MILITARY ORGANIZATIONS. The element of personal relationship, which is the main char acteristic of the feudal system, affected to a marked degree the organization even of the medi •val army. The fighting force under feudal con ditions was marked by four main characteristics: (1) Its members were a military class; (2) they fought as cavalry; (3) they were grouped in small irregular units; and (4) they fought al most without strategy or tactics. The first of these characteristics arose from the fact that all military service was provided as a return made by a vassal for the ,rant of land. When land was granted by kings and great nobles to vassals on condition of military service, the capacity to fur nish this service when demanded was requisite, and therefore men with military training and equipment were a necessity. Military service was: also doubtless a source of pleasure and a matter of pride, since the fighting class was also the landholding and the ruling class. (2) The fact that a feudal army was a mounted body arose from the nature of the times in which feudalism arose. In the ninth and tenth centuries. North men, Magyars, and Saracens were in the various parts of Europe making rapid forays into the old settled regions. and to meet them success fully it was necessary to have a force that could move as rapidly as they. Therefore the counts and kings who were engaged in defending their territory against these invaders substituted mounted troops for the foot soldiers employed formerly in the civil wars, or in the invasions of the Roman Empire. There were some foot troops usually included in a feudal army, but their em ployment in fighting was quite subordinate. An important exception to this, however, was the ease of England, where the archers from a very early time constituted a valuable part of the field forces, and repeatedly showed themselves superior to the chivalry of France. (3) The third characteristic, the lack of a hierarchy of lead ers• and of a series of divisions and subdivisions of the parts of an army, arose from the way in which it was recruited. Each count. baron, or gen tleman brought with him a smaller or larger group of knights, and continued to act as the leader of his group during the fighting. The only regularity was in cases where the lesser knights and esquires were brought to an engagement in squad under the leadership of royal officials. But in most countries these were a small part only of the whole body of fighting men. Any such arrange ment as the modern divisions of brigades, regi ments, and companies was entirely unknown and inapplicable to the prevalent style of fighting.
(4) With this organization, or lack of organiza tion, there could be no system of tactics. There was usually some crude grouping of the whole body of troops into two or three 'battles,' under different leaders; but as a matter of fact the fighting men usually began the onset as soon as they came in sight of the enemy, and the engage ment rapidly became a mere inC•li"•e. or series of separate encounters. Fine personal valor and great personal skill and strength were often dis played in such contests; hut the army as a whole was very ineffective. Similarly strategy or plan ning for a large campaign usually consisted simply in passing into the enemy's country and, while rather languidly seeking an engagement, burning and plundering the property of the enemy's subjects. The great feudal weapons were the lance and battle-axe, with some use of the sword. (See BATTLE-AXE.) There was a develop ment of body protection from the mere coat of mail and headpiece of full plate armor. See Anmon; BREASTPLATE CHAIN MAIL HELM ET; SII IELD.
Such feudal armies were characteristic of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. The Crusades made loss change in warfare than might have been anticipated, the Western armies re maining much the same in organization. By the fourteenth century, however, some new elements were grafted on this system. Mired hands of mercenaries were largely employed (sec BRAIIAN CONS and CONDOTTIERI ) , and these were somewhat bettor organized and handled. Certain new troops were used, or old forms brought into a new prom inence. The Swiss pikemen nnd halberd iers, fight int! in a solid phalanx, frequently overwhelmed a more mirely feudal army of armored Cavalry, especially when the fighting was in a mountain ous country. The English bowmen, armed with the rapidly discharged and effective longbow, were used in connection with heavy-armed cavalry and men-at-arms. Their rapid and deadly flight of arrows threw into confusion any stationary body of feudal troops opposed to them, and put this body at the mercy of the knights whom the archers were supporting. If the opposing cavalry force was charging, the arrows retarded their advance so much as to make its onset ineffective. The effort to meet these new conditions or to utilize them to the best advantage, along with the other influences of the time, gradually led to a diversification of tactics, and eventually to the organization of the modern type of armies. The invention of gunpowder and its gradual intro duction in warfare was rather an element in the gradual development of modern military systems than a source of any sudden change,