Music had long been used by soldiers, and was encouraged by Henry VIII.; but marching in step to fife and drum was invented by the Swiss in the fourteenth century, copied in the fifteenth by the Landsknechts, and from them adopted in all armies. It is interesting to note that the roll on the drum always heard before the band begins a march is the old Landsknechts’ drum march.
FLAGS OR COLOURS
Flags were probably derived from the Knights’ Banner. They were used as Standards by the Swiss, from whom the Reiters and Landsknechts copied the custom, which was then universally adopted. Their varied hues caused them to be styled Colours in England during the reign of Elizabeth. The flag was used not only to distinguish the combatant sides, but also the different regiments, and the men were taught to close and rally to it, and to associate with it ideals of duty and self-sacrifice which still cling to the Colours to-day.
The flag was carried on a time-honoured system which became an art. The various ways of waving and folding it were originally signals for movements which the musicians looked to for guidance, so that the flag-bearer in a sense led the music. The traditions and coquetries of this art were gradually lost, and only survive in the pride of the drum-major in the play of his staff, as he leads the drums at the head of the regiment.
CHAPTER XX
ORGANIZATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Organization in the Wars following the French Revolution
At the close of the eighteenth century, during the wars brought on by the French Revolution, a great change in organization took place. France, with her old army shattered by the Revolution, was suddenly obliged to raise enormous numbers of troops to defend herself against the onslaught of Europe. When, with unparalleled courage and energy, she had stemmed the flood of invasion, a number of French armies at once took the offensive, and carried the war beyond her frontiers in every direction for the next twenty years.