and not improbably several more. Three only of these are recorded as possessing any goods and chattels, and those of the most modest description. An Irish student, with clothes and books to the value of thirteen shillings and elevenpence, comes out at the top of the list; the Master of Arts with the Semitic name had chattels worth nine shillings; while the other Master, John Seton, was the owner of a coverlet, a towel, a sword, and a plate, of the total value of two shillings and sixpence, besides an equity of redemption in a certain book which had been pawned to the custodians of the university chest, a very ordinary transaction.

There remains the cause of these extraordinary outbursts; a moment's reflection will convince us that it was simple enough. The energies, which in our own day find vent in half a dozen forms of athletic exercise, had in the thirteenth century

hardly more than the single outlet of fighting. Men talked of war and sang of it; and the close of the thirteenth century was a period when a succession of fortunate expeditions and a soldierly king had turned men's thoughts more strongly than usual upon the popular topic. The prevailing tone of society must have acted upon the immature lads cooped up in the narrow streets of a crowded city, without, or practically without, books, much as the cheap romances of our own day are believed to affect the officeboy. There were plenty of rogues in the thirteenth century of course, who were able and willing to help the militant student to add practice to theory; and when we recollect that there were no better police than halfa-dozen Dogberries, that the city was unlighted, and that even lads went armed, one no longer has cause to wonder at the insecurity of life in Oxford six hundred years ago.

IT is a commonplace of human history that the springs of great movements are generally to be found in some small and isolated territory. Would we know the home of art we must seek it in the scrap of mountainous land, a peninsula of a peninsula, which is called Attica; would we see the first light of the Reformation we must turn to the parish of Lutterworth in the little island of Great Britain; and if we would discover the birthplace of the modern art of war (and this is perhaps the most important of all arts to human kind), we must go to the tiny scrap of country, little more than five and twenty miles square and surrounded on all sides by lakes and mountains, which is called Schwytz. The fact that all Switzerland is called after its name points to Schwytz as the cradle of all that has made the cantons great; and greatness for a nation (and this is truer of no people than of the Swiss) is achieved primarily by the sword.

But how or why Schwytz should have spun, so to speak, out of her own entrails, the web of a tactical system which overwhelmed the hitherto invincible chivalry, transferred the mastership in the battlefield from the horse to the foot, and thereby effected a great revolution throughout all Europe, are singularly difficult questions. It is indeed impossible to trace the growth of the Swiss military power to its beginning. No such difficulty exists in the case of other nations. We can trace the rise of the German and Bohemian military systems, for instance, with comparative certainty to individual men.

There

is of course no dearth of Swiss heroes, Tell, Rudolf von Erlach, Arnold von Winkelried, and so forth; but even if Swiss historians could agree (which they cannot) that these warriors enjoyed more than a legendary existence, there is still nothing to show that they initiated a new and original art of war. The result is that the Swiss are generally assumed to have sprung, like Pallas, suddenly and fully armed into military existence, on the day of Morgarten in the year 1315. Macchiavelli, anxious to account for so extraordinary a phenomenon, says boldly that the Swiss infantry copied the Macedonian model, but unfortunately omits to explain how a poor community of rude peasants should have known anything about the Macedonian phalanx at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Others dis

pose of the whole difficulty by pointing out that the Swiss, through their poverty, were unable to keep horses and were therefore obliged to fight on foot; and that they were aided in their struggle against Austria by the ruggedness of their country. But because men are forced to fight on foot it does not follow that they will therefore discover the secret of beating men who fight on horseback; and, so far as the nature of the ground enters into the question, the Swiss fought as well in the plains of Lombardy as among their native

mountains.

It is at the same time a mistake to suppose that the Swiss were the only people who had devised infantrytactics of their own, or that they were the first to overthrow the mailed

chivalry on the open field. The battle of Legnano in 1176, where the Milanese infantry defeated the knights of Emperor Frederick the First, anticipates Morgarten by a hundred and fifty years. At Courtrai, again, in 1302 the artisans of the Flemish towns, armed with short pikes and maces, completely routed the headlong cavalry of France. Moreover England, the most striking example of all, had never permitted her infantry quite to disappear, and was specially enamoured of the practice of dismounting her cavalry for action. Indeed it is never sufficiently appreciated that the British archers, unless supported by battalions of knights on foot, would hardly have sufficed to win their first victory of Crecy. But the Flemish infantry was defeated by the French at Mons-en-Pevele, and utterly crushed by the final French victory at Rosebecque in 1382. English, though they tried hard to prolong the life of their archery to their great civil war, were forced to abandon it for pike and musket. But the Swiss system endured, and for more than two centuries gave the law to Europe. It was in truth the foundation of all existing European infantry.

The

Where then the Swiss learned their tactics, or who he was that taught them, are secrets that must remain for ever obscure. One thing alone is certain, that their representative canton, Schwytz, was from its first appearance in history a stubborn and combative community. It was a German colony which upheld its primitive German institutions against the feudalism that threatened it from the North; and above all it enjoyed a permanent quarrel, in consequence of a territorial dispute, with the neighbouring monastery of Einsiedeln. Now this monastery had from very early times received special favour from the

Emperors, with freedom of election for its abbots and immunity from lay jurisdiction at large, and it was to the Emperors that it appealed for defence against the aggression of Schwytz. One would have thought that the Empire would have given short shrift to a petty forest canton, but it was not so. Henry the Fifth in 1114 and Conrad the Third in 1144 both gave judgment for Einsiedeln when the quarrel was referred to them; but neither could enforce his decision on Schwytz. In 1214 the monastery and the canton became so violent in their feud that they burned and ravaged each other's territory for three whole years, until Rudolph of Hapsburg came to mediate between them. Two generations later, on the death of the Emperor Rudolph in 1291, the Schwytzers, defiant of the whole House of Austria, attacked the unhappy monastery again, and brought Duke Albert into the field against them; but the Duke, good soldier though he was, seems to have retired without venturing to risk an action. In 1308, on the death of this Albert, the contest was again revived, and the Schwytzers had yet another opportunity of training themselves in the school of active service. Concurrently with these exploits at home the Swisshad sent a succession of contingents to the aid of the Emperors ever since the twelfth century, while they had given a foretaste of their mercenary as well as of their fighting qualities by taking service with the Abbot of Saint Gall in 1253, and against him in 1262. When therefore the day of Morgarten came in 1315 they were no novices in the business of war.

It was not, however, until Morgarten had been supplemented by Laupen in 1339, and Laupen by Sempach in 1382, that the fame of the Swiss became really exalted in Europe. Even at the latter date, in

spite of strenuous efforts of enthusiasts to prove the contrary, it can hardly be assumed that they had perfected the tactics which distinguished them in the fifteenth century; and indeed the most striking feature in those three early engagements is the extraordinary good luck which they enjoyed through the stupidity of their adversaries. At Laupen the Swiss were little more than five thousand strong, the Bernese, who were the principal combatants, numbering four thousand, and their allies from Uri, Schwytz, Unterwalden, and two other valleys but twelve hundred more. They were drawn up in two great battalions or wedges of unequal size, that on the right being made up of Bernese, and that on the left of their allies; and the whole were posted on rising ground to await attack. The baronial army numbered twentyfour thousand men, twelve hundred of them being cavalry, and was like wise drawn up in two divisions, the cavalry on the right and the infantry on the left. As the mass of the baronial foot advanced, two thousand of the Bernese took to flight without striking a blow; the remainder, to their infinite credit, stood firm until the enemy came close to them and then, after a brief preliminary fire of stones, fell on resolutely with the halberd. The steady advance of the wedge cleft the opposing infantry in twain, and routed it utterly with heavy loss; so that on the right the Swiss success was assured. On the left, however, the battalion of confederates was completely surrounded by the enemy's horse, and, being not yet armed with the long pike, was very hard pressed. The Bernese thereupon rallied and attacked the cavalry, which being thus assailed on both sides, was put to flight after heavy punishment. The Swiss won their victory gallantly and honourably

enough; but it is difficult even for a layman to understand why the baronial commanders did not detach a portion of the cavalry to engage the confederates, and fall with the remainder upon the rear of the Ber

nese.

Sempach, again, was extraordinarily mismanaged by the Austrians. The scene of action was the level summit of a down, by no means unfavourable ground for the action of cavalry. The Austrian cavalry, fourteen hundred in all, was drawn up in three lines on the slope of the down. The Swiss infantry, of about the same strength, was formed in a single wedge; and it was their task, if they could, to dislodge the enemy from their advantageous position. The sequel would be hardly credible did we not know, by many examples, the shifts to which their commanders were driven by the indiscipline of the knights. Duke Leopold of Austria was completely surprised by the appearance of the Swiss, and either from this cause, or from ill-timed recollection of the English tactics at Creçy, ordered his first line to dismount. They did so; but instead of standing firm they rushed down in disorder to the attack, headed by a number of rash young nobles burning to distinguish themselves in their first action. To do them justice they fought hard, and for a time had the better of their enemy, until the latter brought forward one wing, so to speak, of their wedge, and took them in flank. Duke Leopold then ordered his second line to dismount; but before this lengthy operation was complete and the horses removed, the Swiss had completely broken the first line and could turn all their strength upon the second. The day was intensely hot, and the knights, encumbered by their heavy armour, tired sooner than the Swiss, who, seeing their advantage, pressed

it to the utmost. The third Austrian line still remained mounted, but instead of coming forward basely took to flight; the valets in charge of the horses of the dismounted men fled with them, and the Austrians were simply cut to pieces. Such, stripped of the embroidery added by later generations, legends of Winkelried and so forth, seems to be the story of Sempach, even more discreditable to the Austrians than glorious to the Swiss. One would gladly believe, if it were possible, the theory of a Swiss writer who maintains that the Austrians were surprised during a halt before they had time to mount their chargers.

It will be observed that the tactics of the Swiss in these three engagements of Morgarten, Laupen, and Sempach were not yet those which (as shall presently be seen) they employed with such success in their palmy days of the fifteenth century, nor can it be said even that the weapons were the same. The name of the Swiss is generally identified with the long pike of the eighteenfoot shaft; and most gallant attempts have been made by recent writers to prove that this celebrated weapon was a Swiss invention and employed by the confederates from the first. The point, however, is one that must remain uncertain; for the earliest mention of the long pike is found in an order addressed in 1327 by Count Philip of Savoy to the burghers of Turin, and no one can tell whether the Savoyards borrowed it from the Swiss or the Swiss from the Savoyards. The primitive weapons of all infantry seem to be the spear and shield. The Milanese fought with such spears, or pikes, eight or ten feet in length, at Legnano, the Scotch at Falkirk, and the Flemings at Courtrai; so that it is impossible really to predicate of any one nation that it added the

requisite number of feet to the weapon's shaft in order to make a long pike. There is no mention of pikes in the battles of the Swiss until Sempach, and it is probable that in that action they were not above ten feet in length.

Far more distinctive of the Swiss was the halberd, which was their principal weapon at Morgarten and Laupen. It is curious to note how the Teutonic nations, even to this day, prefer the cut and the Latin nations the point. We have been told by German officers that, when the German and French cavalry met in the war of 1870, the German sword-blades always flashed vertically over their heads while the French darted in and out horizontally in a succession of thrusts. Even the German dead lay in whole ranks with their swords at arm's length. So the English at Hastings worked havoc with their battle-axes; the Netherland mercenaries carried a hewing weapon at Bouvines; the Flemings at Courtrai used their godendags, fitted alike both for cut and thrust; and finally the Swiss made play with their halberds, an improvement on the godendag. The halberds had a point for thrusting, a hook wherewith to pull men from the saddle, and above all a broad heavy blade, "most terrific weapons (valde terribilia)," to use the words of John of Winterthur, "cleaving men asunder like a wedge and cutting them into small pieces." can imagine how such a blade at the end of an eight-foot shaft must have surprised galloping young gentlemen who thought themselves invulnerable in their armour.

One

In the matter of missile weapons the Swiss, as the legend of Tell sufficiently shows, favoured the crossbow; but they also employed the more primitive system of stone-throwing with great effect. They were