THE ART OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES 33
The Primitive State of the Military Art
4.4. The Primitive State of the Military Art
Great battles were, on the whole, infrequent: a fact which appears strange, when the long-continued wars of the period are taken into consideration. Whole years of hostilities produced only a few partial skirmishes: compared with modern campaigns, the general engagements were incredibly few. Frederick the Great or Napoleon I. fought more battles in one year than a mediæval commander in ten. The fact would appear to be that the opposing armies, being guided by no very definite aims, and invariably neglecting to keep touch of each other by means of outposts and vedettes, might often miss each other altogether. When they met it was usually from the existence of some topographical necessity, of an old Roman road, or a ford or bridge on which all routes converged.
Nothing could show the primitive state of the military art better than the fact that generals solemnly sent and accepted challenges to meet in battle at a given place and on a given day. Without such precautions there was apparently a danger lest the armies should lose sight of each other, and stray away in different directions. When maps were non-existent, and geographical knowledge both scanty and inaccurate, this was no inconceivable event.
Even when two forces were actually in presence, it sometimes required more skill than the commanders owned to bring on a battle. Bela of Hungary and Ottokar of Bohemia were in arms in 1252, and both were equally bent on fighting; but when they sighted each other it was only to find that the River March was between them. To pass a stream in face of an enemy was a task far beyond the ability of a thirteenth-century general - as St. Louis had found, two years earlier, on the banks of the Achmoum Canal. Accordingly it was reckoned nothing strange when the Bohemian courteously invited his adversary either to cross the March unhindered, and fight in due form on the west bank, or to give him the same opportunity and grant a free passage to the Hungarian side. Bela chose the former alternative, forded the river without molestation, and fought on the other side the disastrous battle of Cressenbrunn.
Infantry was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries absolutely insignificant: foot-soldiers accompanied the army for no better purpose than to perform the menial duties of the camp, or to assist in the numerous sieges of the period. Occasionally they were employed as light troops, to open the battle by their ineffective demonstrations. There was, however, no really important part for them to play. Indeed their lords were sometimes affronted if they presumed to delay too long the opening of the cavalry charges, and ended the skirmishing by riding into and over their wretched followers.
At Bouvines the Count of Boulogne could find no better use for his infantry than to form them into a great circle, inside which he and his horsemen took shelter when their chargers were fatigued and needed a short rest. If great bodies of foot occasionally appeared upon the field, they came because it was the duty of every able-bodied man to join the arrière-ban when summoned, not because the addition of 20,000 or 100,000 half-armed peasants and burghers was calculated to increase the real strength of the levy. The chief cause of their military worthlessness may be said to have been the miscellaneous nature of their armament. Troops like the Scotch Lowlanders, with their long spears, or the Saracen auxiliaries of Frederick II, with their cross-bows, deserved and obtained some respect on account of the uniformity of their equipment.
But with ordinary infantry the case was different; exposed, without discipline and with a miscellaneous assortment of dissimilar weapons, to a cavalry charge, they could not combine to withstand it, but were ridden down and crushed. A few infantry successes which appear towards the end of the period were altogether exceptional in character. The infantry of the Great Company, in the East beat the Duke of Athens, by inducing him to charge with all his men-at-arms into a swamp. In a similar way the victory of Courtrai was secured, not by the mallets and iron-shod staves of the Flemings, but by the canal, into which the headlong onset of the French cavalry thrust rank after rank of their companions.
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