THE ART OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES 79
The Discipline of the Hussite Armies
6.22. The Discipline of the Hussite Armies
A Hussite army in movement had its regular order of march. Wherever the country was open enough it formed five parallel columns. In the centre marched the cavalry and artillery, to each side of them two divisions of waggons accompanied by their complements of infantry. The two outer divisions were longer than the two which marched next the horsemen and the guns. The latter were intended--in the case of a sudden attack--to form the front and rear of a great oblong, of which the longer divisions were to compose the sides. To enable the shorter columns to wheel, one forward and the other backward, no great time would be required, and if the few necessary minutes were obtained, the Hussite order of battle stood complete. To such perfection and accuracy was the execution of this manœuvre brought, that we are assured that a Bohemian army would march right into the middle of a German host, so as to separate division from division, and yet find time to throw itself into its normal formation just as the critical moment arrived. The only real danger was from artillery fire, which might shatter the line of carts: but the Hussites were themselves so well provided with cannon that they could usually silence the opposing batteries. Never assuredly were the tactics of the ‘laager’ carried to such perfection; were the records of the Hussite victories not before us, we should have hesitated to believe that the middle ages could have produced a system whose success depended so entirely on that power of orderly movement which is usually claimed as the peculiar characteristic of modern armies.
But in the Bohemia of the fifteenth century, just as in the England of the seventeenth, fanaticism led to rigid discipline, not to disorder. The whole country, we are assured, was divided into two lists of parishes, which alternately put their entire adult population in the field. While the one half fought, the other remained at home, charged with the cultivation of their own and their neighbours’ lands. A conscription law of the most sweeping kind, which made every man a soldier, was thus in force, and it becomes possible to understand the large numbers of the armies put into the field by a state of no great extent.
Zisca’s first victories were to his enemies so unexpected and so marvellous, that they inspired a feeling of consternation. The disproportion of numbers and the inexperience of the Hussites being taken into consideration, they were indeed surprising. But instead of abandoning their stereotyped feudal tactics, to whose inability to cope with any new form of military efficiency the defeats were really due, the Germans merely tried to raise larger armies, and sent them to incur the same fate as the first host which Sigismund had led against Prague.
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