THE ART OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES 38
The Martial Success of the Swiss
5.2. The Martial Success of the Swiss
The Swiss of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been compared with much aptness to the Romans of the early Republic. In the Swiss, as in the Roman, character we find the most intense patriotism combined with an utter want of moral sense and a certain meanness and pettiness of conception, which prevent us from calling either nation truly great. In both the steadiest courage and the fervour of the noblest self-sacrifice were allied to an appalling ferocity and a cynical contempt and pitiless disregard for the rights of others. Among each people the warlike pride generated by successful wars of independence led ere long to wars of conquest and plunder. As neighbours, both were rendered insufferable by their haughtiness and proneness to take offence on the slightest provocation.
As enemies, both were distinguished for their deliberate and cold-blooded cruelty. The resolution to give no quarter, which appears almost pardonable in patriots desperately defending their native soil, becomes brutal when retained in wars of aggression, but reaches the climax of fiendish inhumanity when the slayer is a mere mercenary, fighting for a cause in which he has no national interest. Repulsive as was the bloodthirstiness of the Roman, it was far from equalling in moral guilt the needless ferocity displayed by the hired Swiss soldiery on many a battlefield of the sixteenth century.
In no point do we find a greater resemblance between the histories of the two peoples, than in the causes of their success in war. Rome and Switzerland alike are examples of the fact that a good military organization and a sound system of national tactics are the surest basis for a sustained career of conquest. Provided with these a vigorous state needs no unbroken series of great commanders. A succession of respectable mediocrities suffices to guide the great engine of war, which works almost automatically, and seldom fails to cleave its way to success.
The elected consuls of Rome, the elected or nominated captains of the Confederates, could never have led their troops to victory, had it not been for the systems which the experience of their predecessors had brought to perfection. The combination of pliability and solid strength in the legion, the powers of rapid movement and irresistible impact which met in the Swiss column, were competent to win a field without the exertion of any extraordinary ability by the generals who set them in motion.
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