The organization of a Regiment of Reiters or of Landsknechts, as described above, became by the end of the sixteenth century general in all armies, and has, in essentials, survived in modern Regimental organization. The Regiment bore the name of the man who raised it or succeeded to its command, down into the nineteenth century, although Numbers began to replace personal Names as titles of Regiments, during the eighteenth. The Regiment, whether of Cavalry or Infantry, was rather the administrative than the tactical unit on the battlefield, and formed, as to-day, the permanent organization through which the men received their pay, clothing, and subsistence. Hence arose the strong and lasting regimental traditions and esprit-de-corps, which survive in the older armies to-day.
The first country to possess a formidable Standing Army was Spain, in the sixteenth century, and her example was soon followed by France, the Empire, and the Netherlands, and in the next century by Sweden, England, and Prussia.
The most important developments in war organization were due to great military reformers, whose armies became the model of their day to all other countries. These were Maurice of Nassau, who led the Dutch in their terrible struggle with Spain towards the close of the sixteenth century, and Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, who a few years later formed the famous army which carried all before it during the Thirty Years’ War. The improvements introduced by these great soldiers will be described in the following chapters, which deal with the evolution of the organization of each Arm separately.
CHAPTER XVI
THE EVOLUTION OF INFANTRY
During the sixteenth century, foot soldiers began to be called Infantry (French Infanterie), after the practice of the Italian Condottieri, who used to call their soldiers their “lads,” as English officers have always had a habit of doing. They used the word Fanti, from Latin Infans, a child who could not talk (in, not, and fari, speak). Similarly, Blücher addressed his men on their toilsome march to Waterloo as “meine Kinder” (“my children”), and Americans talk of their soldiers as “the boys.”
The rise of Infantry from its position of abject inferiority to the mounted men-at-arms may be dated from the fourteenth century, when English archers overthrew the chivalry of France at Cressy and Poictiers, and Swiss halberdiers that of Austria at Morgarten and Sempach. In the next century the Swiss phalanxes (who had now replaced their halberds by pikes) defeated the Burgundian Horse at Morat and Nancy, thus assuring the independence of their country. About the same time the Hussite peasants of Bohemia, effectively organized by their great leader, John Zisca, were holding their own against the horsemen of Austria. Towards the end of the fifteenth century a new type of Infantry arose in the Suabian Landsknechts (country fellows), an appellation corrupted into “Lance Knights” in England, and “Lansquenets” in France. They imitated and improved on the organization and tactics of their neighbours, the Swiss, and soon began to rival them as Infantry.
The Halberd and Pike
Like the Swiss, the Landsknechts were armed with the long pike. The halberd, discarded during the fifteenth century, was a formidable weapon, with its triple combination of pike head for thrusting, axe blade for striking, and crook to drag the horseman down. But its eight-foot shaft was not so effective against a charge of Horse as a hedge of eighteen-foot spikes, with butts on the ground, in the hands of half-a-dozen ranks, one behind the other. The pike now became the general arm of Infantry, and only finally disappeared in 1700.