In England, Scotland, and Ireland, high feudalism was rapidly in course of decay, before Henry VIII. dealt it its death-blow; in Germany it struggled for existence during the reign of Maximilian (Fig. 31); in France it was crushed by Louis XI. with the help of the third estate. Beyond the Alps, in Italy, its existence was prolonged for a short period, partly under a clerical disguise, partly by the hired help of the condottieri, and in some places by the support of the urban democracy, that is the industrial and trading part of the population. Everywhere, however, it disappeared with the Middle Ages, of which, both in its acts and in its first principles, it bore the ineffaceable imprint (Fig. 32).
Fig. 32.—Doorways of the Old Castle of Loches, in Touraine, a favourite Manor of Louis XI. (Fifteenth Century).
WAR AND ARMIES.
The Invasions of the Barbarians.—Attila.—Theodoric seizes Italy.—Organization of Military Fiefs.—Defences of Towns.—Totila and his Tactics.—The Military Genius of Charlemagne.—Military Vassalage.—Communal Militia.—Earliest Standing Armies.—Loss of Technical Tradition.—The Condottieri.—The Gendarmerie.—The Lances Fournies.—Weakening of Feudal Military Obligations.—The French Army in the Time of Louis XI. and his Successors.—Absence of Administrative Arrangement.—Reforms.—Mercenary Troops.—Siege Operations and Engines.
The art of war had attained its highest degree of perfection among the Romans, when the successive invasions of the barbarians began to burst like an overflowing river over the richest of the Roman colonies. These barbarians, most of whom were natives of the Caucasian mountains, were the Iberians, who never halted till they had reached Spain; the Celts or Cimbrians, who installed themselves among the Gauls; and the Sarmatians and the Scythians, who inhabited the vast forests of Germany before the great wars of Julius Cæsar (Fig. 33). Suddenly, in the fourth century of the Christian era, a movement which commenced in the centre of Asia caused an irruption of a race hitherto unknown upon the Caucasian races. These were the Huns, before whom the terrified Goths retreated, but who at first made but a brief apparition in Europe; for if Rome at that time was wanting in seasoned legions, she could rely, at least in the provinces of her empire, upon many numerous and powerful auxiliaries who were accustomed to fight under her standard (Fig. 34), some for the sake of pay, others to defend their own hearths.
Fig. 33.—War Trophy and Barbarian Prisoners.—From Sculptures on the Triumphal Arch of Orange (Second Century).
In 451, in the reign of the Emperor Valentinian III., who had bribed the barbarians instead of repulsing them with the sword, Attila, the King of the Huns, bore down upon Europe at the head of seven hundred thousand fighting men of various races. In less than three months he had overrun and laid waste Moravia, Bohemia, Hesse, and Wurtemburg, crossed the Rhine below Strasburg, the Moselle at Trèves and at Metz, the Meuse at Tongres, the Scheldt at Tournay; and after two sanguinary raids into Burgundy and the country around Orleans, pitched his tents in the plains of Champagne. The tactics of Attila were to avoid pitched battles, to give a wide berth to the fortresses, contenting himself with sacking and plundering their outskirts. He laid waste the open country, burnt villages, put their inoffensive inhabitants to the sword, and making it his chief object to divide and isolate the Roman legions, finally crushed them by the weight of numbers.