Chapter III: Part 3

While Philippe le Bel was destroying the Knights Templars, whom he held to be obstacles to his political plans, he was at the same time seeking in every way the means of restraining a haughty aristocracy, always under arms, whose systematic want of discipline was a danger both to the throne and to the country. As soon as he had obtained from the representatives of the nation, assembled together in States-General, the right to impose taxes according to the requirements of the sovereign, he set to work on the definitive organization of a permanent paid army (Fig. 44). He fixed the age of military service at eighteen, and decreed that none of his subjects, except the old and the sick, should be exempt from it, unless they paid a certain sum to the royal treasury, and supplied, according to their rank and means, one or more substitutes (decree of 1302, 1303, 1306) to serve under the flag of the _ost_ of the king (Fig. 46). Till that time, military service had only been obligatory for forty consecutive days, or, at the most, for three months. This service was, indeed, often of less duration, according to the different degree of infeudation of any particular fief, and was hedged about, besides, with so many privileges and with so many exemptions, that if a feudal army did not succeed in bringing a short campaign to a prosperous issue, it generally met with a fatal collapse. In accordance with this design, Philippe le Bel, at the opening of the Flemish campaign, summoned “for four months to his standards, archbishops, bishops, abbots, dukes, counts, barons, and other nobles, all liable to the ban,” each of whom could claim pay at the rate of twelve deniers (about four francs) a day, besides a sum of thirty sous (about thirty francs) for their equipment.

Philippe le Long (1314) and Philippe de Valois 1337–1340) continued and improved the work of Philippe le Bel. Thenceforward, the _ost_ or army of the king was regularly established; the cross-bowmen and the men-at-arms were the first corps who received a permanent organization and a fixed rate of pay.

In the fourteenth century, the French infantry, composed merely of more or less badly-armed archers, inspired its leaders with no great confidence. Its want of skill and its cowardice too often compromised the issue of an engagement. It was necessary, in order to support those combatants always ready to take to flight, to employ foreign mercenaries, English, Italian, or German, who fought well when they were liberally paid. These mercenaries, more practised in war and more courageous than the soldiers of the ban, were entrusted with the management of the cannon, which at this time were first employed, and which were carried by the camp followers. We may here repeat what we have spoken of elsewhere, viz., that the imperfections of the earliest cannons, the difficulty which attended their use, and the danger incurred by those who discharged them, caused the old arms to be long preferred to these new ones. In fact, long after the new artillery had made considerable progress, it was employed simultaneously with the ancient style of projectiles. The long period during which this important transition in projectile weapons was slowly taking place, was one of the most wretched in the annals of military art. All the great battles of the fourteenth century present us with striking examples of an entire absence of skill in tactics. Mons-en-Puelle (1304), where King Philippe le Bel was all but surprised in his camp; Cassel (1328), where Philippe de Valois escaped half naked from his enemies’ hands; Crecy (1346), where the English used cannon for the first time; Poitiers (1356), where King John was taken prisoner on the battle-field; Nicopolis (1393), where knighthood covered itself with disgrace; Agincourt, where the flower of the French nobility perished--are all examples of the most shameful confusion during the struggle, of the most disgraceful butchery after the defeat. It is not too much to say, that during the whole of this long epoch of bloody contests, true knights and staunch soldiers were very rare, and that good leaders were even rarer still.

In Italy, the _condottieri_, whose principal commander was the Englishman, John Hawkwood, and in France, the free companies, commanded by the renowned Armand de Cervoles, and even those bands of _routiers_, _Brabançons_, and _tard-venus_, who pillaged and plundered the realm to such an extent, says an old chronicler, “that not even a cock was heard to crow in it,” were the only troops who showed any acquaintance with the resources of military warfare or the slightest knowledge of strategic science. It was amongst the ranks of these indefatigable soldiers that the celebrated Bertrand du Guesclin made his first campaign (Fig. 47).

The paid gendarmery, a mixture of heavy and light cavalry, committed, in the reign of Charles VI., many breaches of discipline, without atoning for them by lending any really efficacious aid to French chivalry, which was almost entirely cut to pieces in the bloody disaster of Agincourt (October 25th, 1415). Charles VII., replaced on the throne of his ancestors by his nobles after he had driven out the English, “by the help of God and Joan the Virgin,” determined therefore to disband the gendarmery. From the picked men of the body he formed the framework of fifteen new companies of artillery, numbering nine thousand combatants, amongst whom were incorporated all the regular cavalry of the kingdom. Each gendarme, thoroughly equipped, was attended by two archers and two followers on horseback; this group of five mounted men was called _a lance fully equipped_. In 1447, a sixth man and horse were added to it. A little later, Charles VII. raised several paid bands, recruited by voluntary enlistment and commanded by responsible captains, who were paid by the war treasurers, according to the number of men on the monthly muster-roll. This creation of mercenary troops diminished still further the importance of the ban, which was no longer anything but a badly-equipped secondary militia, though still armed with bows and pikes, and still obliged to wear a uniform. On the actual field of battle the pikemen were always posted in the van; behind them came the foot archers, wearing _salades_, or helmets without vizors, the brigandine or short coat of mail, and armed with cross-bows. But this reorganization of the troops had no invigorating effect on the infantry of the communes, and the _franc-archer_ remained the type of the cowardly soldier.

The death of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, slain in the battle of Nancy (1477), completed the downfall of the feudal chivalry, whose last and most martial representative he was (Fig. 48). Louis XI., who had gathered around him a devoted army, composed of mercenaries from all countries, and who could entirely rely upon the fidelity of his Scottish guard, began attacking the great fiefs, which were in reality the rivals of his throne, and succeeded in destroying them, having no further need of them and their haughty vassalage. Little by little the seigniorial standards disappeared, and their war-cries ceased to resound; a _fief held under the obligation to carry arms_ no longer forced the vassal, its occupier, under the pain of felony and bodily _confiscation_, to equip and arm himself at the first appeal of his suzerain, and to follow the royal _ost_ with a definite number of fighting men. The principle of purchasing exemption from military service being henceforward admitted, all, whether nobles or villains, were at liberty either to serve or to purchase their exemption. Some few feudal _gendarmes_ still remained, but most were free. Of the _squires-at-arms_, some were feudal, others free or even plain _varlets_. Canons, abbots, and prelates whom feudal laws had forced to contribute their personal military service, had long since found substitutes in the persons of the attorneys or bailiffs, who superintended the _ban_ and _arrière-ban_ of the land-owning nobles. Some of the clergy, however, preferred to be individually present with the armies of their sovereign; many a prelate or abbot was delighted to add to his coat-of-arms a cuirass, a sword, a helmet, or some other warlike emblem. In 1356, the bishops of Châlons, of Sens, and of Melun distinguished themselves by feats of personal bravery at the bloody engagement of Poitiers; in 1359, the Bishop of Rheims, by a few vigorous sorties, was the means of saving that city when the English were besieging it; the Archbishop of Sens, William of Montaigu, fell sword in hand on the field of Agincourt; in 1455, a simple monk successfully defended Belgrade; while at the siege of Plaisance, Philip of Savoy, Bishop of Valence, was knighted for his prowess in the breach itself. It is true that many of these ecclesiastical dignitaries had never been solemnly invested; but the example they followed was a lofty one, for several popes, John X., Leo IX., Urban II., Innocent II., and Julius II. (who had first distinguished himself as an able leader under the name of Julien de la Rovère) had personally commanded the troops of the Holy See.

The _fire-stick_, that is to say the arquebuse, which was then called _hequebutte_, with difficulty took the place of the bow, and with still greater difficulty that of the cross-bow. In 1481, Louis XI. deprived his sergeants-at-arms of both the latter weapons, not to arm them with fire-sticks, but in order to give them the pike, the halbert, and the broadsword, of which the Swiss in the recent wars had made such formidable use. Louis XI., however, increased the number of his mounted archers, and placed them later under the orders of the colonel of a company of free-lances known as Albanais or Scouts. These combined bodies formed the French national light cavalry till Francis I. replaced them by the light horse, a body chiefly composed of mercenaries of different nations. In England, ever since the thirteenth century, the mounted archers formed a considerable portion of the national forces. An army of fifteen hundred _complete lances_, which represented a total of six or seven thousand horsemen, required a complement of at least five thousand mounted archers, who were all skilful marksmen. In the time of Henry VIII., an English bowman could discharge as many as twelve arrows in a minute, and he would have considered himself disgraced if he had let fly a single shaft which failed to kill, wound, or at least strike an enemy.

The desperate mêlée of Fornoue (July 6th, 1495), which forced Charles VIII. to retrace his steps after his successful Italian expedition, was nearly the last of the confused and sanguinary struggles of the Middle Ages. The sword and the bow contributed more than the cannon and the fire-stick to the terrible result of the day. From that time the infantry regained its old pre-eminence over the cavalry, and cannon were employed preferably to all other projectile weapons. A complete revolution was also about to ensue, as well in the tactics of an army in the field as in the attack and defence of fortresses. Louis XII. and Francis I., in their Italian campaigns, in which, they wasted so much of the resources and treasures of France, had to contend with German and Spanish mercenaries, at that time the best soldiers in the world; they opposed to them bodies of foreign infantry, sometimes lansquenets (Fig. 49), sometimes Swiss, who made a trade of war, and who, to earn their pay, did not hesitate to fight against their own countrymen. There was one drawback, however, to the acceptance of their services, and that was that they frequently changed sides on the eve of an engagement, or refused to fight on the slightest pretext. More than once the knights of France saw themselves suddenly abandoned by the infantry whose duty it was to support them, and who allowed them to be cut to pieces before their eyes without stirring to assist them (Fig. 50). This happened at the fatal battle of Pavia, when the king and his nobles struggled on foot in hand-to-hand desperation till they fell or were taken prisoners.

In the ordinary arrangement, at this period, of any army giving battle in the open field, the free archers, the men-at-arms, and the knights were posted either in the centre or at the wings, while the infantry, properly so called, divided into little groups of five, termed _cinquains_, was either thrown forward to skirmish, or sent behind to cover the rearguard, or detached at intervals on the flanks in order to harass the enemy and to protect the baggage. During the engagement, all the knights, clad entirely in armour, dismounted in order to fight, and left their horses to the care of the infantry. In these days horses were only used to carry their riders on the march, which the weight of their armour would not have allowed them to perform on foot.

A horseman, when disabled by long service or by age, was no longer employed in the cavalry, but retired into the infantry, where he enjoyed, under the title of _anspessade_ (from the Italian _spezzate_, broken), the privileges that were at a later period granted to veterans.

No troops, until the time of the Crusades, had any distinguishing mark among themselves, except the difference of their arms, and the idea of a military uniform had not then arisen. But with the emblazoned arms, the standards, and the pennants, there came into use scarves, worn as baldricks or sashes, over the cuirass, and of which the colour, which generally matched that of the standard of the feudal seignior of the wearer, became as much a rallying signal as the standards themselves (Fig. 51). The necessity of distinguishing friends from foes at a distance naturally also brought about more or less marked distinctions of dress.

The administration and inner regulation of an army, which had been one of the principal cares of the Gothic and earlier Frankish kings, were entirely neglected, like everything pertaining to the art of war, for many centuries. For instance, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the captains of the different companies were allowed to distribute the pay to their men as they pleased after each muster, and were solely and entirely entrusted with the administration of their companies. They were thus entirely irresponsible, and did not concern themselves to see that the regulations, prescribed by superior authority, concerning the general discipline of the army, were carried into effect. In 1355, daring the captivity of King John in England, special commissioners were appointed, with the title of controllers, whose duty it was to superintend the internal economy of the army generally, with a view to put a stop to the numerous abuses that existed; but the disturbed and unfortunate period at which this attempt was made rendered it almost necessarily a barren one. When the dauphin came to the throne as Charles V., he returned to this project, which he had indeed himself originated, but at his death anarchy again reigned for more than a century. Civil and foreign wars laid waste and exhausted France, without bringing to the surface one single creative mind, with the exception perhaps of Jean Bureau, the grand master of artillery under Charles VIII. It is by no means going beyond the mark to state that the reverses sustained in Italy, in the reigns of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., were owing less to the chivalrous recklessness of the nobility and their ignorance of the first principles of warfare, than to the gross faults of the military administration of the country. Even in Francis I.’s time, the public service was in such a miserable condition that he was never really properly informed of the actual effective strength of his army, for his captains, whose interest it was to exaggerate the number of the rank and file under their standards (Figs. 52 and 53), habitually deceived the generals and their superiors. To such a degree was this carried that, on the eve of the battle of Pavia, Francis I. was led to believe that his army was a third stronger than it really was. At last, however, in 1517, there issued from this chaotic confusion the first germ of a proper system of supervision and control of all matters relating to war.

After Cesare Vecellio, “Degli Habiti Antichi e Moderni:” 8vo,
1590.]

If the tacticians of Italy were the first to fathom theoretically the science of war, it was the Swiss, under Marshal Trivulce, the Spaniards, under Gonzalvez of Cordova, and finally the Flemish, under the Duke of Alba, who successfully restored the military combinations of ancient Greece. They were the first to manœuvre in dense masses and in battalions, and they were the first to successfully employ the column formation of troops. The pikemen of France followed their example, while the troops armed with projectile weapons fought as skirmishers in the van, or in lines two or three deep. It was not, however, till Henry IV.’s time that any considerable body of troops was seen capable of advancing in close column without breaking its formation, and it was not till Louis XIII.’s time that the regiment, first introduced in the preceding reign, became a recognised permanent military unit.

Towards the close of the fifteenth century the French native cavalry still consisted entirely of heavy troopers. The Albanians, the mercenaries of whom the French light cavalry were composed, sold their services, _man and horse_, as the Swiss sold theirs, _man and halbert_. Charles VIII. enrolled eight thousand Albanians for his Italian expedition; but, fifty years later, this foreign element had disappeared from the French army, which had by that time, in addition to its heavy cavalry, a body of light cavalry of its own (Fig. 55).

Until the reign of Henry IV., who was the first monarch to dispense with their dangerous and immoral assistance, free lances were universally employed even by those sovereigns who had promulgated the severest decrees against them, but who, for want of regular soldiers, found themselves forced to accept their doubtful services. Brantôme has thus portrayed them: “Vestus à la pendarde, un haut de chausses bouffant; monstrant la jambe nue, une ou deux, portant leurs bas déchaussés pendant à la ceinture; chantant en cheminant pour soulager le travail de leur chemin.”[3] These scouts, who served on foot, were only allowed _l’étape_--that is to say, a daily allowance of food and forage; but they enjoyed in war time the right of pillage in all towns and fortresses taken by assault (Fig. 56).

This system of paying auxiliary troops _à l’étape_ was first adopted in France in the fourteenth century, and had continued in use in a desultory manner till the reign of Henry II., under whose order a ration scale was drawn up, as well as a scale of provisions, cartage, and billeting due to the king’s troops from the churches, monasteries, communes, nobles, and burgesses, through the possessions of which and in whose neighbourhood their road lay.

The legal age at which the enlistment of soldiers could be made, the manner in which it was effected, and the length of service, varied considerably throughout the Middle Ages and the period of the Renaissance. In Henry II.’s time it was a custom to hire the soldier for three months; Henry IV. increased this period, but not without difficulty, for, to quote, the words of Sully, “Our soldiers can now only be enlisted by force, and can only be persuaded to march by the use of the stick and the threat of the gibbet.” To this picture we must add the significant fact that the system of drill was a very insufficient one, and that it was by no means unusual to find soldiers, whose stay with the standards was after all but a very temporary one, entirely incapable of handling the arms they were entrusted with. The urban militia were, however, far superior to these recruits, for, since the reign of Charles V., it was customary to drill the citizen every Sunday with pike, bow, and cross-bow, particularly in the frontier towns. It is not till Coligny’s time, in the middle of the sixteenth century, that traces can be found of any regulations imposing on commanding officers the duties of teaching and drilling their soldiers.

We have attempted to outline the general military physiognomy of the Middle Ages; we will now rapidly examine the weapons and warlike engines that were invented for the attack and defence of fortified places.

Until the invention of gunpowder, or rather till that of artillery (Fig. 57) the whole art of fortification, says the learned Prosper Mérimée, consisted in following more or less exactly the traditions handed down by the Romans. The stronghold of the Middle Ages had precisely the same characteristic as the ancient _castellum_. The methods of attack against which the engineers had to guard were the assault by escalade, either by surprise or by force of numbers, and the breach, caused either by sapping, mining, or by the battering-rams of the besiegers. The employment of machines or _engines_ of this description was much less frequent after than before the fall of the Roman empire, when the art of war knew no higher flight than to lay siege to a place or sustain a siege.

The first operation of the besiegers was to destroy the outworks of the besieged place, such as the posterns, the barbicans, the barriers, &c. As most of these outworks were built of wood, attempts were generally made to cut them to pieces with hatchets, or to set them on fire with arrows to which were fastened pieces of burning tow steeped in sulphur, or some other incendiary composition.

If the main body of the place were not so strongly fortified as to render a successful assault by force impossible, it was usual to attempt an escalade. With this end in view, the moat, which was generally literally strewn with caltrops (Fig. 58), was filled up with fascines, on which ladders were reared against the ramparts, while archers on the brink of the ditch, protected by mantlets stuck in the ground, drove away with their arrows any of the defenders who attempted to show themselves above the parapets or at the loopholes.

If the siege, in spite of the efforts of the besiegers, promised to be a long one, a blockade was the sole remaining means of reduction, though this was a thing difficult to carry out with forces which were not permanent, and which were generally far from numerous. It therefore became necessary for the besieger to protect his approaches by wooden, earthen, or even stone works, constructed under cover of the night, and solid and lofty enough to enable his archers to aim right on to the battlements of the besieged place. Wooden towers, several stories high, were also frequently resorted to, put together piece by piece at the edge of the moat, or constructed out of bow-shot, and subsequently rolled on wheels to the foot of the walls (Fig. 59). At the siege of Toulouse, in 1218, a machine of this kind was built by the order of Simon de Montfort, capable of accommodating, according to the ballad of the “Albigeois,” five hundred men.

When the missiles hurled from the higher stories of these towers--termed _chattes_ in the south, _chats_, _châteaux_, _bretesches_, in the north--had driven the besieged from their ramparts and battlements, a movable bridge was lowered across the moat, and a hand-to-hand struggle then took place (Fig. 59). The besieged, to prevent or retard the approach of these dreaded towers, were accustomed to hurl immense stones and lighted darts against them, or to undermine or inundate the ground on which they stood, so that their own weight might cause them to topple over.

Besides the means we have just described, there still remained the sap and the mine. Miners, equipped with pickaxes, were sent into the ditch under the protection of a body of archers. A sloping roof, covered with mantlets, sheltered them from the missiles of the besieged. They then pierced the wall, stone by stone, till they had made a hole large enough to allow the passage of several soldiers at once, while the sappers put the finishing stroke to the aperture. The besieged, observing in what direction the enemy was pursuing his operations, strove to concentrate all his means of defence at this point. Sometimes he attempted to crush the miners with immense stones or pieces of wood, sometimes he poured molten lead or boiling oil over them, sometimes, by hastily constructing a fresh wall in rear of the one the miners were breaking through, he gave the latter the trouble of beginning their work all over again just as they thought it was complete.

The mine had this advantage over the sap--that the besieger, being out of sight while engaged in the former method of subterranean work, had every chance of surprising the besieged. In order to effect this, an underground gallery was dug as noiselessly as possible, and carried beneath the foundations of the ramparts. When the mine had reached the walls, these were propped up with pieces of timber, and the earth was dug away until they were supported entirely by this artificial method. Dry vine wood and other inflammable materials were then piled round the props and set on fire, so that when the timber was consumed the walls crumbled down and opened a large breach to the besiegers. Nothing then was left to the garrison but to surrender, in order to avoid the horrors of an assault and the sack of the town (Figs. 60 and 61).

The only remedy possessed by a garrison against this last method of attack was to keep a good watch and to endeavour to discover the whereabouts of the mine, and neutralise it by a countermine. At the siege of Rennes, in 1356, the governor of the town ordered basins of copper, each containing several globes of the same metal, to be placed all about the ramparts; when these globes were seen to vibrate and tremble at each stroke of the hidden pickaxe, it was easy to guess that the mine was not far off. There was also a body of night watchmen, who carefully noted the enemy’s movements, and who rang the alarm-bell at the slightest noise. These watchmen were often replaced by dogs, whose barks, in case of a surprise, gave notice to the garrison (Fig. 62).

The slow and laborious work of the miner was often advantageously replaced by the more powerful action of certain machines, which may be divided into two distinct classes. The first, intended to be used at close quarters and to make a breach in the wall, comprised several varieties of the ancient battering-ram; the second, employed at a distance, were termed _pierriers_, _mangonneaux_, _espringales_, &c. (Figs. 63 and 64).

The battering-ram, which was probably well known from the remotest periods, is described, in the documents of the Middle Ages, pretty much as we see it figured on the monuments of Nineveh. “On Easter day,” says the anonymous author of the chronicle of the “Albigeois,” “the _bosson_ (the southern name of the battering-ram) was placed in position; it is long, iron-headed, straight, and pointed, and it so hammered, and pierced, and smashed, that the wall was broken through (Fig. 65); but they (the besieged) lowered a loop of rope suspended from a machine, and in this noose the _bosson_ was caught and retained.”

Generally speaking, the battering-ram was a long, heavy beam, suspended in the centre from a kind of massive trestle. The end which battered the wall was either covered with an iron hood or pointed with brass. The beam was swung backward and forward by the besiegers, and by dint of striking a wall always in the same spot it often succeeded in shattering or overthrowing it. At other times the ram, instead of being suspended in an oscillating manner, was mounted on wheels, and ran forward with great rapidity against the wall to be battered. The chronicle of the “Albigeois,” just quoted, alludes to the head of the ram being caught in a noose; besides this manœuvre, the garrison would hurl stones and pieces of timber upon it, in order to break it or to put it out of trim; or else they would strive to deaden its blows by interposing a thick mattress of wool covered with leather between it and the stonework of their stronghold.

The machines which they employed to hurl their projectiles seem to have corresponded in nearly every respect with the catapults of the ancients. It was often merely a species of gigantic sling, worked by several men, and throwing pieces of rock and round masses of stone. The _mangonneau_, _bricole_, or _trabuch_, was a kind of square wooden platform, made of thick planks laid crosswise; a long beam, fastened at its lower end by a revolving axis to the platform, was supported at an angle of about 45° by an elevated crosspiece resting on two uprights. The distance between the revolving axis and the point of support was about one-half of the length of the beam. The latter was then secured in this position by long cords fastened to the front of the platform. The men who managed the _bricole_ then lowered the beam backwards by a windlass fixed in the rear, till it (the beam) formed an obtuse instead of an acute angle with the platform, and till the cord securing it in front was stretched to its utmost tension. While it was in this position the projectile they wished to cast was placed in the spoonshaped extremity of the beam. A spring, termed _déclic_, then released the tension of the windlass and the beam, obeying that of the cord fastened to the front of the platform, swung rapidly forward, and hurled the projectile to great distances and to some considerable height (Fig. 66). These _bricoles_ were sometimes employed to throw into besieged strongholds the dead bodies of horses and other animals, fire-balls, and cases of inflammable matter; but they were generally used to shatter the roofs of the buildings inside the walls, and to crush the protecting wooden sheds constructed on the ramparts.

Their use was still continued long after the invention of gunpowder. In the wars of the fourteenth century, particularly in the sieges of Tarazonia, Barcelona, and Burgos, bricoles were made use of side by side with cannons discharged with gunpowder. It was not until the close of the fifteenth century that the rapid progress of the new artillery, which enabled besiegers to breach a wall from a considerable distance, and with a smaller expenditure both of time and men, caused the whole paraphernalia of the old-fashioned ballistic machines to fall into disuse. Thenceforward a new era commenced in the science of attack and defence--an era of which the immense results do not belong only to the period of the Renaissance.

NAVAL MATTERS.

Old Traditions: Long Vessels and Broad Vessels.--The
Dromon.--The Galéasse.--The Coque.--Caracks and
Galleons.--Francis I.’s Great Carack.--Caravelles.--The
Importance of a Fleet.--Hired Fleets.--Poop Guards.--Naval
Laws.--Seaport Tribunals.--Navigation in the open Seas.--The
Boussole.--Armament of Men-of-War.--Towers and Ballistic
Engines.--Artillery.--Naval Strategy.--Decorations
and Magnificent Appointments of Vessels.--Sails and
Flags.--The Galley of Don Juan of Austria.--Sailors’
Superstitions.--Discipline and Punishments.

Ships from the most remote ages have been divided into two classes, namely, long vessels, those propelled by the oar, or by the wind, sometimes by the two combined, and vessels of greater beam, which trusted to their sails alone. The Middle Ages conformed to these traditions; they possessed galleys which answered to the long vessels of antiquity, and ships which corresponded to the larger class.

The galleys of the Middle Ages, like the long vessels of antiquity, may be divided into several varieties. The large galley (Fig. 68), strong in build and swift in sailing, had received from the Greeks the significant name of _dromon_ (runner). In the fifth century Theodoric had a thousand dromons constructed for the defence of the Italian coasts and for the transport of corn; in the ninth, the Emperor Leo the Philosopher, in the military precepts he gave to his son, recommended the construction of dromons with two tiers of oars, five-and-twenty in each tier on each side. For the flag-ship (if we may use the term) of the commander of the fleet, he recommended the construction of a much larger dromon with a hundred oars in each tier, similar to those that used to be built in Pamphylia, and which, for that reason, were known as _pamphiles_. The fleet was to be accompanied by smaller dromons, with a single tier of oars, for the purpose of carrying despatches, and to act as scouts. These bore more particularly the name of _galleys_. For more than three hundred years the construction and rigging of ships underwent no change (Fig. 69); in the twelfth century the dromon was still the principal type of the class of ships propelled by oars. Next came the galley, smaller than the dromon, but fitted, like it, with two tiers of oars, and lastly, the _galion_ or _galéide_ (termed later the _galiot_), a much smaller vessel than the galley.

The largest and the best-armed galley which at that period ploughed the Mediterranean was the one encountered by Richard Cœur de Lion, according to the historian Matthew Paris, on the 3rd of June, 1191, near the coast of Syria, and which was carrying large reinforcements to the camp of the unbelievers, who were besieging at that time the town of Acre. When the sailors of the English fleet first perceived this gigantic vessel, whose vast hull was painted with the most brilliant colours, whose poop was surmounted with a castellated tower, whose three masts unfurled to the wind an immense expanse of canvas, and whose long oars beat the waves with majestic rhythm, they were surprised, and undecided how to act. Richard, however, ordered his men to attack the floating fortress. His lighter galleys surrounded it on all sides, in spite of the arrows and glass vases showered on them by the dromon. These vases broke when they came in contact with the galleys, and enveloped them in Greek fire. The captain of the Arab craft attempted to sail away from his swarm of assailants, but the wind fell, and half his rowers having been slain by the English arrows, he was forced to accept battle. The galleys skirmished around the dromon, striking it repeated blows with their brazen prows, and making large holes in its sides. At last, after a desperate resistance, the giant was engulfed in the waters with all its defenders.

A companion craft to the dromon, as before mentioned, was the _pamphile_, which, before disappearing in the fifteenth century, frequently changed its shape and character. Nor must we forget the _chelande_ (Fig. 70), or _sélandre_, which a writer of the eleventh century represents as a ship of extraordinary length, of great speed, possessing two tiers of oars, and a crew of a hundred and fifty men, and which, three centuries later, became a large flat sailing vessel, and was termed _chaland_. The _taride_, a kind of merchant galley with oars, and the _huissier_, the name of which was derived from a _huis_, or large door, which opened in its side in front of the poop to allow of the embarkation of horses, were contemporaneous with the pamphile and with the sélandre; as also was the _chat_ or _chatte_, which William of Tyre mentions in connection with a maritime war which took place in 1121. According to him it was a ram-armed vessel larger than a galley, and carried a hundred oars, each of which was handled by two men.

Besides all these there were the _bucentaures_ (Fig. 71), large Venetian galleys, and the _sagettes_, or _saïties_ (arrows), whose names denote their slender shape and speed, and which, with their twelve or fifteen oars on each side, played the same part in the twelfth century as the _baliner_, or _barineal_, and the _brigantin_ played from the fourteenth to the seventeenth.

There were two sorts of vessels used in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries also belonging to the numerous and varied family of the galley--the _fuste_ and the _frégate_, both smaller examples of the _galéasse_. A galley was termed _galéasse_ (Fig. 72) when it was of large size, powerfully armed, and propelled by such long and heavy oars that it took six or seven men to work one of them.

We have not by any means exhausted the number of long vessels propelled by oars, but we will now turn to those which only used sails, and which were termed _nefs_, or round vessels.

In the tenth century the Venetians employed these large heavy vessels, which they had adopted from the Saracens, and which were termed _cumbaries_ (from the Latin _cymba_), or _gombaries_. To the same class belonged the _coque_ (Fig. 73), which, according to an old chronicler, had a round stem and stern, a high freeboard, and drew very little water. This style of vessel, which from its shape was considered insubmersable, was largely used both for warlike and commercial purposes, from the twelfth to the close of the fifteenth century.

The _coque_, so frequently employed in the Middle Ages, doubtless suggested the construction of another large vessel of the same sort, called by the Venetians _buzo_, by the Genoese _panzono_, and _busse_ by the Provençaux, three words having a similar signification.[4] These various names plainly indicate the character of this kind of vessel, namely, that it was a broad-beamed, slow-sailing craft, but one capable of carrying large and heavy cargoes.

Such names, however, as _gombaries_, _coques_, and _busses_, are nowadays as completely forgotten as the ships to which they were applied, while such terms as _carraque_ and _galliot_ still convey a meaning understood by everybody. Indeed, they immediately call up in the mind the memory of the numerous Spanish galleons which, according to popular tradition, were constantly returning home laden with Peruvian gold, and of those gigantic caracks which, hailing from the French ports on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, invested the navy of France, in the reigns of Louis XII. and Francis I., with such a splendid and imposing renown.

In 1545, Francis I. had a magnificent carack constructed in Normandy, so richly decorated, with such lofty decks and towers, and so capitally appointed, that it was called the Great Carack. It was anchored in the roadstead of Havre-de-Grâce. Henry VIII. ordered one equally splendid (Fig. 74), in which he intended to embark when he started to meet his brother sovereign at the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold. The French vessel was about to set sail at the head of a powerful fleet dispatched to meet the English. The King, desirous of inspecting it, boarded it on the eve of its departure, accompanied by a numerous and brilliant court. A collation had been prepared for him and his suite, the band was playing, salutes were thundering out in his honour, and he himself was in the midst of his inspection of the floating citadel, when suddenly cries of alarm were heard. A fire had broken out between decks; it burnt with astonishing rapidity, and, before help could be efficiently rendered, the whole of the rigging was in flames. In a few hours all that remained of the Great Carack was an immense hull, half consumed, aground on the beach, upon which the sea was casting up the corpses of those of the crew who were killed by the discharge of its cannons during the progress of the conflagration.

The galliot occupied an intermediate place between the ship properly so called and the large galley. It was, in fact, a slighter vessel, longer and narrower in the beam than all other kinds of ships. Galliots were sometimes, but not often, propelled by oars (Fig. 76). The ordinary build of galliot, whose poop consisted of two rounded quarter circles, separated by the rudder-post, had two decks; the largest of all had three. Two remarkable galliots are mentioned in history, one of which was an exact model of the celebrated Great Carack. It was built at Venice to carry three hundred guns and five hundred soldiers, besides its own crew of sailors, but while still in the lagoons it was caught in a tremendous hurricane. Being severely tossed by the wind and the waves, its rolls threw the whole of its heavy ordnance to the port-side, and, being unable to right itself, it turned over, and went down in sight of the town.

Merely mentioning the _palandres_, the _hourques_, the _pataches_, and the _mahones_, which were smaller than the galliot, but which had certain advantages of their own, we come to a craft whose diminutive dimensions have not prevented it from acquiring a kind of historical renown, in consequence of the important events at the close of the fifteenth century in which it played a part. The craft we refer to is the _caravel_ (Fig. 77), which had the honour of carrying Columbus to the New World. The design of the caravel was taken from the _caravo_, a small barque used by the Spaniards. The grace, the lightness, the fine outlines, and the speed of the caravel, recommended it to the hardy mariners who sailed, in search of new continents, across the Atlantic Ocean. Narrow at the poop, wide at the prow, carrying a double tower at its stern, and a single one at its bows, the caravel carried four vertical masts and one inclined one. Two square sails were bent from the foremast, while the three others each bore a single triangular one (Fig. 78). The caravel sailed as well against the wind as before it, and tacked as easily as a row boat; so, at least, we are told in the log of the first voyage of Columbus.

It is, therefore, an undeniable fact that the sailors of the Middle Ages did not lack large and handsome ships, though the boldest mariner did not care to put too much salt water between his craft and the shore, and, as a rule, the longest voyages were made by following the outline of the coast. The Middle Ages, moreover, could often boast the possession of considerable fleets. In 1242 the Genoese put to sea with ninety-three galleys, thirty traders, and three large ships, to struggle for the supremacy of the seas with a hundred and ten Pisan and Imperial galleys. At the beginning of the same century the Crusaders, when they set sail to attack Constantinople, had a fleet of three hundred vessels according to one writer, and of four hundred and eighty according to another. Amongst them there was one called _The World_, of such large size and so beautifully finished that it was the admiration of all the ports along the coasts of the Mediterranean. Joinville, the ingenuous historian of the crusades of Louis IX., tells us that that sainted king sailed from the port of Aigues-Mortes with a fleet of “eighteen hundred vessels, large and small,” some of which carried as many as a thousand passengers, and some a hundred horses.

In 1295, the combined French and Norwegian fleets, intended to act against the English (Figs. 79 and 80) in the wars of Philippe le Bel and Edward I., amounted to upwards of five hundred vessels, two hundred and sixty of which were galleys, and three hundred and thirty ships of different sizes. Three centuries later fleets were not a whit more numerous or more powerful, though better equipped and organized. In 1570, Sultan Selim sent from Constantinople, against the island of Rhodes, a fleet of a hundred and sixteen galleys, thirty galliots, thirteen _fustes_, six large ships, one galleon, eight _mahones_, forty _passe-chevaux_ (horse transports), and a great number of _caramoussats_, laden with provisions, with artillery, and with stores of all kinds. The Christians, under Marco-Antonio Colonna, could only oppose to this formidable flotilla one hundred and four galleys, twelve _galéasses_, one large galleon, and fourteen large ships.

But in point of fact, and it was one of the consequences of feudalism, large fleets were never constructed and kept up by the governments under whose authority they put to sea. Kings and republics possessed, it is true, a small number of vessels of their own that carried their flag, but, generally speaking, too few to allow them to attack a formidable enemy, or to enable them to defend themselves against one. Here, again, a complete analogy existed between feudal rights at sea and those on land. Feudalism possessed its ships as well as its castles. The barons who possessed estates near the sea-coast were bound to keep up at their own cost one or more vessels, fitted either for war or commerce. The rich merchants of Venice, of Genoa, of Marseilles, and, in later times, of Havre, of Dieppe, and of Antwerp (Fig. 81), by means of their vast wealth, either individually or by combining together, maintained flotillas of galleys and ships.

When war was imminent, and it became necessary to prepare a fleet to carry the Crusaders, the sovereign, directed the nobles who held fiefs and were ship-owners to prepare their vessels for sea, and to equip and arm them--an order which did not require any long time or especial pains to carry into effect, for at that period every sea being infested with pirates, merchant vessels were always forced to keep themselves armed in self-defence. Each sailor of the crew could, at a pinch, be turned into a soldier; and, besides these, there were always cross-bowmen and regular soldiers, whose duty it was to be the first to board an enemy’s ship, or to beat back his boarders with handspikes and cross-bow shafts. To embark, therefore, a few catapults and a few extra soldiers was all that was ordinarily required to transform a peaceable merchant vessel into a ship or galley of war.

The admiral appointed to the command of the fleet published the order to arm in every port under his master’s rule. In virtue of this order, the first proceeding was to exhibit the _cartel_--a scroll fastened to the top of a post or the end of a lance--announcing that so many vessels of such and such a kind were to be ready equipped within a given time, to take the seas against such and such an enemy, or to proceed in such and such a direction. Besides the cartel, which was displayed on the shore or in the gateway of the town, surrounded with garlands and pennants, floated the standard of the prince, which had previously been blessed at a solemn mass celebrated to pray for the success of the undertaking. The sea trumpets rang out their fanfares, and a herald at arms repeated in a loud voice the purport of the cartel. A clerk stood by, pen in hand, for the purpose of registering the names of the sailors and marines, who, as they gave them, settled the conditions of their engagement. A formal contract binding both sides was then signed and sealed before a notary, and as soon as sufficient hands had volunteered, the cartel was taken down and the trumpets ceased to sound.

When the ships of the sovereign, and of the nobles and burgesses his feudal vassals, were insufficient in number to form the fleet with which it was desirable to put to sea, recourse was had to allies and to foreign navies in general. Vessels were bought, hired, and chartered, but in the latter case they were usually only employed as transports. The merchants of Genoa and Venice were in this manner the principal charterers for the Crusaders. In 1246, Saint Louis addressed a demand to them for ships, at the same time making a similar request to the merchants of Marseilles. Emissaries from the king were sent into Provence and Italy to make contracts for the construction and chartering of vessels for the transport of the armed pilgrims who were to accompany him to the Holy Land. These envoys, amongst whom was Brother Andrew, “the prior of the holy house of Jerusalem,” made the necessary arrangements with the podestate of Genoa, with the Duke of Venice, and with the syndicate of the commune of Marseilles, and settled the size of the ships, the number of their crew, the space reserved for each passenger and each horse, and the different tariffs for the berths in the fore and aft towers, for those in the main saloons (termed _paradis_), for those between decks, and for those under the lower deck.

In 1263 the arrangements for St. Louis’s second crusade were carried out in a similar manner.

Genoese vessels reappear in the “army of the sea prepared in the year of grace 1295” by Philippe le Bel against Edward I. of England; in the fleet equipped in 1337 by Philippe de Valois against Edward III.; and in the splendid flotilla lost by Nicholas Behuchet, a French admiral, at l’Ecluse in 1340. Two centuries later the Genoese again contributed ten caracks to the armada prepared by the order of Francis I. on the coast of Normandy, though most of them unfortunately foundered at the mouth of the Seine through the ignorance of their pilots. History also informs us that Andrew Doria (Fig. 82), a Genoese, was one of Francis’ admirals, having commanded that sovereign’s Mediterranean fleet for several months.

The adventurers who served on board vessels chartered by a sovereign or a foreign State were usually the sons, brothers, relations, friends, or dependents of the captains who commanded them. Moreover, the chosen band which, under the name of _retenue de poupe_[5] (Fig. 83), was entrusted with the duty of defending the captain’s flag, was solely recruited from among these adventurers. Their principal duty being the defence of this flag, which floated on the starboard side close to the entrance to the poop, they were expected never to leave their post, except at the captain’s express order. Even when a galley was boarded at the stern, and its deck, up to the mainmast, was swarming with the enemy, all was by no means lost, for the poop still remained in the hands of its brave defenders, who died at their post rather than yield. Among the splendid feats of arms which have adorned naval history, many instances could be cited when a ship’s safety was secured by the desperate resistance of its poop guard. The warriors of the sea (Figs. 84 and 85) were always distinguished for their extreme intrepidity and boldness, and it is easy to believe that from them emanated the system of submarine warfare (Figs. 86 and 87), which, in the fifteenth century, gave birth to a series of extraordinary inventions in nautical weapons.

It is to the credit of these benighted ages, too often accused of barbarism and social anarchy, that in most of the Mediterranean ports overseers were appointed, whose duty it was to inspect and survey everything connected with _voyages beyond the sea_--that is to say, voyages to the Holy Land. This friendly tribunal settled all differences between the passengers or pilgrims and the ship-owners or captains, according to the terms of their reciprocal contracts. One part of their duties was to carefully measure the space assigned to each passenger, to see that every individual had his proper allotment, so as to secure that all were made as comfortable as possible for the voyage, which usually lasted for twenty-five or thirty days.

From Cesare Vecellio, “Degli Habiti Antichi:” 8vo, 1590.]

In point of fact, a perfect maritime code was drawn up to regulate during the passage the mutual relations of the different inmates of the same vessel, and to establish a reciprocity between the ships of friendly nations. The merchant, for instance, who spent a great portion of his life at sea, was treated on board ship with greater deference than the soldier who was there for a short time only. When several merchants chartered a vessel in common for the transport of their merchandise, and proceeded to sea in it themselves, the captain was bound to consult them and to follow their advice in all perils, whenever storms threatened, or when from a dread of pirates it seemed advisable to put into the nearest port. Before setting sail, the captain and the crew swore upon the Gospel to defend the ship and its passengers against the elements and against man. In the latter case, however, the merchants themselves became soldiers for the nonce, and were prepared to assist in the defence of their floating home.

From Woodcuts by Végèce, “L’Art Militaire:” Paris, Christian
Wechel, 1532, small 4to.]