The History of the British Army. J. W. Fortescue
ambassador Giustiniani writing in 1519 described, with but slight exaggeration, the English military forces as consisting of one hundred and fifty thousand men, whose peculiar though not exclusive weapon was the long-bow. Men-at-arms were extinct, light cavalry insignificant in number. Giustiniani, however, did not add that the archers were now more efficiently equipped than at any previous period, being provided with two stakes instead of one, and further protected by a breastplate.[102] Nor did he notice a new weapon, the Moorish or Morris pike, which had lately come into use among the English, and had brought them a little closer to the famous infantry of the Continent.
1520.
It is, however, almost with a smile that we see Henry with undiminished satisfaction flaunting his archers in the face of Francis at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Francis on his side produced his Swiss, and gave the English an opportunity of studying the first infantry in Europe. Fleuranges was at their head, and as his eye wandered from the scarlet and gold of the body-guard to the white and green of the other English troops, he probably felt justified in his opinion that they could not meet his own men in the open field. Henry, however, was unchangeable,[103] and the only sign of novelty that we see at this famous pageant is a horn-shaped flag borne in the retinue of Cardinal Wolsey, the cornette, which was in due time to give its name to the standard-bearers of the English cavalry.[104]
1522.
1523.
1525.
Peace never endured long in those days, and in 1522 Henry was again at war with Francis, in alliance with Charles the Fifth. Again the English deficiencies became patent. In his expedition to France, which led to little result, Henry was forced to rely principally on Charles for cavalry;[105] and when it was evident that France would require to be fought on the Scottish border also, the Earl of Surrey, who held command in the north, begged for a reinforcement of four thousand landsknechts. The French, he said, would certainly bring pikes with them, and the English were not accustomed to pikes, though they would soon learn from the Almains.[106] In plain words, the English soldiers with their existing equipment were unfit to meet the French in the field. Fortunately the Duke of Albany, who was opposed to Surrey, was a coward, and little came of the alarm in the north. But the danger seems for the moment to have aroused Henry to a sense of his backwardness, for we find in 1523 a scheme for the purchase of ten thousand eighteen-foot pikes and corselets, five thousand halberds, and ten thousand hand-culverins with matches,[107] bullet-moulds and powder-flasks complete. This is the first indication of a design to equip the army according to the best rules of the age, and, if it had been adopted, little change would have been needed for a century and a half. It is difficult to say why it was not, for at this time there are signs of an intention to take the improvement of the army seriously in hand.[108] But Henry changed his policy. Peace was made, and was immediately followed by a proclamation to enforce the statute for the encouragement of the long-bow and the discountenance of cross-bows and hand-guns.[109] We must come down to the prolonged rejection of breech-loading artillery by the country in our own day before we can find a parallel to such perversity.
1539.
Nevertheless, in spite of all Henry's efforts fire-arms seem to have taken some hold on England, and particularly on London. In the general alarm that followed the insurrection known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, the King relied principally on London; and in 1537 he granted a Charter of Incorporation to the Artillery Company of the city, an association formed for the improved training of the citizens in weapons of volley, which term included hand-guns and cross-bows as well as the long-bow. This association survives as the Honourable Artillery Company. Again, at the great review of the London trained-bands two years later we find like symptoms of a change. The old account of this pageant is of singular interest for the sight which it gives us of the most efficient soldiers in England. The force consisted of fifteen thousand picked men, all able-bodied and properly equipped, and all, except the officers, clothed in white even to their shoes. White was at once the old colour of England, the colour of the city, and the colour of the Tudors. The men paraded at Mile End, the famous drill-ground which was later to pass into a proverb, at six o'clock in the morning, and at eight moved off on their march to Westminster, in the three orthodox divisions of fore-ward, mid-ward, and rear-ward. First came the artillery, thirteen field-pieces, with their ammunition and "gun-stones," for shot was not yet always made of metal, in carts behind them. Then came the banners of the city, and then the musketeers, five in rank, with five feet of distance between ranks; after them came the bowmen in open order, every man a bow's length[110] from his neighbour; then followed the pikemen with their morris-pikes, "after the Almain manner," and lastly came the bills. Every one of the five divisions in each ward had its own band, its own colours, and its officers riding at its head; and it is worthy of note that the hand-guns and pikes took precedence of the bows and bills. So they marched on in their spotless white to Westminster, where the King awaited them on a platform. As the musketeers passed him they fired volleys, for a volley was of old the salute to the living as well as to the dead, the great guns were manœuvred and "shot off very terribly," doubtless to an accompaniment of female screams, and the force marched back through St. James' Park to the city. The review was intended as a demonstration against the menaces of foreign powers, and it had its due effect.
1544.
The danger passed away; but within four years Henry was again in the field fighting with Charles the Fifth against the French. There is little that is worth remarking in the campaigns that followed. The English as usual took with them their bows and bills, and the archers still came off with credit. A contingent of landsknechts was with them, who behaved so ill as to draw upon themselves more than ordinary dislike; and indeed the palmy days of the landsknechts were over. One portion of the English army alone provoked the warm admiration of Charles, namely, the Northern Horsemen. Wallop, the English commander, took justifiable pride in them, and detached them to clear the country before the Emperor on his departure. Away started the sturdy border-men on their tough little ponies, while Charles watched with all his eyes; and when he saw them breast an ascent before them and "hurl" up the hill, he cried out with honest delight.[111]
Nevertheless it must be confessed that Henry, though the eight and thirty years of his reign were perhaps the most eventful in the history of the modern art of war, did singularly little for the army. The passion for the bow, which evinced itself in repeated enactments and proclamations to the very close of his reign, and the false system of hiring mercenaries, led to a neglect of the infantry which might easily have proved disastrous. For the cavalry, though here again he was inclined to use mercenaries, he showed more care. He was much exercised by the decay of the English breed of horses, and passed three several Acts for its remedy. The wording of these throws a flood of light on our ancient troop-horse. To improve the breed it was enacted that every owner of a park should keep from two to four brood-mares not less than thirteen hands high, and that no stallions under fourteen hands should be employed for breeding; the hand to be reckoned as four inches and the measurement to be made to the withers. From the operation of this Act the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, the home of the Northern Horsemen, were excluded. By a subsequent Act it was ordained that all chases, forests, and commons should be driven once a year, the unlikely mares and foals slaughtered, and no stallions allowed to run free that were under fifteen hands in height. What effect these measures may have wrought I am unable to say; but the knowledge of the small stature of brood-mares can help us to a better understanding of the difficulties which beset the maintenance of an efficient cavalry.[112]
1513.
But the arm wherein Henry worked most improvement was undoubtedly the artillery. We find him at first purchasing all his guns abroad, for the most part in Flanders, and procuring his gunners also from foreign parts; but it is clear, from the number of Englishmen whose appointment to the post of gunner remains on record, that the English were rapidly learning their business from their instructors, while as early as 1514 we find Lord Darcy pleading for the employment of native gunners.[113] There is evidence too that the artilleryman's art was by no means so rare as it had been, gunners receiving no more than the ordinary soldier's pay of sixpence a day.[114] The casting of ordnance in England was less common, though there are scattered notices of English gun-founders from the beginning of the reign. Finally, in the year 1535 John Owen began to make even the largest guns, and obviated the necessity of depending on