THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME XIV SLICE V
Indole to Insanity

Articles in This Slice

INDOLE, or Beńzopyrrol, C8H7N, a substance first prepared by A. Baeyer in 1868. It may be synthetically obtained by distilling oxindole (C8H8NO) with zinc dust; by heating ortho-nitrocinnamic acid with potash and iron filings; by the reduction of indigo blue; by the action of sodium ethylate on ortho-aminochlorstyrene; by boiling aniline with dichloracetaldehyde; by the dry distillation of ortho-tolyloxamic acid; by heating aniline with dichloracetal; by distilling a mixture of calcium formate and calcium anilidoacetate; and by heating pyruvic acid phenyl hydrazone with anhydrous zinc chloride. It is also formed in the pancreatic fermentation of albumen, and, in small quantities, by passing the vapours of mono- and dialkyl-anilines through a red-hot tube. It crystallizes in shining leaflets, which melt at 52° C. and boil at 245° C. (with decomposition), and is volatile in a current of steam. It is a feeble base, and gives a cherry-red coloration with a pine shaving. Many derivatives of indole are known. B-methylindol or skatole occurs in human faeces.

INDONESIAN, a term invented by James Richardson Logan to describe the light-coloured non-Malay inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago. It now denotes all those peoples of Malaysia and Polynesia who are not to be classified as Malays or Papuans, but are of Caucasic type. Among these are the Battaks of north Sumatra; many of the Bornean Dyaks and Philippine Islanders, and the large brown race of east Polynesia which includes Samoans, Maoris, Tongans, Tahitians, Marquesas Islanders and the Hawaiians.

See J. Richardson Logan, The Languages and Ethnology of the Indian Archipelago (1857).

INDORE, a native state of India in the central India agency, comprising the dominions of the Maharaja Holkar. Its area, exclusive of guaranteed holdings on which it has claims, is 9500 sq. m. and the population in 1901 was 850,690, showing a decrease of 23% in the decade, owing to the results of famine. As in the case of most states in central India the territory is not homogeneous, but distributed over several political charges. It has portions in four out of the seven charges of central India, and in one small portion in the Rajputana agency. The Vindhya range traverses the S. division of the state in a direction from east to west, a small part of the territory lying to the north of the mountains, but by much the larger part to the south. The latter is a portion of the valley of the Nerbudda, and is bounded on the south by the Satpura hills. Basalt and other volcanic formations predominate in both ranges, although there is also much sandstone. The Nerbudda flows through the state; and the valley at Mandlesar, in the central part, is between 600 and 700 ft. above the sea. The revenue is estimated at £350,000. The metre gauge railway from Khandwa to Mhow and Indore city, continued to Neemuch and Ajmere, was constructed in 1876.

The state had its origin in an assignment of lands made early in the 18th century to Malhar Rao Holkar, who held a command in the army of the Mahratta Peshwa. Of the Dhangar or shepherd caste, he was born in 1694 at the village of Hol near Poona, and from this circumstance the family derives its surname of Holkar. Before his death in 1766 Malhar Rao had added to his assignment large territorial possessions acquired by his armed power during the confusion of the period. By the end of that century the rulership had passed to another leader of the same clan, Tukoji Holkar, whose son, Jaswant Rao, took an important part in the contest for predominance in the Mahratta confederation. He did not, however, join the combined army of Sindha and the raja of Berar in their war against the British in 1803, though after its termination he provoked hostilities which led to his complete discomfiture. At first he defeated a British force that had marched against him under Colonel Monson; but when he made an inroad into British territory he was completely defeated by Lord Lake, and compelled to sign a treaty which deprived him of a large portion of his possessions. After his death his favourite mistress, Tulsi Bai, assumed the regency, until in 1817 she was murdered by the military commanders of the Indore troops, who declared for the peshwa on his rupture with the British government. After their defeat at Mehidpur in 1818, the state submitted by treaty to the loss of more territory, transferred to the British government its suzerainty over a number of minor tributary states, and acknowledged the British protectorate. For many years afterwards the administration of the Holkar princes was troubled by intestine quarrels, misrule and dynastic contentions, necessitating the frequent interposition of British authority; and in 1857 the army, breaking away from the chief’s control, besieged the British residency, and took advantage of the mutiny of the Bengal sepoys to spread disorder over that part of central India. The country was pacified after some fighting. In 1899 a British resident was appointed to Indore, which had formerly been directly under the agent to the governor-general in central India. At the same time a change was made in the system of administration, which was from that date carried on by a council. In 1903 the Maharaja, Shivaji Rao Holkar, G.C.S.I., abdicated in favour of his son Tukoji Rao, a boy of twelve, and died in 1908.

The City of Indore is situated 1738 ft. above the sea, on the river Saraswati, near its junction with the Khan. Pop. (1901) 86,686. These figures do not include the tract assigned to the resident, known as “the camp” (pop. 11,118), which is under British administration. The city is one of the most important trading centres in central India.

Indore Residency, a political charge in central India, is not co-extensive with the state, though it includes all of it except some outlying tracts. Area, 8960 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 833,410.

(J. S. Co.)

INDORSEMENT, or Endorsement (from Med. Lat. indorsare, to write upon the dorsum, or back), anything written or printed upon the back of a document. In its technical sense, it is the writing upon a bill of exchange, cheque or other negotiable instrument, by one who has a right to the instrument and who thereby transmits the right and incurs certain liabilities. See [Bill of Exchange].

INDO-SCYTHIANS, a name commonly given to various tribes from central Asia, who invaded northern India and founded kingdoms there. They comprise the Sakas, the Yue-Chi or Kushans and the Ephthalites or Hūnas.

INDRA, in early Hindu mythology, god of the clear sky and greatest of the Vedic deities. The origin of the name is doubtful, but is by some connected with indu, drop. His importance is shown by the fact that about 250 hymns celebrate his greatness, nearly one-fourth of the total number in the Rig Veda. He is represented as specially lord of the elements, the thunder-god. But Indra was more than a great god in the ancient Vedic pantheon. He is the patron-deity of the invading Aryan race in India, the god of battle to whose help they look in their struggles with the dark aborigines. Indra is the child of Dyaus, the Heaven. In Indian art he is represented as a man with four arms and hands; in two he holds a lance and in the third a thunderbolt. He is often painted with eyes all over his body and then he is called Sahasraksha, “the thousand eyed.” He lost much of his supremacy when the triad Brahma, Siva and Vishnu became predominant. He gradually became identified merely with the headship of Swarga, a local vice-regent of the abode of the gods.

See A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology (Strassburg, 1897).

INDRE, a department of central France, formed in 1790 from parts of the old provinces of Berry, Orléanais, Marche and Touraine. Pop. (1906) 290,216. Area 2666 sq. m. It is bounded N. by the department of Loir-et-Cher, E. by Cher, S. by Creuse and Haute-Vienne, S.W. by Vienne and N.W. by Indre-et-Loire. It takes its name from the river Indre, which flows through it. The surface forms a vast plateau divided into three districts, the Boischaut, Champagne and Brenne. The Boischaut is a large well-wooded plain comprising seven-tenths of the entire area and covering the south, east and centre of the department. The Champagne, a monotonous but fertile district in the north, produces abundant cereal crops, and affords excellent pasturage for large numbers of sheep, celebrated for the fineness of their wool. The Brenne, which occupies the west of the department, was formerly marshy and unhealthy, but draining and afforestation have brought about considerable improvement.

The department is divided into the arrondissements of Châteauroux, Le Blanc, La Châtre and Issoudun, with 23 cantons and 245 communes. At Neuvy-St-Sépulchre there is a circular church of the 11th century, to which a nave was added in the 12th century, and at Mézières-en-Brenne there is an interesting church of the 14th century. At Levroux there is a fine church of the 13th century and the remains of a feudal fortress, and there is a magnificent château in the Renaissance style at Valençay.

INDRE-ET-LOIRE, a department of central France, consisting of nearly the whole of the old province of Touraine and of small portions of Orléanais, Anjou and Poitou. Pop. (1906) 337,916. Area 2377 sq. m. It is bounded N. by the departments of Sarthe and Loir-et-Cher, E. by Loir-et-Cher and Indre, S. and S.W. by Vienne and W. by Maine-et-Loire. It takes its name from the Loire and its tributary the Indre, which enter it on its eastern border and unite not far from its western border. The other chief affluents of the Loire in the department are the Cher, which joins it below Tours, and the Vienne, which waters the department’s southern region. Indre-et-Loire is generally level and comprises the following districts: the Gâtine, a pebbly and sterile region to the north of the Loire, largely consisting of forests and heaths with numerous small lakes; the fertile Varenne or valley of the Loire; the Champeigne, a chain of vine-clad slopes, separating the valleys of the Cher and Indre; the Véron, a region of vines and orchards, in the angle formed by the Loire and Vienne; the plateau of Sainte-Maure, a hilly and unproductive district in the centre of which are found extensive deposits of shell-marl; and in the south the Brenne, traversed by the Claise and the Creuse and forming part of the marshy territory which extends under the same name into Indre.

Indre-et-Loire is divided into the arrondissements of Tours, Loches and Chinon, with 24 cantons and 282 communes. The chief town is Tours, which is the seat of an archbishopric; and Chinon, Loches, Amboise, Chenonceaux, Langeais and Azay-le-Rideau are also important places with châteaus. The Renaissance château of Ussé, and those of Luynes (15th and 16th centuries) and Pressigny-le-Grand (17th century) are also of note. Montbazon possesses the imposing ruins of a square donjon of the 11th and 12th centuries. Preuilly has the most beautiful Romanesque church in Touraine. The Sainte Chapelle (16th century) at Champigny is a survival of a château of the dukes of Bourbon-Montpensier. The church of Montrésor (1532) with its mausoleum of the family of Montrésor; that of St Denis-Hors (12th and 16th century) close to Amboise, with the curious mausoleum of Philibert Babou, minister of finance under Francis I. and Henry II.; and that of Ste Catherine de Fierbois, of the 15th century, are of architectural interest. The town of Richelieu, founded 1631 by the famous minister of Louis XIII., preserves the enceinte and many of the buildings of the 17th century. Megalithic monuments are numerous in the department.

INDRI, a Malagasy word believed to mean “there it goes,” but now accepted as the designation of the largest of the existing Malagasy (and indeed of all) lemurs. Belonging to the family Lemuridae (see [Primates]) it typifies the subfamily Indrisinae, which includes the avahi and the sifakas (q.v.). From both the latter it is distinguished by its rudimentary tail, measuring only a couple of inches in length, whence its name of Indris brevicaudatus. Measuring about 24 in. in length, exclusive of the tail, the indri varies considerably in colour, but is usually black, with a variable number of whitish patches, chiefly about the loins and on the fore-limbs. The forests of a comparatively small tract on the east coast of Madagascar form its home. Shoots, flowers and berries form the food of the indri, which was first discovered by the French traveller and naturalist Pierre Sonnerat in 1780.

(R. L.*)

INDUCTION (from Lat. inducere, to lead into; cf. Gr. ἐπαγωγή), in logic, the term applied to the process of discovering principles by the observation and combination of particular instances. Aristotle, who did so much to establish the laws of deductive reasoning, neglected induction, which he identified with a complete enumeration of facts; and the schoolmen were wholly concerned with syllogistic logic. A new era opens with Bacon, whose writings all preach the principle of investigating the laws of nature with the purpose of improving the conditions of human life. Unluckily his mind was still enslaved by the formulae of the quasi-mechanical scholastic logic. He supposed that natural laws would disclose themselves by the accumulation and due arrangement of instances without any need for original speculation on the part of the investigator. In his Novum Organum there are directions for drawing up the various kinds of lists of instances. For two hundred years after Bacon’s death little was done towards the theory of induction; the reason being, probably, that the practical scientists knew no logic, while the university logicians, with their conservative devotion to the syllogism, knew no science. Whewell’s Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), the work of a thoroughly equipped scientist, if not of a great philosopher, shows due appreciation of the cardinal point neglected by Bacon, the function of theorizing in inductive research. He saw that science advances only in so far as the mind of the inquirer is able to suggest organizing ideas whereby our observations and experiments are colligated into intelligible system. In this respect J. S. Mill is inferior to Whewell: throughout his System of Logic (1843) he ignores the constitutive work of the mind, and regards knowledge as the merely passive reception of sensuous impressions. His work was intended mainly to reduce the procedure of induction to a regular demonstrative system like that of the syllogism; and it was for this purpose that he formulated his famous Four Methods of Experimental Inquiry. His work has contributed greatly to the systematic treatment of induction. But it must be remarked that his Four Methods are not methods of formal proof, as their author supposed, but methods whereby hypotheses are suggested or tested. The actual proof of an hypothesis is never formal, but always lies in the tests of experiment or observation to which it is subjected.

The current theory of induction as set forth in the standard works is so far satisfactory that it combines the merit of Whewell’s treatment with that of Mill’s; and yet it is plain that there is much for the logician of the future to accomplish. The most important faculty in scientific inquiry is the faculty of suggesting new and valuable hypotheses. But no one has ever given any explanation how the hypotheses arise in the mind: we attribute it to “genius,” which, of course, is no explanation at all. The logic of discovery, in the higher sense of the term, simply has no existence. Another important but neglected province of the subject is the relation of scientific induction to the inductions of everyday life. There are some who think that a study of this relation would quite transform the accepted view of induction. Consider such a piece of reasoning as may be heard any day in a court of justice, a detective who explains how in his opinion a certain burglary was effected. If all reasoning is either deductive or inductive, this must be induction. And yet it does not answer to the accepted definition of induction, “the process of discovering a general principle by observation of particular instances”: what the detective does is to reconstruct a particular crime; he evolves no general principle. Such reasoning is used by every man in every hour of his life: by it we understand what people are doing around us, and what is the meaning of the sense-impressions which we receive. In the logic of the future it will probably be recognized that scientific induction is only one form of this universal constructive or reconstructive faculty. Another most important question closely akin to that just mentioned is the true relation between these reasoning processes and our general life as active intelligent beings. How is it that the detective is able to understand the burglar’s plan of action?—the military commander to forecast the enemy’s plan of campaign? Primarily, because he himself is capable of making such plans. Men as active creatures co-operating with their fellow-men are incessantly engaged in forming plans and in apprehending the plans of those around them. Every plan may be viewed as a form of induction; it is a scheme invented to meet a given situation, an hypothesis which is put to the test of events, and is verified or refuted by practical success or failure. Such considerations widen still farther our view of scientific induction and help us to understand its relation to ordinary human thought and activity. The scientific investigator in his inductive stage is endeavouring to make out the plan on which his material is constructed. The phenomena serve as indications to help him in framing his hypothesis, generally a guess at first, which he proceeds to verify by experiment and the collection of additional facts. In the deductive stage he assumes that he has made out the plan and can apply it to the discovery of further detail. He has the capacity of detecting plans in nature because he is wont to form plans for practical purposes.

There are good recent accounts of induction in Welton’s Manual of Logic, ii., in H. W. B. Joseph’s Introduction to Logic, and in W. R. Boyce Gibson’s Problem of Logic; see also [Logic].

(H. St.)

INDUCTION COIL, an electrical instrument consisting of two coils of wire wound one over the other upon a core consisting of a bundle of iron wires. One of these circuits is called the primary circuit and the other the secondary circuit. If an alternating or intermittent continuous current is passed through the primary circuit, it creates an alternating or intermittent magnetization in the iron core, and this in turn creates in the secondary circuit a secondary current which is called the induced current. For most purposes an induction coil is required which is capable of giving in the secondary circuit intermittent currents of very high electromotive force, and to attain this result the secondary circuit must as a rule consist of a very large number of turns of wire. Induction coils are employed for physiological purposes and also in connexion with telephones, but their great use at the present time is in connexion with the production of high frequency electric currents, for Röntgen ray work and wireless telegraphy.

The instrument began to be developed soon after Faraday’s discovery of induced currents in 1831, and the subsequent researches of Joseph Henry, C. G. Page and W. Sturgeon on the induction of a current. N. J. Callan Early history. described in 1836 the construction of an electromagnet with two separate insulated wires, one thick and the other thin, wound on an iron core together. He provided the primary circuit of this instrument with an interrupter, and found that when the primary current was rapidly intermitted, a series of secondary currents was induced in the fine wire, of high electromotive force and considerable strength. Sturgeon in 1837 constructed a similar coil, and provided the primary circuit with a mercury interrupter operated by hand. Various other experimentalists took up the construction of the induction coil, and to G. H. Bachhoffner is due the suggestion of employing an iron core made of a bundle of fine iron wires. At a somewhat later date Callan constructed a very large induction coil containing a secondary circuit of very great length of wire. C. G. Page and J. H. Abbot in the United States, between 1838 and 1840, also constructed some large induction coils.[1] In all these cases the primary circuit was interrupted by a mechanically worked interrupter. On the continent of Europe the invention of the automatic primary circuit interrupter is generally attributed to C. E. Neeff and to J. P. Wagner, but it is probable that J. W. M’Gauley, of Dublin, independently invented the form of hammer break now employed. In this break the magnetization of the iron core by the primary current is made to attract an iron block fixed to the end of a spring, in such a way that two platinum points are separated and the primary circuit thus interrupted. It was not until 1853 that H. L. Fizeau added to the break the condenser which greatly improved the operation of the coil. It 1851 H. D. Rühmkorff (1803-1877), an instrument-maker in Paris, profiting by all previous experience, addressed himself to the problem of increasing the electromotive force in the secondary circuit, and induction coils with a secondary circuit of long fine wire have generally, but unnecessarily, been called Rühmkorff coils. Rühmkorff, however, greatly lengthened the secondary circuit, employing in some coils 5 or 6 m. of wire. The secondary wire was insulated with silk and shellac varnish, and each layer of wire was separated from the next by means of varnished silk or shellac paper; the secondary circuit was also carefully insulated from the primary circuit by a glass tube. Rühmkorff, by providing with his coil an automatic break of the hammer type, and equipping it with a condenser as suggested by Fizeau, arrived at the modern form of induction coil. J. N. Hearder in England and E. S. Ritchie in the United States began the construction of large coils, the last named constructing a specially large one to the order of J. P. Gassiot in 1858. In the following decade A. Apps devoted great attention to the production of large induction coils, constructing some of the most powerful coils in existence, and introduced the important improvement of making the secondary circuit of numerous flat coils of wire insulated by varnished or paraffined paper. In 1869 he built for the old Polytechnic Institution in London a coil having a secondary circuit 150 m. in length. The diameter of the wire was 0.014 in., and the secondary bobbin when complete had an external diameter of 2 ft. and a length of 4 ft. 10 ins. The primary bobbin weighed 145 ℔, and consisted of 6000 turns of copper wire 3770 yds. in length, the wire being .095 of an inch in diameter. Excited by the current from 40 large Bunsen cells, this coil could give secondary sparks 30 in. in length. Subsequently, in 1876, Apps constructed a still larger coil for William Spottiswoode, which is now in the possession of the Royal Institution. The secondary circuit consisted of 280 m. of copper wire about 0.01 of an inch in diameter, forming a cylinder 37 in. long and 20 in. in external diameter; it was wound in flat disks in a large number of separate sections, the total number of turns being 341,850. Various primary circuits were employed with this coil, which when at its best could give a spark of 42 in. in length.

A general description of the mode of constructing a modern induction coil, such as is used for wireless telegraphy or Röntgen ray apparatus, is as follows: The iron core consists of a bundle of soft iron wires inserted in the Construction. interior of an ebonite tube. On the outside of this tube is wound the primary circuit, which generally consists of several distinct wires capable of being joined either in series or parallel as required. Over the primary circuit is placed another thick ebonite tube, the thickness of the walls of which is proportional to the spark-producing power of the secondary circuit. The primary coil must be wholly enclosed in ebonite, and the tube containing it is generally longer than the secondary bobbin. The second circuit consists of a number of flat coils wound up between paraffined or shellaced paper, much as a sailor coils a rope. It is essential that no joints in this wire shall occur in inaccessible places in the interior. A machine has been devised by Leslie Miller for winding secondary circuits in flat sections without any joints in the wire at all (British Patent, No. 5811, 1903). A coil intended to give a 10 or 12 in. spark is generally wound in this fashion in several hundred sections, the object of this mode of division being to prevent any two parts of the secondary circuit which are at great differences of potential from being near to one another, unless effectively insulated by a sufficient thickness of shellaced or paraffined paper. A 10-in. coil, a size very commonly used for Röntgen ray work or wireless telegraphy, has an iron core made of a bundle of soft iron wires No. 22 S.W.G., 2 in. in diameter and 18 in. in length. The primary coil wound over this core consists of No. 14 S.W.G. copper wire, insulated with white silk laid on in three layers and having a resistance of about half an ohm. The insulating ebonite tube for such a coil should not be less than ¼ in. in thickness, and should have two ebonite cheeks on it placed 14 in. apart. This tube is supported on two hollow pedestals down which the ends of the primary wire are brought. The secondary coil consists of No. 36 or No. 32 silk-covered copper wire, and each of the sections is prepared by winding, in a suitable winding machine, a flat coiled wire in such a way that the two ends of the coil are on the outside. The coil should not be wound in less than a hundred sections, and a larger number would be still better. The adjacent ends of consecutive sections are soldered together and insulated, and the whole secondary coil should be immersed in paraffin wax. The completed coil (fig. 1) is covered with a sheet of ebonite and mounted on a base board which, in some cases, contains the primary condenser within it and carries on its upper surface a hammer break. For many purposes, however, it is better to separate the condenser and the break from the coil. Assuming that a hammer break is employed, it is generally of the Apps form. The interruption of the primary circuit is made between two contact studs which ought to be of massive platinum, and across the break points is joined the primary condenser. This consists of a number of sheets of paraffined paper interposed between sheets of tin foil, alternate sheets of the tin foil being joined together (see Leyden Jar). This condenser serves to quench the break spark. If the primary condenser is not inserted, the arc or spark which takes place at the contact points prolongs the fall of magnetism in the core, and since the secondary electromotive force is proportional to the rate at which this magnetism changes, the secondary electromotive force is greatly reduced by the presence of an arc-spark at the contact points. The primary condenser therefore serves to increase the suddenness with which the primary current is interrupted, and so greatly increases the electromotive force in the secondary circuit. Lord Rayleigh showed (Phil. Mag., 1901, 581) that if the primary circuit is interrupted with sufficient suddenness, as for instance if it is severed by a bullet from a gun, then no condenser is needed. No current flows in the secondary circuit so long as a steady direct current is passing through the primary, but at the moments that the primary circuit is closed and opened two electromotive forces are set up in the secondary; these are opposite in direction, the one induced by the breaking of the primary circuit being by far the stronger. Hence the necessity for some form of circuit breaker, by the continuous action of which there results a series of discharges from one secondary terminal to the other in the form of sparks.

The hammer break is somewhat irregular in action and gives a good deal of trouble in prolonged use; hence many other forms of primary circuit interrupters have been devised. These may be classified as (1) hand- or motor-worked Interrupters or Breaks. dipping interrupters employing mercury or platinum contacts; (2) turbine mercury interrupters; (3) electrolytic interrupters. In the first class a steel or platinum point, operated by hand or by a motor, is periodically immersed in mercury and so serves to close the primary circuit. To prevent oxidation of the mercury by the spark and break it must be covered with oil or alcohol. In some cases the interruption is caused by the continuous rotation of a motor either working an eccentric which operates the plunger, or, as in the Mackenzie-Davidson break, rotating a slate disk having a metal stud on its surface, which is thus periodically immersed in mercury in a vessel. A better class of interrupter is the mercury turbine interrupter. In this some form of rotating turbine pump pumps mercury from a vessel and squirts it in a jet against a copper plate. Either the copper plate or the jet is made to revolve rapidly by a motor, so that the jet by turns impinges against the plate and escapes it; the mercury and plate are both covered with a deep layer of alcohol or paraffin oil, so that the jet is immersed in an insulating fluid. In a recent form the chamber in which the jet works is filled with coal gas. The current supplied to the primary circuit of the coil travels from the mercury in the vessel through the jet to the copper plate, and hence is periodically interrupted when the jet does not impinge against the plate. Mercury turbine breaks are much employed in connexion with large induction coils used for wireless telegraphy on account of their regular action and the fact that the number of interruptions per second can be controlled easily by regulating the speed of the motor which rotates the jet. But all mercury breaks employing paraffin or alcohol as an insulating medium are somewhat troublesome to use because of the necessity of periodically cleaning the mercury. Electrolytic interrupters were first brought to notice by Dr A. R. B. Wehnelt in 1898 (Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift, January 20th, 1899). He showed that if a large lead plate was placed in dilute sulphuric acid as a cathode, and a thick platinum wire protruding for a distance of about one millimetre beyond a glass or porcelain tube into which it tightly fitted was used as an anode, such an arrangement when inserted in the circuit of a primary coil gave rise to a rapid intermittency in the primary current. It is essential that the platinum wire should be the anode or positive pole. The frequency of the Wehnelt break can be adjusted by regulating the extent to which the platinum wire protrudes through the porcelain tube, and in modern electrolytic breaks several platinum anodes are employed. This break can be employed with any voltage between 30 and 250. The Caldwell interrupter, a modification of the Wehnelt break, consists of two electrodes immersed in dilute sulphuric acid, one of them being enclosed by a glass vessel which has a small hole in it capable of being more or less closed by a tapered glass plug. It differs from the Wehnelt break in that there is no platinum to wear away and it requires less current; hence finer regulation of the coil to the current can be obtained. It will also work with either direct or alternating currents. The hammer and mercury turbine breaks can be arranged to give interruptions from about 10 per second up to about 50 or 60. The electrolytic breaks are capable of working at a higher speed, and under some conditions will give interruptions up to a thousand per second. If the secondary terminals of the induction coils are connected to spark balls placed a short distance apart, then with an electrolytic break the discharge has a flame-like character resembling an alternating current arc. This type of break is therefore preferred for Röntgen ray work since it makes less flickering upon the screen, but its advantages in the case of wireless telegraphy are not so marked. In the Grisson interrupter the primary circuit of the induction coil is divided into two parts by a middle terminal, so that a current flowing in at this point and dividing equally between the two halves does not magnetize the iron. This terminal is connected to one pole of the battery, the other two terminals being connected alternately to the opposite pole by means of a revolving commutator which (1) passes a current through one half of the primary, thus magnetizing the core; (2) passes a current through both halves in opposite directions, thus annulling the magnetization; (3) passes a current through the second half of the primary, thus reversing the magnetization of the core; and (4) passes a current in both halves through opposite directions, thus again annulling the magnetization. As this series of operations can be performed without interrupting a large current through the inductive circuit there is not much spark at the commutator, and the speed of commutation can be regulated so as to obtain the best results due to a resonance between the primary and secondary circuits. Another device due to Grisson is the electrolytic condenser interrupter. If a plate of aluminium and one of carbon or iron is placed in an electrolyte yielding oxygen, this aluminium-carbon or aluminium-iron cell can pass current in one direction but not in the other. Much greater resistance is experienced by a current flowing from the aluminium to the iron than in the opposite direction, owing to the formation of a film of aluminic hydroxide on the aluminium. If then a cell consisting of a number of aluminium plates alternating with iron plates or carbon in alkaline solution is inserted in the primary circuit of an induction coil, the application of an electromotive force in the right direction will cause a transitory current to flow through the coil until the electrolytic condenser is charged. By the use of a proper commutator the position of the electrolytic cell in the circuit can be reversed and another transitory primary current created. This interrupted flow of electricity through the primary circuit provides the intermittent magnetization of the core necessary to produce the secondary electromotive force. This operation of commutation can be conducted without much spark at the commutator because the circuit is interrupted at the time when there is no current in it. In the case of the electrolytic condenser no supplementary paraffined paper condenser is necessary as in the case of the hammer or mercury interrupters.

Fig. 2.—Arrangements for producing High Frequency Currents.
T, Transformer or induction coil. Q, Q, Choking coils. D, Spark balls. C, Condenser.	L, Inductance. P, Primary circuit of high frequency coil. S, Secondary circuit.

An induction coil for the transformation of alternating current is called a transformer (q.v.). One type of high frequency current transformer is called an oscillation transformer or sometimes a Tesla coil. The construction of such High Frequency Coils. a coil is based on different principles from that of the coil just described. If the secondary terminals of an ordinary induction coil or transformer are connected to a pair of spark balls (fig. 2), and if these are also connected to a glass plate condenser or Leyden jar of ordinary type joined in series with a coil of wire of low resistance and few turns, then at each break of the primary circuit of the ordinary induction coil a secondary electromotive force is set up which charges the Leyden jar, and if the spark balls are set at the proper distance, this charge is succeeded by a discharge consisting of a movement of electricity backwards and forwards across the spark gap, constituting an oscillatory electric discharge (see [Electrokinetics]). Each charge of the jar may produce from a dozen to a hundred electric oscillations which are in fact brief electric currents of gradually decreasing strength. If the circuit of few turns and low resistance through which this discharge takes place is overlaid with another circuit well insulated from it consisting of a large number of turns of finer wire, the inductive action between the two circuits creates in the secondary a smaller series of electric oscillations of higher potential. Between the terminals of this last-named coil we can then produce a series of discharges each of which consists in an extremely rapid motion of electricity to and fro, the groups of oscillations being separated by intervals of time corresponding to the frequency of the break in the primary circuit of the ordinary induction coil charging the Leyden jar or condenser. These high frequency discharges differ altogether in character from the secondary discharges of the ordinary induction coil. Theory shows that to produce the best results the primary circuit of the oscillation transformer should consist of only one thick turn of wire or, at most, but of a few turns. It is also necessary that the two circuits, primary and secondary, should be well insulated from one another, and for this purpose the oscillation transformer is immersed in a box or vessel full of highly insulating oil. For full details N. Tesla’s original Papers must be consulted (see Journ. Inst. Elect. Eng. 21, 62).

In some cases the two circuits of the Tesla coil, the primary and secondary, are sections of one single coil. In this form the arrangement is called a resonator or auto transformer, and is much used for producing high frequency discharges for medical purposes. The construction of a resonator is as follows: A bare copper wire is wound upon an ebonite or wooden cylinder or frame, and one end of it is connected to the outside of a Leyden jar or battery of Leyden jars, the inner coating of which is connected to one spark ball of the ordinary induction coil. The other spark ball is connected to a point on the above-named copper wire not very far from the lower end. By adjusting this contact, which is movable, the electric oscillations created in the short section of the resonator coil produce by resonance oscillations in the longer free section, and a powerful high frequency electric brush or discharge is produced at the free end of the resonator spiral. An electrode or wire connected with this free end therefore furnishes a high frequency glow discharge which has been found to have valuable therapeutic powers.

Fig. 3.
C1, Condenser in primary circuit. C2, Condenser in secondary circuit.	L1, Inductance in primary circuit. L2, Inductance in secondary circuit.

The general theory of an oscillation transformer containing capacity and inductance in each circuit has been given by Oberbeck, Bjerknes and Drude.[2] Suppose there are two circuits, each consisting of a coil of wire, the two being superimposed Theory of Oscillation Transformers. or adjacent, and let each circuit contain a condenser or Leyden jar in series with the circuit, and let one of these circuits contain a spark gap, the other being closed (fig. 3). If to the spark balls the secondary terminals of an ordinary induction coil are connected, and these spark balls are adjusted near one another, then when the ordinary coil is set in operation, sparks pass between the balls and oscillatory discharges take place in the circuit containing the spark gap. These oscillations induce other oscillations in the second circuit. The two circuits have a certain mutual inductance M, and each circuit has self inductance L1 and L2. If then the capacities in the two circuits are denoted by C1 and C2 the following simultaneous equations express the relation of the currents, i1 and i2, and potentials, v1, and v2, in the primary and secondary circuits respectively at any instant:—

R1 and R2 being the resistances of the two circuits. If for the moment we neglect the resistances of the two circuits, and consider that the oscillations in each circuit follow a simple harmonic law i = I sin pt we can transform the above equations into a biquadratic

The capacity and inductance in each circuit can be so adjusted that their products are the same number, that is C1L1 = C2L2 = CL. The two circuits are then said to be in resonance or to be tuned together. In this particular and unique case the above biquadratic reduces to

where k is written for M √ (L1L2) and is called the coefficient of coupling. In this case of resonant circuits it can also be shown that the maximum potential differences at the primary and secondary condenser terminals are determined by the rule V1/V2 = 2√C2/√C1. Hence the transformation ratio is not determined by the relative number of turns on the primary and secondary circuits, as in the case of an ordinary alternating current transformer (see [Transformers]), but by the ratio of the capacity in the two oscillation circuits. For full proofs of the above the reader is referred to the original papers.

Each of the two circuits constituting the oscillation transformer taken separately has a natural time period of oscillation; that is to say, if the electric charge in it is disturbed, it oscillates to and fro in a certain constant period like a pendulum and therefore with a certain frequency. If the circuits have the same frequency when separated they are said to be isochronous. If n stands for the natural frequency of each circuit, where n = p/2π the above equations show that when the two circuits are coupled together, oscillations set up in one circuit create oscillations of two frequencies in the secondary circuit. A mechanical analogue to the above electrical effect can be obtained as follows: Let a string be strung loosely between two fixed points, and from it let two other strings of equal length hang down at a certain distance apart, each of them having a weight at the bottom and forming a simple pendulum. If one pendulum is set in oscillation it will gradually impart this motion to the second, but in so doing it will bring itself to rest; in like manner the second pendulum being set in oscillation gives back its motion to the first. The graphic representation, therefore, of the motion of each pendulum would be a line as in fig. 4. Such a curve represents the effect in music known as beats, and can easily be shown to be due to the combined effect of two simple harmonic motions or simple periodic curves of different frequency superimposed. Accordingly, the effect of inductively coupling together two electrical circuits, each having capacity and inductance, is that if oscillations are started in one circuit, oscillations of two frequencies are found in the secondary circuit, the frequencies differing from one another and differing from the natural frequency of each circuit taken alone. This matter is of importance in connexion with wireless telegraphy (see [Telegraph]), as in apparatus for conducting it, oscillation transformers as above described, having two circuits in resonance with one another, are employed.

References.—J. A. Fleming, The Alternate Current Transformer (2 vols., London, 1900), containing a full history of the induction coil; id., Electric Wave Telegraphy (London, 1906), dealing in chap. i., with the construction of the induction coil and various forms of interrupter as well as with the theory of oscillation transformers; A. T. Hare, The Construction of Large Induction Coils (London, 1900); J. Trowbridge, “On the Induction Coil,” Phil. Mag. (1902), 3, p. 393; Lord Rayleigh, “On the Induction Coil,” Phil. Mag. (1901), 2, p. 581; J. E. Ives, “Contributions to the Study of the Induction Coil,” Physical Review (1902), vols. 14 and 15.

(J. A. F.)

[1] For a full history of the early development of the induction coil see J. A. Fleming, The Alternate Current Transformer, vol. ii., chap. i.

[2] See A. Oberbeck, Wied. Ann. (1895), 55, p. 623; V. F. R. Bjerknes, d. (1895), 55, p. 121, and (1891), 44, p. 74; and P. K. L. Drude, Ann. Phys. (1904), 13, p. 512.

INDULGENCE (Lat. indulgentia, indulgere, to grant, concede), in theology, a term defined by the official catechism of the Roman Catholic Church in England as “the remission of the temporal punishment which often remains due to sin after its guilt has been forgiven.” This remission may be either total (plenary) or partial, according to the terms of the Indulgence. Such remission was popularly called a pardon in the middle ages—a term which still survives, e.g. in Brittany.

The theory of Indulgences is based by theologians on the following texts: 2 Samuel (Vulgate, 2 Kings) xii. 14; Matt. xvi. 19 and xviii. 17, 18; 1 Cor. v. 4, 5; 2 Cor. ii. 6-11; but the practice itself is confessedly of later growth. As Bishop Fisher says in his Confutation of Luther, “in the early church, faith in Purgatory and in Indulgences was less necessary than now.... But in our days a great part of the people would rather cast off Christianity than submit to the rigour of the [ancient] canons: wherefore it is a most wholesome dispensation of the Holy Ghost that, after so great a lapse of time, the belief in purgatory and the practice of Indulgences have become generally received among the orthodox” (Confutatio, cap. xviii.; cf. Cardinal Caietan, Tract. XV. de Indulg. cap. i.). The nearest equivalent in the ancient Church was the local and temporary African practice of restoring lapsed Christians to communion at the intercession of confessors and prospective martyrs in prison. But such reconciliations differed from later Indulgences in at least one essential particular, since they brought no remission of ecclesiastical penance save in very exceptional cases. However, as the primitive practice of public penance for sins died out in the Church, there grew up a system of equivalent, or nominally equivalent, private penances. Just as many of the punishments enjoined by the Roman criminal code were gradually commuted by medieval legislators for pecuniary fines, so the years or months of fasting enjoined by the earlier ecclesiastical codes were commuted for proportionate fines, the recitation of a certain number of psalms, and the like. “Historically speaking, it is indisputable that the practice of Indulgences in the medieval church arose out of the authoritative remission, in exceptional cases, of a certain proportion of this canonical penalty.” At the same time, according to Catholic teaching, such Indulgence was not a mere permission to omit or postpone payment, but was in fact a discharge from the debt of temporal punishment which the sinner owed. The authority to grant such discharge was conceived to be included in the power of binding and loosing committed by Christ to His Church; and when in the course of time the vaguer theological conceptions of the first ages of Christianity assumed scientific form and shape at the hands of the Schoolmen, the doctrine came to prevail that this discharge of the sinner’s debt was made through an application to the offender of what was called the “Treasure of the Church” (Thurston, p. 315). “What, then, is meant by the ‘Treasure of the Church’?... It consists primarily and completely of the merit and satisfaction of Christ our Saviour. It includes also the superfluous merit and satisfaction of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints. What do we mean by the word ‘superfluous’? In one way, as I need not say, a saint has no superfluous merit. Whatever he has, he wants it all for himself, because, the more he merits on earth (by Christ’s grace) the greater is his glory in heaven. But, speaking of mere satisfaction for punishment due, there cannot be a doubt that some of the Saints have done more than was needed in justice to expiate the punishment due to their own sins.... It is this ‘superfluous’ expiation that accumulates in the Treasure of the Church” (Bp. of Newport, p. 166). It must be noted that this theory of the “Treasure” was not formulated until some time after Indulgences in the modern sense had become established in practice. The doctrine first appeared with Alexander of Hales (c. 1230) and was at once adopted by the leading schoolmen. Clement VI. formally confirmed it in 1350, and Pius VI. still more definitely in 1794.

The first definite instance of a plenary Indulgence is that of Urban II. for the First Crusade (1095). A little earlier had begun the practice of partial Indulgences, which are always expressed in terms of days or years. However definite may have been the ideas originally conveyed by these notes of time, their first meaning has long since been lost. Eusebius Amort, in 1735, admits the gravest differences of opinion; and the Bishop of Newport writes (p. 163) “to receive an Indulgence of a year, for example, is to have remitted to one so much temporal punishment as was represented by a year’s canonical penance. If you ask me to define the amount more accurately, I say that it cannot be done. No one knows how severe or how long a Purgatory was, or is, implied in a hundred days of canonical penance.” The rapid extension of these time-Indulgences is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of the subject. Innocent II., dedicating the great church of Cluny in 1132, granted as a great favour a forty days’ Indulgence for the anniversary. A hundred years later, all churches of any importance had similar indulgences; yet Englishmen were glad even then to earn a pardon of forty days by the laborious journey to the nearest cathedral, and by making an offering there on one of a few privileged feast-days. A century later again, Wycliffe complains of Indulgences of two thousand years for a single prayer (ed. Arnold, i. 137). In 1456, the recitation of a few prayers before a church crucifix earned a Pardon of 20,000 years for every such repetition (Glassberger in Analecta Franciscana, ii. 368): “and at last Indulgences were so freely given that there is now scarcely a devotion or good work of any kind for which they cannot be obtained” (Arnold & Addis, Catholic Dictionary, s.v.). To quote again from Father Thurston (p. 318): “In imitation of the prodigality of her Divine Master, the Church has deliberately faced the risk of depreciation to which her treasure was exposed.... The growing effeminacy and corruption of mankind has found her censures unendurable ... and the Church, going out into the highways and the hedges, has tried to entice men with the offer of generous Indulgence.” But it must be noted that, according to the orthodox doctrine, not only can an Indulgence not remit future sins, but even for the past it cannot take full effect unless the subject be truly contrite and have confessed (or intend shortly to confess) his sins.

This salutary doctrine, however, has undoubtedly been obscured to some extent by the phrase a poena et a culpa, which, from the 13th century to the Reformation, was applied to Plenary Indulgences. The prima-facie meaning of the phrase is that the Indulgence itself frees the sinner not only from the temporal penalty (poena) but also from the guilt (culpa) of all his sins: and the fact that a phrase so misleading remained so long current shows the truth of Father Thurston’s remark: “The laity cared little about the analysis of it, but they knew that the a culpa et poena was the name for the biggest thing in the nature of an Indulgence which it was possible to get” (Dublin Review, Jan. 1900). The phrase, however, was far from being confined to the unlearned. Abbot Gilles li Muisis, for instance, records how, at the Jubilee of 1300, all the Papal Penitentiaries were in doubt about it, and appealed to the Pope. Boniface VIII. did indeed take the occasion of repeating (in the words of his Bull) that confession and contrition were necessary preliminaries; but he neither repudiated the misleading words nor vouchsafed any clear explanation of them. (Chron. Aegidii li Muisis ed. de Smet, p. 189.) His predecessor, Celestine V., had actually used them in a Bull.

The phrase exercised the minds of learned canonists all through the middle ages, but still held its ground. The most accepted modern theory is that it is merely a catchword surviving from a longer phrase which proclaimed how, during such Indulgences, ordinary confessors might absolve from sins usually “reserved” to the Bishop or the Pope. Nobody, however, has ventured exactly to reconstitute this hypothetical phrase; nor is the theory easy to reconcile with (i.) the uncertainty of canonists at the time when the locution was quite recent, (ii.) the fact that Clement V. and Cardinal Cusanus speak of absolution a poena et a culpa as a separate thing from (a) plenary absolution and (b) absolution from “reserved” sins (Clem. lib. v. tit. ix. c. 2, and Johann Busch (d. c. 1480) Chron. Windeshemense, cap. xxxvi.). But, however it originated, the phrase undoubtedly contributed to foster popular misconceptions as to the intrinsic value of Indulgences, apart from repentance and confession; though Dr Lea seems to press this point unduly (p. 54 ff.), and should be read in conjunction with Thurston (p. 324 ff.).

These misconceptions were certainly widespread from the 13th to the 16th century, and were often fostered by the “pardoners,” or professional collectors of contributions for Indulgences. This can best be shown by a few quotations from eminent and orthodox churchmen during those centuries. Berthold of Regensburg (c. 1270) says, “Fie, penny-preacher! ... thou dost promise so much remission of sins for a mere halfpenny or penny, that thousands now trust thereto, and fondly dream to have atoned for all their sins with the halfpenny or penny, and thus go to hell” (ed. Pfeiffer, i. 393).[1] A century later, the author of Piers Plowman speaks of pardoners who “give pardon for pence poundmeal about” (i.e. wholesale; B. ii. 222); and his contemporary, Pope Boniface IX., complained of their absolving even impenitent sinners for ridiculously small sums (pro qualibet parva pecuniarum summula, Raynaldus, Ann. Ecc. 1390). In 1450 Thomas Gascoigne, the great Oxford Chancellor, wrote: “Sinners say nowadays ‘I care not how many or how great sins I commit before God, for I shall easily and quickly get plenary remission of any guilt and penalty whatsoever (cujusdam culpae et poenae) by absolution and indulgence granted to me from the Pope, whose writing and grant I have bought for 4d. or 6d. or for a game of tennis’”—or sometimes, he adds, by a still more disgraceful bargain (pro actu meretricio, Lib. Ver. p. 123, cf. 126). In 1523 the princes of Germany protested to the Pope in language almost equally strong (Browne, Fasciculus, i. 354). In 1562 the Council of Trent abolished the office of “pardoner.”

The greatest of all Plenary Indulgences is of course the Roman Jubilee. This was instituted in 1300 by Boniface VIII., who pleaded a popular tradition for its celebration every hundredth year, though no written evidence could be found. Clement VI. shortened the period to 50 years (1350): it was then further reduced to 33, and again in 1475 to 25 years.

See also the article on [Luther]. The latest and fullest authority on this subject is Dr H. C. Lea, Hist, of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church (Philadelphia, 1896); his standpoint is frankly non-Catholic, but he gives ample materials for judgment. The greatest orthodox authority is Eusebius Amort, De Origine, &c., indulgentiarum (1735). More popular and more easily accessible are Father Thurston’s The Holy Year of Jubilee (1900), and an article by the Bishop of Newport in the Nineteenth Century for January 1901, with a reply by Mr Herbert Paul in the next number.

(G. G. Co.)

[1] Equally strong assertions were made by the provincial council of Mainz in 1261; and Lea (p. 287) quotes the complaints of 36 similar church councils before 1538.

INDULINES, a series of dyestuffs of blue, bluish-red or black shades, formed by the interaction of para-amino azo compounds with primary monamines in the presence of a small quantity of a mineral acid. They were first discovered in 1863 (English patent 3307) by J. Dale and H. Caro, and since then have been examined by many chemists (see O. N. Witt, Ber., 1884, 17, p. 74; O. Fischer and E. Hepp, Ann., 1890, 256, pp. 233 et seq.; F. Kehrmann, Ber., 1891, 24, pp. 584, 2167 et seq.). They are derivatives of the eurhodines (aminophenazines, aminonaphthophenazines), and by means of their diazo derivatives can be de-amidated, yielding in this way azonium salts; consequently they may be considered as amidated azonium salts. The first reaction giving a clue to their constitution was the isolation of the intermediate azophenin by O. Witt (Jour. Chem. Soc., 1883, 43, p. 115), which was proved by Fischer and Hepp to be dianilidoquinone dianil, a similar intermediate compound being found shortly afterwards in the naphthalene series. Azophenin, C30H24N4, is prepared by warming quinone dianil with aniline; by melting together quinone, aniline and aniline hydrochloride; or by the action of aniline on para-nitrosophenol or para-nitrosodiphenylamine. The indulines are prepared as mentioned above from aminoazo compounds:

or by condensing oxy- and amido-quinones with phenylated ortho-diamines (F. Kehrmann, Ber., 1895, 28, p. 1714):

The indulines may be subdivided into the following groups:— (1) benzindulines, derivatives of phenazine; (2) isorosindulines; and (3) rosindulines, both derived from naphthophenazine; and (4) naphthindulines, derived from naphthazine.

The rosindulines and naphthindulines have a strongly basic character, and their salts possess a marked red colour and fluorescence. Benzinduline (aposafranine), C18H13N3, is a strong base, but cannot be diazotized, unless it be dissolved in concentrated mineral acids. When warmed with aniline it yields anilido-aposafranine, which may also be obtained by the direct oxidation of ortho-aminodiphenylamine. Isorosinduline is obtained from quinone dichlorimide and phenyl-β-naphthylamine; rosinduline from benzene-azo-α-naphthylamine and aniline and naphthinduline from benzene-azo-α-naphthylamine and naphthylamine.

INDULT (Lat. indultum, from indulgere, grant, concede, allow), a, papal licence which authorizes the doing of something not sanctioned by the common law of the church; thus by an indult the pope authorizes a bishop to grant certain relaxations during the Lenten fast according to the necessities of the situation, climate, &c., of his diocese.

INDUNA, a Zulu-Bantu word for an officer or head of a regiment among the Kaffir (Zulu-Xosa) tribes of South Africa. It is formed from the inflexional prefix in and duna, a lord or master. Indunas originally obtained and retained their rank and authority by personal bravery and skill in war, and often proved a menace to their nominal lord. Where, under British influence, the purely military system of government among the Kaffir tribes has broken down or been modified, indunas are now administrators rather than warriors. They sit in a consultative gathering known as an indaba, and discuss the civil and military affairs of their tribe.

INDUS, one of the three greatest rivers of northern India.

A considerable accession of exact geographical knowledge has been gained of the upper reaches of the river Indus and its tributaries during those military and political movements which have been so constant on the northern In the Himalaya. frontiers of India of recent years. The sources of the Indus are to be traced to the glaciers of the great Kailas group of peaks in 32° 20′ N. and 81° E., which overlook the Mansarowar lake and the sources of the Brahmaputra, the Sutlej and the Gogra to the south-east. Three great affluents, flowing north-west, unite in about 80° E. to form the main stream, all of them, so far as we know at present, derived from the Kailas glaciers. Of these the northern tributary points the road from Ladakh to the Jhalung goldfields, and the southern, or Gar, forms a link in the great Janglam—the Tibetan trade route—which connects Ladakh with Lhasa and Lhasa with China. Gartok (about 50 m. from the source of this southern head of the Indus) is an important point on this trade route, and is now made accessible to Indian traders by treaty with Tibet and China. At Leh, the Ladakh capital, the river has already pursued an almost even north-westerly course for 300 m., except for a remarkable divergence to the south-west which carries it across, or through, the Ladakh range to follow the same course on the southern side that had been maintained on the north. This very remarkable instance of transverse drainage across a main mountain axis occurs in 79° E., about 100 m. above Leh. For another 230 m., in a north-westerly direction, the Indus pursues a comparatively gentle and placid course over its sandy bed between the giant chains of Ladakh to the north and Zaskar (the main “snowy range” of the Himalaya) to the south, amidst an array of mountain scenery which, for the majesty of sheer altitude, is unmatched by any in the world. Then the river takes up the waters of the Shyok from the north (a tributary nearly as great as itself), having already captured the Zasvar from the south, together with innumerable minor glacier-fed streams. The Shyok is an important feature in The Shyok affluent. Trans-Himalayan hydrography. Rising near the southern foot of the well-known Karakoram pass on the high road between Ladakh and Kashgar, it first drains the southern slopes of the Karakoram range, and then breaks across the axis of the Muztagh chain (of which the Karakoram is now recognized as a subsidiary extension northwards) ere bending north-westwards to run a parallel course to the Indus for 150 m. before its junction with that river. The combined streams still hold on their north-westerly trend for another 100 m., deep hidden under the shadow of a vast array of snow-crowned summits, until they arrive within sight of the Rakapushi peak which pierces the north-western sky midway between Gilgit and Hunza. Here the great change of direction to the south-west occurs, which is thereafter maintained till the Indus reaches the ocean. At this point it receives the Gilgit river from the north-west, having dropped The Gilgit affluent. from 15,000 to 4000 ft. (at the junction of the rivers) after about 500 m. of mountain descent through the independent provinces of northern Kashmir. (See [Gilgit].) A few miles below the junction it passes Bunji, and from that point to a point beyond Chilas (50 m. below Bunji) it runs within the sphere of British interests. Then once again it resumes its “independent” course through the wild mountains of Kohistan and Hazara, receiving tribute from both sides (the Buner contribution being the most noteworthy) till it emerges into the plains of the Punjab below Darband, in 34° 10′ N. All this part of the river has been mapped in more or less detail of late years. The hidden strongholds of those Hindostani fanatics who had found a refuge on its banks since Mutiny days have been swept clean, and many ancient mysteries have been solved in the course of its surveying.

From its entrance into the plains of India to its disappearance in the Indian Ocean, the Indus of to-day is the Indus of the ’fifties—modified only in some interesting particulars. It has been bridged at several important points. There Indus of the plains. are bridges even in its upper mountain courses. There is a wooden pier bridge at Leh of two spans, and there are native suspension bridges of cane or twig-made rope swaying uneasily across the stream at many points intervening between Leh and Bunji; but the first English-made iron suspension bridge is a little above Bunji, linking up the highroad between Kashmir and Gilgit. Next occurs the iron girder railway bridge at Attock, connecting Rawalpindi with Peshawar, at which point the river narrows almost to a gorge, only 900 ft. above sea-level. Twenty miles below Attock the river has carved out a central trough which is believed to be 180 ft. deep. Forty miles below Attock another great bridge has been constructed at Kushalgarh, which carries the railway to Kohat and the Kurram valley. At Mari, beyond the series of gorges which continue from Kushalgarh to the borders of the Kohat district, on the Sind-Sagar line, a boat-bridge leads to Kalabagh (the Salt city) and northwards to Kohat. Another boat-bridge opposite Dera Ismail Khan connects that place with the railway; but there is nothing new in these southern sections of the Indus valley railway system except the extraordinary development of cultivation in their immediate neighbourhood. The Lansdowne bridge at Sukkur, whose huge cantilevers stand up as a monument of British enterprise visible over the flat plains for many miles around, is one of the greatest triumphs of Indian bridge-making. Kotri has recently been connected with Hyderabad in Sind, and the Indus is now one of the best-bridged rivers in India. The intermittent navigation which was maintained by the survivals of the Indus flotilla as far north as Dera Ismail Khan long after the establishment of the railway system has ceased to exist with the dissolution of the fleet, and the high-sterned flat Indus boats once again have the channels and sandbanks of the river all to themselves.

Within the limits of Sind the vagaries of the Indus channels have necessitated a fresh survey of the entire riverain. The results, however, indicate not so much a marked departure in the general course of the river as a great Lower Indus and delta. variation in the channel beds within what may be termed its outside banks. Collaterally much new information has been obtained about the ancient beds of the river, the sites of ancient cities and the extraordinary developments of the Indus delta. The changing channels of the main stream since those prehistoric days when a branch of it found its way to the Runn of Cutch, through successive stages of its gradual shift westwards—a process of displacement which marked the disappearance of many populous places which were more or less dependent on the river for their water supply—to the last and greatest change of all, when the stream burst its way through the limestone ridges of Sukkur and assumed a course which has been fairly constant for 150 years, have all been traced out with systematic care by modern surveyors till the medieval history of the great river has been fully gathered from the characters written on the delta surface. That such changes of river bed and channel should have occurred within a comparatively limited period of time is the less astonishing if we remember that the Indus, like many of the greatest rivers of the world, carries down sufficient detritus to raise its own bed above the general level of the surrounding plains in an appreciable and measurable degree. At the present time the bed of the Indus is stated to be 70 ft. above the plains of the Sind frontier, some 50 m. to the west of it.

The total length of the Indus, measured directly, is about 1500 m. With its many curves and windings it stretches to about 2000 m., the area of its basin being computed at 372,000 sq. m. Even at its lowest in winter it is 500 ft. wide at Iskardo (near Statistics. the Gilgit junction) and 9 or 10 ft. deep. The temperature of the surface water during the cold season in the plains is found to be 5° below that of the air (64° and 69° F.). At the beginning of the hot season, when the river is bringing down snow water, the difference is 14° (87° and 101° June). At greater depths the difference is still greater. At Attock, where the river narrows between rocky banks, a height of 50 ft. in the flood season above lowest level is common, with a velocity of 13 m. per hour. The record rise (since British occupation of the Punjab) is 80 ft. At its junction with the Panjnad (the combined rivers of the Punjab east of the Indus) the Panjnad is twice the width of the Indus, but its mean depth is less, and its velocity little more than one-third. This discharge of the Panjnad at low season is 69,000 cubic ft. per second, that of the Indus 92,000. Below the junction the united discharge in flood season is 380,000 cubic ft., rising to 460,000 (the record in August). The Indus after receiving the other rivers carries down into Sind, in the high flood season, turbid water containing silt to the amount of 1⁄229 part by weight, or 1⁄410 by volume—equal to 6480 millions of cubic ft. in the three months of flood. This is rather less than the Ganges carries. The silt is very fine sand and clay. Unusual floods, owing to landslips or other exceptional causes, are not infrequent. The most disastrous flood of this nature occurred in 1858. It was then that the river rose 80 ft. at Attock. The most striking result of the rise was the reversal of the current of the Kabul river, which flowed backwards at the rate of 10 m. per hour, flooding Nowshera and causing immense damage to property. The prosperity of the province of Sind depends almost entirely on the waters of the Indus, as its various systems of canals command over nine million acres out of a cultivable area of twelve and a half million acres.

See Maclagan, Proceedings R.G.S., vol. iii.; Haig, The Indus Delta Country (London, 1894); Godwin-Austen, Proceedings R.G.S. vol. vi.

(T. H. H.*)

INDUSTRIA (mod. Monteù da Po), an ancient town of Liguria, 20 m. N.E. of Augusta Taurinorum. Its original name was Bodincomagus, from the Ligurian name of the Padus (mod. Po), Bodincus, i.e. bottomless (Plin. Hist. Nat. iii. 122), and this still appears on inscriptions of the early imperial period. It stood on the right bank of the river, which has now changed its course over 1 m. to the north. It was a flourishing town, with municipal rights, as excavations (which have brought to light the forum, theatre, baths, &c.) have shown, but appears to have been deserted in the 4th century A.D.

See A. Fabietti in Atti della Società di Archeologia di Torino, iii, 17 seq.; Th. Mommsen in Corp. Inscrip. Lat. v. (Berlin, 1877), p. 845; E. Ferrero in Notizie degli Scavi (1903), p. 43.

INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, in England a school, generally established by voluntary contributions, for the industrial training of children, in which children are lodged, clothed and fed, as well as taught. Industrial schools are chiefly for vagrant and neglected children and children not convicted of theft. Such schools are for children up to the age of fourteen, and the limit of detention is sixteen. They are regulated by the Children Act 1908, which repealed the Industrial Schools Act 1866, as amended by Acts of 1872, 1891 and 1901, and parallel legislation in the various Elementary Education Acts, besides some few local acts. The home secretary exercises powers of supervision, &c. See [Juvenile Offenders].

INDUSTRY (Lat. industria, from indu-, a form of the preposition in, and either stare, to stand, or struere, to pile up), the quality of steady application to work, diligence; hence employment in some particular form of productive work, especially of manufacture; or a particular class of productive work itself, a trade or manufacture. See [Labour Legislation], &c.

INE, king of the West Saxons, succeeded Ceadwalla in 688, his title to the crown being derived from Ceawlin. In the earlier part of his reign he was at war with Kent, but peace was made in 694, when the men of Kent gave compensation for the death of Mul, brother of Ceadwalla, whom they had burned in 687. In 710 Ine was fighting in alliance with his kinsman Nun, probably king of Sussex, against Gerent of West Wales and, according to Florence of Worcester, he was victorious. In 715 he fought a battle with Ceolred, king of Mercia, at Woodborough in Wiltshire, but the result is not recorded. Shortly after this time a quarrel seems to have arisen in the royal family. In 721 Ine slew Cynewulf, and in 722 his queen Aethelburg destroyed Taunton, which her husband had built earlier in his reign. In 722 the South Saxons, previously subject to Ine, rose against him under the exile Aldbryht, who may have been a member of the West Saxon royal house. In 725 Ine fought with the South Saxons and slew Aldbryht. In 726 he resigned the crown and went to Rome, being succeeded by Aethelheard in Wessex. Ine is said to have built the minster at Glastonbury. The date of his death is not recorded. He issued a written code of laws for Wessex, which is still preserved.

See Bede, Hist. Eccl. (Plummer), iv. 15, v. 7; Saxon Chronicle (Earle and Plummer), s.a. 688e, 694, 710, 715, 721, 722, 725, 728; Thorpe, Ancient Laws, i. 2-25; Sehmid, Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Leipzig, 1858); Liebermann, Gesetzeder Angelsachsen (Halle, 1898-99).

INEBOLI, a town on the north coast of Asia Minor, 70 m. W. of Sinūb (Sinope). It is the first place of importance touched at by mercantile vessels plying eastwards from Constantinople, being the port for the districts of Changra and Kastamuni, and connected with the latter town by a carriage road (see [Kastamuni]). The roadstead is exposed, having no protection for shipping except a jetty 300 ft. long, so that in rough weather landing is impracticable. The exports (chiefly wool and mohair) are about £248,000 annually and the imports £200,000. The population is about 9000 (Moslems 7000, Christians 2000). Ineboli represents the ancient Abonou-teichos, famous as the birthplace of the false prophet Alexander, who established there (2nd century A.D.) an oracle of the snake-God Glycon-Asclepius. This impostor, immortalized by Lucian, obtained leave from the emperor Marcus Aurelius to change the name of the town to Ionopolis, whence the modern name is derived (see [Alexander the Paphlagonian]).

INEBRIETY, LAW OF. The legal relations to which inebriety (Lat. in, intensive, and ebrietas, drunkenness) gives rise are partly civil and partly criminal.

I. Civil Capacity.—The law of England as to the civil capacity of the drunkard is practically identified with, and has passed through substantially the same stages of development as the law in regard to the civil capacity of a person suffering from mental disease (see [Insanity]). Unless (see III. inf.) a modification is effected in his condition by the fact that he has been brought under some form of legal control, a man may, in spite of intoxication, enter into a valid marriage or make a valid will, or bind himself by a contract, if he is sober enough to know what he is doing, and no improper advantage of his condition is taken (cf. Matthews v. Baxter, 1873, L.R. 8 Ex. 132; Imperial Loan Co. v. Stone, 1892, 1 Q.B. 599). The law is the same in Scotland and in Ireland; and the Sale of Goods Act 1893 (which applies to the whole United Kingdom) provides that where necessaries are sold and delivered to a person who by reason of drunkenness is incompetent to contract, he must pay a reasonable price for them; “necessaries” for the purposes of this provision mean goods suitable to the condition in life of such person and to his actual requirements at the time of the sale and delivery.

Under the Roman law, and under the Roman Dutch law as applied in South Africa, drunkenness, like insanity, appears to vitiate absolutely a contract made by a person under its influence (Molyneux v. Natal Land and Colonization Co., 1905, A.C. 555).

In the United States, as in England, intoxication does not vitiate contractual capacity unless it is of such a degree as to prevent the person labouring under it from understanding the nature of the transaction into which he is entering (Bouvier, Law Dict., s.v. “Drunkenness”; and cf. Waldron v. Angleman, 1004, 58 Atl. 568; Fowler v. Meadow Brook Water Co., 1904, 57 Atl. 959; 208 Penn., 473). The same rule is by implication adopted in the Indian Contract Act (Act ix. of 1872), which provides (s. 12) that “a person is ... of sound mind for the purpose of making a contract if, at the time when he makes it, he is capable of understanding it and of forming a rational judgment as to its effect upon his interests.” In some legal systems, however, habitual drunkenness is a ground for divorce or judicial separation (Sweden, Law of the 27th of April 1810; France, Code Civil, Art. 231, Hirt v. Hirt, Dalloz, 1898, pt. ii., p. 4, and n. 4).

II. Criminal Responsibility.—In English law, drunkenness, unlike insanity, was at one time regarded as in no way an excuse for crime. According to Coke (Co. Litt., 247) a drunkard, although he suffers from acquired insanity, dementia affectata, is voluntarius daemon, and therefore has no privilege in consequence of his state; “but what hurt or ill soever he doth, his drunkenness doth aggravate it.” Sir Matthew Hale (P.C. 32) took a more moderate view, viz. that a person under the influence of this voluntarily contracted madness “shall have the same judgment as if he were in his right senses”; and admitted the existence of two “allays” or qualifying circumstances: (1) temporary frenzy induced by the unskilfulness of physicians or by drugging; and (2) habitual or fixed frenzy. Those early authorities have, however, undergone considerable development and modification.

Although the general principle that drunkenness is not an excuse for crime is still steadily maintained (see Russell, Crimes, 6th ed., i. 144; Archbold, Cr. Pl., 23rd ed., p. 29), it is settled law that where a particular intent is one of the constituent elements of an offence, the fact that a prisoner was intoxicated at the time of its commission is relevant evidence to show that he had not the capacity to form that intent. Drunkenness is also a circumstance of which a jury may take account in considering whether an act was premeditated, or whether a prisoner acted in self-defence or under provocation, when the question is whether the danger apprehended or the provocation was sufficient to justify his conduct or to alter its legal character. Moreover, delirium tremens, if it produce such a degree of madness as to render a person incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, relieves him from criminal responsibility for any act committed by him while under its influence; and in one case at nisi prius (R. v. Baines, The Times, 25th Jan. 1886) this doctrine was extended by Mr Justice Day to temporary derangement occasioned by drink. The law of Scotland accepts, if it does not go somewhat beyond, the later developments of that of England in regard to criminal responsibility in drunkenness. Indian law on the point is similar to the English (Indian Penal Code, Act. xlv. of 1860, ss. 85, 86; Mayne, Crim. Law of India, ed. 1896, p. 391). In the United States the same view is the prevalent legal doctrine (see Bishop, Crim. Law, 8th ed., i, ss. 397-416). The Criminal Code of Queensland (No. 9 of 1899, Art. 28) provides that a person who becomes intoxicated intentionally is responsible for any crime that he commits while so intoxicated, whether his voluntary intoxication was induced so as to afford an excuse for the commission of an offence or not. As in England, however, when an intention to cause a specific result is an element of an offence, intoxication, whether complete or partial, and whether intentional or unintentional, may be regarded for the purpose of ascertaining whether such intention existed or not. There is a similar provision in the Penal Code of Ceylon (No. 2 of 1883, Art. 79). The Criminal Codes of Canada (1892, c. 29, ss. 7 et seq.) and New Zealand (No. 56 of 1893, ss. 21 et seq.) are silent on the subject of intoxication as an excuse for crime. The Criminal Code of Grenada (No. 2 of 1897, Art. 51) provides that “a person shall not, on the ground of intoxication, be deemed to have done any act involuntarily, or be exempt from any liability to punishment for any act: and a person who does an act while in a state of intoxication shall be deemed to have intended the natural and probable consequences of his act.” There is a similar provision in the Criminal Code of the Gold Coast Colony (No. 12 of 1892, s. 54). Under the French Penal Code (Art. 64), “il n’y a ni crime, ni délit, lorsque le prévenu était en état de démence au temps de l’action ou lorsqu’il aura été contraint par une force à laquelle il n’ a pu résister.” According to the balance of authority (Dalloz, Rép. tit., Peine, ss. 402 et seq.) intoxication is not assimilated to insanity, within the meaning of this article, but it may be and is taken account of by juries as an extenuating circumstance (Ortolan, Droit Pénal i. s. 323: Chauveau et Hélie i. s. 360). A provision in the German Penal Code (Art. 51) that an act is not punishable if its author, at the time of committing it, was in a condition of unconsciousness, or morbid disturbance of the activity of his mind which prevented the free exercise of his will, has been held not to extend to intoxication (Clunet, 1883, p. 311). But in Germany as in France, intoxication may apparently be an extenuating circumstance. Under the Italian Penal Code (Arts. 46-49) intoxication—unless voluntarily induced so as to afford an excuse for crime—may exclude or modify responsibility.

So far only the question whether drunkenness is an excuse for offences committed under its influence has been dealt with. There remains the question how far drunkenness itself is a crime. Mere private intoxication is not, either in England or in the United States (Bishop, Crim. Law, 8th ed., i. s. 399) indictable as an offence at common law; but in all civilized countries public drunkenness is punishable when it amounts to a breach of the peace (see [Liquor Laws]) or contravention of public order; and modern legislation in many countries provides for deprivation of personal liberty for long periods in case of a frequent repetition of the offence. Reference may be made in this connexion to the Inebriates Acts 1898, 1899 and 1900 (see iii. inf.), and also to similar legislation in the British colonies and in foreign legal systems (e.g. Cape of Good Hope, No. 32 of 1896; Ceylon, Licensing Ordinance 1891, ss. 23, 24, 29; New South Wales, Vagrants Punishment Act 1866; Massachusetts, Acts of 1891, c. 427, 1893, cc. 414, 44; France, Law of 23rd of Jan. 1873, Art. 6).

III. State Action in Regard to Inebriety.—This assumes a variety of forms. (a) Measures regulating the punishment of occasional or habitual drunkenness by fines or short terms of imprisonment. (b) Control in penal establishments for lengthened periods. (c) Laws prohibiting the sale of liquor to persons who are known inebriates: e.g. in England (Licensing Act 1902); Ontario (Rev. Stats. 1897, c. 245, ss. 124, 125); New South Wales (Liquor Act 1898, ss. 52, 53); Cape of Good Hope (No. 28 of 1883, s. 89); New York (Rev. Stats. 1889-1892, c. 20, Title iv.); California (Act to prevent sale of liquor to drunkards, 1889); Massachusetts (Pub. Stats., ed. 1902, c. 100, s. 9). (d) Laws regulating the appointment of some person or persons to act as guardian or guardians, or who may be endowed with legal powers over the person and estate of an inebriate. Thus in France (Code Civil, Arts. 489 et seq.), Germany (Civil Code, Art. 6 (39)) and Austria-Hungary (Bürgerliches Gesetz-Buch, ss. 21, 269, 270, 273), an inebriate may be judicially interdicted if he is squandering his property and thereby exposing his family to future destitution. Provision is also made for the interdiction of inebriates by the laws of Nova Scotia (Rev. Stats. 1900, c. 126, s. 2), Manitoba (Rev. Stat. 1902, c. 103, ss. 30 et seq.), British Columbia (Rev. Stat. 1897, c. 66), New South Wales (Inebriates Act 1900, s. 5), Tasmania (Inebriates Act 1885, No. 17, s. 23); Canton of Bâle (Trustee Law of the 23rd of Feb. 1880, s. 11), Orange River Colony (Code Laws, c. 108, s. 30), Maryland (Code General Laws, c. 474, s. 47). (e) Control for the purpose of reformation. Legislation of this character provides reformatory treatment: (1) for the inebriate who makes a voluntary application for admission; (2) by compulsory seclusion for the inebriate who refuses consent to treatment and yet manages to keep out of the reach of the law; (3) for the inebriate who is a police-court recidivist, or who has committed crime, caused or contributed to by drink. The legislation of the Cape of Good Hope (Inebriates Act 1896) and of North Dakota (Habitual Drunkards Act 1895) provides for the first of these methods of treatment alone. Compulsory detention for ordinary inebriates only is provided for by the laws of Delaware (Act of 1898), Massachusetts (Rev. Laws, c. 87), and of the Cantons of Berne (Law of the 24th of Nov. 1883) and Bâle (Law of the 21st of Feb. 1901). All three methods of treatment are in force in New South Wales (Inebriates Act 1900), Queensland (Inebriates Institutions Act 1896) and South Australia (Inebriates Act 1881). Provision is made only for voluntary application and compulsory detention of ordinary inebriates in Victoria (Inebriates Act 1890), Tasmania (Inebriates Act 1885; Inebriates Hospitals Act 1892) and New Zealand (Inebriates Institutions Act 1898). The legislation of the United Kingdom (Inebriates Acts 1879-1900) deals both with voluntary application and with the committal of criminal inebriates or of police-court recidivists. A brief sketch of the English system must suffice.

The Inebriates Acts of 1870-1900 deal in the first place with non-criminal, and in the second place with criminal, habitual drunkards.

For the purposes of the acts the term “habitual drunkard” means “a person who, not being amenable to any jurisdiction in lunacy, is notwithstanding, by reason of habitual intemperate drinking of intoxicating liquor, at times dangerous to himself or herself, or incapable of managing himself or herself and his or her affairs.” A person would become amenable to the lunacy jurisdiction not only where habitual drunkenness made him a “lunatic” in the legal sense of the term, but where it created, such a state of disease and consequential “mental infirmity” as to bring his case within section 116 of the Lunacy Act 1890, the effect of which is explained in the article Insanity. Any “habitual drunkard” within the above definition may obtain admission to a “licensed retreat” on a written application to the licensee, stating the time (the maximum period is two years) that he undertakes to remain in the retreat. The application must be accompanied by the statutory declaration of two persons that the applicant is an habitual drunkard, and its signature must be attested by a justice of the peace who has satisfied himself as to the fact, and who is required to state that the applicant understood the nature and effect of his application. Licences (each of which is subject to a duty and is impressed with a stamp of £5, and 10s. for every patient above ten in number) are granted for retreats by the borough council and the town clerk in boroughs, and elsewhere by the county council and the clerk of the county council. The maximum period for which a licence may be granted is two years, but licences may be renewed by the licensing authority on payment of a stamp duty of the same amount as on the original grant. When an habitual drunkard has once been committed to a retreat, he must remain in the retreat for the time that he has fixed in his application, subject to certain statutory provisions similar to those prescribed by the Lunacy Acts for asylums as to leave of absence and discharge; and he may be retaken and brought back to the retreat under a justice’s warrant. The term of detention may be extended on its expiry, or an inebriate may be readmitted, on a fresh application, without any statutory declaration, and without the attesting justice being required to satisfy himself that the applicant is an habitual drunkard. Licensed retreats are subject to inspection by an Inspector of Retreats appointed by the Home Secretary, to whom he makes an annual report. The Home Secretary is empowered to make rules and regulations for the management of retreats, and “regulations and orders,” not inconsistent with such rules, are to be prepared by the licensee within a month after the granting of his licence, and submitted to the inspector for approval. The rules now in force are dated as regards (a) England, 28th Feb. 1902; (b) Scotland, 14th April 1902; (c) Ireland, 3rd Feb. 1903. There are also statutory provisions, similar to those of the Lunacy Acts, as to offences—(i.) by licensees failing to comply with the requirements of the acts; (ii) by persons ill-treating patients, or helping them to escape, or unlawfully supplying them with intoxicating liquor; (iii.) by patients refusing to comply with the rules. The Home Secretary may (i.) authorize the establishment of “State Inebriate Reformatories,” to be paid for out of moneys provided by parliament; and (ii.) sanction “Certified Inebriates’ Reformatories” on the application of any borough or county council, or any person whatever, if satisfied concerning the reformatory and the persons proposing to maintain it. An Inspector of Certified Inebriate Reformatories has been appointed. Regulations for State Inebriate Reformatories and for Certified Inebriate Reformatories have been made, dated as follows: State Inebriate Reformatories:—England, 21st of June 1901, 29th of Dec. 1903, 29th of April 1904; Scotland, 9th of March 1900; Ireland, 16th of March 1899, 16th of April 1901, 10th of Feb. 1904. Certified Inebriate Reformatories:—England, Model Regulations, 17th of Dec. 1898; Scotland, Regulations, 14th of Feb. 1899; Ireland, Model Regulations, 29th of April 1899.

Any person convicted on indictment of an offence punishable with imprisonment or penal servitude (i.e. of any non-capital felony and of most misdemeanours), if the court is satisfied from the evidence that the offence was committed under the influence of drink, or that drink was a contributing cause of the offence, may, if he admits that he is, or is found by the jury to be, an habitual drunkard, in addition to or in substitution for any other sentence, be ordered to be detained in a state or certified inebriate reformatory, the managers of which are willing to receive him. Again, any habitual drunkard who is found drunk in any public place, or who commits any other of a series of similar offences under various statutes, after having within twelve months been convicted at least three times of a similar offence, may, on conviction on indictment, or, if he consent, on summary conviction, be sent for detention in any certified inebriate reformatory. The expenses of prosecuting habitual drunkards under the above provisions are payable out of the local rates upon an order to that effect by the judge of assize or chairman of quarter-sessions if the prosecution be on indictment, or by a court of summary jurisdiction if the offence is dealt with summarily.

Authorities.—As to the history of legislation on the subject see Parl. Paper No. 242 of 1872; 1893 C. 7008. See also Wyatt Paine, Inebriate Reformatories and Retreats (London, 1899); Blackwell, Inebriates Acts, 1879-1898 (London, 1899); Wood Renton, Lunacy (London and Edinburgh, 1896); Kerr, Inebriety (3rd ed., London, 1894). An excellent account of the systems in force in other countries for the treatment of inebriates will be found in Parl. Pap. (1902), cd. 1474.

(A. W. R.)

INFALLIBILITY (Fr. infaillibilité and infallibilité, the latter now obsolete, Med. Lat. infallibilitas, infallibilis, formed from fallor, to make a mistake), the fact or quality of not being liable to err or fail. The word has thus the general sense of “certainty”; we may, e.g., speak of a drug as an infallible specific, or of a man’s judgment as infallible. In these cases, however, the “infallibility” connotes certainty only in so far as anything human can be certain. In the language of the Christian Church the word “infallibility” is used in a more absolute sense, as the freedom from ail possibility of error guaranteed by the direct action of the Spirit of God. This belief in the infallibility of revelation is involved in the very belief in revelation itself, and is common to all sections of Christians, who differ mainly as to the kind and measure of infallibility residing in the human instruments by which this revelation is interpreted to the world. Some see the guarantee, or at least the indication, of infallibility in the consensus of the Church (quod semper, ubique, et ab omnibus) expressed from time to time in general councils; others see it in the special grace conferred upon St Peter and his successors, the bishops of Rome, as heads of the Church; others again see it in the inspired Scriptures, God’s Word. This last was the belief of the Protestant Reformers, for whom the Bible was in matters of doctrine the ultimate court of appeal. To the translation and interpretation of the Scriptures men might bring a fallible judgment, but this would be assisted by the direct action of the Spirit of God in proportion to their faith. As for infallibility, this was a direct grace of God, given only to the few. “What ever was perfect under the sun,” ask the translators of the Authorized Version (1611) in their preface, “where apostles and apostolick men, that is, men endued with an extraordinary measure of God’s Spirit, and privileged with the privilege of infallibility, had not their hand?” In modern Protestantism, on the other hand, the idea of an infallible authority whether in the Church or the Bible has tended to disappear, religious truths being conceived as valuable only as they are apprehended and made real to the individual mind and soul by the grace of God, not by reason of any submission to an external authority. (See also [Inspiration].)

At the present time, then, the idea of infallibility in religious matters is most commonly associated with the claim of the Roman Catholic Church, and more especially of the pope personally as head of that Church, to possess the privilege of infallibility, and it is with the meaning and limits of this claim that the present article deals.

The substance of the claim to infallibility made by the Roman Catholic Church is that the Church and the pope cannot err when solemnly enunciating, as binding on all the faithful, a decision on a question of faith or morals. The infallibility of the Church, thus limited, is a necessary outcome of the fundamental conception of the Catholic Church and its mission. Every society of men must have a supreme authority, whether individual or collective, empowered to give a final decision in the controversies which concern it. A community whose mission it is to teach religious truth, which involves on the part of its members the obligation of belief in this truth, must, if it is not to fail of its object, possess an authority capable of maintaining the faith in its purity, and consequently capable of keeping it free from and condemning errors. To perform this function without fear of error, this authority must be infallible in its own sphere. The Christian Church has expressly claimed this infallibility for its formal dogmatic teaching. In the very earliest centuries we find the episcopate, united in council, drawing up symbols of faith, which every believer was bound to accept under pain of exclusion, condemning heresies, and casting out heretics. From Nicaea and Chalcedon to Florence and Trent, and to the present day, the Church has excluded from her communion all those who do not profess her own faith, i.e. all the religious truths which she represents and imposes as obligatory. This is infallibility put into practice by definite acts.

The infallibility of the pope was not defined until 1870 at the Vatican Council; this definition does not constitute, strictly speaking, a dogmatic innovation, as if the pope had not hitherto enjoyed this privilege, or as if the Church, as a whole, had admitted the contrary; it is the newly formulated definition of a dogma which, like all those defined by the Councils, continued to grow into an ever more definite form, ripening, as it were, in the always living community of the Church. The exact formula for the papal infallibility is given by the Vatican Council in the following terms (Constit. Pastor aeternus, cap. iv.); “we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma, that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra—i.e. when, in his character as Pastor and Doctor of all Christians, and in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he lays down that a certain doctrine concerning faith or morals is binding upon the universal Church,—possesses, by the Divine assistance which was promised to him in the person of the blessed Saint Peter, that same infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer thought fit to endow His Church, to define its doctrine with regard to faith and morals; and, consequently, that these definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable in themselves, and not in consequence of the consent of the Church.” A few notes will suffice to elucidate this pronouncement.

(a) As the Council expressly says, the infallibility of the pope is not other than that of the Church; this is a point which is too often forgotten or misunderstood. The pope enjoys it in person, but solely qua head of the Church, and as the authorized organ of the ecclesiastical body. For this exercise of the primacy as for the others, we must conceive of the pope and the episcopate united to him as a continuation of the Apostolic College and its head Peter. The head of the College possesses and exercises by himself alone the same powers as the College which is united with him; not by delegation from his colleagues, but because he is their established chief. The pope when teaching ex cathedra acts as head of the whole episcopal body and of the whole Church.

(b) If the Divine constitution of the Church has not changed in its essential points since our Lord, the mode of exercise of the various powers of its head has varied; and that of the supreme teaching power as of the others. This explains the late date at which the dogma was defined, and the assertion that the dogma was already contained in that of the papal primacy established by our Lord himself in the person of St Peter. A certain dogmatic development is not denied, nor an evolution in the direction of a centralization in the hands of the pope of the exercise of his powers as primate; it is merely required that this evolution should be well understood and considered as legitimate.

(c) As a matter of fact the infallibility of the pope, when giving decisions in his character as head of the Church, was generally admitted before the Vatican Council. The only reservation which the most advanced Gallicans dared to formulate, in the terms of the celebrated declaration of the clergy of France (1682), had as its object the irreformable character of the pontifical definitions, which, it was claimed, could only have been acquired by them through the assent of the Church. This doctrine, rather political than theological, was a survival of the errors which had come into being after the Great Schism, and especially at the council of Constance; its object was to put the Church above its head, as the council of Constance had put the ecumenical council above the pope, as though the council could be ecumenical without its head. In reality it was Gallicanism alone which was condemned at the Vatican Council, and it is Gallicanism which is aimed at in the last phrase of the definition we have quoted.

(d) Infallibility is the guarantee against error, not in all matters, but only in the matter of dogma and morality; everything else is beyond its power, not only truths of another order, but even discipline and the ecclesiastical laws, government and administration, &c.

(e) Again, not all dogmatic teachings of the pope are under the guarantee of infallibility; neither his opinions as private instructor, nor his official allocutions, however authoritative they may be, are infallible; it is only his ex cathedra instruction which is guaranteed; this is admitted by everybody.

But when does the pope speak ex cathedra, and how is it to be distinguished when he is exercising his infallibility? As to this point there are two schools, or rather two tendencies, among Catholics: some extend the privilege of infallibility to all official exercise of the supreme magisterium, and declare infallible, e.g. the papal encyclicals.[1] Others, while recognizing the supreme authority of the papal magisterium in matters of doctrine, confine the infallibility to those cases alone in which the pope chooses to make use of it, and declares positively that he is imposing on all the faithful the obligation of belief in a certain definite proposition, under pain of heresy and exclusion from the Church; they do not insist on any special form, but only require that the pope should clearly manifest his will to the Church. This second point of view, as clearly expounded by Mgr Joseph Fessler (1813-1872), bishop of St Pölten, who was secretary to the Vatican Council, in his work Die wahre und die falsche Unfehlbarkeit der Päpste (French trans. La vraie et la fausse infaillibilité, Paris, 1873), and by Cardinal Newman in his “Letter to the Duke of Norfolk,” is the correct one, and this is clear from the fact that it has never been blamed by the ecclesiastical authority. Those who hold the latter opinion have been able to assert that since the Vatican Council no infallible definition had yet been formulated by the popes, while recognizing the supreme authority of the encyclicals of Leo XIII.

It is remarkable that the definition of the infallibility of the pope did not appear among the projects (schemata) prepared for the deliberations of the Vatican Council (1869). It doubtless arose from the proposed forms for the definitions of the primacy and the pontifical magisterium. The chapter on the infallibility was only added at the request of the bishops and after long hesitation on the part of the cardinal presidents. The proposed form, first elaborated in the conciliary commission de fide, was the object of long public discussions from the 50th general congregation (May 13th, 1870) to the 85th (July 13th); the constitution as a whole was adopted at a public session, on the 18th, of the 535 bishops present, two only replied “Non placet”; but about 50 had preferred not to be present. The controversies occasioned by this question had started from the very beginning of the Council, and were carried on with great bitterness on both sides. The minority, among whom were prominent Cardinals Rauscher and Schwarzenberg, Hefele, bishop of Rotterdam (the historian of the councils) Cardinal Mathieu, Mgr Dupanloup, Mgr Maret, &c., &c., did not pretend to deny the papal infallibility; they pleaded the inopportuneness of the definition and brought forward difficulties mainly of an historical order, in particular the famous condemnation of Pope Honorius by the 6th ecumenical council of Constantinople in 680. The majority, in which Cardinal Manning played a very active part, took their stand on theological reasons of the strongest kind; they invoked the promises of Our Lord to St Peter: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her”; and again, “I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not; and do thou in thy turn confirm thy brethren”; they showed the popes, in the course of the ages, acting as the guardians and judges of the faith, arousing or welcoming dogmatic controversies and authoritatively settling them, exercising the supreme direction in the councils and sanctioning their decisions; they explained that the few historical difficulties did not involve any dogmatic defect in the teaching of the popes; they insisted upon the necessity of a supreme tribunal giving judgment in the name of the whole of the scattered Church; and finally, they considered that the definition had become opportune for the very reason that under the pretext of its inopportuneness the doctrine itself was being attacked.

The definition once proclaimed, controversies rapidly ceased; the bishops who were among the minority one after the other formulated their loyal adhesion to the Catholic dogma. The last to do so in Germany was Hefele, who published the decrees of the 10th of April 1871, thus breaking a long friendship with Döllinger; in Austria, where the government had thought good to revive for the occasion the royal placet, Mgr Haynald and Mgr Strossmayer delayed the publication, the former till the 15th of September 1871, the latter till the 26th of December 1872. In France the adhesion was rapid, and the publication was only delayed by some bishops in consequence of the disastrous war with Prussia. Though no bishops abandoned it, a few priests, such as Father Hyacinthe Loyson, and a few scholars at the German universities refused their adhesion. The most distinguished among the latter was Döllinger, who resisted all the advances of Mgr Scherr, archbishop of Munich, was excommunicated on the 17th of April 1871, and died unreconciled, though without joining any separate group. After him must be mentioned Friedrich of Munich, several professors of Bonn, and Reinkens of Breslau, who was the first bishop of the “Old Catholics.” These professors formed the “Committee of Bonn,” which organized the new Church. It was recognized and protected first in Bavaria, thanks to the minister Freiherr Johann von Lutz, then in Saxony, Baden, Württemberg, Prussia, where it was the pretext for, if not the cause of, the Kulturkampf, and finally in Switzerland, especially at Geneva.

For the theological aspects of the dogma of infallibility, see, among many others, L. Billot, S.J., De Ecclesia Christi (3 vols., Rome, 1898-1900); or G. Wilmers, S.J., De Christi Ecclesia (Regensburg, 1897). The most accessible popular work is that of Mgr Fessler already mentioned. For the history of the definition see [Vatican Council]; also [Papacy], [Gallicanism], [Febronianism], [Old Catholics], &c.

(A. Bo.*)

[1] It was in this sense that it was understood by Döllinger, who pointed out that the definition of the dogma would commit the Church to all past official utterances of the popes, e.g. the Syllabus of 1864, and therefore to a war à outrance against modern civilization. This view was embodied in the circular note to the Powers, drawn up by Döllinger and issued by the Bavarian prime minister Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst on April 9, 1869. It was also the view universally taken by the German governments which supported the Kulturkampf in a greater or less degree.—Ed.

INFAMY (Lat. infamia), public disgrace or loss of character. Infamy (infamia) occupied a prominent place in Roman law, and took the form of a censure on individuals pronounced by a competent authority in the state, which censure was the result either of certain actions which they had committed or of certain modes of life which they had pursued. Such a censure involved disqualification for certain rights both in public and in private law (see A. H. J. Greenidge, Infamia, its Place in Roman Public and Private Law, 1894). In English law infamy attached to a person in consequence of conviction of some crime. The effect of infamy was to render a person incompetent to give evidence in any legal proceeding. Infamy as a cause of incompetency was abolished by an act of 1843 (6 & 7 Vict. c. 85).

The word “infamous” is used in a particular sense in the English Medical Act of 1858, which provides that if any registered medical practitioner is judged by the General Medical Council, after due inquiry, to have been guilty of infamous conduct in any professional respect, his name may be erased from the Medical Register. The General Medical Council are the sole judges of whether a practitioner has been guilty of conduct infamous in a professional respect, and they act in a judicial capacity, but an accused person is generally allowed to appear by counsel. Any action which is regarded as disgraceful or dishonourable by a man’s professional brethren—such, for example, as issuing advertisements in order to induce people to consult him in preference to other practitioners—may be found infamous.

INFANCY, in medical practice, the nursing age, or the period during which the child is at the breast. As a matter of convenience it is usual to include in it children up to the age of one year. The care of an infant begins with the preparations necessary for its birth and the endeavour to ensure that taking place under the best possible sanitary conditions. On being born the normal infant cries lustily, drawing air into its lungs. As soon as the umbilical cord which unites the child to the mother has ceased to pulsate, it is tied about 2 in. from the child’s navel and is divided above the ligature. The cord is wrapped in a sterilized gauze pad and the dressing is not removed until the seventh to the tenth day, when the umbilicus is healed.

The baby is now a separate entity, and the first event in its life is the first bath. The room ready to receive a new-born infant should be kept at a temperature of 70° F. The temperature of the first bath should be 100° F. The child should be well supported in the bath by the left hand of the nurse, and care should be taken to avoid wetting the gauze pad covering the cord. In some cases infants are covered with a white substance termed “vernix caseosa,” which may be carefully removed by a little olive oil. Sponges should never be used, as they tend to harbour bacteria. A soft pad of muslin or gauze which can be boiled should take its place. After the first ten days 94° F. is the most suitable temperature for a bath. When the baby has been well dried the skin may be dusted with pure starch powder to which a small quantity of boric acid has been added. The most important part of the toilet of a new-born infant is the care of the eyes, which should be carefully cleansed with gauze dipped in warm water and one drop of a 2% solution of nitrate of silver dropped into each eye. The clothes of a newly born child should consist exclusively of woollen undergarments, a soft flannel binder, which should be tied on, being placed next the skin, with a long-sleeved woven wool vest and over this a loose garment of flannel coming below the feet and long enough to tuck up. Diapers should be made of soft absorbent material such as well-washed linen and should be about two yards square and folded in a three-cornered shape. An infant should always sleep in a bed or cot by itself. In 1907, of 749 deaths from violence in England and Wales of children under one month, 445 were due to suffocation in bed with adults. A healthy infant should spend most of its time asleep and should be laid into its cot immediately after feeding.

The normal infant at birth weighs about 7 ℔. During the two or three days following birth a slight decrease in weight occurs, usually 5 to 6 oz. When nursing begins the child increases in weight up to the seventh day, when the infant will have regained its weight at birth. From the second to the fourth week after birth (according to Camerer) an infant should gain 1 oz. daily or 1½ to 2 ℔ monthly, from the fourth to the sixth month ½ to 2⁄3 of an oz. daily or 1 ℔ monthly, from the sixth to the twelfth month ½ oz. daily or less than 1 ℔ monthly. At the sixth month it should be twice the weight at birth. The average weight at the twelfth month is 20 to 21 ℔. The increase of weight in artificially fed is less regular than in breast-fed babies.

Food.—There is but one proper food for an infant, and that is its mother’s milk, unless when in exceptional circumstances the mother is not allowed to nurse her child. Artificially fed children are much more liable to epidemic diseases. The child should be applied to the breast the first day to induce the flow of milk. The first week the child should be fed at intervals of two hours, the second week eight to nine times, and the fourth week eight times at intervals of two and a half hours. At two months the child is being suckled six times daily at intervals of three hours, the last feed being at 11 P.M. Where a mother cannot nurse a child the child must be artificially fed. Cow’s milk must be largely diluted to suit the new-born infant. Armstrong gives the following table of dilution:—

Koplik has drawn out a table of the amounts to be given as follows:—

In cities it is advisable that milk should be either sterilized by boiling or pasteurized, i.e. subjected to a form of heating which, while destroying pathogenic bacteria, does not alter the taste. The milk in a suitable apparatus is subjected to a temperature of 65° C. (149° F.) for half an hour and is then rapidly cooled to 20° C. (68° F.). Children fed on pasteurized milk should be given a teaspoonful of fresh orange juice daily to supply the missing acid and salts.

Artificial feeding is given by means of a bottle. In France all bottles with rubber tubes have been made illegal. They are a fruitful source of infection, as it is impossible to keep them clean. The best bottle is the boat-shaped one, with a wide mouth at one end, to which is attached a rubber teat, while the other end has a screw stopper. This is readily cleansed and a stream of water can be made to flow through it. All bottle teats should be boiled at least once a day for ten minutes with soda and kept in a glass-covered jar until required. A feed should be given at the temperature of 100° F.

At the ninth month a cereal may be added to the food. Before that the infant is unable to digest starchy foods. Much starch tends to constipation, and it is rarely wise to give starchy preparations in a proportion of more than 3% to children under a year old. A child who is carefully fed in a cleanly manner should not have diarrhoea, and its appearance indicates carelessness somewhere. The English registrar-general’s returns for 1906 show that in the seventy-six largest towns in England and Wales 14,306 deaths of infants under one year from diarrhoea took place in July, August and September alone. These deaths are largely preventable; when Dr Budin of Paris established his “Consultations de Nourissons” the infant mortality of Paris amounted to 178 per 1000, but at the consultation the rate was 46 per 1000. At Varengeville-sur-mer a consultation for nurslings was instituted under Dr Poupalt of Dieppe in 1904. During the seven previous years the infant mortality had averaged 145 per 1000. In 1904-1905 not one infant at the consultation died, though it was a summer of extreme heat, and in 1898 when similar heat had prevailed the infant mortality was 285 per 1000. The deaths of infants under one year in England and Wales, taken from the registrar-general’s returns for 1907, amounted to 117.62 per 1000 births, an alarming sacrifice of life. France has been turning her attention to the establishment of infant consultations on the lines of Dr Budin’s, and similar dispensaries under the designation “Gouttes de lait” have been widely established in that country; gratifying results in the fall in infant mortality have followed. At the Fécamp dispensary the mortality from diarrhoea has fallen to 2.8, while that in neighbouring towns is from 50 to 76 per 1000 (Sir A. Simpson). It has been left to private enterprise in England to deal with this problem. The St Pancras “School for Mothers” was established in 1907 in north-west London. Though started by private persons it was in 1909 worked in connexion with the Health Department of the Borough Council, but was supported by charitable subscriptions and by a small contribution from the student mothers. There are classes for mothers on the care of their health during pregnancy, infant feeding, home nursing, cooking and needlework. Poor mothers unable to contribute get free dinners for three months previous to the birth of their child and for nine months after if the child is breast-fed. Two doctors are in attendance, and mothers are encouraged to bring their children fortnightly to be weighed, and receive advice. The average attendance is ninety. A baby is said to have “graduated” when it is a year old. An interesting development in connexion with the scheme is a class for fathers at which the medical officer of health for the district lectures on the duties of fatherhood. Similar schools for mothers are now established in Fulham and Stepney. Weighing centres have been established at Dundee, Sheffield, Nottingham, Birmingham, Aberdeen, Bolton, Belfast, and Newcastle-on-Tyne. An infants’ milk depôt has been established at Finsbury, and effort is being made to establish milk laboratories where separate nursing portions of sterile milk could be supplied to poor mothers. The Walker-Gordon milk laboratories in the United States are a step in this direction.

The average length of a child at birth is 19½ in. and during the first year the average increase is 77⁄8 in. A new-born infant is deaf (Koplik). This is supposed to be due to the blocking of the eustachian tubes with mucus. On the fourth day there is some evidence of hearing, and at the fifth week noises in the room disturb it. A healthy infant may be taken out of doors when a fortnight old in summer, after which it should have a daily outing, the eyes being protected from the direct rays of the sun. On the second day the eyes are sensitive to light, in the second month the infant notices colours, at the sixth month it knows its parents, and should be able to hold its head up. At the sixth month the baby begins to cut its temporary teeth. After their appearance they should be cleaned once a day by a piece of gauze moistened in boric acid solution. Attempts to stand are made about the tenth month, and walking begins about the fourteenth month. By this time the intelligence should be developed and memory is observed. A child a year old should be able to articulate a few small words. With the advent of walking and speech the period of infancy may be said to end.

See Pierre Budin, The Nursling (1907); Henry Koplik, Disease of Infancy and Childhood (1906); Eric Pritchard, The Physiological Feeding of Infants (1904); Eric Pritchard, Infant Education (1907); John Grimshaw, Your Child’s Health (1908).

(H. L. H.)

INFANT (in early forms enfaunt, enfant, through the Fr. enfant, from Lat. infans, in, not, and fans, the present participle of fari, to speak), a child; in non-legal use, a very young child, a baby, or one of an age suitable to be taught in an “infant school”; in law, a person under full age, and therefore subject to disabilities not affecting persons who have attained full age.

This article deals with “infants” in the last sense; for the more general sense see [Infancy] and [Child]. The period of full age varies widely in different systems, as do also the disabilities attaching to nonage (non-age). In Roman law, the age of puberty, fixed at fourteen for males and twelve for females, was recognized as a dividing line. Under that age a child was under the guardianship of a tutor, but several degrees of infancy were recognized. The first was absolute infancy; after that, until the age of seven, a child was infantiae proximus; and from the eighth year to puberty he was pubertati proximus. An infant in the last stage could, with the assent of his tutor, act so as to bind himself by stipulations; in the earlier stages he could not, although binding stipulations could be made to him in the second stage. After puberty, until the age of twenty-five years, a modified infancy was recognized, during which the minor’s acts were not void altogether, but voidable, and a curator was appointed to manage his affairs. The difference between the tutor and the curator in Roman law was marked by the saying that the former was appointed for the care of the person, the latter for the estate of the pupil. These principles apply only to children who are sui juris. The patria potestas, so long as it lasts, gives to the father the complete control of the son’s actions. The right of the father to appoint tutors to his children by will (testamentarii) was recognized by the Twelve Tables, as was also the tutorship of the agnati (or legal as distinct from natural relations) in default of such an appointment. Tutors who held office in virtue of a general law were called legitimi. Besides and in default of these, tutors dativi were appointed by the magistrates. These terms are still used in much the same sense in modern systems founded on the Roman law, as may be seen in the case of Scotland, noticed below.

By the law of England full age is twenty-one, and all minors alike are subject to incapacities. The period of twenty-one years is regarded as complete at the beginning of the day before the birthday: for example, an infant born on the first day of January attains his majority at the first moment of the 31st of December. The incapacity of an infant is designed for his own protection, and its general effect is to prevent him from binding himself absolutely by obligations. Of the contracts of an infant which are binding ab initio, the most important are those relating to “necessaries.” By the Sale of Goods Act 1893, an infant liable on a contract for necessaries can be sued only for a reasonable price, not necessarily the price he agreed to pay. The same statute declares “necessaries” to mean “goods suitable to the condition in life of the infant, and to his actual requirements at the time of the sale and delivery.” In the case of goods having a market price, the market price is reasonable. In all other cases the question is one of fact for the jury. The protection of infants extends sometimes to transactions completed after full age; the relief of heirs who have been induced to barter away their expectations is an example. “Catching bargains,” as they are called, throw on the persons claiming the benefit of them the burden of proving their substantial righteousness.

At common law a bargain made by an infant might be ratified by him after full age, and would then become binding. Lord Tenterden’s act required the ratification to be in writing. But now, by the Infants’ Relief Act 1874, “all contracts entered into by infants for the repayment of money lent or to be lent, or for goods supplied or to be supplied (other than contracts for necessaries), and all accounts stated, shall be absolutely void,” and “no action shall be brought whereby to charge any person upon any promise made after full age to pay any debt contracted during infancy, or upon any ratification made after full age of any promise or contract made during infancy, whether there shall or shall not be any new consideration for such promise or ratification after full age.” For some years after the passage of this statute highly conflicting views were held as to the meaning of the part of section 2 whereby it was enacted that “no action shall be brought whereby to charge any person ... upon any ratification made after full age of any promise or contract made during infancy.” Some authorities were of opinion that the section only applied to the three classes of contract made void by the previous section, viz. for goods supplied, money lent and on account stated. Others thought the effect to be that no contract, except for necessaries, made during infancy could be enforced after the infant came to full age. After several conflicting decisions it has been settled that both these views were wrong. Of the infant’s contracts voidable at common law there were two kinds. The first kind became void at full age, unless expressly ratified. The second kind were valid, unless repudiated within a reasonable time after full age was attained by the infant. The Infants’ Relief Act (section 2) strikes only at the first class and leaves the second untouched. Thus a promise of marriage made during infancy cannot be ratified so as to become actionable: but an infant’s marriage settlement, being of the second class, is valid, unless it is repudiated within a reasonable time after the infant attains full age. What is a reasonable time depends on all the circumstances of the case. In a case decided in 1893 a settlement made by a female infant was allowed to be repudiated thirty years after she attained full age, but the circumstances were exceptional. A contract of marriage may be lawfully made by persons under age. Marriageable age is fourteen in males and twelve in females. So, generally, an infant may bind himself by contract of apprenticeship or service. Since the passing of the Wills Act, an infant, except he be a soldier in actual military service or a seaman at sea, is unable to make a will. Infancy is in general a disqualification for public offices and professions, e.g. to be a member of parliament or an elector, a mayor or burgess, a priest or deacon, a barrister or solicitor, &c.

Before 1886 the custody of an infant belonged in the first place, and against all other persons, to the father, who was said to be “the guardian of his children by nature and nurture”; and the father might by deed or will dispose of the custody or tuition of his children until the age of twenty-one.

The Guardianship of Infants Act 1886 placed the mother almost on the same footing as the father as to guardianship of infants. On the death of the father the mother becomes guardian under the statute, either alone when no guardian has been appointed by the father, or jointly with any guardian appointed by him under 12 Chas. II. c. 24. A change of the law even more important is that whereby the mother may by deed or will appoint a guardian or guardians of her infant children to act after her death. If the father survives the mother, the mother’s guardian can only act if it be shown to the satisfaction of the court that the father is unfitted to be the sole guardian. On the death of the father, the guardian so appointed by the mother acts jointly with any guardian appointed by the father. The Guardianship of Infants Act 1886 also gives power to the high court and to county courts to make orders, upon the application of the mother, regarding the custody of an infant, and the right of access thereto of either parent. The court must take into consideration “the welfare of the infant, and ... the conduct of the parents, and ... the wishes as well of the mother as of the father.” The same statute also empowers the high court of justice, “on being satisfied that it is for the welfare of the infant,” to “remove from his office any testamentary guardian or any guardian appointed or acting by virtue of this act,” and also to appoint another in place of the guardian so removed.

The same statute gives power to a court sitting in divorce practically to take away from a parent guilty of a matrimonial offence all rights of guardianship. When a decree for judicial separation or divorce is pronounced, the court pronouncing it may at the same time declare the parent found guilty of misconduct to be unfit to have the custody of the children of the marriage. “In such case the parent so declared to be unfit shall not, upon the death of the other parent, be entitled as of right to the custody or guardianship of such children.” The court exercises this power very sparingly. When the declaration of unfitness is made, the practical effect is to give to the innocent parent the sole guardianship, as well as power to appoint a testamentary guardian to the exclusion of the guilty parent.

Another radical change has been made in the rights of parents as to guardianship of their children. In consequence of several cases where, after children had been rescued by philanthropic persons from squalid homes and improper surroundings, the courts had felt bound by law to redeliver them to their parents, the Custody of Children Act 1891 was passed. It provides that when the parent of a child applies to the court for a writ or order for the production of the child, and the court is of opinion that the parent has abandoned or deserted the child, or that he has otherwise so conducted himself that the court should refuse to enforce his right to the custody of the child, the court may, in its discretion, decline to issue the writ or make the order. If the child, in respect of whom the application is made, is being brought up by another person (“person” includes “school or institution”), or is being boarded out by poor-law guardians, the court may, if it orders the child to be given up to the parent, further order the parent to pay all or part of the cost incurred by such person or guardians in bringing up the child.

A parent who has abandoned or deserted his child is, prima facie, unfit to have the custody of the child. And before the court can make an order giving him the custody, the onus lies on him to prove that he is fit. The same rule applies where the child has been allowed by the parent “to be brought up by another person at that person’s expense, or by the guardians of a poor-law union, for such a length of time and under such circumstances as to satisfy the court that the parent was unmindful of his parental duties.”

The 4th section of the Custody of Children Act 1891 preserves the right of the parent to control the religious training of the infant. The father, however unfit he may be to have the custody of his child, has the legal right to require the child to be brought up in his own religion. If the father is dead, and has left no directions on the point, the mother may assert a similar right. But the court may consult the wishes of the child; and when an infant has been allowed by the father to grow up in a faith different from his own, the court will not, as a rule, order any change in the character of religious instruction. This is especially the case where the infant appears to be settled in his convictions.

In the same direction as the Custody of Children Act 1891 is the Children Act 1908, whereby considerable powers have been conferred on courts of summary jurisdiction (see [Children, Law Relating to]).

There is not at common law any corresponding obligation on the part of either parent to maintain or educate the children. The legal duties of parents in this respect are only those created by the poor laws, the Education Acts and the Children Act 1908.

An infant is liable to a civil action for torts and wrongful acts committed by him. But, as it is possible so to shape the pleadings as to make what is in substance a right arising out of contract take the form of a right arising from civil injury, care is taken that an infant in such a case shall not be held liable. With respect to crime, mere infancy is not a defence, but a child under seven years of age is presumed to be incapable of committing a crime, and between seven and fourteen his capacity requires to be affirmatively proved. After fourteen an infant is doli capax.

The law of Scotland follows the leading principles of the Roman law. The period of minority (which ends at twenty-one) is divided into two stages, that of absolute incapacity (until the age of fourteen in males, and twelve in females), during which the minor is in pupilarity, and that of partial incapacity (between fourteen and twenty-one), during which he is under curators. The guardians (or tutors) of the pupil are either tutors-nominate (appointed by the father in his will); tutors-at-law (being the next male agnate of twenty-five years of age), in default of tutors-nominate; or tutors-dative, appointed by royal warrant in default of the other two. No act done by the pupil, or action raised in his name, has any effect without the interposition of a guardian. After fourteen, all acts done by a minor having curators are void without their concurrence. Every deed in nonage, whether during pupilarity or minority, and whether authorized or not by tutors or curators, is liable to reduction on proof of “lesion,” i.e. of material injury, due to the fact of nonage, either through the weakness of the minor himself or the imprudence or negligence of his curators. Damage in fact arising on a contract in itself just and reasonable would not be lesion entitling to restitution. Deeds in nonage, other than those which are absolutely null ab initio, must be challenged within the quadriennium utile, or four years after majority.

The Guardianship of Infants Act 1886, the Custody of Children Act 1891 and the Children Act 1908, mentioned above, all apply to Scotland.

In the United States, the principles of the English common law as to infancy prevail, generally the most conspicuous variations being those affecting the age at which women attain majority. In many states this is fixed at eighteen. There is some diversity of practice as to the age at which a person can make a will of real or personal estate.

INFANTE (Spanish and Portuguese form of Lat. infans, young child), a title of the sons of the sovereign of Spain and Portugal, the corresponding infanta being given to the daughters. The title is not borne by the eldest son of the king of Spain, who is prince of Asturias, Il principe de Asturias. Until the severance of Brazil from the Portuguese monarchy, the eldest son was prince of Brazil. While a son or daughter of the sovereign of Spain is by right infante or infanta of Spain, the title, alone, is granted to other members of the blood royal by the sovereign.

INFANTICIDE, the killing of a newly-born child or of the matured foetus. When practised by civilized peoples the subject of infanticide concerns the criminologist and the jurist; but its importance in anthropology, as it involves a widespread practice among primitive or savage nations, requires more detailed attention. J. F. McLennan (Studies in Ancient History, pp. 75 et seq.) suggests that the practice of female infanticide was once universal, and that in it is to be found the origin of exogamy. Much evidence, however, has been adduced against this hypothesis by Herbert Spencer and Edward Westermarck. Infanticide, both of males and females, is far less widespread among savage races than McLennan supposed. It certainly is common in many lands, and more females are killed than males; but among many fierce and savage peoples it is almost unknown. Thus among the Tuski, Ahts, Western Eskimo and the Botocudos new-born children are killed now and then, if they are weak and deformed, or for some other reason (such as the superstition attaching to birth of twins) but without distinction of sex. Among the Dakota Indians and Crees female infanticide is rare. The Blackfoot Indians believe that a woman guilty of such an act will never reach “the Happy Mountain” after death, but will hover round the scene of her misdeed with branches of trees tied to her legs. The Aleutians hold that child-murder brings misfortune on the whole village. Among the Abipones it is common, but the boys are usually the victims, because it is customary to buy a wife for a son, whereas a grown daughter will always command a price. In Africa, where a warm climate and abundance of food simplify the problem of existence, the crime is not common. Herr Valdau relates that a Bakundu woman, accused of it, was condemned to death. In Samoa, in the Mitchell and Hervey Islands, and in parts of New Guinea, it was unheard of; while among the cannibals, the Solomon Islanders, it occurred rarely. A theory has been advanced by L. Fison (Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 1880) that female infanticide is far less common among the lower savages than among the more advanced tribes. Among some of the most degraded of human beings, such as the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, the crime was unknown, except when committed by the mother “from jealousy or hatred of her husband or because of desertion and wretchedness.” It is said that certain Californian Indians were never guilty of child-murder before the arrival of the whites; while Wm. Ellis (Polynesian Researches, i. 249) thinks it most probable that the custom was less prevalent in earlier than later Polynesian history. The weight of evidence tends to support Darwin’s theory that during the earliest period of human development man did not lose that strong instinct, the love of his young, and consequently did not practice infanticide; that, in short, the crime is not characteristic of primitive races.

Infanticide may be said to arise from four reasons. It may be (1) an act of callous brutality or to satisfy cannibalistic cravings. A Fuegian, Darwin relates, dashed his child’s brains out for upsetting a basket of fish. An Australian, seeing his infant son ill, killed, roasted and ate him. In some parts of Africa the negroes bait lion-traps with their own children. Some South American Indians, such as the Moxos, abandon or kill them without reason; while African and Polynesian cannibals eat them without the excuse of the periodic famines which made the Tasmanians regard the birth of a child as a piece of good fortune.

2. Or infanticide may be the result of the struggle for existence. Thus in Polynesia, while the climate ensures food in plenty, the relative smallness of the islands imposed the custom on all families without distinction. In the Hawaiian Islands all children, after the third or fourth, were strangled or buried alive. At Tahiti fathers had the right (and used it) of killing their newly-born children by suffocation. The chiefs were obliged by custom to kill all their daughters. The society of the Areois, famous in the Society Islands, imposed infanticide upon the women members by oath. In other islands all girl-children were spared, but only two boys in each family were reared. The difficulties of suckling partly explain the custom of killing twins. For the same reason the Eskimo and Red Indians used to bury the infant with the mother who died in childbirth. Among warrior and hunter tribes, where women could not act as beasts of burden as in agricultural communities, and where a large number of girls were likely to attract the hostile attentions of neighbouring tribesmen, girl-babies were murdered. Arabs, in ancient times, buried alive the majority of female children. In many lands infanticide was regarded as a meritorious act on the part of a parent, done, as a precaution against famine, in the interests of the tribe. In other parts of the world, infanticide results from customs which impose heavy burdens on child-rearing. Of these artificial hardships the best example is afforded by India. There the practice, though forbidden by both the Vedas and the Koran, prevailed among the Rajputs and certain aboriginal tribes. Among the aristocratic Rajputs, it was thought dishonourable that a girl should remain unmarried. Moreover, a girl may not marry below her caste; she ought to marry her superior, or at least her equal. This reasoning was most powerful with the highest castes, in which the disproportion of the sexes was painfully apparent. But, assuming marriage to be possible, it was ruinously expensive to the bride’s father, the cost in the case of some rajahs having been known to exceed £100,000. To avoid all this, the Rajput killed a proportion of his daughters—sometimes in a very singular way. A pill of tobacco and bhang might be given to the new-born child; or it was drowned in milk;[1] or the mother’s breast was smeared with opium or the juice of the poisonous datura. A common method was to cover the child’s mouth with a plaster of cow-dung, before it drew breath. Infanticide was also practised to a small extent by some sects of the aboriginal Khonds and by the poorer hill-tribes of the Himalayas. Where infanticide occurs in India, though it really rests on the economic facts stated, there is usually some poetical tradition of its origin. Infanticide from motives of prudence was common among some American Indian tribes of the north-west, with whom the “potlatch” was an essential part of their daughter’s marriage ceremonies.

3. Or infanticide may be in the nature of a religious observance. The gods must be appeased with blood, and it is believed that no sacrifice can be so pleasing to them as the child of the worshipper. Such were the motives impelling parents to the burning of children in the worship of Moloch. In India children were thrown into the sacred river Ganges, and adoration paid to the alligators who fed on them. Where the custom prevails as a sacrifice the male child is usually the victim.

4. Or, finally, infanticide may have a social or political reason. Thus at Sparta (and in other places in early Greek and Roman history) weakly or deformed children were killed by order of the state, a custom approved in the ideal systems of Aristotle and Plato, and still observed among the Eskimo and the Kamchadales.

Authorities.—Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 614-619; McLennan, Studies in Ancient History, pp. 75 et seq.; McLennan, “Exogamy and Endogamy” in the Fortnightly Review, xxi. 884 et seq.; Darwin, Descent of Man, ii. 400 et seq.; L. Fison, and A. W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai (1880); Westermarck, History of Human Marriage (1894); Browne, Infanticide: Its Origin, Progress and Suppression (London, 1857); Lord Avebury, Prehistoric Times (1900), and Origin of Civilization (1902).

Law.—The crime of infanticide among civilized nations is still frequent. It is however due in most cases to abnormal causes, such as a sudden access of insanity, privation, unreasoning dislike to the child, &c. It is most closely connected with illegitimacy in the class of farm and domestic servants, the more common motive being the terror of the mother of incurring the disgrace with which society visits the more venial offence. Often, however, it is inspired by no better motive than the wish to escape the burden of the child’s support. The granting of affiliation orders thus tends to save the lives of many children, though it provides a motive for the paramour sometimes to share in the crime. The laws of the European states differ widely on this subject—some of them treating infanticide as a special crime, others regarding it merely as a case of murder of unusually difficult proof. In the law of England infanticide is murder or manslaughter according to the presence or absence of deliberation. The infant must be a human being in the legal sense; and “a child becomes a human being when it has completely proceeded in a living state from the body of its mother, whether it has breathed or not, and whether it has an independent circulation or not, and whether the navel-string is severed or not; and the killing of such a child is homicide when it dies after birth in consequence of injuries received before, during or after birth.” À child in the womb or in the act of birth, though it may have breathed, is therefore not a human being, the killing of which amounts to homicide. The older law of child murder under a statute of James I. consisted of cruel presumptions against the mother, and it was not till 1803 that trials for that offence were placed under the ordinary rules of evidence. The crown now takes upon itself the onus of proving in every case that the child has been alive. This is often a matter of difficulty, and hence a frequent alternative charge is that of concealment of birth (see [Birth]), or concealment of pregnancy in Scotland. It is the opinion of the most eminent of British medical jurists that this presumption has tended to increase infanticide. Apart from this, the technical definition of human life has excited a good deal of comment and some indignation. The definition allows many wicked acts to go unpunished. The experience of assizes in England shows that many children are killed when it is impossible to prove that they were wholly born. The distinction taken by the law was probably comprehended by the minds of the class to which most of the unhappy mothers belong. Partly to meet this complaint it was suggested to the Royal Commission of 1866 that killing during birth, or within seven days thereafter, should be an offence punishable with penal servitude. The second complaint is of an opposite character—partly that infanticide by mothers is not a fit subject for capital punishment, and partly that, whatever be the intrinsic character of the act, juries will not convict or the executive will not carry out the sentence. Earl Russell gave expression to this feeling when he proposed that no capital sentence should be pronounced upon mothers for the killing of children within six months after birth. When there has been a verdict of murder, sentence of death must be passed, but the practice of the Home Office, as laid down in 1908, is invariably to commute the death sentence to penal servitude for life. The circumstances of the case and the disposition and general progress of the prisoners under discipline in a convict prison are then determining factors in the length of subsequent detention, which rarely exceeds three years. After release, the prisoner’s further progress is carefully watched, and if it is seen to be to her advantage the conditions of her release are cancelled and she is restored to complete freedom.

In India measures against the practice were begun towards the end of the 18th century by Jonathan Duncan and Major Walker. They were continued by a series of able and earnest officers during the 19th century. One of its chief events, representing many minor occurrences, was the Amritsar durbar of 1853, which was arranged by Lord Lawrence. At that meeting the chiefs residing in the Punjab and the trans-Sutlej states signed an agreement engaging to expel from caste every one who committed infanticide, to adopt fixed and moderate rates of marriage expenses, and to exclude from these ceremonies the minstrels and beggars who had so greatly swollen the expense. According to the present law, if the female children fall below a certain percentage in any tract or among any tribe in northern India where infanticide formerly prevailed, the suspected village is placed under police supervision, the cost being charged to the locality. By these measures, together with a strictly enforced system of reporting births and deaths, infanticide has been almost trampled out; although some of the Rājput clans keep their female offspring suspiciously close to the lowest average which secures them from surveillance.

It is difficult to say to what extent infanticide prevails in the United Kingdom. At one time a large number of children were murdered in England for the purpose of obtaining the burial money from a benefit club,[2] but protection against this risk has been provided for by the Friendly Societies Act 1896, and the Collecting Societies Act 1896. The neglect or killing of nurse-children is treated under [Baby-farming], and [Children, Law Relating to].

In the United States, the elements of this offence are practically the same as in England. The wilful killing of an unborn child is not manslaughter unless made so by statute. To constitute manslaughter under Laws N.Y. 1869, ch. 631, by attempts to produce miscarriage, the “quickening” of the child must be averred and proved (Evans v. People, 49 New York Rep. 86; see also Wallace v. State, 7 Texas app. 570).

[1] In Baluchistan, where children are often drowned in milk, there is a euphemistic proverb: “The lady’s daughter died drinking milk.”

[2] See Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Classes, “Supplementary Report on Interment in Towns,” by Edwin Chadwick (Parl. Papers, 1843, xii. 395); and The Social Condition and Education of the People, by Joseph Kay (1850).

INFANTRY, the collective name of soldiers who march and fight on foot and are armed with hand-weapons. The word is derived ultimately from Lat. infans, infant, but it is not clear how the word came to be used to mean soldiers. The suggestion that it comes from a guard or regiment of a Spanish infanta about the end of the 15th century cannot be maintained in view of the fact that Spanish foot-soldiers of the time were called soldados and contrasted with French fantassins and Italian fanteria. The New English Dictionary suggests that a foot-soldier, being in feudal and early modern times the varlet or follower of a mounted noble, was called a boy (cf. Knabe, garçon, footman, &c., and see [Valet]).

Historical Sketch

The importance of the infantry arm, both in history and at the present time, cannot be summed up better and more concisely than in the phrase used by a brilliant general of the Napoleonic era, General Morand—“L’infanterie, c’est l’armée.”

It may be confidently asserted that the original fighting man was a foot-soldier. But infantry was differentiated as an “arm” considerably later than cavalry; for when a new means of fighting (a chariot or a horse) presented itself, it was assimilated by relatively picked men, chiefs and noted warriors, who ipso facto separated themselves from the mass or reservoir of men. How this mass itself ceased to be a mere residue and developed special characteristics; how, instead of the cavalry being recruited from the best infantry, cavalry and infantry came to form two distinct services; and how the arm thus constituted organized itself, technically and tactically, for its own work—these are the main questions that constitute the historical side of the subject. It is obvious that as the “residue” was far the greatest part of the army, the history of the foot-soldier is practically identical with the history of soldiering.

It was only when a group of human beings became too large to be surprised and assassinated by a few lurking enemies, that proper fighting became the normal method of settling a quarrel or a rivalry. Two groups, neither of which had been able to surprise the other, had to meet face to face, and the instinct of self-preservation had to be reconciled with the necessity of victory. From this it was an easy step to the differentiation of the champion, the proved excellent fighting man, and to providing this man, on whom everything depended, with all assistance that better arms, armour, horse or chariot could give him. But suppose our champion slain, how are we to make head against the opposing champion? For long ages, we may suppose, the latter, as in the Iliad, slaughtered the sheep who had lost their shepherd, but in the end the “residue” began to organize itself, and to oppose a united front to the enemy’s champions—in which term we include all selected men, whether horsemen, charioteers or merely specially powerful axemen and swordsmen. But once the individual had lost his commanding position, the problem presented itself in a new form—how to ensure that every member of the group did his duty by the others—and the solution of this problem for the conditions of the ancient hand-to-hand struggle marks the historical beginning of infantry tactics.

Gallic warriors bound themselves together with chains. The Greeks organized the city state, which gave each small army solidarity and the sense of duty to an ideal, and the phalanx, in which the file-leaders were in a sense champions yet were The phalanx and the legion. made so chiefly by the unity of the mass. But the Romans went farther. Besides developing solidarity and a sense of duty, they improved on this conception of the battle to such a degree that as a nation they may be called the best tacticians who ever existed. Giving up the attempt to make all men fight equally well, they dislocated the mass of combatants into three bodies, of which the first, formed of the youngest and most impressionable men, was engaged at the outset, the rest, more experienced men, being kept out of the turmoil. This is the very opposite of the “champion” system. Those who would have fled after the fall of the champions are engaged and “fought out” before the champions enter the area of the contest, while the champions, who possess in themselves the greatest power of resisting and mastering the instinct of self-preservation, are kept back for the moment when ordinary men would lose heart.

It might be said with perfect justice that without infantry there would never have been discipline, for cavalry began and continued as a crowd of champions. Discipline, which created and maintained the intrinsic superiority of the Roman legion, depended first on the ideal of patriotism. This was ingrained into every man from his earliest years and expressed in a system of rewards and punishments which took effect from the same ideal, in that rewards were in the main honorary in character (mural crowns, &c.), while no physical punishment was too severe for the man who betrayed, by default or selfishness, the cause of Rome. Secondly, though every man knew his duty, not every man was equal to doing it, and in recognition of this fact the Romans evolved the system of three-line tactics in which the strong parts of the machine neutralized the weak. The first of these principles, being psychological in character, rose, flourished and decayed with the moral of the nation. The second, deduced from the first, varied with it, but as it was objectively expressed in a system of tactics, which had to be modified to suit each case, it varied also in proportion as the combat took more or less abnormal forms. So closely knit were the parts of the system that not only did the decadence of patriotism sap the legionary organization, but also the unsuitability of that organization to new conditions of warfare reacted unfavourably, even disastrously, on the moral of the nation. Between them, the Roman infantry fell from its proud place, and whereas in the Republic it was familiarly called the “strength” (robur), by the 4th century A.D. it had become merely the background for a variety of other arms and corps. Luxury produced “egoists,” to whom the rewards meant nothing and the punishments were torture for the sake of torture. When therefore the Roman imperium extended far enough to bring in silks from China and ivory from the forests of central Africa, the citizen-army ceased to exist, and the mere necessity for garrisoning distant savage lands threw the burden of service upon the professional soldier.

The natural consequence of this last was the uniform training of every man. There were no longer any primary differences between one cohort and another, and though the value of the three-line system in itself ensured its continuance, The Roman Imperial Army. any cohort, however constituted, might find itself serving in any one of the three lines, i.e. the moral of the last line was no better than that of the first. The best guarantee of success became uniform regimental excellence, and whereas Camillus or Scipio found useful employment in battle for every citizen, Caesar complained that a legion which had been sent him was too raw, though it had been embodied for nine years. The conditions which were so admirably met by the old system never reappeared; for before armies resumed a “citizen” character the invention of firearms had subjected all ranks and lines alike to the same ordeal of facing unseen death, and the old soldiers were better employed in standing shoulder to shoulder with the young. In brief, the old Roman organization was based on patriotism and experience, and when patriotism gave place to “egoism,” and the experience of the citizen who spent every other summer in the field of war gave place to the formal training of the paid recruit, it died, unregretted either by the citizen or by the military chieftain. The latter knew how to make the army his devoted servant, while the former disliked military service and failed to prepare himself for the day when the military chief and the mercenary overrode his rights and set up a tyranny, and ultimately the inner provinces of the empire came to be called inermes—unarmed, defenceless—in contrast to the borderland where the all-powerful professional legions lay in garrison.

In these same frontier provinces the tactical disintegration of the legion slowly accomplished itself. Originally designed for the exigencies of the normal pitched battle on firm open fields, and even after its professionalization retaining its character as a large battle unit, it was soon fragmented through the exigencies of border warfare into numerous detachments of greater or less size, and when the military frontier of the empire was established, the legion became an almost sedentary corps, finding the garrisons for the blockhouses on its own section of the line of defence. Further, the old heavy arms and armour which had given it the advantage in wars of conquest—in which the barbarians, gathering to defend their homes, offered a target for the blow of an army—were a great disadvantage when it became necessary to police the conquered territory, to pounce upon swiftly moving bodies of raiders before they could do any great harm. Thus gradually cavalry became more numerous, and light infantry of all sorts more useful, than the old-fashioned linesman. To these corps went the best recruits and the smartest officers, the opportunities for good service and the rewards for it. The legion became once more the “residue.” Thus when the “champion” reappeared on the battlefield the solidarity that neutralized his power had ceased to exist.

The battle of Adrianople, the “last fight of the legion,” illustrates this. The frontal battle was engaged in the ordinary way, and the cohorts of the first line of the imperial army were fighting man to man with the front ranks of the Gothic infantry (which had indeed a solidarity of its own, unlike the barbarians of the early empire, and was further guaranteed against moral over-pressure by a wagon laager), when suddenly the armoured heavy cavalry of the Goths burst upon their flank and rear. There were no longer Principes and Triarii of the old Republican calibre, but only average troops, in the second and third lines, and they were broken at once. The first line felt the battle in rear as well as in front and gave way. Thereafter the victors, horse and foot, slaughtered unresisting herds of men, not desperate soldiers, and on this day the infantry arm, as an arm, ceased to exist.

Of course, not every soldier became a horseman, and still fewer could provide themselves with armour. Regular infantry, too, was still maintained for siege, mountain and forest warfare. But the robur, the kernel of the line The Dark Ages. of battle, was gone, and though a few of the peoples that fought their way into the area of civilization in the dark ages brought with them the natural and primitive method of fighting on foot, it was practically always a combination of mighty champions and “residue,” even though the latter bound themselves together by locked shields, as the Gauls had bound themselves long before with chains, to prevent “skulking.” These infantry nations, without any infantry system comparable to that of the Greeks and Romans, succumbed in turn to the crowd of mounted warriors—not like the Greeks and Romans for want of good military qualities, but for want of an organization which would have distributed their fighting powers to the best advantage. One has only to study the battle of Hastings to realize how completely the infantry masses of the English slipped from the control of their leaders directly the front ranks became seriously engaged. For many generations after Hastings there was no attempt to use infantry as the kernel of armies, still less to organize it as such beforehand. Indeed, except in the Crusades, where men of high and of low degree alike fought for their common faith, and in sieges, where cavalry was powerless and the services of archers and labourers were at a premium, it became quite unusual for infantry to appear on the field at all.

The tactics of feudal infantry at its best were conspicuously illustrated in the battle of Bouvines, where besides the barons, knights and sergeants, the Brabançon mercenaries (heavy foot) and the French communal militia opposed one another. Bouvines. On the French right wing, the opportune arrival of a well-closed mass of cavalry and infantry in the flank of a loose crowd of men-at-arms which had already been thoroughly engaged, decided the fight. In the centre, the respective infantries were in first line, the nobles and knights, with their sovereigns, in second, yet it was a mixed mass of both that, after a period of confused fighting, focussed the battle in the persons of the emperor and the king of France, and if the personal encounters of the two bodies of knights gave the crowded German infantry a momentary chance to strike down the king, the latter was soon rescued by a half-dozen of heavy cavalrymen. On the left wing, the count of Boulogne made a living castle of his Brabançon pikes, whence with his men-at-arms he sallied forth from time to time and played the champion. Lastly, the Constable Montmorency brought over what was still manageable of the corps that had defeated the cavalry on the right (nearly all mounted men) and gave the final push to the allied centre and right in succession. Then the imperial army fled and was slaughtered without offering much resistance. Of infantry in this battle there was enough and to spare, but its only opportunities for decisive action were those afforded by the exhaustion of the armoured men or by the latter becoming absorbed in their own single combats to the exclusion of their proper work in the line of battle. As usual the infantry suffered nine-tenths of the casualties. For all their numbers and apparent tactical distribution on this field, they were “residue,” destitute of special organization, training or utility; and the only suggestion of “combined tactics” is the expedient adopted by the count of Boulogne, rings of spearmen to serve as pavilions served in the tournament—to secure a decorous setting for a display of knightly prowess.

In those days in truth the infantry was no more the army than to-day the shareholders of a limited company are the board of directors. They were deeply, sometimes vitally, interested in the result, but they contributed little or nothing to bringing it about, except when the opposing cavalries were in a state of moral equilibrium, and in these cases anything suffices—the appearance of camp followers on a “Gillies Hill,” as at Bannockburn or the sound of half-a-dozen trumpets—to turn the scale. Once it turned, the infantry of the beaten side was cut down unresistingly, while the more valuable prisoners were admitted to ransom. Thereafter, feudal tactics were based principally on the ideas of personal glory—won in single combat, champion against champion, and of personal profit—won by the knight in holding a wealthy and well-armed baron to ransom and by the foot-soldier in plundering while his masters were fighting. In the French army, the term bidaux, applied in the days of Bouvines to all the infantry other than archers and arblasters, came by a quite natural process to mean the laggards, malingerers and skulkers of the army.

But even this infantry contained within itself two half-smothered sparks of regeneration, the idea of archery and the idea of communal militia. Archery, in whatever form practised, was the one special form of military Revival of infantry. activity with which the heavy gendarme (whether he fought on horseback or dismounted) had no concern. Here therefore infantry had a special function, and in so far ceased to be “residue.” The communal militia was an early and inadequate expression of the town-spirit that was soon to produce the solid burgher-militia of Flanders and Germany and after that the trained bands of the English cities and towns. It therefore represented the principles of solidarity, of combination, of duty to one’s comrade and to the common cause—principles which had disappeared from feudal warfare.[1] It was under the influence of these two ideas or forces that infantry as an arm began once again, though slowly and painfully, to differentiate itself from the mass of bidaux until in the end the latter practically contained only the worthless elements.

The first true infantry battle since Hastings was fought at Courtrai in 1302, between the burghers of Bruges and a feudal army under Count Robert of Artois. The citizens, arrayed in heavy masses, and still armed with miscellaneous weapons, were Courtrai. careful to place themselves on ground difficult of access—dikes, pools and marshes—and to fasten themselves together, like the Gauls of old. Their van was driven back by the French communal infantry and professional crossbowmen, whereupon Robert of Artois, true feudal leader as he was, ordered his infantry to clear the way for the cavalry and without even giving them time to do so pushed through their ranks with a formless mass of gendarmerie. This, in attempting to close with the enemy, plunged into the canals and swamped lands, and was soon immovably fastened in the mud. The citizens swarmed all round it and with spear, cleaver and flail destroyed it. Robert himself with a party of his gendarmerie strove to break through the solid wall of spears, but in vain. He was killed and his army perished with him, for the citizens did not regard war as a game and ransom as the loser’s forfeit. As for the communal infantry which had won the first success, it had long since disappeared from the field, for when count Robert ordered his heavy cavalry forward, they had thought themselves attacked in rear by a rush of hostile cavalry—as indeed they were, for the gendarmerie rode them down—and melted away.

Crécy (q.v.) was fought forty-four years after Courtrai. Here the knights had open ground to fight on, and many boasted that they would revenge themselves. But they encountered not merely infantry, but infantry tactics, and were for the second, and not the last, time destroyed. The English army included a large feudal element, but the spirit of indiscipline had been crushed by a series of iron-handed kings, and for more than a century the nobles, in so far as they had been bad subjects, had been good Englishmen. The English yeomen had reached a level of self-discipline and self-respect which few even of the great continental cities had attained. They had, lastly, made the powerful long-bow (see [Archery]) their own, and Edward I. had combined the shock of the heavy cavalry with the slow searching preparatory rain of arrows (see [Falkirk]). That is, infantry tactics and cavalry tactics were co-ordinated by a general, and the special point of this for the present purpose is that instead of being, as in France, the unstable base of the so-called “feudal pyramid,” infantry has become an arm, capable of offence and defence and having its own special organization, function in the line of battle and tactical method. This last, indeed, like every other tactical method, rested ultimately on the moral of the men who had to put it into execution. Archer tactics did not serve against the disciplined rush of Joan of Arc’s gendarmerie, for the solidarity of the archer companies that tried to stop it had long been undermined.

Yet we cannot overrate the importance of the archer in this period of military history. In the city militias solidarity had been obtained through the close personal relationship of the trade gilds and by the elimination of the champion. The English archer. Therefore, as every offensive in war rests upon boldness, these militias were essentially defensive, for they could only hope to ward off the feudal champion, not to outfight him (Battle of Legnano, 1176. See Oman, p. 442). England, however, had evolved a weapon which no armour could resist, and a race of men as fully trained to use it as the gendarme was to use the lance.[2] This weapon gave them the power of killing without being killed, which the citizens’ spears and maces and voulges did not. But like all missiles, arrows were a poor stand-by in the last resort if determined cavalry crossed the “beaten zone” and closed in, and besides pavises and pointed stakes the English archers were given the support of the knights, nobles and sergeants—the armoured champions—whose steady lances guaranteed their safety. Here was the real forward stride in infantry tactics. Archery had existed from time immemorial, and a mere technical improvement in its weapon could hardly account for its suddenly becoming the queen of the battlefield. The defensive power of the “dark impenetrable wood” of spears had been demonstrated again and again, but when the cavalry had few or no preliminary difficulties to face, the chances of the infantry mass resisting long-continued pressure was small. It was the combination of the two elements that made possible a Crécy and a Poitiers, and this combination was the result of the English social system which produced the camaraderie of knight and yeoman, champion and plain soldier. Fortified by the knight’s unshakeable steadiness, the yeoman handled his bow and arrows with cool certainty and rapidity, and shot down every rush of the opposing champions. This was camaraderie de combat indeed, and in such conditions the offensive was possible and even easy. The English conquered whole countries while the Flemish and German spearmen and vougiers merely held their own. For them, decisive victories were only possible when the enemy played into their hands, but for the English the guarantee of such victories was the specific character of their army itself and the tactical methods resulting from and expressing that character.

But the war of conquest embodied in these decisive victories dwindled in its later stages to a war of raids. The feudal lord, like the feudal vassal, returned home and gave place to the professional man-at-arms and the professional The Hundred Years’ War. captain. Ransom became again the chief object, and except where a great leader, such as Bertrand Du Guesclin, compelled the mercenaries to follow him to death or victory, a battle usually became a mêlée of irregular duels between men-at-arms, with all the selfishness and little of the chivalry of the purely feudal encounter. The war went on and on, the gendarmes thickened their armour, and the archers found more difficulty in penetrating it. Moreover, in raids for devastation and booty, the slow-moving infantryman was often a source of danger to his comrades. In this guerrilla the archer, though he kept his place, soon ceased to be the mainstay of battle. It had become customary since Crécy (where the English knights and sergeants were dismounted to protect the archers) for all mounted men to send away their horses before engaging. Here and there cavalry masses were used by such energetic leaders as the Black Prince and Du Guesclin, and more often a few men remained mounted for work requiring exceptional speed and courage,[3] but as a general rule the man-at-arms was practically a mounted infantryman, and when he dismounted he stood still. Thus two masses of dismounted lances, mixed with archers, would meet and engage, but the archers, the offensive element, were now far too few in proportion to the lances, the purely defensive element, and battles became indecisive skirmishes instead of overwhelming victories.

Cavalry therefore became, in a very loose sense of the word, infantry. But we are tracing the history not of all troops that stood on their feet to fight, but of infantry and the special tactics of infantry, and the period before and after 1370, when the moral foundations of the new English tactics had disappeared, and the personality of Du Guesclin gave even the bandits of the “free companies” an intrinsic, if slight, superiority over the invaders, is a period of deadlock. Solidarity, such as it was, had gone over to the side of the heavy cavalry. But the latter had deliberately forfeited their power of forcing the decision by fighting on foot, and the English archer, the cadre of the English tactical system, though diminished in numbers, prestige and importance, held to existence and survived the deadlock. Infantry of that type indeed could never return to the “residue” state, and it only needed a fresh moral impetus, a Henry V., to set the old machinery to work again for a third great triumph. But again, after Agincourt, the long war lapsed into the hands of the soldiers of fortune, the basis of Edward’s and Henry’s tactics crumbled, and, led by a greater than Du Guesclin, the knights and the nobles of France, and the mercenary captains and men-at-arms as well, rode down the stationary masses of the English, lances and bowmen alike.

The net result of the Hundred Years’ War therefore was to re-establish the two arms, cavalry and infantry, side by side, the one acting by shock, and the other by fire. The lesson of Crécy was “prepare your charge before delivering it,” and for that purpose great bodies of infantry armed with bows, arblasts and handguns were brought into existence in France. When the French king in 1448 put into force the “lessons of the war” and organized a permanent army, it consisted in the main of heavy cavalry (knights and squires in the “ordonnance” companies, soldiers of fortune in the paid companies) and archers and arblasters (francs-archers recruited nationally, arblasters as a rule mercenaries, though largely recruited in Gascony). To these armes de jet were added, in ever-increasing numbers, hand firearms. Thus the “fire” principle of attack was established, and the defensive principle of “mass” relegated to the background. In such circumstances cavalry was of course the decisive arm, and the reputation of the French gendarmerie was such as to justify this bold elimination of the means of passive defence.[4]

The foot-soldier of Germany and the Low Countries had followed a very different line of development. Here the rich commercial cities scarcely concerned themselves with the quarrels or revolts of neighbouring nobles, Burgher militias. but they resolutely defended their own rights against feudal interference, and enforced them by an organized militia, opposing the strict solidarity of their own institutions to the prowess of the champion who threatened them. The struggle was between “you shall” on the part of the baron and “we will not” on the part of the citizens, the offensive versus the defensive in the simplest and plainest form. The latter was a policy of unbreakable squares, and wherever possible, strong positions as well. Sometimes the citizens, sometimes the nobles gained the day, but the general result was that steady infantry in proper formation could not be ridden down, and as yeomen-archers of the English type to “prepare” the charge were not obtainable from amongst the serf populations of the countryside, the problem of the attack was, for Central Europe, insoluble.

The unbreakable square took two forms, the wagenburg with artillery, and the infantry mass with pikes. The first was no more, in the beginning, than an expedient for the safe and rapid crossing of wider stretches of open country The Wagenburg. than would have been possible for dismounted men, whom the cavalry headed off as soon as they ventured far enough from the shelter of walls. The men rode not on horses but on carriages, and the carriages moved over the plains in laager formation, the infantrymen standing ready with halbert and voulge or short stabbing spear, and the gunners crouching around the long barrelled two-pounders and the “ribaudequins”—the early machine guns—which were mounted on the wagons. These wagenburgen combined in themselves the due proportions of mobility and passive defence, and in the skilled hands of Ziska they were capable of the boldest offensive. But such a tactical system depended first of all on drill, for the armoured cavalry would have crowded through the least gap in the wagon line, and the necessary degree of drill in those days could only be attained by an army which had both a permanent existence and some bond of solidarity more powerful than the incentive to plunder—that is, in practice, it was only attained in full by the Hussite insurgents. The cavalry, too, learned its lesson, and pitted mobile three-pounders against the foot-soldiers’ one- and two-pounders, and the wagenburg became no more than a helpless target. Thus when, not many years after the end of the Hussite wars, the Wars of the Roses eliminated the English model and the English tactics from the military world of Europe, the French system of fire tactics—masses of archers, arblasters and handgun-men, with some spearmen and halberdiers to stiffen them—was left face to face with that of the Swiss and Landsknechts, the system of the “long pike.”

A series of victories ranging from Morgarten (1315) to Nancy (1477) had made the Swiss the most renowned infantry in Europe. Originally their struggles with would-be oppressors had taken the form, often seen elsewhere, of arraying solid The Swiss. masses of men, united in purpose and fidelity to one another rather than by any material or tactical cohesion. Like the men of Bruges at Courtrai, the Swiss had the advantage of broken ground, and the still greater advantage of being opposed by reckless feudal cavalry. Their armament at this stage was not peculiar—voulges, gisarmes, halberts and spears—though they were specially adept in the use of the two-handed sword. But as time went on the long pike (said to have originated in Savoy or the Milanese about 1330) became more and more popular until at last on the verge of their brief ascendancy (about 1475-1515) the Swiss armed as much as one quarter of their troops with it. The use of firearms made little or no progress amongst them, and the Swiss mercenaries of 1480, like their forerunners of Morgarten and Sempach, fought with the arme blanche alone. But in a very few years after the Swiss nation had become soldiers of fortune en masse, the more open lands of Swabia entered into serious and bitter competition with them. From these lands came the Landsknechts, whose order was as strong as, and far less unwieldy than, that of the Swiss, whose armament included a far greater proportion of firearms, and who established a regimental system that left a permanent mark on army organization. The Landsknecht was the prototype of the infantryman of the 16th and 17th centuries, but his right to indicate the line of evolution had to be wrung from many rivals.

The year 1480 indeed was a turning-point in military history. Within the three years preceding it the battles of Nancy and Guinegate had destroyed both the old feudalism of Charles the Bold and the new cavalry tactics of the The long pike. French gendarmerie. The former was an anachronism, while the latter, when the great wars came to an end and there was no longer either a national impulse or a national leader, had lapsed into the old vices of ransom and plunder. With these, on the same fields, the franc-archer system of infantry tactics perished ignominiously. It rested, as we know, on the principle that the fire of the infantry was to be combined with and completed by the shock of the gendarmerie, and when the latter were found wanting as at Guinegate, the masses of archers and arblasters, which were only feebly supported by a few handfuls of pikemen and halberdiers, were swept away by the charge of some heavy battalions of Swabian and Flemish pikes. Guinegate was the début of the Landsknecht infantry as Nancy was that of the Swiss, and the lesson could not be misread. Louis XI. indeed hanged some of his franc-archers and dismissed the rest, and in their place raised “bands” of regular infantry, one of which bore for the first time the historic name of Picardie. But these “bands” were not self-contained. Armed for the most part with armes de jet they centred on the 6000 Swiss pikemen whom Louis XI., in 1480, took into his service, and for nearly fifty years thereafter the French foot armies are always composed of two elements, the huge battalions of Swiss or Landsknechts,[5] armed exclusively with the long pike (except for an ever-decreasing proportion of halberts, and a few arquebuses), and for their support and assistance, French and mercenary “bands.”

The Italian wars of 1494-1544, in which the principles of fire and shock were readjusted to meet the conditions created by firearms, were the nursery of modern infantry. The combinations of Swiss, Landsknechts, Spanish “tercios” and French “bands” that figured on the battlefields of the early 16th century were infinitely various. But it is not difficult to find a thread that runs through the whole.

The essence of the Swiss system was solidity. They arrayed themselves in huge oblongs of 5000 men and more, at the corners of which, like the tower bastions of a 16th-century fortress, stood small groups of arquebusiers. The The Italian Wars, 1494-1525. Landsknechts and the Romagnols of Italy, imitated and rivalled them, though as a rule developing more front and less depth. At this stage solidity was everything and fire-power nothing. At Fornuovo (1495) the mass of arquebusiers and arblasters in the French army did little or nothing; it was the Swiss who were l’espérance de l’ost. At Agnadello or Vailá in 1509 the ground and the “encounter-battle” character of the engagement gave special chances of effective employment to the arquebusiers on either side. Along the front the Venetian marksmen, secure behind a bank, picked off the leaders of the enemy as they came near. On the outer flank of the battle the bands of Gascon arquebusiers, which would otherwise have been relegated to an unimportant place in the general line of battle, lapped round the enemy’s flank in broken ground and produced great and almost decisive effect. But this was only an afterthought of the king of France and Bayard. In the rest of the battle the huge masses of Swiss pikes were thrown upon the enemy much as the old feudal cavalry had been, regardless of ditches, orchards and vineyards.

Then for a moment the problem was solved, or partially solved, by the artillery. From Germany the material, though not—at least to the same extent—the principle, of the wagenburg penetrated, in the first years of the 16th century, to Italy and thence to France. Thus by degrees a very numerous and exceedingly handy light artillery—“carts with gonnes,” as they were called in England—came into play on the Italian battlefields, and took over from the dying franc-archer system the work of preparing the assault by fire. For mere skirmishing the Swiss and Landsknechts had arquebusiers enough, without needing to call on the masses of Gascons, &c., and pari passu with the development of this artillery, the “bands,” other than Swiss and Landsknechts, began to improve themselves into pikemen and halberdiers. At Ravenna (1512) the bands of Gascony and Picardy, as well as the French aventuriers (the “bands of Piedmont,” afterwards the second senior regiment of the French line) fought in the line of battle shoulder to shoulder with the Landsknechts. On this day the fire action of the new artillery was extraordinarily murderous, ploughing lanes in the immobile masses of infantry. At Marignan the French gendarmerie and artillery, closely and skilfully combined, practically destroyed the huge masses of the Swiss, and so completely had “infantry” and “fire” become separate ideas that on the third day of this tremendous battle we find even the “bands of Piedmont” cutting their way into the Swiss masses.

But from this point the lead fell into the hands of the Spaniards. These were originally swift and handy light infantry, capable—like the Scottish Highlanders at Prestonpans and Falkirk long afterwards—of sliding The Spanish infantry and the arquebus. under the forest of pikes and breaking into the close-locked ranks with buckler and stabbing sword. For troops of this sort the arquebus was an ideal weapon, and the problem of self-contained infantry was solved by Gonsalvo de Cordoba, Pescara and the great Spanish captains of the day by intercalating small closed bodies of arquebusiers with rather larger, but not inordinately large, bodies of pikes. These arquebusiers formed separate, fully organized sections of the infantry regiment. In close defence they fought on the front and flanks of the pikes, but more usually they were pushed well to the front independently, their speed and excellent fire discipline enabling them to do what was wholly beyond the power of the older type of firing infantry—to take advantage of ground, to run out and reopen fire during a momentary pause in the battle of lance and pike, and to run back to the shelter of their own closed masses when threatened by an oncoming charge. When this system of tactics was consecrated by the glorious success of Pavia (1525), the “cart with gonnes” vanished and the system of fighting everywhere and always “at push of pike” fell into the background.

The lessons of Pavia can be read in Francis I.’s instructions to his newly formed Provincial (militia) Legions in 1534 and in the battle of Cerisoles ten years later. The “legion” was ordered to be composed of six “bands”—battalions we should 16th Century-tactics. call them now, but in those days the term “battalion” was consecrated to a gigantic square of the Swiss type—each of 800 pikes (including a few halberts) and 200 arquebusiers. The pikes, 4800 strong, of each legion were grouped in one large battalion, and covered on the front and flanks by the 1200 arquebuses, the latter working in small and handy squads. These “legions” did not of course count as good troops, but their organization and equipment, designed deliberately in peace time, and not affected by the coming and going of soldiers of fortune, represent therefore the theoretically perfect type for the 16th century. Cerisoles represents the system in practice, with veteran regular troops. On the side of the French most of the arquebuses were grouped on the right wing, in a long irregular line of companies or strong squads, supported at a moderate distance by companies or small battalions of “corselets” (pikes of the French bands of Picardy and Piedmont); the rest of the line of battle was composed of Landsknechts, &c., similarly arrayed, except that the arquebusiers were on the flanks and immediate front of the “corselets” and behind the arquebuses and corselets of the right wing came a Swiss monster of the old type. On the imperial side of the Landsknechts, Spanish and Italian infantry were drawn up in seven or eight battalions, each with its due proportion of pikes and “shot.” The course of the battle demonstrated both the active tactical power of the new form of fire-action and the solidity of the pike nucleus, the former in the attack and defence of hills, woods and localities, the latter in an episode in which a Spanish battalion, after being ridden through from corner to corner by the French gendarmes, continued on its way almost unchecked and quite unbroken. This combination of arquebusiers supported by corselets in first line and corselets with a few arquebusiers in second, reappeared at Renty (1554), and St Quentin (1557), and was in fact the typical disposition of infantry from about 1530 to 1600.

By 1550, then, infantry had entirely ceased to be an auxiliary arm. It contained within itself, and (what is more important) within its regimental units, the power of fighting effectively and decisively both at close quarters and at a distance—the principal characteristic of the arm to-day. It had, further, developed a permanent regimental existence, both in Spain and in France, and in the former country it had progressed so far from the “residue” state that young nobles preferred to trail a pike in the ranks of the foot to service in the gendarmerie or light horse. The service battalions were kept up to war strength by the establishment of depots and the preliminary training there of recruits. In France, apart from Picardie and the other old regiments, every temporary regiment, on disbandment, threw off a depot company of the best soldiers, on which nucleus the regiment was reconstituted for the next campaign. Moreover, the permanent establishment was augmented from time to time by the colonel-general of the foot “giving his white flag” to temporary regiments.

The organization of the French infantry in 1570 presents some points of interest. The former broad classification of au delà and en deça des monts or “Picardie” and “Piedmont,” representing the home and Italian armies, had disappeared, and The French infantry in 1570. instead the whole of the infantry, under one colonel-general, was divided into the regiments of Picardie, Piedmont and French Guards, each of which had its own colonel and its own colours. Besides these, three newer corps were entretenus par le Roy—“Champagne,” practically belonging to the Guise[6] family, and two others formed out of the once enormous regiment of Marshal de Cossé-Brissac. At the end of a campaign all temporary regiments were disbanded, but in imitation of the Spanish depot system, each, on disbandment, threw off a depot company of picked men who formed the nucleus for the next year’s augmentation. The regiment consisted of 10-16 “ensigns” or companies, each of about 150 pikemen and 50 arquebusiers. Each company had a proprietary captain, the owners of the first two companies being the colonel-general and the colonel (mestre de camp). The senior captain was called the sergeant-major, and performed the duties of a second in command and an adjutant or brigade-major. Unlike the regimental commander, the sergeant-major was always mounted, and it is recorded that one officer newly appointed to the post incurred the ridicule of the army by dismounting to speak to the king. “Some veteran officers,” wrote a contemporary, “are inclined to think that the regimental commander should be mounted as well as the sergeant-major.” The regiment was as a rule formed for parade and battle either in line 10 deep or in “battalion” (i.e. mass), Swiss fashion. The captain occupied the front, the ensigns with the company colours the centre, and the lieutenants the rear place in the file. The sergeants, armed with the halbert, marched on each side of the battalion or company. Though the musket was gradually being introduced, and had powerful advocates in Marshal Strozzi and the duke of Guise, the bulk of the “shot” still carried the arquebus, the calibre of which had been, thanks to Strozzi’s efforts, standardized (see [Caliver]) so that all the arms took the same sizes of ball. The pikeman had half-armour and a 14-ft. pike, the arquebusier beside the firearm a sword which he was trained to use in the manner of the former Spanish light infantry. The arquebusiers were arrayed in 3 ranks in front of the pikes or in 10 deep files on either flank.

The wars in which this system was evolved were wars for prestige and aggrandizement. They were waged, therefore, by mercenary soldiers, whose main object was to live, and who were officered either by men of their own stamp, or by nobles eager to win military glory. But the Wars of Religion raised questions of life and death for the Frenchmen of either faith, and such public opinion as there was influenced the method of operations so far that a decision and not a prolongation of the struggle began to be the desired end of operations. Hence in those wars the relatively immobile “battalion” of pikes diminishes in importance and the arquebusiers and musketeers grow more and more efficient. Armies, too, became smaller, and marched more rapidly. Encounter-battles became more frequent than “pitched” battles, and in these the musketeer was at a great advantage. Thus by 1600 the proportions between pikes and musketeers in the French army had come to be 6 pikes to 4 muskets or arquebuses, and the bataillon de combat or brigade was normally no more than 1200 strong. In the Netherlands, however, the war of consciences was fought out between the best regular army in the world and burgher militias. Even the French fantassins were second in importance to the Spanish soldados. The latter continued to hold the pre-eminent position they had gained at Pavia.[7] They improved the arquebus into the musket, a heavier and much more powerful weapon (fired from a rest) which could disable a horse at 500 paces.

At this moment the professional soldier was at the high-water mark of his supremacy. The musket was too complicated to be rapidly and efficiently used by any but a highly trained man; the pike, probably because it had now Alva. to protect two or three ranks of “shot” in front of the leading rank of pikemen, as well as the pikemen themselves, had grown longer (up to 18 ft.); and drill and manœuvre had become more important than ever, for in the meantime cavalry had mostly abandoned the massive armour and the long lance in favour of half-armour and the pistol, and their new tactics made them both swifter to charge groups of musketeers and more deadly to the solid masses of pikemen. This superiority of the regular over the irregular was most conspicuously shown in Alva’s war against the Netherlands patriots. Desperately as the latter fought, Spanish captains did not hesitate to attack patriot armies ten times their own strength. If once or twice this contempt led them to disaster, as at Heiligerlee in 1568 (though here, after all, Louis of Nassau’s army was chiefly composed of trained mercenaries), the normal battle was of the Jemmingen type—seven soldados dead and seven thousand rebels.

As regards battles in the open field, such results as these naturally confirmed the “Spanish system” of tactics. The Dutch themselves, when they evolved reliable field armies, copied it with few modifications, and by degrees it was spread over Europe by the professional soldiers on both sides. There was plenty of discussion and readjustment of details. For example, the French, with their smaller battalions and more rapid movements, were inclined to disparage both the cuirass and the pike, and only unwillingly hampered themselves with the long heavy Spanish musket, which had to be fired from a rest. In 1600, nearly fifty years after the introduction of the musket, this most progressive army still deliberately preferred the old light arquebus, and only armed a few selected men with the larger weapons. On the other hand, the Spaniards, though supreme in the open, had for the most part to deal with desperate men behind fortifications. Fighting, therefore, chiefly at close quarters with a fierce enemy, and not disposing either of the space or of the opportunity for “manœuvre-battles,” they sacrificed all their former lightness and speed, and clung to armour, the long pike and the heavy 2½ oz. bullet. But the principles first put into practice by Gonsalvo de Cordoba, the combination, in the proportions required in each case, of fire and shock elements in every body of organized infantry however small, were maintained in full vigour, and by now the superiority of the infantry arm in method, discipline and technique, which had long before made the Spanish nobles proud to trail a pike in the ranks, began to impress itself on other nations. The relative value of horse and foot became a subject for expert discussion instead of an axiom of class pride. The question of cavalry versus infantry, hotly disputed in all ages, is a matter affecting general tactics, and does not come within the scope of the present article (see further [Cavalry]). Expert opinion indeed was still on the side of the horsemen. It was on their cavalry, with its speed, its swords and its pistols that the armies of the 16th century relied in the main to produce the decision Infantry in 1600. in battle. Sir Francis Vane, speaking of the battle of Nieupoort in 1600, says, “Whereas most commonly in battles the success of the foot dependeth on that of the horse, here it was clean contrary, for so long as the foot held good the horse could not be beaten out of the field.” The “success” of the foot in Vane’s eyes is clearly resistance to disintegration rather than ability to strike a decisive blow.

Plate I.

Plate II.

It must be remembered, however, that Vane is speaking of the Low Countries, and that in France at any rate the solidity which saved the day at Nieupoort was less appreciated than the élan which had won so many smart engagements in the Wars of Religion. Moreover, it was the offensive, the decision-compelling faculty of the foot that steadily developed during the 17th century. To this, little by little, the powers of passive resistance to which Vane did homage, valuable as they were, were sacrificed, until at last the long pike disappeared altogether and the firearm, provided with a bayonet, was the uniform weapon of the foot-soldier. This stage of infantry history covers almost exactly a century. As far as France was concerned, it was a natural evolution. But the acceptance of the principle by the rest of the military world, imposed by the genius of Gustavus Adolphus, was rather revolution than evolution.

In the army which Louis XIII. led against his revolted barons of Anjou in 1620, the old regiments (les vieux—Picardie, Piedmont, &c.) seem to have marched in an open chequer-wise formation of companies which is interesting not only Gustavus Adolphus. as a deliberate imitation of the Roman legion (all soldiers of that time, in the prevailing confusion of tactical ideas, sought guidance in the works of Xenophon, Aelian and Vegetius), but as showing that flexibility and handiness was not the monopoly of the Swedish system that was soon to captivate military Europe. The formations themselves are indeed found in the Spanish and Dutch armies, but the equipment of the men, and the general character of the operations in which they were engaged, probably failed to show off the advantages of this articulation, for the generals of the Thirty Years’ War, trained in this school, formed their infantry into large battalions (generally a single line of masses). Experience certainly gave the troops that used these unwieldy formations a relatively high manœuvring capacity, for Tilly’s army at Breitenfeld (1631) “changed front half-left” in the course of the battle itself. But the manœuvring power of the Swedes was higher still. Each party represented one side of the classical revival, the Swedes the Roman three-line manipular tactics, the Imperialists and Leaguers those of the Greek line of phalanxes. The former, depending as it did on high moral in the individual foot-soldier, was hardly suitable to such a congeries of mercenaries as those that Wallenstein commanded, and later in the Thirty Years’ War, when the old native Swedish and Scottish brigades had been annihilated, the Swedish infantry was little if at all better than the rest.

But its tactical system, sanctified by victory, was eagerly caught up by military Europe. The musket, though it had finally driven out the arquebus, had been lightened by Gustavus Adolphus so far that it could be fired without a rest. Rapidity in loading had so far improved that a company could safely be formed six deep instead of ten, as in the Spanish and Dutch systems. Its fire power was further augmented by the addition of two very light field-guns to each battalion; these could inflict loss at twice the effective range of the shortened musket. Above all, Gustavus introduced into the military systems of Europe a new discipline based on the idea of exact performance of duty, which made itself felt in every part of the service, and was a welcome substitute for the former easy-going methods of regimental existence.[8] The adoption of Swedish methods indeed was facilitated by the disrepute into which the older systems had fallen. Men were beginning to see that armies raised by contract for a few months’ work possessed inherent vices that made it impossible to rely upon them in small things. Courage the mercenary certainly possessed, but his individual sense of honour, code of soldierly morals, and sometimes devotion to a particular leader did not compensate for the absence of a strong motive for victory and for his general refractoriness in matters of detail, such as march-discipline and punctuality, which had become essential since the great Swedish king had reintroduced order, method and definiteness of purpose into the conduct of military operations. In the old-fashioned masses, moreover, individual weaknesses, both moral and physical, counted for little or were suppressed in the general soldierly feeling of the whole body. But the six-deep line used by Gustavus demanded more devotion and exact obedience in the individual and a more uniform method of drill and handling arms. So shallow an order was not strong enough, under any other conditions, to resist the shock of cavalry or even of pikemen. Indeed, had not the cavalry (who, after Gustavus’s death, were uninspired mercenaries like the rest) ceased to charge home in the fashion that Gustavus exacted of them, it is possible that the new-fashioned line would not have stood the test, and that infantry would have reverted to the early 16th-century type.

The problem of combining the maximum of fire power with the maximum of control over the individual firer was not fully solved until 1740, but the necessity of attempting the problem was realised from the first. In the Swedish The Great Rebellion. army, before it was corrupted by the atmosphere of the Thirty Years’ War, duty to God and to country were the springs of the punctual discipline, in small things and in great, which made it the most formidable army, unit for unit, in the world. In the English Civil War (in which the adherents of the “Swedish system” from the first ousted those of the “Dutch”) the difficulty was more acute, for although the mainsprings of action were similar, the technical side of the soldier’s business—the regimental organization, drill and handling of arms—had all to be improvised. Now in the beginning the Royalist cavalry was recruited from “gentlemen that have honour and courage and resolution”; later, Cromwell raised a cavalry force that was even more thoroughly imbued with the spirit of duty, “men who made some conscience of what they did,” and throughout the Civil War, consequently, the mounted arm was the queen of the battlefield.

The Parliamentary foot too “made some conscience of what it did,” more especially in the first years of the war. But its best elements—the drilled townsmen—were rather of a defensive than of an offensive character, and towards the close of the struggle, when the foot on both sides came to be formed of professional soldiers, the defensive element decreased, as it had decreased in France and elsewhere. The war was like Gustavus’s German campaign, one of rapid and far-ranging marches, and the armoured pikeman had either to shorten his pike and to cast off his armour or to be left at home with the heavy artillery (see Firth’s Cromwell’s Army, ch. iv.). Fights “at push of pike” were rare enough to be specially mentioned in reports of battles. Sir James Turner says that in 1657, when he was commissioned with others to raise regiments for the king of Denmark, “those of the Privy Council would not suffer one word to be mentioned of a pike in our Commissions.” It was the same with armour. In 1658 Lockhart, the commander of the English contingent in France, specially asked for a supply of cuirasses and headpieces for his pikemen in order to impress his allies. In 1671 Sir James Turner says, “When we see battalions of pikes, we see them everywhere naked unless it be in the Netherlands.” But a small proportion of pikes was still held to be necessary by experienced soldiers, for as yet the socket bayonet had not been invented, and there was still cavalry in Europe that could be trusted to ride home.

While such cavalry existed, the development of fire power was everywhere hindered by the necessity of self-defence. On the other hand the hitherto accepted defensive means militated against efficiency in many ways, and about 1670, when Louis Disuse of the pike. XIV. and Louvois were fashioning the new standing army that was for fifty years the model for Europe, the problem was how to improve the drill and efficiency of the musketeers so far that the pikes could be reduced to a minimum. In 1680 the firelock was issued instead of the matchlock to all grenadiers and to the four best shots in each French Company. The bayonet—in its primitive form merely a dagger that was fixed into the muzzle of the musket—was also introduced, and the pike was shortened. The proportion of pikes to muskets in Henry IV.’s day, 2 to 1 or 3 to 2, and in Gustavus’s 2 to 3, had now fallen to 1 to 3.

The day of great causes that could inspire the average man with the resolution to conquer or die was, however, past, and the “shallow order” (l’ordre mince), with all its demands on the individual’s sense of duty, had become an integral part of the military system. How then was the sense of duty to be created? Louis and Louvois and their contemporaries sought to create it by taking raw recruits in batches, giving them a consistent training, quartering them in barracks and uniforming them. Henceforward the soldier was not a unit, self-taught and free to enter the service of any master. He had no existence as a soldier apart from his regiment, and within it he was taught that the regiment was everything and the individual nothing. Thus by degrees the idea of implicit obedience to orders and of esprit de corps was absorbed. But the self-respecting Englishman or the quick ardent Frenchman was not the best raw material for quasi-automatic regiments, and it was not until an infinitely more rigorous system of discipline was applied to an unimaginative army that the full possibilities of this enforced sense of duty were realized.

The method of delivering fire originally used by the Spaniards, in which each man in succession fired and fell back to the rear of the file to reload, required for its continued and exact performance a degree of coolness and individual smartness Methods of fire before 1740. which was probably rarely attained in practice. This was not of serious moment when the “shot” were simple auxiliaries, but when under Gustavus the offensive idea came to the front, and the bullets of the infantry were expected to do something more than merely annoy the hostile pikemen, a more effective method had to be devised. First, the handiness of the musket was so far improved that one man could reload while five, instead of as formerly ten, fired. Then, as the enhanced rate of fire made the file-firing still more disorderly than before, two ranks and three were set to fire “volews” or “salvees” together, and before 1640 it had become the general custom for the musketeers to fire one or two volleys and then, along with the pikemen, to “fall on.” It was of course no mean task to charge even a disordered mass of pikes with a short sword or a clubbed musket, and usually after a few minutes the combatants would drift apart and the musketeers on either side would keep up an irregular fire until the officers urged the whole forward for a second attempt.

With the general disuse of the lance, the disappearance of the personal motives that formerly made the cavalryman charge home, the adoption of the flintlock musket and the invention of the socket bayonet (the fixing of which did not prevent fire The bayonet. being delivered), all reason for retaining the pike vanished, and from about 1700 to the present day, therefore, the invariable armament of infantry has been the musket (or rifle) and bayonet. The manner of employing the weapons, however, changed but slowly. In the French army in 1688, for instance (15 years before the abolition of the pike), the old file-fire was still officially recognized, though rarely employed, the more usual method being for the musketeers in groups of 12 to 30 men to advance to the front and deliver their volleys in turn, these groups corresponding in size to one of the musketeer wings (manches) of a company or double company. But the fire and shock action of infantry were still distinct, the idea of “push of pike” remained, the bayonet (as at Marsaglia) taking the place of the pike, and musketry methods were still and throughout the War of the Spanish Succession somewhat half-hearted and tentative. Two generals so entirely different in genius and temperament as Saxe and Catinat could agree on this point, that attacking infantry ought to close with the enemy, bayonets fixed, without firing a shot. Catinat’s orders to his army in 1690, indeed, seem rather to indicate that he expected his troops to endure the enemy’s first fire without replying in order that their own volley, when it was at last delivered at a few paces distance, should be as murderous as possible, while Saxe, who was a dreamer as well as a practical commander of troops, advocated the pure bayonet charge. But the fact that is common to both is the relative ineffectiveness of musketry before the Prussian era, whether this musketry was delivered by groups of men running forward and returning in line or even by companies in a long line of battle.

This ineffectiveness was due chiefly to the fact that fire and movement were separate matters. The enemy’s volley, that Catinat and others ordered their troops to endure without flinching, was sometimes (as at Fontenoy) absolutely crushing. But as a rule it inflicted an amount of loss that was not sufficient to put the advancing troops out of action, and experienced officers were aware that to halt to reply gave the enemy time to reload, and that once the fight became an interchange of partial and occasional volleys or a general tiraillerie, there was an end to the attack.

Meanwhile, the tactics of armies had been steadily crystallizing into the so-called “linear” form, which, as far as concerns the infantry, is simply two long lines of battalions (three, four or five deep) and gave the utmost possible development Linear tactics. to fire-power. The object of the “line” was to break or beat down the opposing line in the shortest possible time, whether by fire action or shock action, but fire action was only decisive at so short a range that the principal volley could be followed immediately by a charge over a few score paces at most and the crossing of bayonets. Fire was, however, effective at ranges outside charging distance, especially from the battalion guns, and however the decision was achieved in the end, it was necessary to cross the zone between about 300 yds. and 50 yds. range as quickly as possible. It was therefore the business of the regimental officer to force his men across this zone before fire was opened. If, as Catinat recommended, decisive range was reached with every musket loaded and the troops well in hand, their fire when finally it was delivered might well be decisive. But in practice this rarely happened, and though here and there such expedients as a skirmishing line were employed to assist the advance by disturbing the enemy’s fire the most that was hoped by the average colonel or captain was that in the advance fire should be opened as late as possible and that the officers should strive to keep in their hands the power of breaking off the fire-fight and pushing the troops forward again. Theorists were already proposing column formations for shock action, and initiating the long controversy between l’ordre mince and l’ordre profonde, but this was for the time being pure speculation. The linear system rested on the principle that the maximum weight of controlled fire at short range was decisive, and the practical problem of infantry tactics was how to obtain this. The question of fire versus shock had been answered in favour of the former, and henceforward for many years the question of fire versus movement held the first place. The purpose was settled, and it remained to discover the means.

This means was Prussian fire-discipline, which was elaborated by Leopold of Dessau and Frederick William I., and practically applied by Frederick the Great. It consisted first in the combination, instead of the alternation, of fire and movement, and secondly in the thorough efficiency of the fire in itself. But both these demanded a more stringent and technically more perfect drill than had ever before been imagined, or, for that matter, has ever since been attained. A hundred years before the steady drill of the Spanish veterans at Rocroi, who at the word of command opened their ranks to let the cannon fire from the rear and again closed them, impressed every soldier in Europe. But such drill as this was child’s play compared with the Old Dessauer’s.

On approaching the enemy the marching columns of the Prussians, which were generally open columns of companies 4 deep, wheeled, in succession to the right or left (almost always to the right) and thus passed along the front of the enemy at a distance Prussian fire discipline, 1740. of 800-1200 yds. until the rear company had wheeled. Then the whole together (or in the case of a deployment to the left, in succession) wheeled into line facing the enemy. These movements, if intervals and distances were preserved with proper precision, brought the infantry into two long well-closed lines, and parade-ground precision was actually attained, thanks to remorseless drilling and to the reintroduction of the march in step to music. Of course such movements were best executed on a firm plain, and as far as possible the attack and defence of woods and villages was left to light infantry and grenadiers. But even in marshes and scrub, the line managed to manœuvre with some approach to the precision of the barrack square.[9] Now, this precision allowed Frederick to take risks that no former commander would have dared to take. At Hohenfriedberg the infantry columns crossed a marshy stream almost within cannon shot of the enemy; at Kolin (though there this insolence was punished) the army filed past the Imperialist skirmishers within less than musket shot, and the climax of this daring was the “oblique order” attack of Leuthen. With this was bound up a fire discipline that was more extraordinary than any perfection of manœuvre. Before Hohenfriedberg the king gave orders that “pelotonfeuer” was to be opened at 200 paces from the enemy and continued up to 30 paces, when the line was to fall on with the bayonet. The possibility of this combination of fire and movement was the work of Leopold, who gave the Prussian infantry iron ramrods, and by sheer drill made the soldier a machine capable of delivering (with the flintlock muzzle-loading muskets, be it observed) five volleys a minute. This pelotonfeuer or company volleys replaced the old fire by ranks practised in other armies. Fire began from the flanks of the battalion, which consisted of eight companies (for firing, 3 deep). When the right company commander gave “fire,” the commander of No. 2 gave “ready,” followed in turn by other companies up to the centre. The same process having been gone through on the left flank, by the time the two centre companies had fired the two flank companies were ready to recommence, and thus a continuous series of rolling volleys was delivered, at one or two seconds’ interval only between companies. In attack this fire was combined with movement, each company in turn advancing a few paces after “making ready.” In square, old-fashioned methods of fire were employed. Square was an indecisive and defensive formation, rarely used, and in the advance of the deployed line, the offensive and decision-seeking formation par excellence, the special Prussian fire-discipline gave Frederick an advantage of five shots to two against all opponents. The bayonet-attack, if the rolling volleys had done their work, was merely “presenting the cheque for payment” as a modern German writer puts it. The cheque had been drawn, the decision given, in the fire-fight.

For some years this method of infantry training gave the Prussians a decisive superiority in whatever order they fought. But their enemies improved and also grew in numbers, while the Prussian army’s resources were strictly Leuthen. limited. Thus in the Seven Years’ War, after the two costly battles of Prague and Kolin (1757) especially, it became necessary to manœuvre with the object of bringing the Prussian infantry into contact with an equal or if possible smaller portion of the enemy’s line. If this could be achieved, victory was as certain as ever, but the difficulties of bringing about a successful manœuvre were such that the classical “oblique order” attack was only once completely executed. This was at Leuthen, December 5th, 1757, perhaps the greatest day in the history of the Prussian army. Here, in a rolling plain country occasionally broken by marshes and villages, the “oblique order” was executed at high speed and with clockwork precision. Frederick’s object was to destroy the left of the Austrian army (which far outnumbered his own) before the rest of their deployed line of battle could change front to intervene. His method was to place his own line, by a concealed flank march, opposite the point where he desired to strike, and then to advance, not in two long lines but in échelon of battalions from the right (see [Leuthen]). The échelon was not so deep but that each battalion was properly supported by the following one on its left (100 paces distance), and each, as it came within 200 yds. of the Austrian battalion facing it, opened its “rolling volleys” while continuing to advance; thus long before the left and most backward battalions were committed to the fight, the right battalions were crumbling the Austrian infantry units one by one from left to right. It was the same, without parade manœuvres, when at last the Austrians managed to organize a line of defence about Leuthen village. Unable to make an elaborate change of front with the whole centre and right wing for want of time, they could do no more than crowd troops about Leuthen, on a short fighting front, and this crumbled in turn before the Prussian volleys.

One lesson of Leuthen that contemporary soldiers took to heart was that even a two-to-one superiority in numbers could not remedy want of manoeuvring capacity. It might be hoped that with training and drill an Austrian battalion could be made equal to a Prussian one in the front-to-front fight, and in fact, as losses told more and more heavily on Frederick’s army as years went on, the specific superiority of his infantry disappeared. From 1758 therefore, to the end of the war, there were no more Rossbachs and Leuthens. Superiority in efficiency through previous training having exhausted its influence, superiority in force through manœuvre began to be the general’s ideal, and as it was a more familiar notion to the average Prussian general, trained to manœuvre, than to his opponent, whose idea of “manœuvre” was to sidle carefully from one position to another, Prussian generalship maintained its superiority, in spite of many reverses, to the end. The last campaigns were indeed a war of positions, because Frederick had no longer the men available for forcing the Austrians out of them, and on many occasions he was so weak that the most passive defensive and the most elaborate entrenchments barely sufficed to save him. But whenever opportunity offered itself, the king sought a decisive success by bringing the whole of his infantry against part of the enemy’s—the principle of Leuthen put in practice over a wider area and with more elastic manœuvre methods. The long échelon of battalions directed against a part of the hostile line developed quite naturally into an irregular échelon of brigade columns directed against a part of the enemy’s position. But the history of the “cordon system” which followed this development belongs rather to the subject of tactics in general than to that of infantry fighting methods. Within the unit the tactical method scarcely varied. In a battle each battalion or brigade fought as a unit in line, using company volleys and seeking the decision by fire.

In this, and in even the most minute details of drill and uniform, military Europe slavishly copied Prussia for twenty years after the Seven Years’ War. The services of ex-Prussian officers were at a premium just as those of Controversies and developments, 1760-1790. Gustavus’s officers had been 150 years before. Military missions from all countries went to Potsdam or to the “Reviews” to study Prussian methods, with as simple a faith in their adequacy as that shown to-day by small states and half-civilized kingdoms who send military representatives to serve in the great European armies. And withal, the period 1763-1792 is full of tactical and strategical controversies. The principal of these, as regards infantry, was that between “fire” and “shock” revived about 1710 by Folard, and about 1780 the American War of Independence complicated it by introducing a fresh controversy between skirmishing and close order. As to the first, in Folard’s day as in Frederick’s, fire action at close range was the deciding factor in battle, but in Frederick’s later campaigns, wherein he no longer disposed of the old Prussian infantry and its swift mechanical fire-discipline, there sprang up a tendency to trust to the bayonet for the decision. If the (so-called) Prussian infantry of 1762 could be in any way brought to close with the enemy, it had a fair chance of victory owing to its leaders’ previous dispositions, and then the advocates of “shock,” who had temporarily been silenced by Mollwitz and Hohenfriedberg, again took courage. The ordinary line was primarily a formation for fire, and only secondarily or by the accident of circumstances for shock, and, chiefly perhaps under Saxe’s influence, the French army had for many years been accustomed to differentiate between “linear” formations for fire and “columnar” for attack—thus reverting to 16th-century practice. While, therefore, the theoreticians pleaded for battalion columns and the bayonet or for line and the bullet, the practical soldier used both. Many forms of combined line and column were tried, but in France, where the question was most assiduously studied, no agreement had been arrived at when the advent of the skirmisher further complicated the issues.

In the early Silesian wars, when armies fought in open country in linear order, the outpost service scarcely concerned the line troops sufficiently to cause them to get under arms at the sound of firing on the sentry line. It was performed by irregular light troops, recruited from wild characters of all nations, who were also charged with the preliminary skirmishing necessary to clear up the situation before the deployment of the battle-army, but once the line opened fire their work was done and they cleared away to the flanks (generally in search of plunder). Later, however, as the preliminary manœuvring before the battle grew in importance and the ground taken into the manœuvring zone was more varied and extended than formerly, light infantry was more and more in demand—in a “cordon” defensive for patrolling the intervals between the various detachments of line troops, in an attack for clearing the way for the deployment of each column. Yet in all this there was no suggestion that light troops or skirmishers were capable of bringing about the decision in an armed conflict. When Frederick gained a durable peace in 1763 he dismissed his “free battalions” without mercy, and by 1764 not more than one Prussian soldier in eleven was an “irregular,” either of horse or foot.[10]

But in the American War of Independence the line was pitted against light infantry in difficult country, and the British and French officers who served in it returned to Europe full of enthusiasm for the latter. Nevertheless, their light infantry Light Infantry. was, unlike Frederick’s, selected line infantry. The light infantry duties—skirmishing, reconnaissance, outposts—were grafted on to a thorough close-order training. At first these duties fell to the grenadiers and light companies of each battalion, but during the struggle in the colonies, the light companies of a brigade were so frequently massed in one battalion that in the end whole regiments were converted into light infantry. This combination of “line” steadiness and “skirmisher” freedom was the keynote of Sir John Moore’s training system fifteen years later, and Moore’s regiments, above all the 52nd, 43rd (now combined as the Oxfordshire Light Infantry) and 95th Rifles (Rifle Brigade), were the backbone of the British Army throughout the Peninsular War. At Waterloo the 52nd, changing front in line at the double, flung itself on the head and flank of the Old Guard infantry, and with the “rolling volleys” inherited from the Seven Years’ War, shattered it in a few minutes. Such an exploit would have been absolutely inconceivable in the case of one of the old “free battalions.” But the light infantry had not merely been levelled up to the line, it had surpassed it, and in 1815 there were no troops in Europe, whether trained to fight in line or column or skirmishers, who could rival the three regiments named, the “Light Division” of Peninsular annals. For meantime the infantry organization and tactics of the old régime, elsewhere than in England, had been disintegrated by the flames of the French Revolution, and from their ashes a new system had arisen, which forms the real starting-point of the infantry tactics of to-day.

The controversialists of Louis XVI.’s time, foremost of whom were Guibert, Joly de Maizeroy and Menil Durand (see Max Jähns, Gesch. d. Kriegswissenschaften, vol. iii.), were agreed that shock action should be the work of troops The French Revolution. formed in column, but as to the results to be expected from shock action, the extent to which it should be facilitated by a previous fire preparation, and the formations In which fire should be delivered (line, line with skirmishers or “swarms”) discussion was so warm that it sometimes led to wrangles in ladies’ drawing-rooms and meetings in the duelling field. The drill-book for the French infantry issued shortly before the Revolution was a common-sense compromise, which in the main adhered to the Frederician system as modified by Guibert, but gave an important place in infantry tactics to the battalion “columns of attack,” that had hitherto appeared only spasmodically on the battlefields of the French army and never elsewhere. This, however, and the quick march (100 paces to the minute instead of the Frederician 75) were the only prescriptions in the drill-book that survived the test of a “national” war, to which within a few years it was subjected (see [French Revolutionary Wars]). The rest, like the “linear system” of organization and manœuvre to which it belonged (see [Army], §§ 30-33; [Conscription], &c.) was ignored, and circumstances and the practical troop-leaders evolved by circumstances fashioned the combination of close-order columns and loose-order skirmishers which constituted essentially the new tactics of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic infantry.

The process of evolution cannot be stated in exact terms, more especially as the officers, as they grew in wisdom through experience, learned to apply each form in accordance with ground and circumstances, and to reject, when unsuitable, not only the Tactical evolution in France 1792-1807. forms of the drill-book, but the forms proposed by themselves to replace those of the drill-book. But certain tendencies are easily discernible. The first tendency was towards the dissolution of all tactical links. The earlier battles were fought partly in line for fire action, partly in columns for the bayonet attack. Now the linear tactics depended on exact preservation of dressing, intervals and distances, and what required in the case of the Prussians years of steady drill at 76 paces to the minute was hardly attainable with the newly levied ardent Frenchmen marching at 100 to 120. Once, therefore, the line moved, it broke up into an irregular swarm of excited firers, and experience soon proved that only the troops kept out of the turmoil, whether in line or in column, were susceptible of manœuvre and united action. Thus from about 1795 onwards the forms of the old régime, with half the troops in front in line of battle (practically in dense hordes of firers) and the other half in rear in line or line of columns, give way to new ones in which the skirmishers are fewer and the closed troops more numerous, and the decision rests no longer with the fire of the leading units (which of course could not compare in effectiveness with the rolling volleys of the drilled line) but with the bayonets of the second and third lines—the latter being sometimes in line but more often, owing to the want of preliminary drill, in columns. The skirmishers tended again to become pure light infantry, whose rôle was to prepare, not to give, the decision, and who fought in a thin line, taking every advantage of cover and marksmanship. In the Consulate and early Empire, indeed, we commonly find, in the closed troops destined for the attack, mixed line and column formations combining in themselves shock and controlled close-order fire—absolutely regardless of the skirmishers in front.

In sum, then, from 1792 to 1795 the fighting methods of the French infantry, of which so much has been written and said, are, as they have aptly been called, “horde-tactics.” From 1796 onwards to the first campaigns of the Empire, on the other hand, there is an ever-growing tendency to combine skirmishers, properly so called, with controlled and well-closed bodies in rear, the first to prepare the attack to the best of their ability by individual courage and skill at arms, the second to deliver it at the right moment (thanks to their retention of manœuvre formations), and with all possible energy (thanks to the cohesion, moral and material, which carried forward even the laggards). Even when in the long wars of the Empire the quality of the troops progressively deteriorated, infantry tactics within the regiment or brigade underwent no radical alteration. The actual formations were most varied, but they always contained two of the three elements, column, line and skirmishers. Column (generally two lines of battalions in columns of double-companies) was for shock or attack, line for fire-effect, and skirmishers to screen the advance, to scout the ground and to disturb the enemy’s aim. Of these, except on the defensive (which was rare in a Napoleonic battle), the “column” of attack was by far the most important. The line formations for fire, with which it was often combined, rarely accounted for more than one-quarter of the brigade or division, while the skirmishers were still less numerous. Withal, these formations in themselves were merely fresh shapes for old ideas. The armament of Napoleon’s troops was almost identical with that of Frederick’s or Saxe’s. Line, column and combinations of the two were as old as Fontenoy and were, moreover, destined to live for many years after Napoleon had fallen. “Horde-tactics” did not survive the earlier Revolutionary campaigns. Wherein then lies the change which makes 1792 rather than 1740 the starting-point of modern tactics?

The answer, in so far as so comprehensive a question can be answered from a purely infantry standpoint, is that whereas Frederick, disposing of a small and highly finished instrument, used its manœuvre power and regimental Napoleon’s infantry and artillery tactics, 1807-1815. efficiency to destroy one part of his enemy so swiftly that the other had no time to intervene, Napoleon, who had numbers rather than training on his side, only delivered his decisive blow after he had “fixed” all bodies of the enemy which would interfere with his preparations—i.e. had set up a physical barrier against the threatened intervention. This new idea manifested itself in various forms. In strategy (q.v.) and combined tactics it is generally for convenience called “economy of force.” In the domain of artillery (see [Artillery]) it marked a distinction, that has revived in the last twenty years, between slow disintegrating fire and sudden and overpowering “fire-preparation.” As regards infantry the effect of it was revolutionary. Regiments and brigades were launched to the attack to compel the enemy to defend himself, and fought until completely dissolved to force him to use up his reserves. “On s’engage partout et puis l’on voit” is Napoleon’s own description of his holding attack, which in no way resembled the “feints” of previous generations. The self-sacrifice of the men thus engaged enabled their commander to “see,” and to mass his reserves opposite a selected point, while little by little the enemy was hypnotized by the fighting. Lastly, when “the battle was ripe” a hundred and more guns galloped into close range and practically annihilated a part of the defender’s line. They were followed up by masses of reserve infantry, often more solidly formed at the outset than the old Swiss masses of the 16th century.[11] If the moment was rightly chosen these masses, dissolved though they soon were into dense formless crowds, penetrated the gap made by the guns (with their arms at the slope) and were quickly followed by cavalry divisions to complete the enemy’s defeat. Here, too, it is to be observed there is no true shock. The infantry masses merely “present the cheque for payment,” and apart from surprises, ambushes and fights in woods and villages there are few recorded cases of bayonets being crossed in these wars. Napoleon himself said “Le feu est tout, le reste peu de chose,” and though a mere plan of his dispositions suggests that he was the disciple of Folard and Menil Durand, in reality he simply applied “fire-power” in the new and grander form which his own genius imagined.

The problem, then, was not what it had been one hundred and fifty years before. The business of the attack was not to break down the passive resistance of the defence, but to destroy or to evade its fire-power. No attack with the bayonet could succeed if this remained effective and unbroken, and no resistance (in the open field at least) availed when it had been mastered or evaded. In Napoleon’s army, the circumstance that the infantry was (after 1807) incapable of carrying out its own fire-preparation forced the task into the hands of the field artillery. In other armies the 18th-century system had been discredited by repeated disasters, and the infantry, as it became “nationalized,” was passing slowly through the successive phases of irregular lines, “swarms,” skirmishers and line-and-column formations that the French Revolutionary armies had traversed before them—none of them methods that in themselves had given decisive results.

In all Europe the only infantry that represented the Frederician tradition and prepared its own charge by its own fire was the British. Eye-witnesses who served in the ranks of the French have described the sensation of powerlessness The British Peninsular infantry. that they felt as their attacking column approached the line and watched it load and come to the present. The column stopped short, a few men cheered, others opened a ragged individual fire, and then came the volleys and the counter-attack that swept away the column. Sometimes this counterstroke was made, as in the famous case of Busaco, from an apparently unoccupied ridge, for the British line, under Moore’s guidance, had shaken off the Prussian stiffness, fought 2 deep instead of 3 and was able to take advantage of cover. The “blankness of the battlefield” noted by so many observers to-day in the South African and Manchurian Wars was fully as characteristic of Wellington’s battles from Vimeiro to Waterloo, in spite of close order and red uniforms. But these battles were of the offensive-defensive type in the main, and for various reasons this type could not be accepted as normal by the rest of Europe. Nonchalance was not characteristic of the eager national levies of 1813 and 1814, and the Wellington method of infantry tactics, though it had brought about the failure of Napoleon’s last effort, was still generally regarded as an illustration of the already recognized fact that on the defensive the fire-power of the line, unless partly or wholly evaded by rapidity in the advance and manœuvring power or mastered and extinguished by the fire-power of the attack, made the front of the defence impregnable. There was indeed nothing in the English tactics at Waterloo that, standing out from the incidents of the battle, offered a new principle of winning battles.

Nor indeed did Europe at large desire a fresh era of warfare. Only the French, and a few unofficial students of war elsewhere, realized the significance of the rejuvenated “line.” For every one else, the later Napoleonic battle was the model, and as the great wars had ended before the “national” spirit had been exhausted or misused in wars of aggrandizement, infantry tactics retained, in Germany, Austria and Russia, the characteristic Napoleonic formations, lines of battalion or regimental columns, sometimes combined with linear formations for fire, and always covered by skirmishers. That these columns must in action dissolve sooner or later into dense irregular swarms was of course foreseen, but Napoleon had accustomed the world to long and costly fire-fighting as the preliminary to the attack of the massed reserves, and for the short remainder of the period of smooth-bore muskets, troops were always launched to the attack in columns covered by a thin line of picked shots as skirmishers. The moral power of the offensive “will to conquer” and the rapidity of the attack itself were relied upon to evade and disconcert the fire-power of the defence. If the attack failed to do so, the ranges at which infantry fire was really destructive were so small that it was easy for the columns to deploy or disperse and open a fire-fight to prepare the way for the next line of columns. And after a careful study of the battle of the Alma, in which the British line won its last great victory in the open field, Moltke himself only proposed such modifications in the accepted tactical system as would admit of the troops being deployed for defence instead of meeting attack, as the Russians met it, in solid and almost stationary columns. Fire in the attack, in fact, had come to be considered as chiefly the work of artillery, and as artillery, being an expensive arm, had been reduced during the period of military stagnation following Waterloo, and was no longer capable of Napoleonic feats, the attack was generally a bayonet attack pure and simple. Infantry methods, 1815-1870. Waterloo and the Alma were credited, not to fire-power, but to English solidity, and as Ardant du Picq observes, “All the peoples of Europe say ‘no one can resist our bayonet attack if it is made resolutely’—and all are right.... Bayonet fixed or in the scabbard, it is all the same.” Since the disappearance of the “dark impenetrable wood” of spears, the question has always turned on the word “resolute.” If the defence cannot by any means succeed in mastering the resolution of the assailant, it is doomed. But the means (moral and material) at the disposal of the defence for the purpose of mastering this resolution were, within a few years of the Crimean War, revolutionized by the general adoption of the rifle, the introduction of the breech-loader and the revival of the “nation in arms.”

Thirty years before the Crimea the flint-lock had given way to the percussion lock (see [Gun]), which was more certain in its action and could be used in all weathers. But fitting a copper cap on the nipple was not so simple a matter for nervous fingers as priming with a pinch of powder, and the usual rate of fire had fallen from the five rounds a minute of Frederick’s day to two or three at the most. “Fire-power” therefore was at a low level until the general introduction[12] of the rifled barrel, which while further diminishing the rate of fire, at any rate greatly increased the range at which volleys were thoroughly effective. Artillery (see [Artillery], § 13), the fire-weapon of the attack, made no corresponding progress, and even as early as the Alma and Inkerman (where the British troops used the Minie rifle) the dense columns had suffered heavily without being able to retaliate by “crossing bayonets.” Fire power, therefore, though still the special prerogative of the defence, began to reassert its influence, and for a brief period the defensive was regarded as the best form of tactics. But the low rate of fire was still a serious objection. Many incidents in the American Civil War showed this, notably Fredericksburg, where the key of the Confederate position was held—against a simple frontal attack unsupported by effective artillery fire—by three brigades in line one behind the other, i.e. by a six-deep firing line. No less force could guarantee the “inviolability of the front,” and even when, in this unnatural and uneconomical fashion, the rate of fire was augmented as well as the effective range, a properly massed and well-led attack in column (or in a rapid succession of deployed lines) generally reached the defender’s position, though often in such disorder that a resolute counterstroke drove it back again. The American fought over more difficult country and with less previous drill-training than the armies of the Old World. The fire-power of the defence, therefore, that even in America did not always prevail over the resolution of the attack, entirely failed in the Italian war of 1859 to stop the swiftly moving, well-drilled columns of the French professional army, in which the national élan had not as yet been suppressed, as it was a few years later, by the doctrine that “the new arms found their greatest scope in the defence.” The Austrians, who had pinned their faith to this doctrine, deserted their false gods, forbade any mention of the defensive in their drill-books, and brought back into honour the bayonet tactics of the old wars.

The need of artillery support for the attack was indeed felt (though the gunners had not as yet evolved any substitute for the case-shot preparation of Napoleon’s time), but men remembered that artillery was used by the great captain, not so much to enable good troops to close with the enemy, as to win battles with masses of troops of an inferior stamp, and contemporary experience seemed to show that (if losses were accepted as inevitable) good and resolute troops could overpower the defence, even in face of the rifle and without the aid of case shot. But a revolution was at hand.

In 1861 Moltke, discussing the war in Italy, wrote, “General Niel attributes his victory (at Solferino) to the bayonet. But that does not imply that the attack was often followed by a hand-to-hand fight. In principle, when one The breech-loading rifle. makes a bayonet charge, it is because one supposes that the enemy will not await it.... To approach the enemy closely, pouring an efficacious fire into him—as Frederick the Great’s infantry did—is also a method of the offensive.” This method was applicable at that time for the Prussians alone, for they alone possessed a breech-loading firearm. The needle-gun was a rudimentary weapon in many respects, but it allowed of maintaining more than twice the rate of fire that the muzzle-loader could give, and, moreover, it permitted the full use of cover, because the firer could lie down to fire without having to rise between every round to load. Further, he could load while actually running forward, whereas with the old arms loading not only required complete exposure but also checked movement. The advantages of the Prussian weapon were further enhanced, in the war against Austria, by the revulsion of feeling in the Imperial army in favour of the pure bayonet charge in masses that had followed upon Magenta and Solferino.

With the stiffly drilled professional soldier of England, Austria and Russia the handiness of the new weapon could hardly have been exploited, for (in Russia at any rate) even skirmishers had to march in step. The Prussians were drilled nominally in accordance with regulations dating from 1812, and therefore suitable, if not to the new weapon, at least to the “swarm” fighting of an enthusiastic national army, but upon these regulations a mass of peace-time amendments had been superposed, and in theory their drill was as stiff as that of the Russians. But, as in France in 1793-1796, the composition of their army—a true “nation in arms”—and the character of the officers evolved by the universal service system saved them from their regulations. The offensive spirit was inculcated as thoroughly as elsewhere, and in a much more practical form. Dietrich von Bülow’s predictions of the future battle of “skirmishers” (meaning thereby a dense but irregular firing line) had captivated the younger school of officers, while King William and the veterans of Napoleon’s wars were careful to maintain small columns (sometimes company[13] columns of 240 rifles, but quite as often half-battalion and battalion columns) as a solid background to the firing line. Thus in 1866 (see [Seven Weeks’ War]), as Moltke had foreseen, the attacking infantry fought its way to close quarters by means of its own fire, and the bayonet charge again became, in his own words, “not the first, but the last, phase of the combat,” immediately succeeding a last burst of rapid fire at short range and carried out by the company and battalion reserves in close order. Against the Austrians, whose tactics alternated between unprepared bayonet rushes by whole brigades and a passive slow-firing defensive, victory was easily achieved.

But immediately after Königgrätz the French army was served out with a breech-loading rifle greatly superior in every respect to the needle-gun, and after four years’ tension France pitted breech-loader against breech-loader. Infantry in the war of 1870. In the first battles (see [Wörth], and [Metz]: Battles) the decision-seeking spirit of the “armed nation,” the inferior range of the needle-gun as compared with that of the chassepot, and the recollections of easy triumphs in 1864 and 1866, all combined to drive the German infantry forward to within easy range before they began to make use of their weapons. Their powerful artillery would have sufficed of itself to enable them to do this (see [Sedan]), had they but waited for its fire to take effect. But they did not, and they suffered accordingly, for, owing to the ineffectiveness of their rifle between 1000 and 400 yds. range, they had to advance, as the Austrians and Russians had done in previous wars, without firing a shot. In these circumstances their formations, whether line or column, broke up, and the whole attacking force dissolved into long irregular swarms. These swarms were practically composed only of the brave men, while the rest huddled together in woods and valleys. When, therefore, at last the firing line came within 400 or 500 yds. of the French, it was both severely tried and numerically weak, but the fact that it was composed of the best men only enabled it to open and to maintain an effective fire. Even then the French, highly disciplined professional soldiers that they were, repeatedly swept them back by counterstrokes, but these counterstrokes were subjected to the fire of the German guns and were never more than locally and momentarily effective. More and more German infantry was pushed forward to support the firing line, and, like its predecessors, each reinforcement, losing most of its unwilling men as it advanced over the shot-swept ground, consisted on arrival of really determined men, and closing on the firing line pushed it forward, sometimes 20 yds., sometimes 100, until at last rapid fire at the closest ranges dislodged the stubborn defenders. Bayonets (as usual) were never actually used, save in sudden encounters in woods and villages. The decisive factors were, first the superiority of the Prussian guns, secondly, heavy and effective fire delivered at short range, and above all the high moral of a proportion of resolute soldiers who, after being subjected for hours to the most demoralizing influences, had still courage left for the final dash. These three factors, in spite of changes in armament, rule the infantry attack of to-day.

Infantry Tactics Since 1870

The net result of the Franco-German War on infantry tactics, as far as it can be summed up in a single phrase, was to transfer the fire-fight to the line of skirmishers. Henceforward the old and correct sense of the word “skirmishers” is lost. They have nothing to do with a “skirmish,” but are the actual organ of battle, and their old duties of feeling the way for the battle-formations have been taken over by “scouts.” The last-named were not, however, fully recognized in Great Britain[14] till long after the war—not in fact until the war in South Africa had shown that the “skirmisher” or firing line was too powerful an engine to be employed in mere “feeling.” In most European armies “combat patrols,” which work more freely, are preferred to scouts, but the idea is the same.

The fire-fight on the line of skirmishers, now styled the firing line, is the centre of gravity of the modern battle. In 1870, owing to the peculiar circumstances of unequal armament, the “fire-fight” was insufficiently developed Lessons of 1870. and uneconomically used, and after the war tacticians turned their attention to the evolution of better methods than those of Wörth and Gravelotte, Europe in general following the lead of Prussia. Controversy, in the early stages, took the form of a contest between “drill” and “individualism,” irrespective of formations and technical details, for until about 1890 the material efficiency of the gun and the rifle remained very much what it had been in 1870, and the only new factor bearing on infantry tactics was the general adoption of a “national army” system similar to Prussia’s and of rifles equal, and in some ways superior, to the chassepot. All European armies, therefore, had to consider equality in artillery power, equality in the ballistics of rifles, and equal intensity of fighting spirit as the normal conditions of the next battle of nations. Here, in fact, was an equilibrium, and in such conditions how was the attacking infantry to force its way forward, whether by fire or movement or by both? France sought the answer in the domain of artillery. Under the guidance of General Langlois, she re-created the Napoleonic hurricane of case-shot (represented in modern conditions by time shrapnel), while from the doctrine formed by Generals Maillard and Bonnal there came a system of infantry tactics derived fundamentally from the tactics of the Napoleonic era. This, however, came later; for the moment (viz. from 1871 to about 1890) the lead in infantry training was admittedly in the hands of the Prussians.

German officers who had fought through the war had seen the operations, generally speaking, either from the staff officer’s or from the regimental officer’s point of view. To the former and to many of the latter the most indelible impression of the battlefield was what they called Massen-Drückebergertum or “wholesale skulking.” The rest, who had perhaps in most cases led the brave remnant of their companies in the final assaults, believed that battles were won by the individual soldier and his rifle. The difference between the two may be said to lie in this, that the first sought a remedy, the second a method. The remedy was drill, the method extended order.

The extreme statement of the case in favour of drill pure and simple is to be found in the famous anonymous pamphlet A Summer Night’s Dream, in which a return to the “old Prussian fire-discipline” of Frederick’s day was offered as the solution of the problem, how to give “fire” its maximum efficacity. Volleys and absolutely mechanical obedience to word of command represent, of course, the most complete application of fire-power that can be conceived. But the proposals of the extreme close-order school were nevertheless merely pious aspirations, not so much because of the introduction of the breech-loader as because the short-service “national” army can never be “drilled” in the Frederician sense. The proposals of the other school were, however, even more impracticable, in that they rested on the hypothesis that all men were brave, and that, consequently, all that was necessary was to teach the recruit how to shoot and to work with other individuals in the squad or company. Disorder of the firing line was accepted, not as an unavoidable evil, but as a condition in which individuality had full play, and as dense swarm formations were quite as vulnerable as an ordinary line, it was an easy step from a thick line of “individuals” to a thin one. The step was, in fact, made in the middle of the war of 1870, though it was hardly noticed that extension only became practicable in proportion as the quality of the enemy decreased and the Germans became acclimatized to fire.

Between these extremes, a moderate school, with the emperor William (who had more experience of the human being in battle than any of his officers) at its head, spent a few years in groping for close-order formations which admitted of control without vulnerability, then laid down the principle and studied the method of developing the greatest fire-power of which short-service infantry was supposed capable, ultimately combined the “drill” and teaching ideas in the German infantry regulations of 1888, which at last abolished those of 1812 with their multitudinous amendments.

The necessity for “teaching” arose partly out of the new conditions of service and the relative rarity of wars. The soldier could no longer learn the ordinary rules of safety in action and comfort in bivouac by experience, Conditions of the modern battle. and had to be taught. But it was still more the new conditions of fighting that demanded careful individual training. Of old, the professional soldier (other than the man belonging to light troops or the ground scout) was, roughly speaking, either so far out of immediate danger as to preserve his reasoning faculties, or so deep in battle that he became the unconscious agent of his inborn or acquired instincts. But the increased range of modern arms prolonged the time of danger, and although (judged by casualty returns) the losses to-day are far less than those which any regiment of Frederick’s day was expected to face without flinching, and actual fighting is apparently spasmodic, the period in which the individual soldier is subjected to the fear of bullets is greatly increased. Zorndorf, the most severe of Frederick’s battles, lasted seven hours, Vionville twelve and Wörth eleven. The battle of the future in Europe, without being as prolonged as Liao-Yang, Shaho and Mukden, will still be undecided twenty-four hours after the advanced guards have taken contact. Now, for a great part of this time, the “old Prussian fire-discipline,” which above all aims at a rapid decision, will be not only unnecessary, but actually hurtful to the progress of the battle as a whole. As in Napoleon’s day (for reasons presently to be mentioned) the battle must resolve itself into a preparative and a decisive phase.[15] In the last no commander could desire a better instrument (if such were attainable with the armies of to-day) than Frederick’s forged steel machine, in which every company was human mitrailleuse. But the preparatory combat not only will be long, but also must be graduated in intensity at different times and places in accordance with the commander’s will, and the Frederician battalion only attained its mechanical perfection by the absolute and permanent submergence of the individual qualities of each soldier, with the result that, although it furnished the maximum effort in the minimum time, it was useless once it fell apart into ragged groups. The individual spirit of earnestness and intelligence in the use of ground by small fractions, which in Napoleon’s day made the combat d’usure possible, was necessarily unknown in Frederick’s. On the other hand, graduation implies control on the part of the leaders, and this the method of irregular swarms of individual fighters imagined by the German progressives merely abdicates. At most such swarms—however close or extended—can only be tolerated as an evil that no human power can avert when the battle has reached a certain stage of intensity. Even the latest German Infantry Training (1906) is explicit on this point. “It must never be forgotten that the obligation of abandoning close order is an evil which can often be avoided when” &c. &c. (par. 342). The consequences of this evil, further, are actually less serious in proportion as the troops are well drilled—not to an unnecessary and unattainable ideal of mechanical perfection, but to a state of instinctive self-control in danger. Drill, therefore, carried to such a point that it has eliminated the bad habits of the recruit without detriment to his good habits, is still the true basis of all military training, whether training be required for the swift controlled movements of bodies of infantry in close order, for the cool and steady fire of scattered groups of skirmishers, or for the final act of the resolute will embodied in the “decisive attack.” Unfortunately for the solution of infantry problems “drill” and “close order” are often confused, owing chiefly to the fact that in the 1870 battles the dissolution of close order formations practically meant the end of control as control was then understood. Both the material and objective, and the inward and spiritual significances of “drill” are, however, independent of “close order.” In fact, in modern history, when a resolute general has made a true decisive attack with half-drilled troops, he has generally arrayed them in the closest possible formations.

Drill is the military form of education by repetition and association (see G. le Bon, Psychologie de l’éducation). Materially it consists in exercises frequently repeated by bodies of soldiers with a view to ensuring the harmonious action of each individual Drill. in the work to be performed by the mass—in a word, rehearsals. Physical “drill” is based on physiology and gymnastics, and aims at the development of the physique and the individual will power.[16] But the psychological or moral is incomparably the most important side of drill. It is the method or art of discipline. Neither self-control nor devotion in the face of imminent danger can as a rule come from individual reasoning. A commander-in-chief keeps himself free from the contact with the turmoil of battle so long as he has to calculate, to study reports or to manœuvre, and commanders of lower grades, in proportion as their duty brings them into the midst of danger, are subjected to greater or less disturbing influences. The man in the fighting line where the danger is greatest is altogether the slave of the unconscious. Overtaxed infantry, whether defeated or successful, have been observed to present an appearance of absolute insanity. It is true that in the special case of great war experience reason resumes part of its dominion in proportion as the fight becomes the soldier’s habitual milieu. Thus towards the end of a long war men become skilful and cunning individual fighters; sometimes, too, feelings of respect for the enemy arise and lead to interchange of courtesies at the outposts, and it has also been noticed that in the last stage of a long war men are less inclined to sacrifice themselves. All this is “reason” as against inborn or inbred “instinct.” But in the modern world, which is normally at peace, some method must be found of ensuring that the peace-trained soldier will carry out his duties when his reason is submerged. Now we know that the constant repetition of a certain act, whether on a given impulse or of the individual’s own volition, will eventually make the performance of that act a reflex action. For this reason peace-drilled troops have often defeated a war-trained enemy, even when the motives for fighting were equally powerful on each side. The mechanical performance of movements, and loading and firing at the enemy, under the most disturbing conditions can be ensured by bringing the required self-control from the domain of reason into that of instinct. “L’éducation,” says le Bon, “est l’art de faire passer le conscient dans l’inconscient.” Lastly, the instincts of the recruit being those special to his race or nation, which are the more powerful because they are operative through many generations, it is the drill sergeant’s business to bring about, by disuse, atrophy of the instincts which militate against soldierly efficiency, and to develop, by constant repetition and special preparation, other useful instincts which the Englishman or Frenchman or German does not as such possess. In short, as regards infantry training, there is no real distinction between drill and education, save in so far as the latter term covers instruction in small details of field service which demand alertness, shrewdness and technical knowledge (as distinct from technical training). As understood by the controversialists of the last generation, drill was the antithesis of education. To-day, however, the principle of education having prevailed against the old-fashioned notion of drill, it has been discovered that after all drill is merely an intensive form of education. This discovery (or rather definition and justification of an existing empirical rule) is attributable chiefly to a certain school of French officers, who seized more rapidly than civilians the significance of modern psycho-physiology. In their eyes, a military body possesses in a more marked degree than another, the primary requisite of the “psychological crowd,” studied by Gustave le Bon, viz. the orientation of the wills of each and all members of the crowd in a determined direction. Such a crowd generates a collective will that dominates the wills of the individuals composing it. It coheres and acts on the common property of all the instincts and habits in which each shares. Further it tends to extremes of baseness and heroism—this being particularly marked in the military crowd—and lastly it reacts to a stimulus. The last is the keynote of the whole subject of infantry training as also, to a lesser degree, of that of the other arms. The officer can be regarded practically as a hypnotist playing upon the unconscious activities of his subject. In the lower grades, it is immaterial whether reason, caprice or a fresh set of instincts stimulated by an outside authority, set in motion the “suggestion.” The true leader, whatever the provenance of his “suggestion,” makes it effective by dominating the “psychological crowd” that he leads. On the other hand, if he fails to do so, he is himself dominated by the uncontrolled will of the crowd, and although leaderless mobs have at times shown extreme heroism, it is far more usual to find them reverting to the primitive instinct of brutality or panic fear. A mob, therefore, or a raw regiment, requires greater powers of suggestion in its leader, whereas a thorough course of drill tunes the “crowd” to respond to the stimulus that average officers can apply.

So far from diminishing, drill has increased in importance under modern conditions of recruiting. It has merely changed in form, and instead of being repressive it has become educative. The force of modern short-service troops, as troops, is far sooner spent than that of the old-fashioned automatic regiments, while the reserve force of its component parts, remaining after the dissolution, is far higher than of old. But this uncontrolled, force is liable to panic as well as amenable to an impulse of self-sacrifice. In so far, then, it is necessary to adopt the catchword of the Bülow school and to “organize disorder,” and the only known method of doing so is drill. “Individualism” pure and simple had certainly a brief reign during and after the South African War, especially in Great Britain, and both France and Germany coquetted with “Boer tactics,” until the Russo-Japanese war brought military Europe back to the old principles.

But the South African War came precisely at the point of time when the controversies of 1870 had crystallized into a form of tactics that was not suitable to the conditions of that war, while about the same time the relations of infantry The South African War. and artillery underwent a profound change. As regards the South African War, the clear atmosphere, the trained sight of the Boers, and the alternation of level plain and high concave kopjes which constituted the usual battlefield, made the front to front infantry attacks not merely difficult but almost impossible. For years, indeed ever since the Peninsular War, the tendency of the British army to deploy early had afforded a handle to European critics of its tactical methods. It was a tendency that survived with the rest of the “linear” tradition. But in South Africa, owing to the special advantages of the defenders, which denied to the assailant all reliable indications of the enemy’s strength and positions, this early deployment had to take a non-committal form—viz. many successive lines of skirmishers. The application of this form was, indeed, made easy by the openness of the ground, but like all “schematic” formations, open or close, it could not be maintained under fire, with the special disadvantage that the extensions were so wide as to make any manœuvring after the fight had cleared up a situation a practical impossibility. Hence some preconceived idea of an objective was an essential preliminary, and as the Boer mounted infantry hardly ever stood to defend any particular position to the last (as they could always renew the fight at some other point in their vast territory), the preconceived idea was always, after the early battles, an envelopment in which the troops told off to the frontal holding attack were required, not to force their advance to its logical conclusion, but to keep the fight alive until the flank attack made itself felt. The principal tendency of British infantry tactics after the Boer War was therefore quite naturally, under European as well as colonial conditions, to deploy at the outset in great depth, i.e. in many lines of skirmishers, each line, when within about 1400 yds. of the enemy’s position, extending to intervals of 10 to 20 paces between individuals. The reserves were strong and their importance was well marked in the 1902 training manual, but their functions were rather to extend or feed the firing line, to serve as a rallying point in case of defeat and to take up the pursuit (par. 220, Infantry Training, 1902), than to form the engine of a decisive attack framed by the commander-in-chief after “engaging everywhere and then seeing” as Napoleon did. The 1905 regulations adhered to this theory of the attack in the main, only modifying a number of tactical prescriptions which Formulation of the British “Doctrine.” had not proved satisfactory after their transplantation from South Africa to Europe, but after the Russo-Japanese War a series of important amendments was issued which gave greater force and still greater elasticity to the attack procedure, and in 1909 the tactical “doctrine” of the British army was definitively formulated in Field Service Regulations, paragraph 102, of which after enumerating the advantages and disadvantages of the “preconceived idea” system, laid it down, as the normal procedure of the British Army, that the general should “obtain the decision by manœuvre on the battlefield with a large general reserve maintained in his own hand” and “strike with his reserve at the right place and time.”

The rehabilitation of the Napoleonic attack idea thus frankly accepted in Great Britain had taken place in France several years before the South African War, and neither this war nor that in Manchuria effectively shook the faith of the French army in the principle, while on the other hand Germany remains faithful to the “preconceived idea,” both in strategy and tactics.[17] This essential difference in the two rival “doctrines” is intimately connected with the revival of the Napoleonic artillery attack, in the form of concentrated time shrapnel.

The Napoleonic artillery preparation, it will be remembered, was a fire of overwhelming intensity delivered against the selected point of the enemy’s position, at the moment of the massed and decisive assault of the reserves. In Napoleon’s time the artillery went in to within 300 or 400 yds. range for this act, i.e. in front of the infantry, whereas now the guns fire over the heads of the infantry and concentrate shells instead of guns on the vital point. The principle is, however, the same. A model infantry attack in the Napoleonic manner was that of Okasaki’s brigade on the Terayama hill at the battle of Shaho, described by Sir Ian Hamilton in his Staff Officer’s Scrap-Book. The Japanese, methodical and cautious as they were, only sanctioned a pure open force assault as a last resort. Then the brigadier Okasaki, a peculiarly resolute leader, arrayed his brigade in a “schematic” attack formation of four lines, the first two in single rank, the third in line and the fourth in company columns. Covered by a powerful converging shrapnel fire, the brigade covered the first 900 yds. of open plain without firing a shot. Then, however, it disappeared from sight amongst the houses of a village, and the spectators watched the thousands of flashes fringing the further edge that indicated a fire-fight at decisive range (the Terayama was about 600 yds. beyond the houses). Forty minutes passed, and the army commander Kuroki said, “He cannot go forward. We are in check to-day all along the line.” But at that moment Okasaki’s men, no longer in a “schematic” formation but in many irregularly disposed groups—some of a dozen men and some of seventy, some widely extended and some practically in close order—rushed forward at full speed over 600 yds. of open ground, and stormed the Terayama with the bayonet.

Such an attack as that at the battle of Shaho is rare, but so it has always been with masterpieces of the art of war. We have only to multiply the front of attack by two and the forces engaged by five—and to find the resolute The decisive attack. general to lead them—to obtain the ideal decisive attack of a future European war. Instead of the bare open plain over which the advance to decisive range was made, a European general would in most cases dispose of an area of spinneys, farm-houses and undulating fields. The schematic approach-march would be replaced in France and England by a forward movement of bodies in close order, handy enough to utilize the smallest covered ways. Then the fire of both infantry and artillery would be augmented to its maximum intensity, overpowering that of the defence, and the whole of the troops opposite the point to be stormed would be thrown forward for the bayonet charge. The formation for this scarcely matters. What is important is speed and the will to conquer, and for this purpose small bodies (sections, half-companies or companies), not in the close order of the drill book but grouped closely about the leader who inspires and controls them, are as potent an instrument as a Frederician line or a Napoleonic column.

Controversy, in fact, does not turn altogether on the method of the assault, or even on the method of obtaining the fire-superiority of guns and rifles that justifies it. Although one nation may rely on its guns more than on the rifles, or vice versa, all are agreed that at decisive range the firing line should contain as many men as can use their rifles effectually. Perhaps the most disputed point is the form of the “approach-march,” viz. the dispositions and movements of the attacking infantry between about 1400 and about 600 yds. from the position of the enemy.

The condition of the assailant’s infantry when it reaches decisive ranges is largely governed by the efforts it has expended and the losses it has suffered in its progress. Sometimes even after a firing line of some strength has been The approach-march. established at decisive range, it may prove too difficult or too costly for the supports (sent up from the rear to replace casualties and to augment fire-power) to make their way to the front. Often, again, it may be within the commander’s intentions that his troops at some particular point in the line should not be committed to decisive action before a given time—perhaps not at all. It is obvious then that no “normal” attack procedure which can be laid down in a drill book (though from time to time the attempt has been made, as in the French regulations of 1875) can meet all cases. But here again, though all armies formally and explicitly condemn the normal attack, each has its own well-marked tendencies.

The German regulations of 1906 define the offensive as “transporting fire towards the enemy, if necessary to his immediate proximity”; the bayonet attack “confirms” the victory. Every attack begins with deployment Current views on the infantry attack. into extended order, and the leading line advances as close to the enemy as possible before opening fire. In ground offering cover, the firing line has practically its maximum density at the outset. In open ground, however, half-sections, groups and individuals, widely spaced out, advance stealthily one after the other till all are in position. It is on this position, called the “first fire position” and usually about 1000 yds. from the enemy, that the full force of the attack is deployed, and from this position, as simultaneously as possible, it opens the fight for fire-superiority. Then, each unit covering the advance of its neighbours, the whole line fights its way by open force to within charging distance. If at any point a decision is not desired, it is deliberately made impossible by employing there such small forces as possess no offensive power. Where the attack is intended to be pushed home, the infantry units employed act as far as possible simultaneously, resolutely and in great force (see the German Infantry Regulations, 1906, §§ 324 et seq.).

While in Germany movement “transports the fire,” in France fire is regarded as the way to make movement possible. It is considered (see Grandmaison, Dressage de l’infanterie) that a premature and excessive deployment enervates the attack, that the ground (i.e. covered ways of approach for small columns, not for troops showing a fire front) should be used as long as possible to march “en troupe” and that a firing line should only be formed when it is impossible to progress without acting upon the enemy’s means of resistance. Thereafter each unit, in such order as its chief can keep, should fight its way forward, and help others to do so—like Okasaki’s brigade in the last stage of its attack—utilizing bursts of fire or patches of wood or depressions in the ground, as each is profitable or available to assist the advance. “From the moment when a fighting unit is ‘uncoupled,’ its action must be ruled by two conditions, and by those only: the one material, an object to be reached; the other moral, the will to reach the object.”

The British Field Service Regulations of 1909 are in spirit more closely allied to the French than to the German. “The climax of the infantry attack is the assault, which is made possible by superiority of fire” is the principle (emphasized in the book itself by the use of conspicuous type), and a “gradual building up of the firing line within close range of the position,” coupled with the closest artillery support, and the final blow of the reserves delivered “unexpectedly and in the greatest possible strength” are indicated as the means.[18]

The defence, as it used to be understood, needs no description. To-day in all armies the defence is looked upon not as a means of winning a battle, but as a means of temporizing and avoiding the decision until the commander of Defence. the defending party is enabled, by the general military situation or by the course and results of the defensive battle itself, to take the offensive. In the British Field Service Regulations it is laid down that when an army acts on the defensive no less than half of it should if possible be earmarked, suitably posted and placed under a single commander, for the purpose of delivering a decisive counter-attack. The object of the purely defensive portion, too, is not merely to hold the enemy’s firing line in check, but to drive it back so that the enemy may be forced to use up his local reserve resources to keep the fight alive. A firing line covered and steadied by entrenchments, and restless local reserves ever on the look-out for opportunities of partial counterstrokes, are the instruments of this policy.

A word must be added on the use of entrenchments by infantry, a subject the technical aspect of which is fully dealt with and illustrated in [Fortification and Siegecraft]: Field Defences. Entrenchments of greater or less strength by themselves Entrenchments. have always been used by infantry on the defensive, especially in the wars of position of the 17th and 18th centuries. In the Napoleonic and modern “wars of movement,” they are regarded, not as a passive defence—they have long ceased to present a physical barrier to assault—but as fire positions so prepared as to be defensible by relatively few men. Their purpose is, by economizing force elsewhere, to give the maximum strength to the troops told off for the counter-offensive. In the later stages of the American Civil War, and also in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905—each in its way an example of a “war of positions”—the assailant has also made use of the methods of fortification to secure every successive step of progress in the attack. The usefulness and limitations of this procedure are defined in generally similar terms in the most recent training manuals of nearly every European army. Section 136, § 7 of the British Infantry Training (1905, amended 1907) says: “During the process of establishing a superiority of fire, successive fire positions will be occupied by the firing line. As a rule those affording natural cover will be chosen, but if none exist and the intensity of the hostile fire preclude any immediate further advance, it may be expedient for the firing line to create some. This hastily constructed protection will enable the attack to cope with the defender’s fire and thus prepare the way for a farther advance. The construction of cover during an attack, however, will entail delay and a temporary loss of fire effect and should therefore be resorted to only when absolutely necessary.... As soon as possible the advance should be resumed, &c.” The German regulations are as follows (Infantry Training, 1906, § 313): “In the offensive the entrenching tool may be used where it is desired, for the moment, to content one’s self with maintaining the ground gained.... The entrenching tool is only to be used with the greatest circumspection, because of the great difficulty of getting an extended line to go forward under fire when it has expended much effort in digging cover for itself. The construction of trenches must never paralyze the desire for the irresistible advance, and above all must not kill the spirit of the offensive.”

Organization and Equipment

The organization of infantry varies rather more than that of other arms in different countries. Taking the British system first, the battalion (and not as elsewhere the regiment of two, three or more battalions) is the administrative and manœuvre unit. It is about 1000 strong, and is commanded by a lieutenant-colonel, who has a major and an adjutant (captain or lieutenant) to assist him, and an officer of lieutenant’s or captain’s rank (almost invariably promoted from the ranks), styled the quartermaster, to deal with supplies, clothing, &c. There are eight companies of a nominal strength of about 120 each. These are commanded by captains (or by junior majors), and each captain has or should have two lieutenants or second lieutenants to assist him. Machine guns are in Great Britain distributed to the battalions and not massed in permanent batteries. In addition there are various regimental details, such as orderly-room staff, cooks, cyclists, signallers, band and ambulance men. The company is divided into four sections of thirty men each and commanded by sergeants. A half-company of two sections is under the control of a subaltern officer. A minor subdivision of the section into two “squads” is made unless the numbers are insufficient to warrant it. In administrative duties the captain’s principal assistant is the colour-sergeant or pay-sergeant, who is not assigned to a section command. The lieutenant-colonel, the senior major and the adjutant are mounted. The commanding officer is assisted by a battalion staff, at the head of which is the adjutant. The sergeant-major holds a “warrant” from the secretary of state for war, as does the bandmaster. Other members of the battalion staff are non-commissioned officers, appointed by the commanding officer. The most important of these is the quartermaster-sergeant, who is the assistant of the quartermaster. The two colours (“king’s” and “regimental”) are in Great Britain carried by subalterns and escorted by colour-sergeants (see [Colours]).

The “tactical” unit of infantry is now the company, which varies very greatly in strength in the different armies. Elsewhere the company of 250 rifles is almost universal, but in Great Britain the company has about 110 men in the ranks, forming four sections. These sections, each of about 28 rifles, are the normal “fire-units,” that is to say, the unit which delivers its fire at the orders of and with the elevation and direction given by its commander. This, it will be observed, gives little actual executive work for the junior officers. But a more serious objection than this (which is modified in practice by arrangement and circumstances) is the fact that a small unit is more affected by detachments than a large one. In the home battalions of the Regular Army such detachments are very large, what with finding drafts for the foreign service battalions and for instructional courses, while in the Territorial Force, where it is so rarely possible to assemble all the men at once, the company as organized is often too small to drill as such. On the other hand, the full war-strength company is an admirable unit for control and manœuvre in the field, owing to its rapidity of movement, handiness in using accidents of ground and cover, and susceptibility to the word of command of one man. But as soon as its strength falls below about 80 the advantages cease to counterbalance the defects. The sections become too small as fire-units to effect really useful results, and the battalion commander has to coordinate and to direct 8 comparatively ineffective units instead of 4 powerful ones. The British regular army, therefore, has since the South African War, adopted the double company as the unit of training. This gives at all times a substantial unit for fire and manœuvre training, but the disadvantage of having a good many officers only half employed is accentuated. As to the tactical value of the large or double company, opinions differ. Some hold that as the small company is a survival from the days when the battalion was the tactical unit and the company was the unit of volley-fire, it is unsuited to the modern exigencies that have broken up the old rigid line into several independent and co-operating fractions. Others reply that the strong continental company of 250 rifles came into existence in Prussia in the years after Waterloo, not from tactical reasons, but because the state was too poor to maintain a large establishment of officers, and that in 1870, at any rate, there were many instances of its tactical unwieldiness. The point that is common to both organizations is the fact that there is theoretically one subaltern to every 50 or 60 rifles, and this reveals an essential difference between the British and the Continental systems, irrespective of the sizes or groupings of companies. The French or German subaltern effectively commands his 50 men as a unit, whereas the British subaltern supervises two groups of 25 to 30 men under responsible non-commissioned officers. That is to say, a British sergeant may find himself in such a position that he has to be as expert in controlling and obtaining good results from collective fire as a German lieutenant. For reasons mentioned in [Army], § 40, non-commissioned officers, of the type called by Kipling the “backbone of the army,” are almost unobtainable with the universal service system, and the lowest unit that possesses any independence is the lowest unit commanded by an officer. But apart from the rank of the fire-unit commander, it is questionable whether the section, as understood in England, is not too small a fire-unit, for European warfare at any rate. The regulations of the various European armies, framed for these conditions, practically agree that the fire-unit should be commanded by an officer and should be large enough to ensure good results from collective fire. The number of rifles meeting this second condition is 50 to 80 and their organization a “section” (corresponding to the British half-company) under a subaltern officer. The British army has, of course, to be organized and trained for an infinitely wider range of activity, and no one would suggest the abolition of the small section as a fire-unit. But in a great European battle it would be almost certainly better to group the two sections into a real unit for fire effect. (For questions of infantry fire tactics see [Rifle]: § Musketry.)

On the continent of Europe the “regiment,” which is a unit, acting in peace and war as such, consists normally of three battalions, and each battalion of four companies or 1000 rifles. The company of 250 rifles is commanded by a captain, who is mounted. In France the company has four sections, commanded in war by the three subalterns and the “adjudant” (company sergeant-major); the sections are further grouped in pairs to constitute pelotons (platoons) or half-companies under the senior of the two section leaders. In peace there are two subalterns only, and the peloton is the normal junior officer’s command. The battalion is commanded by a major (commandant or strictly chef de bataillon), the regiment (three or four battalions) by a colonel with a lieutenant-colonel as second. An organization of 3-battalion regiments and 3-company battalions was proposed in 1910.

In Germany, where what we have called the continental company originated, the regiment is of three battalions under majors, and the battalion of four companies commanded by captains. The company is divided into three Züge (sections), each under a subaltern, who has as his second a sergeant-major, a “vice-sergeant-major” or a “sword-knot ensign” (aspirant officer). In war there is one additional officer for company. The Zug at war-strength has therefore about 80 rifles in the ranks, as compared with the French “section” of 50, and the British section of 30.

The system prevailing in the United States since the reorganization of 1901 is somewhat remarkable. The regiment, which is a tactical as well as an administrative unit, consists of three battalions. Each battalion has four companies of (at war-strength) 3 officers and 150 rifles each. The regiment in war therefore consists of about 1800 rifles in three small and handy battalions of 600 each. The circumstances in which this army serves, and in particular the maintenance of small frontier posts, have always imposed upon subalterns the responsibilities of small independent commands, and it is fair to assume that the 75 rifles at a subaltern’s disposal are regarded as a tactical unit.

In sum, then, the infantry battalion is in almost every country about 1000 rifles strong in four companies. In the United States it is 600 strong in four companies, and in Great Britain it is 1000 strong in eight. The captain’s command is usually 200 to 250 men, in the United States 150, and in Great Britain 120. The lieutenant or second lieutenant commands in Germany 80 rifles, in France 50, in the United States 75, as a unit of fire and manœuvre. In Great Britain he commands, with relatively restricted powers, 60.

A short account of the infantry equipments—knapsack or valise, belt, haversack, &c.—in use in various countries will be found in [Uniforms, Naval and Military]. The armament of infantry is, in all countries, the magazine rifle (see [Rifle]) and bayonet (q.v.), for officers and for certain under-officers sword (q.v.) and pistol (q.v.). Ammunition (q.v.) in the British service is carried (a) by the individual soldier, (b) by the reserves (mules and carts) in regimental charge, some of which in action are assembled from the battalions of a brigade to form a brigade reserve, and (c) by the ammunition columns.

Bibliography.—The following works are selected to show (1) the historical development of the arm, and (2) the different “doctrines” of to-day as to its training and functions:—Ardant du Picq, Études sur le combat; C. W. C. Oman, The Art of War: Middle Ages; Biottot, Les Grands Inspirés—Jeanne d’Arc; Hardy de Périni, Batailles françaises; C. H. Firth, Cromwell’s Army; German official history of Frederick the Great’s wars, especially Erster Schlesische Krieg, vol. i.; Susane, Histoire de l’infanterie française; French General Staff, La Tactique au XVIIIme—l’infanterie and La Tactique et la discipline dans les armées de la Révolution—Général Schauenbourg; J. W. Fortescue, History of the British Army; Moorsom, History of the 52nd Regiment; de Grandmaison, Dressage de l’infanterie (Paris, 1908); works of W. v. Scherff; F. N. Maude, Evolution of Infantry Tactics and Attack and Defence; [Meckel] Ein Sommernachtstraum (Eng. trans, in United Service Magazine, 1890); J. Meckel, Taktik; Malachowski, Scharfe- und Revuetaktik; H. Langlois, Enseignements de deux guerres; F. Hoenig, Tactics of the Future and Twenty-four Hours of Moltke’s Strategy (Eng. trans.); works of A. von Boguslowski; British Officers’ Reports on the Russo-Japanese War; H. W. L. Hime, Stray Military Papers; Grange, “Les Réalités du champ de bataille—Woerth” (Rev. d’infanterie, 1908-1909); V. Lindenau, “The Boer War and Infantry Attack” (Journal R. United Service Institution, 1902-1903); Janin, “Aperçus sur la tactique—Mandchourie” (Rev. d’infanterie, 1909); Soloviev, “Infantry Combat in the Russo-Jap. War” (Eng. trans. Journal R.U.S.I., 1908); British Official Field Service Regulations, part i. (1909), and Infantry Training (1905); German drill regulations of 1906 (Fr. trans.); French drill regulations of 1904; Japanese regulations 1907 (Eng. trans.). The most important journals devoted to the infantry arm are the French official Revue d’infanterie (Paris and Limoges), and the Journal of the United Stales Infantry Association (Washington, D. C).

(C. F. A.)