equipment, was superior to the French soldier of the same order in the great and vital qualities of courage and energy. This arose, we may assert with confidence, from the treatment (so different from that which was experienced by the French foot-soldier) shown to the foot-soldier of England by the nobles and knights of his own nation. By them he was treated with consideration and respect and confidence, as a good soldier and a brave man ; and whenever an occasion served, he received practical proofs of the high estimation in which he was held. In battle some English barons and distinguished knights always joined the bands of their archers, and fought side by side with them in their own ranks.

The French naturally desired to have archers of ther own; and they soon succeeded in organising a force of bowmen who, in the estimation of Juvenal des Ursins, an historian who wrote a little later, were as good, and indeed even superior to the archers of England. 66 In a short time,” says this chronicler, "the French archers became so expert in their use of the bow, that they were able to discharge their arrows with a more sure aim than the English; and, indeed, if these archers had formed a close confederacy amongst themselves, they might have become a more powerful body than the princes and nobles of France; and, accordingly, it was the apprehension of such a result as this which caused the French king to suppress the archer force in his army." Possibly the French writer may have been slightly prepossessed in favour of his own countrymen; and when he found that the French archers were considered to be capable of surpassing nobles and knights in military prowess, he might naturally suppose them to be the most perfect archers in the world. At any rate, their own sovereign considered them to be even too perfect; and so he did not give to the bowmen of England an opportunity for bringing this question of national superiority to a practical test. Without a doubt, the archers of England would have

candidly admitted their own comparative inferiority, when once they had felt a proof of being inferior. A very decided and decisive proof would certainly have been required, since, even in those days, we may suppose that there existed some presentiment of that later evidence of insular obtuseness, which is said now to render English soldiers unable to understand when they are beaten. In the days of Crécy they were not beaten; and Juvenal des Ursins has told us that, some little time after Crécy, the French archers were too good to be permitted to attempt to beat their English contemporaries. Certain English writers, on the contrary, are disposed to suspect it to have been just as well for those skilled archers of France that they never were able to make the trial.

It is a singular fact that an early French historian should not only have described the powerful impression produced in his own times upon the popular mind in France by a body of soldiers formed from the humbler classes, but also should have shown that this most important force troubled the mighty ones of the earth with an implied threat of a revolution, distant, indeed, but in due time certain to take place.

We may now consider the military equipment of archers in their palmy days.

Their proper weapon, the bow, to which they owed their reputation, by right first claims our attention. Amongst the archers of England it was exclusively the great bow, five feet in length, and formed of yew, which at a range of at least 240 yards discharged a strong arrow, sharp and barbed. The shafts of these arrows were provided, near their base, with feathers, or with strips of leather. They were carried, not in such a quiver as appears in antique statues of Apollo or Diana, but bound together in a sheaf, and so suspended from the waist-belt. When in the act of commencing battle, the archer shook out his sheaf of arrows and placed them under his left foot, their points outwards; and thus he had only

to stoop down in order to take them one by one in his hand as they were required. "A first-rate English archer," says Prince Louis Napoleon, " who in a single minute was unable to draw and discharge his bow twelve times with a range of 240 yards, and who in these twelve shots once missed his man, was very lightly esteemed." It is doubtful whether, at so great a distance, an arrow could have struck its mark with sufficient force to penetrate a knight's surcoat and hauberk of mail; but it would kill his horse, which was not yet provided with defensive armour, and this was the very circumstance which caused that change in tactics which has been mentioned.05

At all periods in the history of warfare it always has been a matter of great difficulty for infantry to resist and repel the shock of a cavalry charge. In some ages, as for example in the 12th century, this was a military problem for which it was held to be hopeless to seek for any solution; while at other periods, as in antiquity, this same problem was considered to be difficult, though by no means impossible, to be solved. It does not appear from Homer that the war-chariots, which then took the place of cavalry properly so called, were particularly formidable to the combatants who fought on foot. It is evident that they served simply to carry the warriors here and there, on the field of battle, with greater rapidity than they could have moved without them. The warriors voluntarily, and, indeed, systematically, dismounted from their chariots when they were about to engage in actual combat, and they fought on foot; which, assuredly, they would not have done, had their chariots offered to them those advantages in action which afterwards they acquired when mounted on horseback. Thus we never hear of any such thing as a charge by the Homeric war-chariots. The Greek phalanx, again, had no great dread of cavalry—a fact easy to be understood, since to break into that massive and serried formation a

body of horse would have been required, far more numerous, and infinitely better provided and trained than the Greeks or their enemies were able to bring into the field. In like manner, the Roman legion did not consider it necessary to bestow much attention on hostile cavalry. The precautions, however, that were adopted at the battle of Zama, by Scipio, against the Numidian cavalry, a body of horsemen of a peculiarly formidable character, have been observed and recorded. He formed his lines in such a manner that unusually wide spaces were left between the companies into which his legions were divided. Scipio knew that horses, when they are caused to charge men in line, and especially when they feel the points of weapons, only attempt to glide along the length of the obstacle and to escape by the flanks; and, consequently, he desired to oppose to the Numidians a formation of his infantry with a front as little extended as possible. The plans of that illustrious general were attended with the full measure of the success that he anticipated from them. And, in general also, the legion which fought in its customary open formation, divided into sections of companies, was in an excellent condition to resist cavalry with good effect. In the middle ages, on the other hand, either the foot soldiers were very inferior in military qualities (which was really the fact) or (which also in some degree was probable) the art of training horses had made a great advance, or from some other causes, for a long period it appeared to be altogether hopeless for any infantry to attempt to encounter the career of the Western mounted men-at-arms. The revival of the military art dates from the very day upon which this opinion ceased to prevail.

The charge of cavalry is checked by two forms of resistance, which, though really distinct, are generally applied in combination. First, that is, by presenting a line of pikes or bayonets, which is too strong to be broken; and secondly, while the charge is yet being made, by striking down by

means of missiles, either arrows or bullets, so many of the horses that the advancing column is necessarily shaken, or, perhaps, actually thrown into disorder.

Whenever any improvement is made in arrows and other missiles, cavalry sinks in importance-for a time, that is to say -and until fresh and more effectual means are discovered for repelling the new or improved missiles. What has just now been described took place at Crécy. The English archers on that day shot down the horses of the French knights in considerable numbers; and their arrows wounded many others, which, through their violence and terror, contributed in a great degree to break up the cavalry and destroy its efficiency. Indeed, the French knights at Crécy were unable to accomplish more than to reach the position of their enemies, when they melted away, so to speak, and were either dispersed or destroyed. Foot soldiers, who stood firm and in good order, under such circumstances, had every advantage. And this it was which, when once clearly understood, led the knights to dismount and to form on foot in rear of the archers, where they might receive a charge of cavalry without injury to themselves, and repel it to the utter discomfiture of the cavaliers.

After a while (early in the 15th century), an innovation was introduced, which, in some slight degree, affected the practice of the archers. This was the introduction of a large shield, called a pavise, or pavas (also called a mantlet), a kind of movable breastwork, which, resting on the ground, covered almost entirely the person of the soldier."7 Not only when on the march, but also in battle, and above all at sieges, the knight had his pavise carried before him by a page or valet. Square in outline, and convex in form, this pavise was sufficiently large to shelter both the page and his master; the latter it must be added, still continued to carry his regular shield. It is curious to enumerate the defences which thus the warrior of that age interposed between his person and the