The cross-bow was rarely favoured by Englishmen, though an imposing force of 4000 appeared in the united forces of England and Burgundy in 1411, each attended by two varlets to load, so that the weapons were always ready to shoot. In 1415, however, Henry V. only took ninety-eight from England in his whole force of 10,500 men, eighteen of whom were mounted. In 1465 the so-called mounted archers were very variously armed in France, with cross-bows, veuglaires, and hand culverins.
If so formidable a body as the English archers could be left to their own devices as to accoutrements in the first half of the century, the rest of the foot, armed with long weapons called staves, bills, and halbards, must have presented the appearance of a mere rabble. The French foot, armed with partisans, halbards, or javelins, bore the suggestive name of “brigans,” and were much despised, but at Montlhéry in 1465 the greater part of the slaughter was by the “rascally Burgundian foot,” with their pikes and other weapons tipped with iron.
The Swiss victory at Morat in 1476 undoubtedly led the French, and later the English, to introduce a disciplined infantry armed with the pike as a serious element into the army. In 1480 the French took the extreme course of disbanding the whole body of archers, substituting Swiss pikemen, and causing a prodigious number of pikes, halbards, and daggers to be made by the cutlers. Thus in 1482 the army of Picardy is composed of no more than 1400 men-at-arms, 6000 Swiss, and 8000 pikes. The proportions in England, ten years later, may be gauged by the Earl of Surrey’s contingent of five men-at-arms, each with cushet and page, twelve demi-lances, twenty archers mounted, forty-six on foot, and thirteen bills. The archers remained an important force with us till long after Henry VIII., but it is only in his reign that the billmen and halbardiers occupy a definite position in the country’s armed forces. These were armed with bill, sword, shield, sallad, and corselet. The costume of the foot and even the yeomen of the guard, 1000 strong under Henry VIII., changed with the civil dress, but always included the royal badge and crown. Henry proceeded to the siege of Boulogne in the midst of his pikemen with fifty mounted archers on the right and fifty mounted gunners on the left. Their costumes are seen in the Hampton Court pictures. In 1598 it was scarlet profusely spangled. Under Philip and Mary they were an even more important force, and under Elizabeth the backbone of the army was its pikemen, billmen, and harquebusiers, now armed, as in France, with Milanese corselets and morions. The bill was six feet long, of native production, the head at least twelve inches long, and bound with iron like the halbard, which was shorter, to at least the middle of the staff. The black bills were also shorter and from Germany, but the best halbards were Milanese. The partisan with us seems to have been more a weapon of parade, various in form, with or without wings, and richly decorated with engraving, painting, and gilding. The pike was eighteen to twenty-two feet long, with a tassel to prevent the water running down. The “Staves” in the Tower under Henry VIII. included 20,100 morris pikes, some highly decorated, and 2000 javelins, mostly richly mounted, as if for the Court guards. The army taken to France in 1513 comprised, according to the Venetian ambassador, 6000 halbardiers and 12,000 men with holy-water sprinklers, a weapon never seen before, six feet long, surmounted by a ball with six steel spikes. The name was a quaint joke, like the Flemish Godendag or the Swiss Wasistdas and Morgenstern. Besides these there were tridents, pole-axes, collen cleves, boar-spears, rawcons, partisans, and other forms of staff weapons in smaller quantities.
Plate VI.—Profile of the helmet belonging to the French suit ([Fig. 32]). In the guard-chamber of Windsor Castle.
An English army sometimes comprised light cavalry even in the earliest times, perhaps none more singular than a miserably-accoutred force of mounted Irish armed with target, short javelin, and great outlandish knives, but without using saddles, in the reign of Henry V. The army of Henry VIII. in 1513 comprised 9000 to 10,000 heavy barbed cavalry and 8000 light horse, and 2000 mounted archers. His “Retinewe of speres” comprised a page, a cushet with javelin or demi-lance, and two archers, all mounted, to each man-at-arms. An English force of about 400 demi-lances serving Henri II. in 1552 “for their pleasure,” were in short petticoats, red bonnets, body with brassarts of plate, and high leather boots above the knee, mounted on swift little horses and armed with a lance like a demi-pike.
The infantry, though not yet a permanent standing force, except in the case of the Royal bodyguards, was now a recognised arm into which men enlisted as a professional career for the term of their lives or until disabled. To handle the pike or arquebus efficiently required long training, and veterans were always accepted before recruits. It was their steadiness and power of manœuvring in action that lessened the value of heavy cavalry, and consequently contributed, more than any other circumstance, to the rapid disuse of the cap-à-pied suit of armour in the field, so noticeable in the next chapter.