ascendency to three principal causes : discipline ; care in the selection, training, and exercise of the soldiers ; and readiness in adopting improvements, whether from friends or foes. In the first the Romans surpassed all other nations. The second especially attracted the attention of contemporary students of their military institutions; Hirtius, Vegetius, Josephus, all speak of the constant exercises by which, in peace as in war, the Roman soldier was trained and inured to war. " If," says Josephus, " we consider what a study the Romans made of military art, we must confess that the empire to which they have attained is not a gift of fortune, but a reward of virtue. They did not wait for war to handle their arms ; nor, slumbering in the bosom of peace, move themselves only when awakened by necessity : as if their weapons were born with them, as if they formed part of their members, they allowed no truce to exercises; and these military games are real apprenticeship to combat. Each soldier tests his strength and courage everyday; thus battles are neither new nor difficult to them; accustomed to keep their places, disorder never arises, fear never troubles their minds, fatigue never exhausts their bodies. They are certain to conquer, because they are certain to find enemies unequal to them ; and one may say, without fear of mistake, that their exercises are battles without bloodshed, and their battles bloody exercises." Josephus said truly, they would never meet their equals. When they fell, it was not because their adversaries were superior, but be
cause they themselves were no longer what they had been.Hitherto war had been a progressive art. Each great military power succumbed in its turn to an organisation and superior to its own. But with the fall of Rome we seem to begin afresh. The nations by whom the overthrow of this great empire was effected were in the condition from which the Latins had emerged ten centuries before ; and more than ten centuries elapsed before the lost ground was regained, and such highly-trained armies again appeared. The early institutions of the Frank and German races, the new masters of Europe, were those of a free, proud, warlike people. The right to bear arms was the privilege of the freeman, the mark of his status in the community. No man could assume it till publicly pronounced worthy, and solemnly invested before the assembly of the people. From that time he was never separated from his arms. The same word (ivehr) denoted a weapon and a freeman ; even his plot of land (were) was named after that by which alone he held it, and his social existence ceased when no longer able to carry arms and mount his horse. Similarly, nation and army were convertible terms ; the Longobards continued to call themselves an army (Heer) long after their settlement in Italy. Their organisation was rude and simple. The family was the basis of the social fabric; kindred families formed clans, and these again confedera tions (Markgenossenschaft}, to which admission was only obtained by common consent. Finally, the kindred tribes or communities occupying a certain district (gau) formed a higher organisation (gaugemeinde), which usually included the whole of a particular race or stock, and had well-de fined natural boundaries. For political and military pur poses the gau or province was subdivided into "circles" (Kreis) and " hundreds," names which have continued to this day ; the latter calculated to include as many house holds as would suffice to place a hundred warriors in the field. Kings and commanders were, elected and were entrusted with absolute power in war time, but in peace every freeman claimed perfect liberty ; all great questions were determined by the people in public assembly, and all conquests were the property of the community, to be shared equally among them. It is hard to imagine a greater contrast than that between the perfect freedom and equality of the early German institutions, and the tyranny and unequal rights of the feudal system which succeeded it. But we can trace the gradual .transition. From early days the most adventurous youths attached themselves to the hero of the nation or tribe, to be instructed by him in peace and led to victory in war. Thus each great warrior collected round him a band of personal followers retainers, whom he equipped with horses and armour, and rewarded with a share of the booty, and who in return followed him in all expeditions, and obeyed no law but his word. When conquests were effected by such bands, the land was the property of the chief, and was distributed by him as a reward to his followers. Gradually kings and chieftains increased their retimies, extending protection to those who obeyed them, and enriching them by grants of lands acquired by conquest or seizure. These grants soon ceased to be free gifts, rewards for past service, but were held to entail future service also ; and the chiefs assumed the right to revoke them. As the power .of the nobles and the number of their retainers increased, so did the number and power of the independent freemen decrease; a prey to oppres sion and exactions of all sorts, they attached themselves in self-defence to some neighbouring lord, surrendering their lands, and consenting to hold them of him as vassals. Finally, the lords increased their pretensions, assuming the titles of " suzerains" or " seigneurs," claiming absolute authority over the persons and property of their vassals, and requiring an oath of fealty from them; and the feudal system, with all its grinding tyranny, was established. Nations were broken up into small seignioralties, whose lords, at constant war with each other, only united to resist any interference with their privileges ; and if occa sionally a powerful ruler like Charlemagne succeeded for a time in establishing a real government, it was only per sonal, and collapsed as soon as the strong hand was removed. No great national undertakings, no great pro gress in the arts of peace or war, were possible under such conditions; and it was not till feudalism was nearly extinct that these arts emerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages.
The early Frank and German armies comprised the whole manhood of the nations, rudely organised by " hundreds," or by tribes and families. Some knowledge of tactics had been gained from their adversaries the Romans, and from deserters and escaped slaves in their ranks; but they usually adhered to their own national formation, the wedge- shaped column of attack. The principal arm was infantry, divided into "heavy" and " light;" the light infantry being originally the elite, and trained to act with the cavalry, but afterwards degenerating into mere attendants of the latter. The transition from the national to the feudal system is seen in the armies of Charles Martel. These consisted in part of his personal followers, partly of mer cenaries, and partly of national levies. At _Tours the latter still formed the great bulk of the force, and fought, as of old, in heavy masses and with little tactical organisation. Under Charlemagne armies became more feudal, the chiefs and their retainers forming a larger proportion, the national levies a much smaller one; and the frequent levies ordered in his reign did much to extinguish the class of freemen, driving them to seek protection as vassals of the great nobles. The true feudal armies were formed entirely of the knights, men-at-arms, and vassals, who obeyed the summons of their suzerain, either at the call of the king, or for his own private wars, and whose service lasted variously for twenty or forty days or three months, at the end of which the army disbanded and returned hoine.
