Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

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.