved its superiority that it at once
replaced its rival in the armies of Europe. Both the arquebus and the
musket had a touch-hole on the right side of the barrel, with a pan for
the priming, with which a lighted quick match was brought in contact by
pressing a trigger. The musket, on account of its weight, was provided
with a long rest, forked in the upper part and furnished with a spike to
stick in the ground. The _matchlock_ (long-barrelled matchlocks are
still used by various uncivilized peoples, notably in India) was the
typical weapon of the soldier for two centuries. The class of hand
fire-arms provided with an arrangement for striking a spark to ignite
the powder charge begins with the _wheel-lock_. This lock was invented
at Nuremberg in 1515, but was seldom applied to the arquebus and musket
on account of the costliness of its mechanism and the uncertainty of its
action. The early forms of flint-lock (_snaphance_) were open to the
same objections, and the _fire-lock_ (as the flint-lock was usually
called) remained for many years after its introduction the armament of
special troops only, till about the beginning of the 18th century it
finally superseded the old matchlock. Thenceforward the fire-lock
(called familiarly in England "Brown Bess") formed with the bayonet
(q.v.) the armament of all infantry, and the fire-arms carried by other
troops were constructed on the same principle. Flint-lock muskets were
supplanted about 1830-1840 by the percussion musket, in which a
fulminate cap was used. A Scottish clergyman, Alexander Forsyth,
invented this method of ignition in 1807, but it was not till 1820 that
it began to come into general use. (See GUN.) The system of firing the
charge by a fulminate was followed by the invention of the needle-gun
(q.v.). The muzzle-loading rifle, employed by special troops since about
1800, came into general use in the armies of Europe about 1854-1860. It
was superseded, as a result of the success of the needle-gun in the war
of 1866, by the breech-loading rifle, this in its turn giving way to the
magazine rifle about 1886-1890. (See RIFLE.) Neither breech-loaders nor
revolvers, however, are inventions of modern date. Both were known in
Germany as early as the close of the 15th century. There are in the
Musee d'Artillerie at Paris wheel-lock arquebuses of the 16th century
which are breech-loaders; and there is, in the Tower armoury, a revolver
with the old matchlock, the date of which is about 1550. A German
arquebus of the 16th century, in the museum of Sigmaringen, is a
revolver of seven barrels. Nor is rifling a new thing in fire-arms, for
there was a rifled arquebus of the 15th century, in which the balls were
driven home by a mallet, and a patent was taken out in England for
rifling in 1635. All these systems were thus known at an early period in
the history of fire-arms, but for want of the minutely accurate
workmanship required and, above all, of a satisfactory firing
arrangement, they were left in an undeveloped state until modern times.
The earliest pistols were merely shorter handguns, modified for mounted
men, and provided with a straight stock which was held against the
breastplate (poitrinal or petronel). The long-barrelled pistol was the
typical weapon of the cavalry of the 16th century. (See CAVALRY.) With
the revival of shock tactics initiated by Gustavus Adolphus the length
of the pistol barrel became less and less, and its stock was then shaped
for the hand alone. (See PISTOL.)     (C. F. A.)




ARMSTEAD, HENRY HUGH (1828-1905), English sculptor, was first trained as
a silversmith, and achieved the highest excellence with the "St George's
Vase" and the "Outram Shield." He rose to the front rank among
contemporary sculptors, his chief works being the external sculptural
decorations of the colonial office in Whitehall, the sculptures on the
southern and eastern sides of the podium of the Albert Memorial, the
large fountain at King's College, Cambridge, and numerous effigies, such
as "Bishop Wilberforce" at Winchester, and "Lord John Thynne" at
Westminster, with smaller portraiture and much ideal work. His sense of
style and nobility was remarkable; and he was besides gifted with a fine
power of design and draughtsmanship, which he put to good use in his
early years for book illustration. He was elected associate of the Royal
Academy in 1875 and a full member in 1880.




ARMSTRONG, ARCHIBALD (d. 1672), court jester, called "Archy," was a
native of Scotland or of Cumberland, and according to tradition first
distinguished himself as a sheep-stealer; afterwards he entered the
service of James VI., with whom he became a favourite. When the king
succeeded to the English throne, Archy was appointed court jester. In
1611 he was granted a pension of two shillings a day, and in 1617 he
accompanied James on his visit to Scotland. His influence was
considerable and he was greatly courted and flattered, but his success
appears to have turned his head. He became presumptuous, insolent and
mischievous, excited foolish jealousies between the king and Henry,
prince of Wales, and was much disliked by the members of the court. In
1623 he accompanied Prince Charles and Buckingham in their adventure
into Spain, where he was much caressed and favoured by the Spanish court
and, according to his own account, was granted a pension. His conduct
here became more intolerable than ever. He rallied the infanta on the
defeat of the Armada and censured the conduct of the expedition to
Buckingham's face. Buckingham declared he would have him hanged, to
which the jester replied that "dukes had often been hanged for insolence
but never fools for talking." On his return he gained some complimentary
allusions from Ben Jonson by his attacks upon the Spanish marriage. He
retained his post on the accession of Charles I., and accumulated a
considerable fortune, including the grant by the king of 1000 acres in
Ireland. After the death of Buckingham in 1628, whom he declared "the
greatest enemy of three kings," the principal object of his dislike and
rude jests was Laud, whom he openly vilified and ridiculed. He
pronounced the following grace at Whitehall in Laud's presence: "Great
praise be given to God and little _laud_ to the devil," and after the
news of the rebellion in Scotland in 1637 he greeted Laud on his way to
the council chamber at Whitehall with: "Who's fool now? Does not your
Grace hear the news from Stirling about the liturgy?" On Laud's
complaint to the council, Archy was sentenced the same day "to have his
coat pulled over his head and be discharged the king's service and
banished the king's court." He settled in London as a money-lender, and
many complaints were made to the privy council and House of Lords of his
sharp practices. In 1641 on the occasion of Laud's arrest, he enjoyed a
mean revenge by publishing _Archy's Dream; sometimes Jester to his
Majestie, but exiled the Court by Canterburie's malice_. Subsequently he
resided at Arthuret in Cumberland, according to some accounts his
birthplace, where he possessed an estate, and where he died in 1672, his
burial taking place on the 1st of April. He was twice married, his
second wife being Sybilla Bell. There is no record of any legal
offspring, but the baptism of a "base son" of Archibald Armstrong is
entered in the parish register of the 17th of December 1643. _A Banquet
of Jests: A change of Cheare_, published about 1630, a collection
chiefly of dull, stale jokes, is attributed to him, and with still less
reason probably _A choice Banquet of Witty Jests ... Being an addition
to Archee's Jests, taken out of his Closet but never published in his
Lifetime_ (1660).




ARMSTRONG, JOHN (1709-1779), British physician and writer, was born
about 1709 at Castletown, Roxburghshire, where his father was parish
minister. He graduated M.D. (1732) at Edinburgh University, and soon
afterwards settled in London, where he paid more attention to literature
than to medicine. He was, in 1746, appointed one of the physicians to
the military hospital behind Buckingham House; and, in 1760, physician
to the army in Germany, an appointment which he held till the peace of
1763, when he retired on half-pay. For many years he was closely
associated with John Wilkes, but quarrelled with him in 1763. He died on
the 7th of September 1779. Armstrong's first publication, an anonymous
one, entitled _An Essay for Abridging the Study of Physic_ (1735), was a
satire on the ignorance of the apothecaries and medical men of his day.
This was followed two years after by the _Economy of Love_, a poem the
indecency of which damaged his professional practice. In 1744 appeared
his _Art of Preserving Health_, a very successful didactic poem, and the
one production on which his literary reputation rests. His
_Miscellanies_ (1770) contains some shorter poems displaying
considerable humour.




ARMSTRONG, JOHN (1738-1843), American soldier, diplomatist and political
leader, born at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on the 25th of November 1758.
His father, also named John Armstrong (1725-1795), a native of the north
of Ireland, who had emigrated to the Pennsylvania frontier between 1745
and 1748, served successively as a brigadier-general in the Continental
army (1776-77), as brigadier-general and then major-general of the
Pennsylvania militia (1777-83), during the War of Independence, and was
a member of the Continental Congress in 1779-1780 and again in
1787-1788. The son studied for a time at the College of New Jersey (now
Princeton University), and served as a major in the War of Independence.
In March 1783, while the Continental army was stationed at Newburgh
(q.v.), New York, he wrote and issued, anonymously, the famous "Newburgh
Addresses." In 1784 he led a force of Pennsylvania militia against the
Connecticut settlers in Wyoming Valley, and treated them in such a
high-handed manner as to incur the disapproval even of the Pennsylvania
legislature. In 1789 he married the sister of Chancellor Robert R.
Livingston of New York, and removed to New York city, where his own
ability and his family connexion gave him great political influence. In
1801-2 and again in 1803-4 he was a member of the United States Senate.
From 1804 to 1810 he was the United States minister to France, and in
March 1806 he was joined with James Bowdoin as a special minister to
treat through France with Spain concerning the acquisition of Florida,
Spanish spoliations of American commerce, and the "Louisiana" boundary.
During the War of 1812, he was a brigadier-general in the United States
army from July 1812 until January 1813, and from then until August 1814
secretary of war in the cabinet of President Madison, when his
unpopularity forced him to resign. "In spite of Armstrong's services,
abilities and experience," says Henry Adams, "something in his character
always created distrust. He had every advantage of education, social and
political connexion, ability and self-confidence; ... but he suffered
from the reputation of indolence and intrigue." Nevertheless, he
"introduced into the army an energy wholly new," an energy the results
of which were apparent "for half a century." After his resignation he
lived in retirement at Red Hook, New York, where he died on the 1st of
April 1843. He published _Notices of the War of 1812_ (2 vols., 1836;
new ed., 1840), the value of which is greatly impaired by its obvious
partiality.

  The best account of Armstrong's career as minister to France and as
  secretary of war may be found in Henry Adams's _History of the United
  States, 1801-1817_ (9 vols., New York, 1889-1890).




ARMSTRONG, SAMUEL CHAPMAN (1839-1893), American soldier, philanthropist
and educator, was born on Maui, one of the Hawaiian Islands, on the 30th
of January 1839, his parents Richard and Clarissa Armstrong, being
American missionaries. He was educated at the Punahou school in
Honolulu, at Oahu College, into which the Punahou school developed in
1852, and at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he
graduated in 1862. He served in the Civil War, on the Union side, from
1862 to 1865, rising in the volunteer service to the regular rank of
colonel and the brevet rank of brigadier-general, and, after December
1863, acted as one of the officers of the coloured troops commanded by
General William Birney. In November 1865 he was honourably mustered out
of the volunteer service. His experience as commander of negro troops
had added to his interest, always strong, in the negroes of the south,
and in March 1866 he became superintendent of the Ninth District of
Virginia, under the Freedman's Bureau, with headquarters near Fort
Monroe. While in this position he became convinced that the only
permanent solution of the manifold difficulties which the freedmen
encountered lay in their moral and industrial education. He remained in
the educational department of the Bureau until this work came to an end
in 1872; though five years earlier, at Hampton, Virginia, near Fort
Monroe, he had founded, with the aid principally of the American
Missionary Association, an industrial school for negroes, Hampton
Institute, which was formally opened in 1868, and at the head of which
he remained until his death, there, on the 11th of May 1893. After 1878
Indians were also admitted to the Institute, and during the last fifteen
years of his life Armstrong took a deep interest in the "Indian
question." Much of his time after 1868 was spent in the Northern and
Eastern states, whither he went to raise funds for the Institute. See
_Samuel Chapman Armstrong, a Biographical Study_ (New York, 1904), by
his daughter, Edith Armstrong Talbot.

His brother, WILLIAM N. ARMSTRONG, was attorney-general in the cabinet
of the Hawaiian king Kalakaua I. He accompanied that monarch on a
prolonged foreign tour in 1881, visiting Japan, China, Siam, India,
Europe and the United States, and in 1904 published an amusing account
of the journey, called _Round the World with a King_.




ARMSTRONG, WILLIAM GEORGE ARMSTRONG, BARON (1810-1900), British
inventor, founder of the Elswick manufacturing works, was born on the
26th of November 1810, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and was educated at a
school in Bishop Auckland. The profession which he adopted was that of a
solicitor, and from 1833 to 1847 he was engaged in active practice in
Newcastle as a member of the firm of Donkin, Stable & Armstrong. His
sympathies, however, were always with mechanical and scientific
pursuits, and several of his inventions date from a time anterior to his
final abandonment of the law. In 1841-1843 he published several papers
on the electricity of effluent steam. This subject he was led to study
by the experience of a colliery engineman, who noticed that he received
a sharp shock on exposing one hand to a jet of steam issuing from a
boiler with which his other hand was in contact, and the inquiry was
followed by the invention of the "hydro-electric" machine, a powerful
generator of electricity, which was thought worthy of careful
investigation by Faraday. The question of the utilization of water-power
had engaged his attention even earlier, and in 1839 he invented an
improved rotary water motor. Soon afterwards he designed a hydraulic
crane, which contained the germ of all the hydraulic machinery for which
he and Elswick were subsequently to become famous. This machine depended
simply on the pressure of water acting directly in a cylinder on a
piston, which was connected with suitable multiplying gear. In the first
example, which was erected on the quay at Newcastle in 1846, the
necessary pressure was obtained from the ordinary water mains of the
town; but the merits and advantages of the device soon became widely
appreciated, and a demand arose for the erection of cranes in positions
where the pressure afforded by the mains was insufficient. Of course
pressure could always be obtained by the aid of special reservoirs, but
to build these was not always desirable, or even practicable. Hence,
when in 1850 a hydraulic installation was required for a new ferry
station at New Holland, on the Humber estuary, the absence of water
mains of any kind, coupled with the prohibitive cost of a special
reservoir owing to the character of the soil, impelled him to invent a
fresh piece of apparatus, the "accumulator," which consists of a large
cylinder containing a piston that can be loaded to give any desired
pressure, the water being pumped in below it by a steam-engine or other
prime mover. This simple device may be looked upon as the crown of the
hydraulic system, since by its various modifications the installation of
hydraulic power became possible in almost any situation. In particular,
it was rendered practicable on board ship, and its application to the
manipulation of heavy naval guns and other purposes on warships was not
the least important of Armstrong's achievements.

The Elswick works were originally founded for the manufacture of this
hydraulic machinery, but it was not long before they became the
birthplace of a revolution in gunmaking; indeed, could nothing more be
placed to Armstrong's credit than their establishment, his name would
still be worthy of remembrance. Modern artillery dates from about 1855,
when Armstrong's first gun made its appearance. This weapon embodied all
the essential features which distinguish the ordnance of to-day from the
cannon of the middle ages--it was built up of rings of metal shrunk upon
an inner steel barrel; it was loaded at the breech; it was rifled; and
it threw, not a round ball, but an elongated projectile with ogival
head. The guns constructed on this principle yielded such excellent
results, both in range and accuracy, that they were adopted by the
British government in 1859, Armstrong himself being appointed engineer
of rifled ordnance and receiving the honour of knighthood. At the same
time the Elswick Ordnance Company was formed to manufacture the guns
under the supervision of Armstrong, who, however, had no financial
interest in the concern; it was merged in the Elswick Engineering Works
four years later. Great Britain thus originated a principle of gun
construction which has since been universally followed, and obtained an
armament superior to that possessed by any other country at that time.
But while there was no doubt as to the shooting capacities of these
guns, defects in the breech mechanism soon became equally patent, and in
a few years caused a reversion to muzzle-loading. Armstrong resigned his
position in 1863, and for seventeen years the government adhered to the
older method of loading, in spite of the improvements which experiment
and research at Elswick and elsewhere had during that period produced in
the mechanism and performance of heavy guns. But at last Armstrong's
results could no longer be ignored; and wire-wound breech-loading guns
were received back into the service in 1880. The use of steel wire for
the construction of guns was one of Armstrong's early ideas. He
perceived that to coil many turns of thin wire round an inner barrel was
a logical extension of the large hooped method already mentioned, and in
conjunction with I.K. Brunel, was preparing to put the plan to practical
test when the discovery that it had already been patented caused him to
abandon his intention, until about 1877. This incident well illustrates
the ground of his objection to the British system of patent law, which
he looked upon as calculated to stifle invention and impede progress;
the patentees in this case did not manage to make a practical success of
their invention themselves, but the existence of prior patents was
sufficient to turn him aside from a path which conducted him to valuable
results when afterwards, owing to the expiry of those patents, he was
free to pursue it as he pleased.

Lord Armstrong, who was raised to the peerage in 1887, was the author of
_A Visit to Egypt_ (1873), and _Electric Movement in Air and Water_
(1897), besides many professional papers. He died on the 27th of
December 1900, at Rothbury, Northumberland. His title became extinct,
but his grand-nephew and heir, W.H.A.F. Watson-Armstrong (b. 1863), was
in 1903 created Baron Armstrong of Bamburgh and Cragside.




ARMY (from Fr. _armee_, Lat. _armata_), a considerable body of men armed
and organized for the purpose of warfare on land (Ger. _Armee_), or the
whole armed force at the disposal of a state or person for the same
purpose (Ger. _Heer_ = host). The application of the term is sometimes
restricted to the permanent, active or regular forces of a state. The
history of the development of the army systems of the world is dealt
with in this article in sections 1 to 38, being followed by sections 39
to 59 on the characteristics of present-day armies. The remainder of the
article is devoted to sections on the history of the principal armies of
Europe, and that of the United States. For the Japanese Army see JAPAN,
and for the existing condition of the army in each country see under the
country heading.


GENERAL HISTORY

1. _Early Armies._--It is only with the evolution of the specially
military function in a tribe or nation, expressed by the separation of a
warrior-class, that the history of armies (as now understood) commences.
Numerous savage tribes of the present day possess military organizations
based on this system, but it first appears in the history of
civilization amongst the Egyptians. By the earliest laws of Egypt,
provision was made for the support of the warriors. The exploits of her
armies under the legendary Sesostris cannot be regarded as historical,
but it appears certain that the country possessed an army, capable of
waging war in a regular fashion, and divided thus early into separate
arms, these being chariots, infantry and archers. The systems of the
Assyrians and Babylonians present no particular features of interest,
save that horsemen, as distinct from charioteers, appear on the scene.
The first historical instance of a military organization resembling
those of modern times is that of the Persian empire.

2. _Persia._--Drawn from a hardy and nomadic race, the armies of Persia
at first consisted mainly of cavalry, and owed much of their success to
the consequent ease and rapidity of their movements. The warlike
Persians constantly extended their power by fresh conquests, and for
some time remained a distinctly conquering and military race, attaining
their highest power under Cyrus and Cambyses. Cyrus seems to have been
the founder of a comprehensive military organization, of which we gather
details from Xenophon and other writers. To each province was allotted a
certain number of soldiers as standing army. These troops, formed
originally of native Persians only, were called the king's troops. They
comprised two classes, the one devoted exclusively to garrisoning towns
and castles, the other distributed throughout the country. To each
province was appointed a military commander, responsible for the number
and efficiency of the troops in his district, while the civil governor
was answerable for their subsistence and pay. Annual musters were held,
either by the king in person or by generals deputed for the purpose and
invested with full powers. This organization seems to have fully
answered its original purpose, that of holding a vast empire acquired by
conquest and promptly repelling inroads or putting down insurrections.
But when a great foreign war was contemplated, the standing army was
augmented by a levy throughout the empire. The extent of the empire made
such a levy a matter of time, and the heterogeneous and unorganized mass
of men of all nations so brought together was a source of weakness
rather than strength. Indeed, the vast hosts over which the Greeks
gained their victories comprised but a small proportion of the true
Persians. The cavalry alone seems to have retained its national
character, and with it something of its high reputation, even to the
days of Alexander.

3. _Greece._--The Homeric armies were tribal levies of foot, armed with
spear, sword, bow, &c., and commanded by the chiefs in their
war-chariots. In historic times all this is changed. Greece becomes a
congeries of city-states, each with its own citizen-militia. Federal
armies and permanent troops are rare, the former owing to the
centrifugal tendency of Greek politics, the latter because the
"tyrannies," which must have relied very largely on standing armies to
maintain themselves, had ultimately given way to democratic
institutions. But the citizen-militia of Athens or Sparta resembled
rather a modern "nation in arms" than an auxiliary force. Service was
compulsory in almost all states, and as the young men began their career
as soldiers with a continuous training of two or three years, Hellenic
armies, like those of modern Europe, consisted of men who had undergone
a thorough initial training and were subsequently called up as required.
Cavalry, as always in the broken country of the Peloponnesus, was not of
great importance, and it is only when the theatre of Greek history is
extended to the plains of Thessaly that the mounted men become numerous.
In the 4th century the mainstay of Greek armies was the _hoplite_
([Greek: hoplitaes]), the heavy-armed infantryman who fought in the
_corps de bataille_; the light troops were men who could not provide the
full equipment of the hoplite, rather than soldiers trained for certain
special duties such as skirmishing. The fighting formation was that of
the _phalanx_, a solid corps of hoplites armed with long spears. The
armies were recruited for each war by calling up one or more classes of
men in reserve according to age. It was the duty and privilege of the
free citizen to bear arms; the slaves were rarely trusted with weapons.

4. _Sparta._--So much is common to the various states. In Sparta the
idea of the nation in arms was more thoroughly carried out than in any
other state in the history of civilization. In other states the
individual citizen often lived the life of a soldier, here the nation
lived the life of a regiment. Private homes resembled the "married
quarters" of a modern army; the unmarried men lived entirely in
barracks. Military exercises were only interrupted by actual service in
the field, and the whole life of a man of military age was devoted to
them. Under these circumstances, the Spartans maintained a practically
unchallenged supremacy over the armies of other Greek states; sometimes
their superiority was so great that, like the Spanish regulars in the
early part of the Dutch War of Independence, they destroyed their
enemies with insignificant loss to themselves. The surrender of a
Spartan detachment, hopelessly cut off from all assistance, and the
victory of a body of well-trained and handy light infantry over a closed
battalion of Spartiates were events so unusual as seriously to affect
the course of Greek history.

5. _Greek Mercenaries._--The military system of the 4th century was not
called upon to provide armies for continuous service on distant
expeditions. When, after the earlier campaigns of the Peloponnesian War,
the necessity for such expeditions arose, the system was often strained
almost to breaking point, (e.g. in the case of the Athenian expedition
to Syracuse), and ultimately the states of Greece were driven to choose
between unprofitable expenditure of the lives of citizens and recruiting
from other sources. Mercenaries serving as light troops, and
particularly as _peltasts_ (a new form of disciplined "light infantry")
soon appeared. The _corps de bataille_ remained for long the old phalanx
of citizen hoplites. But the heavy losses of many years told severely on
the resources of every state, and ultimately non-national
recruits--adventurers and soldiers of fortune, broken men who had lost
their possessions in the wars, political refugees, runaway slaves,
&c.--found their way even into the ranks of the hoplites, and Athens at
one great crisis (407) enlisted slaves, with the promise of citizenship
as their reward. The Arcadians, like the Scots and the Swiss in modern
history, furnished the most numerous contingent to the new professional
armies. A truly national army was indeed to appear once more in the
history of the Peloponnesus, but in the meantime the professional
soldier held the field. The old bond of strict citizenship once broken,
the career of the soldier of fortune was open to the adventurous Greek.
Taenarum and Corinth became regular _entrepots_ for mercenaries. The
younger Cyrus raised his army for the invasion of Persia precisely as
the emperors Maximilian and Charles V. raised regiments of
_Landsknechte_--by the issue of recruiting commissions to captains of
reputation. This army became the famous Ten Thousand. It was a marching
city-state, its members not desperate adventurers, but men with the calm
self-respect of Greek civilization. On the fall of its generals, it
chose the best officers of the army to command, and obeyed implicitly.
Cheirisophus the Spartan and Xenophon the Athenian, whom they chose,
were not plausible demagogues; they were line officers, who, suddenly
promoted to the chief command under circumstances of almost overwhelming
difficulty, proved capable of achieving the impossible. The merit of
choosing such leaders is not the least title to fame of the Ten Thousand
mercenary Greek hoplites. About the same time Iphicrates with a body of
mercenary _peltasts_ destroyed a _mora_ or corps of Spartan hoplites
(391 B.C.).

6. _Epaminondas._--Not many years after this, Spartan oppression roused
the Theban revolt, and the Theban revolt became the Theban hegemony. The
army which achieved this under the leadership of Epaminondas, one of the
great captains of history, had already given proofs of its valour
against Xenophon and the Cyreian veterans. Still earlier it had won the
great victory of Delium (424 B.C.).

It was organized, as were the professional armies, on the accepted model
of the old armies, viz. the phalangite order, but the addition of
peltasts now made a Theban army, unlike the Spartans, capable of
operating in broken country as well as in the plain. The new tactics of
the phalanx, introduced by Epaminondas, embodied, for the first time in
the history of war, the modern principle of local superiority of force,
and suggested to Frederick the Great the famous "oblique order of
battle." Further, the cavalry was more numerous and better led than that
of Peloponnesian states. The professional armies had well understood the
management of cavalry; Xenophon's handbook of the subject is not without
value in the 20th century. In Greek armies the dearth of horses and the
consequent numerical weakness of the cavalry prevented the bold use of
the arm on the battlefield (see CAVALRY). But Thebes had always to deal
with nations which possessed numerous horsemen. Jason of Pherae, for
instance, put into the field against Thebes many thousands of Thessalian
horse; and thus at the battle of Tegyra in 375 the Theban cavalry under
Pelopidas, aided by the _corps d'elite_ of infantry called the Sacred
Band, carried all before them. At Leuctra Epaminondas won a glorious
victory by the use of his "oblique order" tactics; the same methods
achieved the second great victory of Mantineia (362 B.c.) at which
Epaminondas fell. Pelopidas had already been slain in a battle against
the Thessalians, and there was no leader to carry on their work. But the
new Greek system was yet to gain its greatest triumphs under Alexander
the Great.

7. _Alexander._--The reforms of Alexander's father, Philip of Macedon,
may most justly be compared to those of Frederick William I. in Prussia.
Philip had lived at Thebes as a hostage, and had known Iphicrates,
Epaminondas and Pelopidas. He grafted the Theban system of tactics on to
the Macedonian system of organization. That the latter--a complete
territorial system--was efficient was shown by the fact that Philip's
blow was always struck before his enemies were ready to meet it. That
the new Greek tactics, properly used, were superior to the old was once
more demonstrated at Chaeronea (338 B.C.), where the Macedonian infantry
militia fought in phalanx, and the cavalry, led by the young Alexander,
delivered the last crushing blow. On his accession, like Frederick the
Great, Alexander inherited a well-trained and numerous army, and was not
slow to use it. The invasion of Asia was carried out by an army of the
Greek pattern, formed both of Hellenes and of non-Hellenes on an
exceedingly strong Macedonian nucleus. Alexander's own guard was
composed of picked horse and foot. The infantry of the line comprised
Macedonian and Greek hoplites, the Macedonians being subdivided into
heavy and medium troops. These fought in a grand phalanx, which was
subdivided into units corresponding to the modern divisions, brigades
and regiments, the fighting formation being normally a line of battalion
masses. The arm of the infantry was the 18-foot pike (_sarissa_). The
peltasts, Macedonian and Greek, were numerous and well trained, and
there was the usual mass of irregular light troops, bowmen, slingers,
&c. The cavalry included the Guard ([Greek: agaema]), a body of heavy
cavalry composed of chosen Macedonians, the line cavalry of Macedonia
([Greek: hetairoi]) and Thessaly, the numerous small contingents of the
Greek states, mercenary corps and light lancers for outpost work. The
final blow and the gathering of the fruits of victory were now for the
first time the work of the mounted arm. The solid phalanx was almost
unbreakable in the earlier stages of the battle, but after a long
infantry fight the horsemen had their chance. In former wars they were
too few and too poorly mounted to avail themselves of it, and decisive
victories were in consequence rarely achieved in battles of Greek versus
Greek. Under Epaminondas, and still more under Philip and Alexander, the
cavalry was strong enough for its new work. Battles are now ended by the
shock action of mounted men, and in Alexander's time it is noted as a
novelty that the cavalry carried out the pursuit of a beaten army. There
were further, in Alexander's army, artillerymen with a battering train,
engineers and departmental troops, and also a medical service, an
improvement attributed to Jason of Pherae. The victories of this army,
in close order and in open, over every kind of enemy and on every sort
of terrain, produced the Hellenistic world, and in that achievement the
history of Greek armies closes, for after the return of the greater part
of the Europeans to their homes the armies of Alexander and his
successors, while preserving much of the old form, become more and more
orientalized.

The decisive step was taken in 323, when a picked contingent of
Persians, armed mainly with missile weapons, was drafted into the
phalanx, in which henceforward they formed the middle ranks of each file
of sixteen men. But, like the third rank of Prussian infantry up to
1888, they normally fought as skirmishers in advance, falling into their
place behind the pikes of the Macedonian file-leaders only if required
for the decisive assault. The new method, of course, depended for
success on the steadiness of the thin three-deep line of Macedonians
thus left as the line of battle. Alexander's veterans were indeed to be
trusted, but as time went on, and little by little the war-trained
Greeks left the service, it became less and less safe to array the
Hellenistic army in this shallow and articulated order of battle. The
purely formal organization of the phalanx sixteen deep became thus the
actual tactical formation, and around this solid mass of 16,384 men
gathered the heterogeneous levies of a typical oriental army. Pyrrhus,
king of Epirus, retained far more of the tradition of Alexander's system
than his contemporaries farther east, yet his phalanx, comparatively
light and mobile as it was, achieved victories over the Roman legion
only at the cost of self-destruction. Even elephants quickly became a
necessary adjunct to Hellenistic armies.

8. _Carthage._--The military systems of the Jews present few features of
unusual interest. The expedient of calling out successive contingents
from the different tribes, in order to ensure continuity in military
operations, should, however, be noticed. David and Solomon possessed
numerous permanent troops which served as guards and garrisons; in
principle this organization was identical with that of the Persians, and
that of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Particular interest
attaches to the Carthaginian military forces of the 3rd century B.C.
Rarely has any army achieved such renown in the short space of sixty
years (264-202 B.C.). Carthage produced a series of great generals,
culminating in Hannibal, who is marked out, even by the little that is
known of him, as the equal of Napoleon. But Napoleon was supported by a
national army, Hannibal and his predecessors were condemned to work with
armies of mercenaries. For the first time in the world's history war is
a matter with which the civil population has no concern. The merchants
of Carthage fought only in the last extremity; the wars in which their
markets were extended were conducted by non-national forces and directed
by the few Carthaginian citizens who possessed military aptitudes. The
civil authorities displayed towards their instruments a spirit of hatred
for which it is difficult to find a parallel. Unsuccessful leaders were
crucified, the mercenary soldiers were cheated of their pay, and broke
out into a mutiny which shook the empire of Carthage to its foundations.
But the magnetism of a leader's personality infused a corporate military
spirit into these heterogeneous Punic armies, and history has never
witnessed so complete an illustration of the power of pure and unaided
_esprit de corps_ as in the case of Hannibal's army in Italy, which,
composed as it was of Spaniards, Africans, Gauls, Numidians, Italians
and soldiers of fortune of every country, was yet welded by him into
thorough efficiency. The army of Italy was as great in its last fight at
Zama as the army of Spain at Rocroi; its victories of the Trebia,
Trasimene and Cannae were so appalling that, two hundred years later,
the leader to whom these soldiers devoted their lives was still, to a
Roman, the "dire" Hannibal.

In their formal organization the Carthaginian armies resembled the new
Greek model, and indeed they were created in the first instance by
Xanthippus, a Spartan soldier in the service of Carthage, who was called
upon to raise and train an army when the Romans were actually at the
gates of Carthage, and justified his methods in the brilliant victory of
Tunis (255 B.C.). For the solid Macedonian phalanx of 16,000 spears
Xanthippus substituted a line of heavy battalions equal in its aggregate
power of resistance to the older form, and far more flexible. The
triumphs of the cavalry arm in Hannibal's battles far excelled those of
Alexander's horsemen. Hannibal chose his fighting ground whenever
possible with a view to using their full power, first to defeat the
hostile cavalry, then to ride down the shaken infantry masses, and
finally to pursue _au fond_. At Cannae, the greatest disaster ever
suffered by the Romans, the decisive blow and the slaughter were the
work of Hannibal's line cavalry, the relentless pursuit that of his
light horse. But a professional long-service army has always the
greatest difficulty in making good its losses, and in the present case
it was wholly unable to do so. Even Hannibal failed at last before the
sustained efforts of the citizen army of Rome.

9. _Roman Army under the Republic._--The earliest organization of the
Roman army is attributed to Romulus, who formed it on the tribal
principle, each of the three tribes contributing its contingent of horse
and foot. But it was to Servius Tullius that Rome owed, traditionally,
the complete classification of her citizen-soldiers. For the details of
the Roman military system, see ROMAN ARMY. During the earlier period of
Roman history the army was drawn entirely from the first classes of the
population, who served without pay and provided their own arms and
armour. The wealthiest men (_equites_) furnished the cavalry, the
remainder the infantry, while the poorer classes either fought as light
troops or escaped altogether the privilege and burden of military
service. Each "legion" of 3000 heavy foot was at first formed in a solid
phalanx. The introduction of the elastic and handy three-line formation
with intervals (similar in many respects to Alexander's) was brought
about by the Gallic wars, and is attributed to M. Furius Camillus, who
also, during the siege of Veii, introduced the practice of paying the
soldiers, and thus removed the chief obstacle to the employment of the
poorer classes. The new order of battle was fully developed in the
Pyrrhic Wars, and the typical army of the Republic may be taken as
dating from the latter part of the 3rd century B.C. The legionary was
still possessed of a property qualification, but it had become
relatively small. An annual levy was made at Rome to provide for the
campaign of the year. Discipline was severe, and the rewards appealed as
much to the soldier's honour as to his desire of gain. A legion now
consisted of three lines (_Hastati, Principes, Triarii_), each line
composed of men of similar age and experience, and was further
subdivided into thirty "maniples," each of two "centuries." The normal
establishment of 300 cavalry, 3000 heavy and 1200 light infantry was
still maintained, though in practice these figures were often exceeded.
In place of the old light-armed and somewhat inferior _rorarii_, the new
_velites_ performed light infantry duties (211 B.C.), at the same time
retaining their place in the maniples, of which they formed the last
ranks (compare the Macedonian phalanx as reorganized in 323, S 7 above).
The 300 cavalry of the legion were trained for shock action. But the
strength of the Roman army lay in the heavy legionary infantry of
citizens. The thirty maniples of each legion stood in three lines of
battle, but the most notable point of their formation was that each
maniple stood by itself on its own small manoeuvre-area, free to take
ground to front or flank. To the Roman legion was added a legion of
allies, somewhat differently organized and possessing more cavalry, and
the whole force was called a "double legion" or briefly a "legion." A
consul's army consisted nominally of two double legions, but in the
Punic wars military exigencies rather than custom dictated the numbers
of the army, and the two consuls at Cannae (216 B.C.) commanded two
double consular armies, or eight double legions.

10. _Characteristics of the Roman Army._--Such in outline was the Roman
military organization at the time when it was put to the severe test of
the Second Punic War. Its elements were good, its military skill
superior to that of any other army of ancient history, while its
organization was on the whole far better than any that had gone before.
The handy formation of maniples at open order was unique in the ancient
world, and it did not reappear in history up to the advent of Gustavus
Adolphus. In this formation, in which everything was entrusted to the
skill of subordinates and the individual courage of the rank and file,
the Romans met and withstood with success every type of impact, from the
ponderous shock of the Macedonian phalanx and the dangerous rush of
Celtic savages to the charge of elephants. Yet it was no particular
virtue in the actual form employed that carried the Roman arms to so
many victories. There would have been positive danger in thus
articulating the legion had it been composed of any but the most
trustworthy soldiers. To swiftness and precision of manoeuvre they added
a dogged obstinacy over which nothing but overwhelming disaster
prevailed. It is, therefore, not unnatural to ask wherein the system
which produced these soldiers failed, as it did within a century after
the battle of Zama. The greatest defect was the want of a single
military command. The civil magistrates of Rome were _ex officio_
leaders of her armies, and though no Roman officer lacked military
training, the views of a consul or praetor were almost invariably
influenced by the programme of his political party. When, as sometimes
happened, the men under their command sided in the political differences
of their leaders, all real control came to an end. The soldiers of the
Republic hardly ever forgot that they were citizens with voting powers;
they served as a rule only during a campaign; and, while there could be
little question as to their patriotism and stubbornness, they lacked
almost entirely that _esprit de corps_ which is found only amongst the
members of a body having a permanent corporate existence. Thus they had
the vices as well as the virtues of a nation in arms, and they fell
still further short of the ideal because of the dubious and precarious
tenure of their generals' commands. The great officers were usually sent
home at the end of a campaign, to be replaced by their elected
successors, and they showed all the hesitation and fear of
responsibility usually found in a temporary commander. Above all, when
two armies, each under its own consul or praetor, acted together, the
command was either divided or exercised on alternate days.

11. _Roman Empire._--The essential weaknesses of militia forces and the
accidental circumstances of that under consideration led, even in
earlier times, to the adoption of various expedients which for a time
obviated the evils to which allusion has been made. But a change of far
greater importance followed the final exploits of the armies of the old
system. The increasing dominions of the Republic, the spread of wealth
and luxury, the gradual decadence of the old Roman ideas, all tended to
produce an army more suited to the needs of the newer time than the
citizen militia of the 3rd century. Permanent troops were a necessity;
the rich, in their newly acquired dislike of personal effort, ceased to
bear their share in the routine life of the army, and thus the
proletariat began to join the legions with the express intention of
taking to a military career. The actual change from the old _regime_ to
the new was in the main the work of Gaius Marius. The urgent demand for
men at the time of the Teutonic invasions caused the service to be
thrown open to all Roman citizens irrespective of _census_. The new
territories furnished cavalry, better and more numerous than the old
_equites_, and light troops of various kinds to replace the _velites_.
Only the heavy foot remained a purely Italian force, and the spread of
the Roman citizenship gradually abolished the distinction between a
Roman and an allied legion. The higher classes had repeatedly shown
themselves unwilling to serve under plebeians (e.g. Varro and
Flaminius); Marius preferred to have as soldiers men who did not despise
him as an inferior. Under all these influences for good or for evil, the
standing army was developed in the first half of the 1st century B.C.
The tactical changes in the legion indicate its altered character. The
small maniples gave way to heavy "cohorts," ten cohorts forming the
legion; as in the Napoleonic wars, light and handy formations became
denser and more rigid with the progressive decadence in _moral_ of the
rank and file. It is more significant still that in the days of Marius
the annual oath of allegiance taken by the soldier came to be replaced
by a personal vow, taken once and for all, of loyalty to the general.
_Ubi bene, ibi patria_ was an expression of the new spirit of the army,
and Caesar had but to address his men as _quirites_ (civilians) to quell
a mutiny. _Hastati, principes_ and _triarii_ were now merely expressions
in drill and tactics. But perhaps the most important of all these
changes was the growth of regimental spirit and tradition. The legions
were now numbered throughout the army, and the Tenth Legion has remained
a classic instance of a "crack" corps. The _moral_ of the Roman army was
founded no longer on patriotism, but on professional pride and _esprit
de corps_.

With this military system Rome passed through the era of the Civil Wars,
at the end of which Augustus found himself with forty-five legions on
his hands. As soon as possible he carried through a great
reorganization, by which, after ruthlessly rejecting inferior elements,
he obtained a smaller picked force of twenty-five legions, with numerous
auxiliary forces. These were permanently stationed in the frontier
provinces of the Empire, while Italy was garrisoned by the Praetorian
cohorts, and thus was formed a regular long-service army, the strength
of which has been estimated at 300,000 men. But these measures,
temporarily successful, produced in the end an army which not only was
perpetually at variance with the civil populations it was supposed to
protect, but frequently murdered the emperors to whom it had sworn
allegiance when it raised them to the throne. The evil fame of the
Italian cohorts has survived in the phrase "praetorianism" used to imply
a venal military despotism. The citizens gradually ceased to bear arms,
and the practice of self-mutilation became common. The inevitable
_denouement_ was delayed from time to time by the work of an energetic
prince. But the ever-increasing inefficiency and factiousness of the
legions, and the evanescence of all military spirit in the civil
population, made it easy for the barbarians, when once the frontier was
broken through, to overrun the decadent Empire. The end came when the
Gothic heavy horse annihilated the legions of Valens at Adrianople (A.D.
378).

There was now no resource but to take the barbarians into Roman pay.
Under the name of _foederati_, the Gothic mercenary cavalry played the
most conspicuous part in the succeeding wars of the Empire, and began
the reign of the heavy cavalry arm, which lasted for almost a thousand
years. Even so soon as within six years of the death of Valens twenty
thousand Gothic horse decided a great battle in the emperor's favour.
These men, however, became turbulent and factious, and it was not until
the emperor Leo I. had regenerated the native Roman soldier that the
balance was maintained between the national and the hired warrior. The
work of this emperor and of his successors found eventual expression in
the victories of Belisarius and Narses, in which the Romans, in the new
role of horse-archers, so well combined their efforts with those of the
_foederati_ that neither the heavy cavalry of the Goths nor the phalanx
of Frankish infantry proved to be capable of resisting the imperial
forces. At the battle of Casilinum (553) Roman foot-archers and infantry
bore no small part of the work. It was thus in the Eastern Empire that
the Roman military spirit revived, and the Byzantine army, as evolved
from the system of Justinian, became eventually the sole example of a
fully organized service to be found in medieval history.

12. _The "Dark Ages."_--In western Europe all traces of Roman military
institutions quickly died out, and the conquerors of the new kingdoms
developed fresh systems from the simple tribal levy. The men of the
plains were horsemen, those of marsh and moor were foot, and the four
greater peoples retained these original characteristics long after the
conquest had been completed. In organization the Lombards and Franks,
Visigoths and English scarcely differed. The whole military population
formed the mass of the army, the chiefs and their personal retainers the
_elite_. The Lombards and the Visigoths were naturally cavalry; the
Franks and the English were, equally naturally, infantry, and the armies
of the Merovingian kings differed but little from the English _fyrd_
with which Offa and Penda fought their battles. But in these nations the
use of horses and armour, at first confined to kings and great chiefs,
gradually spread downwards to the ever-growing classes of _thegns,
comites_, &c. Finally, under Charlemagne were developed the general
lines of the military organization which eventually became feudalism.
For his distant wars he required an efficient and mobile army. Hence
successive "capitularies" were issued dealing with matters of
recruiting, organization, discipline and field service work. Very
noticeable are his system of forts (_burgi_) with garrisons, his
military train of artillery and supplies, and the reappearance of the
ancient principle that three or four men should equip and maintain one
of themselves as a warrior. These and other measures taken by him tended
to produce a strong veteran army, very different in efficiency from the
tumultuary levy, to which recourse was had only in the last resort.
While war (as a whole) was not yet an art, fighting (from the
individual's point of view) had certainly become a special function;
after Charlemagne's time the typical feudal army, composed of
well-equipped cavalry and ill-armed peasantry serving on foot, rapidly
developed. Enemies such as Danes and Magyars could only be dealt with by
mounted men who could ride round them, compel them to fight, and
annihilate them by the shock of the charge; consequently the practice of
leaving the infantry in rear, and even at home, grew up almost as a part
of the feudal system of warfare. England, however, sought a different
remedy, and thus diverged from the continental methods. This remedy was
the creation of a fleet, and, the later Danish wars being there carried
out, not by bands of mounted raiders, but by large armies of military
settlers, infantry retained its premier position in England up to the
day of Hastings. Even the _thegns_, who there, as abroad, were the
mainstay of the army, were heavy-armed infantry. The only contribution
made by Canute to the military organization of England was the retention
of a picked force of _hus carles_ (household troops) when the rest of
the army with which he had conquered his realm was sent back to
Scandinavia. At Hastings, the forces of Harold consisted wholly of
infantry. The English array was composed of the king and his personal
friends, the _hus carles_, and the contingents of the _fyrd_ under the
local _thegns_; though better armed, they were organized after the
manner of their forefathers. On that field there perished the best
infantry in Europe, and henceforward for three centuries there was no
serious rival to challenge the predominance of the heavy cavalry.

13. _The Byzantines_ (cf. article ROMAN EMPIRE, LATER).--While the west
of Europe was evolving feudalism, the Byzantine empire was acquiring an
army and military system scarcely surpassed by any of those of antiquity
and not often equalled up to the most modern times. The _foederati_
disappeared after the time of Justinian, and by A.D. 600 the army had
become at once professional and national. For generations, regiments had
had a corporate existence. Now brigades and divisions also appeared in
war, and, somewhat later, in peace likewise. With the disappearance of
the barbarians, the army became one homogeneous service, minutely
systematized, and generally resembling an army in the modern sense of
the word. The militia of the frontier districts performed efficiently
the service of surveillance, and the field forces of disciplined
regulars were moved and employed in accordance with well-reasoned
principles of war; their maintenance was provided for by a scutage,
levied, in lieu of service, on the central provinces of the empire.
Later, a complete territorial system of recruiting and command was
introduced. Each "theme" (military district) had its own regular
garrison, and furnished a field division of some 5000 picked troopers
for a campaign in any theatre of war. Provision having been made in
peace for a depot system, all weakly men and horses could be left
behind, and local duties handed over to second line troops; thus the
field forces were practically always on a war footing. Beside the
"themes" under their generals, there were certain districts on the
frontiers, called "clissuras," placed under chosen officers, and
specially organized for emergency service. The corps of officers in the
Byzantine army was recruited from the highest classes, and there were
many families (e.g. that from which came the celebrated Nicephorus
Phocas) in which soldiering was the traditional career. The rank and
file were either military settlers or men of the yeoman class, and in
either case had a personal interest in the safety of the theme which
prevented friction between soldiers and civilians. The principal arm
was, of course, cavalry, and infantry was employed only in special
duties. Engineer, train and medical services were maintained in each
theme. Of the ensemble of the Byzantine army it has been said that "the
art of war as it was understood at Constantinople ... was the only
system of real merit existing. No western nation could have afforded
such a training to its officers till the 16th or ... 17th century." The
vitality of such an army remained intact long after the rest of the
empire had begun to decay, and though the old army practically ceased to
exist after the great disaster of Manzikert (1071), the barbarians and
other mercenaries who formed the new service were organized, drilled and
trained to the same pitch of military efficiency. Indeed the greatest
tactical triumph of the Byzantine system (Calavryta, 1079) was won by an
army already largely composed of foreigners. But mercenaries in the end
developed praetorianism, as usual, and at last they actually mutinied,
in the presence of the enemy, for higher pay (Constantinople, 1204).

14. _Feudalism._--From the military point of view the change under
feudalism was very remarkable. For the first time in the history of
western Europe there appears, in however rough a form, a systematized
obligation to serve in arms, regulated on a territorial basis. That army
organization in the modern sense--organization for tactics and
command--did not develop in any degree commensurate with the development
of military administration, was due to the peculiar characteristics of
the feudal system, and the virtues and weaknesses of medieval armies
were its natural outcome. Personal bravery, the primary virtue of the
soldier, could not be wanting in the members of a military class, the
_metier_ of which was war and manly exercises. Pride of caste, ambition
and knightly emulation, all helped to raise to a high standard the
individual efficiency of the feudal cavalier. But the gravest faults of
the system, considered as an army organization, were directly due to
this personal element. Indiscipline, impatience of superior control, and
dangerous knight-errantry, together with the absence of any chain of
command, prevented the feudal cavalry from achieving results at all
proportionate to the effort expended and the potentialities of a force
with so many soldierly qualities. If such defects were habitually found
in the best elements of the army--the feudal tenants and subtenants who
formed the heavy cavalry arm--little could be expected of the despised
and ill-armed foot-soldiery of the levy. The swift raids of the Danes
and others (see above) had created a precedent which in French and
German wars was almost invariably followed. The feudal levy rarely
appeared at all on the battlefield, and when it was thus employed it was
ridden down by the hostile knights, and even by those of its own party,
without offering more than the feeblest resistance. Above all, one
disadvantage, common to all classes of feudal soldiers, made an army so
composed quite untrustworthy. The service which a king was able to exact
from his feudatories was so slight (varying from one month to three in
the year) that no military operation which was at all likely to be
prolonged could be undertaken with any hope of success.

15. _Medieval Mercenaries._--It was natural, therefore, that a sovereign
who contemplated a great war should employ mercenaries. These were
usually foreigners, as practically all national forces served on feudal
terms. While the greater lords rode with him on all his expeditions, the
bulk of his army consisted of professional soldiers, paid by the levy of
_scutage_ imposed upon the feudal tenantry. There had always been
soldiers of fortune. William's host at Hastings contained many such men;
later, the Flemings who invaded England in the days of Henry I. sang to
each other--

  "Hop, hop, Willeken, hop! England is mine and thine,"--

and from all the evidence it is clear that in earlier days the hired
soldiers were adventurers seeking lands and homes. But these men usually
proved to be most undesirable subjects, and sovereigns soon began to pay
a money wage for the services of mercenaries properly so called. Such
were the troops which figured in English history under Stephen. Such
troops, moreover, formed the main part of the armies of the early
Plantagenets. They were, as a matter of course, armed and armoured like
the knights, with whom they formed the men-at-arms (_gendarmes_) of the
army. Indeed, in the 11th and 12th centuries, the typical army of France
or the Empire contains a relatively small percentage of "knights,"
evidence of which fact may be found even in so fanciful a romance as
_Aucassin and Nicolete_. It must be noted, however, that not all the
mercenaries were heavy cavalry; the Brabancon pikeman and the Italian
crossbowman (the value of whose weapon was universally recognized) often
formed part of a feudal army.

16. _Infantry in Feudal Times._--These mercenary foot soldiers came as a
rule from districts in which the infantry arm had maintained its ancient
predominance in unbroken continuity. The cities of Flanders and Brabant,
and those of the Lombard plain, had escaped feudal interference with
their methods of fighting, and their burgher militia had developed into
solid bodies of heavy-armed pikemen. These were very different from
those of the feudal levy, and individual knightly bravery usually failed
to make the slightest impression on a band of infantry held together by
the stringent corporate feeling of a trade-gild. The more adventurous of
the young men, like those of the Greek cities, took service abroad and
fought with credit in their customary manner. The reign of the
"Brabancon" as a mercenary was indeed short, but he continued, in his
own country, to fight in the old way, and his successor in the
profession of arms, the Genoese crossbowman, was always highly valued.
In England, moreover, the infantry of the old _fyrd_ was not suffered to
decay into a rabble of half-armed countrymen, and in France a burgher
infantry was established by Louis VI. under the name of the _milice des
communes_, with the idea of creating a counterpoise to the power of the
feudatories. Feudalism, therefore, as a military system, was
short-lived. Its limitations had always necessitated the employment of
mercenaries, and in several places a solid infantry was coming into
existence, which was drawn from the sturdy and self-respecting middle
classes, and in a few generations was to prove itself a worthy opponent
not only to the knight, but to the professional man-at-arms.

17. _The Crusades._--It is an undoubted fact that the long wars of the
Crusades produced, directly, but slight improvement in the feudal armies
of Europe. In the East large bodies of men were successfully kept under
arms for a considerable period, but the application of crusading methods
to European war was altogether impracticable. In the first place, much
of the permanent force of these armies was contributed by the military
orders, which had no place in European political activities. Secondly,
enthusiasm mitigated much of the evil of individualism. In the third
place, there was no custom to limit the period of service, since the
Crusaders had undertaken a definite task and would merely have
stultified their own purpose in leaving the work only half done. There
were, therefore, sharp contrasts between crusading and European armies.
In the latter, systematization was confined to details of recruiting; in
the armies of the Cross, men were from time to time obtained by the
accident of religious fervour, while at the same time continuous service
produced a relatively high system of tactical organization. Different
conditions, therefore, produced different methods, and crusading unity
and discipline could not have been imposed on an ordinary army, which
indeed with its paid auxiliaries was fairly adequate for the somewhat
desultory European wars of that time. The statement that the Crusaders
had a direct influence on the revival of infantry is hardly susceptible
of convincing demonstration, but it is at any rate beyond question that
the social and economic results of the Crusades materially contributed
to the downfall of the feudal knight, and in consequence to a rise in
the relative importance of the middle classes. Further, not only were
the Crusading knights compelled by their own want of numbers to rely on
the good qualities of the foot, but the foot themselves were the
"survivors of the fittest," for the weakly men died before they reached
the Holy Land, and with them there were always knights who had lost
their horses and could not obtain remounts. Moreover, when "simple" and
"gentle" both took the Cross there could be no question of treating
Crusaders as if they were the mere feudal levy. But the little direct
influence of the whole of these wars upon military progress in Europe is
shown clearly enough by the fact that at the very close of the Crusades
a great battle was lost through knight-errantry of the true feudal type
(Mansurah).

18. _The Period of Transition_ (1290-1490).--Besides the infantry
already mentioned, that of Scotland and that of the German cities fought
with credit on many fields. Their arm was the pike, and they were always
formed in solid masses (called in Scotland, _schiltrons_). The basis of
the medieval commune being the suppression of the individual in the
social unit, it was natural that the burgher infantry should fight "in
serried ranks and in better order" than a line of individual knights,
who, moreover, were almost powerless before walled cities. But these
forces lacked offensive power, and it was left for the English archers,
whose importance dates from the latter years of the 13th century, to
show afresh, at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, the value of missile
action. When properly supported by other arms, they proved themselves
capable of meeting both the man-at-arms and the pikeman. The greatest
importance attaches to the evolution of this idea of mutual support and
combination. Once it was realized, war became an art, and armies became
specially organized bodies of troops of different arms. It cannot be
admitted, indeed, as has been claimed, that the 14th century had a
scientific system of tactics, or that the campaign of Poitiers was
arranged by the French "general staff." Nevertheless, during this
century armies were steadily coming to consist of expert soldiers, to
the exclusion of national levies and casual mercenaries. It is true
that, by his system of "indents," Edward III. of England raised national
armies of a professional type, but the English soldier thus enrolled,
when discharged by his own sovereign, naturally sought similar
employment elsewhere. This system produced, moreover, a class of
unemployed soldiers, and these, with others who became adventurers from
choice or necessity, and even with foreign troops, formed the armies
which fought in the Wars of the Roses--armies which differed but
slightly from others of the time. The natural result of these wars was
to implant a hatred of soldiery in the heart of a nation which had
formerly produced the best fighting men in Europe, a hatred which left a
deep imprint on the constitutional and social life of the people. In
France, where Joan of Arc passed like a meteor across the military
firmament, the idea of a national regular army took a practical form in
the middle of the 15th century. Still, the forces thus brought into
existence were not numerous, and the soldier of fortune, in spite of
such experiences of his methods as those of the Wars of the Roses, was
yet to attain the zenith of his career.

19. _The Condottieri._--The immediate result of this confused period of
destruction and reconstruction was the _condottiere_, who becomes
important about 1300. In Italy, where the _condottieri_ chiefly
flourished, they were in demand owing to the want of feudal cavalry, and
the inability of burgher infantry to undertake wars of aggression. The
"free companies" (who served in great numbers in France and Spain as
well as in Italy) were "military societies very much like trade-gilds,"
which (so to speak) were hawked from place to place by their managing
directors, and hired temporarily by princes who needed their services.
Unlike the older hirelings, they were permanently organized, and thus,
with their experience and discipline, became the best troops in
existence. But the carrying on of war "in the spirit of a handicraft"
led to bloodless battles, indecisive campaigns, and other unsatisfactory
results, and the reign of the _condottieri_ proper was over by 1400,
subsequent free companies being raised on a more strictly national
basis. With all their defects, however, they were the pioneers of modern
organization. In the inextricable tangle of old and new methods which
constitutes the military system of the 15th century, it is possible to
discern three marked tendencies. One is the result of a purely military
conception of the now special art of war, and its exposition as an art
by men who devote their whole career to it. The second is the idea of a
national army, resulting from many social, economical and political
causes. The third is the tendency towards minuter organization and
subdivision within the army. Whereas the individual feudatories had
disliked the close supervision of a minor commander, and their army had
in consequence remained always a loosely-knit unit, the men who made war
into an art belonged to small bands or corps, and naturally began their
organization from the lower units. Herein, therefore, was the germ of
the regimental system of the present day.

20. _The Swiss._--The best description of a typical European army at the
opening of the new period of development is that of the French army in
Italy in 1494, written by Paolo Giovio. He notes with surprise that the
various corps of infantry and cavalry are distinct, the usual practice
of the time being to combine one lancer, one archer, one groom, &c.,
into a small unit furnished and commanded by the lancer. There were
Swiss and German infantry, armed with pike and halbert, with a few
"shot," who marched in good order to music. There were the heavy
men-at-arms (_gendarmes_), accompanied as of old by mounted archers,
who, however, now fought independently. There were, further, Gascon
slingers and crossbowmen, who had probably acquired, from contact with
Spain, some of the lightness and dash of their neighbours. The artillery
train was composed of 140 heavy pieces and a great number of lighter
guns; these were then and for many generations thereafter a special arm
outside the military establishments (see ARTILLERY). In all this the
only relic of the days of Crecy is the administrative combination of the
men-at-arms and the horse archers, and even this is no longer practised
in action. The most important element in the army is the heavy infantry
of Swiss and Germans. The Swiss had for a century past gradually
developed into the most formidable troops of the day. The wars of Zizka
(q.v.) in Bohemia (1420) materially assisted in the downfall of the
heavy cavalry; and the victories of the Swiss, beginning with Sempach
(1382), had by 1480 proved that their solid battalions, armed with the
long pike and the halberd, were practically invulnerable to all but
missile and shock action combined. By fortune of war, they never met the
English, who had shown the way to deal with the _schiltron_ as early as
Falkirk. So great was their confidence against ordinary troops, that on
one occasion (1444) they detached 1600 men to engage 50,000. It was
natural that a series of victories such as Granson, Morat and Nancy
should place them in the forefront of the military nations of Europe.
The whole people devoted itself thereupon to professional soldiering,
particularly in the French service, and though their monopoly of
mercenary employment lasted a short time only, they continued to furnish
regiments to the armies of France, Spain and the Pope up to the most
modern times. But their efficiency was thoroughly sapped by the growth
of a mutinous and insubordinate spirit, the memory of which has survived
in the proverb _Point d'argent, point de Suisse_, and inspired
Machiavelli with the hatred of mercenaries which marks every page of his
work on the art of war. One of their devices for extorting money was to
appear at the muster with many more soldiers than had been contracted
for by their employers, who were forced to submit to this form of
blackmail. At last the French, tired of these caprices, inflicted on the
Swiss the crushing defeat of Marignan (q.v.), and their tactical system
received its death-blow from the Spaniards at Pavia (1525).

21. _The Landsknechts._--The modern army owes far more of its
organization and administrative methods to the Landsknechts ("men of the
country," as distinct from foreigners) than to the Swiss. As the latter
were traditionally the friends of France, so these Swabians were the
mainstay of the Imperial armies, though both were mercenaries. The
emperor Maximilian exerted himself to improve the new force, which soon
became the model for military Europe. A corps of Landsknechts was
usually raised by a system resembling that of "indents," commissions
being issued by the sovereign to leaders of repute to enlist men. A
"colour" (_Fahnlein_) numbered usually about 400 men, a corps consisted
of a varying number of colours, some corps having 12,000 men. From these
troops, with their intense pride, _esprit de corps_ and comradeship,
there has come down to modern times much of present-day etiquette,
interior economy and "regimental customs"--in other words, nearly all
that is comprised in the "regimental" system. Amongst the most notable
features of their system were the functions of the provost, who combined
the modern offices of provost-marshal, transport and supply officer, and
canteen manager; the disciplinary code, which admitted the right of the
rank and file to judge offences touching the honour of the regiment; and
the women who, lawfully or unlawfully attached to the soldiers, marched
with the regiment and had a definite place in its corporate life. The
conception of the regiment as the home of the soldier was thus realized
in fact.

22. _The Spanish Army._--The tendencies towards professional soldiering
and towards subdivision had now pronounced themselves. At the same time,
while national armies, as dreamed of by Machiavelli; were not yet in
existence, two at least of the powers were beginning to work towards an
ideal. This ideal was an army which was entirely at the disposal of its
own sovereign, trained to the due professional standard, and organized
in the best way found by experience to be applicable to military needs.
On these bases was formed the old Spanish army which, from Pavia (1525)
to Rocroi (1643), was held by common consent to be the finest service in
existence. Almost immediately after emerging from the period of internal
development, Spain found herself obliged to maintain an army for the
Italian wars. In the first instance this was raised from amongst
veterans of the war of Granada, who enlisted for an indefinite time.
Probably the oldest line regiments in Europe are those descended from
the famous _tercios_, whose formation marks the beginning of military
establishments, just as the Landsknechts were the founders of military
manners and customs. The great captains who led the new army soon
assimilated the best points of the Swiss system, and it was the Spanish
army which evolved the typical combination of pike and musket which
flourished up to 1700. Outside the domain the tactics, it must be
credited with an important contribution to the science of army
organization, in the depot system, whereby the _tercios_ in the field
were continually "fed" and kept up to strength. The social position of
the soldier was that of a gentleman, and the young nobles (who soon came
to prefer the _tercios_ to the cavalry service) thought it no shame,
when their commands were reduced, to "take a pike" in another regiment.
The provost and his gallows were as much in evidence in a Spanish camp
as in one of Landsknechts, but the comradeship and _esprit de corps_ of
a _tercio_ were the admiration of all contemporary soldiers. With all
its good qualities, however, this army was not truly national; men soon
came from all the various nations ruled by the Habsburgs, and the
soldier of fortune found employment in a _tercio_ as readily as
elsewhere. But it was a great gain that corps, as such, were fully
recognized as belonging to the government, however shifting the
_personnel_ might be. Permanence of regimental existence had now been
attained, though the universal acceptance and thorough application of
the principle were still far distant. During the 16th century, the
French regular army (originating in the _compagnies d'ordonnance_ of
1445), which was always in existence, even when the Swiss and
_gendarmes_ were the best part of the field forces, underwent a
considerable development, producing amongst other things the military
terminology of the present day. But the wars of religion effectually
checked all progress in the latter part of the century, and the European
reputation of the French army dates only from the latter part of the
Thirty Years' War.

23. _The Sixteenth Century._--The battle of St Quentin (1557) is usually
taken as the date from which the last type of a purely mercenary _arm_
(as distinct from _corps_) comes into prominence. "Brabancon" or "Swiss"
implied pikemen without further qualification, the new term "Reiter"
similarly implied mercenary cavalry fighting with the pistol. Heavy
cavalry could disperse arquebusiers and musketeers, but it was helpless
against solid masses of pikemen; the Reiters solved the difficulty by
the use of the pistol. They were well armoured and had little to fear
from musket-balls. Arrayed in deep squadrons, therefore, they rode up to
the pikes with impunity, and fired methodically _dans le tas_, each rank
when it had discharged its pistols filing to the rear to reload. These
Reiters were organized in squadrons of variable strength, and recruited
in the same manner as were the Landsknechts. They were much inferior,
however, to the latter in their discipline and general conduct, for
cavalry had many more individual opportunities of plunder than the foot,
and the rapacity and selfishness of the Reiters were consequently in
marked contrast to the good order and mutual helpfulness in the field
and in quarters which characterized the regimental system of the
Landsknechts.

24. _Dutch System._--The most interesting feature of the Dutch system,
which was gradually evolved by the patriots in the long War of
Independence, was its minute attention to detail. In the first years of
the war, William the Silent had to depend, for field operations, on
mutinous and inefficient mercenaries and on raw countrymen who had
nothing but devotion to oppose to the discipline and skill of the best
regular army in the world. Such troops were, from the point of view of
soldiers like Alva, mere _canaille_, and the ludicrous ease with which
their armies were destroyed (as at Jemmingen and Mookerheyde), at the
cost of the lives of perhaps a dozen Spanish veterans, went far to
justify this view. But, fortunately for the Dutch, their fortified towns
were exceedingly numerous, and the individual bravery of
citizen-militia, who were fighting for the lives of every soul within
their walls, baffled time after time all the efforts of Alva's men. In
the open, Spanish officers took incredible liberties with the enemy;
once, at any rate, they marched for hours together along submerged
embankments with hostile vessels firing into them from either side.
Behind walls the Dutch were practically a match for the most furious
valour of the assailants.

The insurgents' first important victory in the open field, that of
Rymenant near Malines (1577), was won by the skill of "Bras de Fer," de
la Noue, a veteran French general, and the stubbornness of the English
contingent of the Dutch army--for England, from 1572 onwards, sent out
an ever-increasing number of volunteers. This battle was soon followed
by the great defeat of Gembloux (1578), and William the Silent was not
destined to see the rise of the Dutch army. Maurice of Nassau was the
real organizer of victory. In the wreck of all feudal and burgher
military institutions, he turned to the old models of Xenophon,
Polybius, Aelian and the rest. Drill, as rigid and as complicated as
that of the Macedonian phalanx, came into vogue, the infantry was
organized more strictly into companies and regiments, the cavalry into
troops or cornets. The _Reiter_ tactics of the pistol were followed by
the latter, the former consisted of pikes, halberts and "shot." This
form was generally followed in central Europe, as usual, without the
spirit, but in Holland it was the greater trustworthiness of the rank
and file that allowed of more flexible formations, and here we no longer
see the foot of an army drawn up, as at Jemmingen, in one solid and
immovable "square." In their own country and with the system best suited
thereto, the Dutch, who moreover acquired greater skill and steadiness
day by day, maintained their ground against all the efforts of a Parma
and a Spinola. Indeed, it is the best tribute to the vitality of the
Spanish system that the inevitable _debacle_ was so long delayed. The
campaigns of Spinola in Germany demonstrated that the "Dutch" system, as
a system for general use, was at any rate no better than the system over
which it had locally asserted its superiority, and the spirit, and not
the form, of Maurice's practice achieved the ultimate victory of the
Netherlanders. In the Thirty Years' War, the unsuccessful armies of
Mansfeld and many others were modelled on the Dutch system,--the forces
of Spinola, of Tilly and of Wallenstein, on the Spanish. In other words,
these systems as such meant little; the discipline and spirit behind
them, everything. Yet the contribution made by the Dutch system to the
armies of to-day was not small; to Maurice and his comrades we owe,
first the introduction of careful and accurate drill, and secondly the
beginnings of an acknowledged science of war, the groundwork of both
being the theory and practice of antiquity. The present method of
"forming fours" in the British infantry is ultimately derived from
Aelian, just as the first beats of the drums in a march represent the
regimental calls of the Landsknechts, and the depots and the drafts for
the service battalions date from the Italian wars of Spain.

25. _The Thirty Years' War._--Hitherto all armies had been raised or
reduced according to the military and political situation of the moment.
Spain had indeed maintained a relatively high effective in peace, but
elsewhere a few personal guards, small garrisons, and sometimes a small
regular army to serve as a nucleus, constituted the only permanent
forces kept under arms by sovereigns, though, in this era of perpetual
wars, armies were almost always on a war footing. The expense of
maintenance at that time practically forbade any other system than this,
called in German _Werbe-system_, a term for which in English there is no
nearer equivalent than "enlistment" or "levy" system. It is worth
noticing that this very system is identical in principle with that of
the United States at the present day, viz., a small permanent force,
inflated to any required size at the moment of need. The exceptional
conditions of the Dutch army, indeed, secured for its regiments a long
life; yet when danger was finally over, a large portion of the army was
at once reduced. The history of the British army from about 1740 to 1820
is a most striking, if belated, example of the _Werbe-system_ in
practice. But the Thirty Years' War naturally produced an unusual
continuity of service in corps raised about 1620-1630, and fifty years
later the principle of the standing army was universally accepted. It is
thus that the senior regiments of the Prussian and Austrian armies date
from about 1630. At this time an event took place which was destined to
have a profound influence on the military art. Gustavus Adolphus of
Sweden landed in Germany with an army better organized, trained and
equipped than any which had preceded it. This army, by its great victory
of Breitenfeld (1631), inaugurated the era of "modern" warfare, and it
is to the system of Gustavus that the student must turn for the initial
point of the progressive development which has produced the armies of
to-day. Spanish and Dutch methods at once became as obsolete as those of
the Landsknechts.

26. _The Swedish Army._--The Swedish army was raised by a carefully
regulated system of conscription, which was "preached in every pulpit in
Sweden." There were indeed enlisted regiments of the usual type, and it
would seem that Gustavus obtained the best even of the soldiers of
fortune. But the national regiments were raised on the _Indelta_ system.
Each officer and man, under this scheme, received a land grant within
the territorial district of his corps, and each of these districts
supplied recruits in numbers proportionate to its population. This
curious mixture of feudal and modern methods produced the best elements
of an army, which, aided by the tactical and technical improvements
introduced by Gustavus, proved itself incomparably superior to its
rivals. Of course the long and bloody campaigns of 1630-34 led to the
admission of great numbers of mercenaries even into the Swedish corps;
and German, Scottish and other regiments figured largely, not only in
the armies of Duke Bernhard and his successors, but in the army of
Gustavus' own lifetime. As early as 1632 one brigade of the army was
distinguished by the title "Swedish," as alone containing no foreigners.
Yet the framework was much the same as it had been in 1630. The
battle-organization of two lines and two wings, which was typical of the
later "linear" tactics, began to supplant the system of the _tercios_.
How cumbrous the latter had become by 1630 may be judged from any
battle-plan of the period, and notably from that of Lutzen. Gustavus'
cavalry fought four or three deep only, and depended as little as
possible on the pistol. The work of riding down the pikes was indeed
rendered easier by the improved tactical handiness of the musketeers,
but it was fiery leading which alone compelled victory, for there were
relatively few Swedish horse and many squadrons of Germans and others,
who in themselves were far less likely to charge boldly than the
"Pappenheimers" and other crack corps of the enemy. The infantry was of
the highest class, and only on that condition could loose and supple
lines be trusted to oppose the solid _tercios_ of Tilly and Wallenstein.
Cumbrous indeed these were, but by long practice they had acquired no
small manoeuvring power, of which Breitenfeld affords a striking
example. The Swedes, however, completely surpassed them. The progress
thus made may be gauged from the fact that under Gustavus the largest
closed body of infantry was less than 300 strong. Briefly, the genius of
a great commander, the ardour of a born cavalry leader, better arms and
better organization, carried the Swedes to the end of their career of
victory, but how personal was the _vis viva_ which inspired the army was
quickly noticeable after the death of Gustavus. Even a Bernhard could,
in the end, evoke no more heroism from a Swedish army than from any
other, and the real Swedish troops fought their last battle at
Nordlingen (1634). After this, little distinguished the "Swedish" forces
from the general mass of the armies of the time, save their system, to
which, and to its influence on the training of such leaders as Baner,
Torstensson and Wrangel, all their later victories were due. So much of
Gustavus' work survived even the carnage of Nordlingen, and his system
always obtained better results, even with the heterogeneous troops of
this later period, than any other of the time.

27. _The English Civil War_ (see GREAT REBELLION).--The armies on either
side which, about the same time, were fighting out the constitutional
quarrel in England were essentially different from all those of the
continent, though their formal organization was similar to that of the
Swedes. The military expression of a national conscience had appeared
rarely indeed in the Thirty Years' War, which was a means of livelihood
for, rather than an assertion of principle by, those who engaged in it.
In England, on the other hand, there were no mercenaries, and the whole
character of the operations was settled by the burning desire of a true
"nation in arms" to decide at once, by the arbitrament of battle, the
vital points at issue. A German critic (Fritz Hoenig) has indicated
Worcester as the prototype of Sedan; at any rate, battles of this kind
invariably resulted in failure when entrusted to a "standing" army of
the 18th century. But the national armies disappeared at the end of the
struggle; after the Restoration, English political aims became, so far
as military activity was concerned, similar in scope and execution to
those of the continent; and the example of Cromwell and the "New Model,"
which might have revolutionized military Europe, passed away without
having any marked influence on the armies of other nations.

28. _Standing Armies._--Nine years after Nordlingen, the old Spanish
army fought its last and most honourable battle at Rocroi. Its
conquerors were the new French troops, whose victory created as great a
sensation as Pavia and Crecy had done. Infusing a new military spirit
into the formal organization of Gustavus' system, the French army was
now to "set the fashion" for a century. France had been the first power
to revive regular forces, and the famous "Picardie" regiment disputed
for precedence even with the old _tercios_. The country had emerged from
the confusion of the past century with the foreign and domestic strength
of a practically absolute central power. The Fronde continued the
military history of the army from the end of the Thirty Years' War; and
when the period of consolidation was finally closed, all was prepared
for the introduction of a "standing army," practically always at war
strength, and entirely at the disposal of the sovereign. The
reorganization of the military establishments by Louvois may be taken as
the formal date at which standing armies came into prominence (see
historical sketch of the French army below). Other powers rapidly
followed the lead of France, for the defects of enlisted troops had
become very clear, and the possession of an army always ready for war
was an obvious advantage in dynastic politics. The French proprietary
system of regiments, and the general scheme of army administration which
replaced it, may be taken as typical of the armies of other great powers
in the time of Louis XIV.

29. _Character of the Standing Armies._--A peculiar character was from
the first imparted to the new organizations by the results of the Thirty
Years' War. A well-founded horror of military barbarity had the effect
of separating the soldier from the civilian by an impassable gulf. The
drain of thirty years on the population, resources and finances of
almost every country in middle Europe, everywhere limited the size of
the new armies; and the decision in 1648 of all questions save those of
dynastic interest dictated the nature of their employment. The best
soldiers of the time pronounced in favour of small field armies, for in
the then state of communications and agriculture large forces proved in
practice too cumbrous for good work. In every country, therefore, the
army took the form of a professional body, nearly though not quite
independent of extra recruits for war, set apart entirely from all
contact with civil life, rigidly restricted as to conduct in peace and
war, and employed mostly in the "maintenance" of their superiors'
private quarrels. Iron discipline produced splendid tenacity in action,
and wholesale desertion at all times. In the Seven Years' War, for
instance, the Austrians stated one-fifth of their total loss as due to
desertion, and Thackeray's _Barry Lyndon_ gives no untrue picture of the
life of a soldier under the old regime. Further, since men were costly,
rigid economy of their lives in action, and minute care for their
feeding and shelter on the march, occupied a disproportionate amount of
the attention of their generals. Armies necessarily moved slowly and
remained concentrated to facilitate supply and to check desertion, and
thus, when a commander had every unit of his troops within a short ride
of his headquarters, there was little need for intermediate general
officers, and still less for a highly trained staff.

30. _Organization in the 18th Century._--All armies were now almost
equal in fighting value, and war was consequently reduced to a set of
rules (not principles), since superiority was only to be gained by
methods, not by men. Soldiers such as Marlborough, who were superior to
these jejune prescriptions, met indeed with uniform success. But the
methods of the 18th century failed to receive full illustration, save by
the accident of a great captain's direction, even amidst the
circumstances for which they were designed. It is hardly to be wondered
at, therefore, that they failed, when forced by a new phase of
development to cope with events completely beyond their element. The
inner organization was not markedly altered. Artillery was still outside
the normal organization of the line of battle, though in the period
1660-1740 much was done in all countries to improve the material, and
above all to turn the _personnel_ into disciplined soldiers. Cavalry was
organized in regiments and squadrons, and armed with sabre and pistol.
Infantry had by 1703 begun to assume its three-deep line formation and
the typical weapons of the arm, musket and bayonet. Regiments and
battalions were the units of combat as well as organization. In the
fight the company was entirely merged in the higher unit, but as an
administrative body it still remained. As for the higher organization,
an army consisted simply of a greater or less number of battalions and
squadrons, without, as a rule, intermediate commands and groupings. The
army was arrayed as a whole in two lines of battle, with the infantry in
the centre and the cavalry on the flanks, and an advanced guard; the
so-called reserve consisting merely of troops not assigned to the
regular commands. It was divided, for command in action, into right and
left wings, both of cavalry and infantry, of each line. This was the
famous "linear" organization, which in theory produced the maximum
effort in the minimum time, but in practice, handled by officers whose
chief care was to avoid the expenditure of effort, achieved only
negative results. To see its defects one need only suppose a battalion
of the first line hard pressed by the enemy. A battalion of the second
line was directly behind it, but there was no authority, less than that
of the wing commander, which could order it up to support the first. All
the conditions of the time were opposed to tactical subdivision, as the
term is now understood. That the 18th century did not revive
_schiltrons_ was due to the new fire tactics, to which everything but
control was sacrificed. This "control," as has been said, implied not so
much command as police supervision. But far beyond any faults of
organization and recruiting, the inherent vice of these armies was, as
Machiavelli had pointed out two centuries previously, and as Prussia was
to learn to her cost in 1806, that once they were thoroughly defeated,
the only thing left to be done was to make peace at once, since there
was no other armed force capable of retrieving a failure.

31. _Frederick the Great._--The military career of Frederick the Great
is very different from those of his predecessors. With an army organized
on the customary system, and trained and equipped, better indeed, but
still on the same lines as those of his rivals, the king of Prussia
achieved results out of all proportion to those imagined by contemporary
soldiers. It is to his campaigns, therefore, that the student must refer
for the real, if usually latent, possibilities of the army of the 18th
century. The prime secret of his success lay in the fact that he was his
own master, and responsible to no superior for the uses to which he put
his men. This position had never, since the introduction of standing
armies, been attained by any one, even Eugene and Leopold of Dessau
being subject to the common restriction; and with this extraordinary
advantage over his opponents, Frederick had further the firmness and
ruthless energy of a great commander. Prussia, moreover, was more
strictly organized than other countries, and there was relatively little
of that opposition of local authorities to the movement of troops which
was conspicuous in Austria. The military successes of Prussia,
therefore, up to 1757, were not primarily due to the system and the
formal tactics, but were the logical outcome of greater energy in the
leading, and less friction in the administration, of her armies. But the
conditions were totally different in 1758-1762, when the full force of
the alliance against Prussia developed itself in four theatres of war.
Frederick was driven back to the old methods of making war, and his men
were no longer the soldiers of Leuthen and Hohenfriedberg. If discipline
was severe before, it was merciless then; the king obtained men by force
and fraud from every part of Germany, and had both to repress and to
train them in the face of the enemy. That under such conditions, and
with such men, the weaker party finally emerged triumphant, was indeed a
startling phenomenon. Yet its result for soldiers was not the production
of the national army, though the dynastic forces had once more shown
themselves incapable of compassing decisive victories, nor yet the
removal of the barrier between army and people, for the operations of
Frederick's recruiting agents made a lasting impression, and, further,
large numbers 

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