J. Fortescue - The History of the British Army

For the trial of military offences a board of justices accompanied each distinct body, but there were some corps of landsknechts that enjoyed the privilege of the trial of the long pikes,[61] which gave the rank and file sole jurisdiction in respect of crimes that brought disgrace on the regiment. In such cases the provost laid his complaint; and the ensigns, thrusting their flags point downward into the ground, vowed that they would never fly them again until the blot on the fair name of the regiment was removed. The culprit was then tried according to a certain fixed procedure by his comrades alone, without the intervention of any officer. If he were found guilty, the men drew themselves up in two ranks, north and south, facing inwards; the ensigns, with colours flying, posted themselves at the east end of the lane thus formed, and the prisoner was brought to the west. The ensigns then exhorted him to play the man and make bravely for the colours, and the provost, clapping him thrice on the shoulder in the name of the Trinity, bade him run. Then the doomed man plunged into the lane, and every comrade plied pike and halberd and sword on him as he passed. The swifter he ran the sooner came the end, and as he lay hewn, mangled, and bleeding, gasping out his life, his comrades kneeled down together and prayed God to rest his soul. Then all rose and filed in silence three times round the corpse, and at the last the musketeers fired over it three volleys in the name of the Trinity.

The strength of a regiment of landsknechts varied very greatly. There might be thirty companies or there might be ten; the total force sometimes reached ten or twelve thousand men, and in such a case was frequently strengthened by a contingent of artillery. The weapons were the pike, the halberd, and a proportion of firearms, which last tended constantly to increase. Every man found his own arms, and the dress of the landsknechts, being that which it pleased each man best to wear, was generally both fantastic and extravagant, for they had all the soldier's ambition to let their light shine before women. Maximilian's courtiers were so jealous of their gorgeous apparel that they begged him to forbid it, but the emperor was far too sensible to do anything so foolish. "Bah!" he said, "this is the cheese with which we bait our trap to catch such mice," a sentiment which English officers will still endorse. Not all the prejudices of dying feudalism could induce Maximilian to discourage his new infantry; on the contrary, meeting a regiment once on the march he dismounted, shouldered a pike, and marched with them for the rest of the day. It is worth noting that the drum-beat of the landsknechts, whereof they were extremely proud, probably the selfsame beat as that to which Maximilian strode along that day, still preludes the marches of our own military bands.[62]

The drill of the landsknechts was probably crude enough. There was no exercise for pike or halberd, and there is no sign of the complicated manœuvres that were so common at the opening of the seventeenth century; but as they always fought, like the Swiss, in huge masses, there was probably little occasion for these. The men fell in by files, probably at sufficient distance and interval to allow every man to turn right or left about on his own ground; but for action they were closed up tight in vast battalions far too unwieldly for any evolution. Moreover, few of the officers knew anything of drill. They were selected for bravery and experience, no doubt, in some cases, but not for military knowledge; and it is the more probable that the colonels, according to custom, sold the position of officer to the highest bidder, since Maximilian could rarely furnish them with money for their preliminary expenses. The one duty expected without fail of officers was that they should be foremost in the fight, and as a rule they one and all took their place in the front rank with the colonel for centre, and, armed like their men, showed the way into the enemy's battalion. Not one remained on a horse in action, though he might ride regularly on the march; and indeed the landsknechts disliked to see an officer mounted on anything larger than a pony at any time, admitting no reason for an infantry-man to ride a good horse except that he might run away the faster. The duties of officers being thus defined, it is easy to see why the colonel reserved to himself the appointment of the colour-sergeants, for they were practically the only men who knew anything of drill or manœuvre. The colonel might prescribe the formation of his battalion for action, but only the colour-sergeants could execute it; and hence arose the rule that sergeants should be armed with no weapon but a halberd, since any heavier weapon would impede them in the eternal running up and down the ranks which was imposed on them by their peculiar duty. The influence of these traditions was still visible in our army until quite recently. But a few years have passed since sergeants shouldered their rifles as though they carried a different weapon from the men, and officers have only lately ceased to depend on them greatly in matters of drill.

Such was the new infantry of Europe at the close of the fifteenth and the opening of the sixteenth centuries, not yet perfected, but advancing rapidly to an efficiency and importance such as had for many centuries been unknown in Europe. And now the nations poured down into the fair land of Italy to teach each other in that second birthplace of all arts the new-born art of war. France was the first that came; and few armies have caused greater wonder in Europe than that which marched with Charles the Eighth through Florence in 1496. The work begun for the expulsion of the English from France had been steadily continued. Louis the Eleventh had hired Swiss sergeants to drill his infantry, and Picardie, the senior regiment of the old French line, was already in potential existence. But it was not these, but other men who set the Florentines at gaze. For there were to be seen the Scottish archers, the finest body-guard alike for valour and for stature in the world, the Swiss, marching by with stately step and incredible good order, the chivalrous gentlemen of France, mailed from top to toe and gorgeous in silken tabards, riding in all the pride of Agincourt avenged, mounted archers less heavy but more workmanlike as befitted light cavalry, and lastly a great train of brass artillery, cannons and culverins, and falcons, the largest weighing six thousand pounds and mounted on four wheels, the smallest made for shot no bigger than a doctor's pills and travelling on two wheels only. Already the quick-witted French had thought out the principle of the limber, and had made two wheels of their heavy guns removable. Already too they had trained the drivers of the lighter ordnance to move as swiftly as light cavalry.[63]

We cannot follow this army through the triumphs and the disasters of the next half century, but we must needs glance briefly at the rapid progress of French military organisation. Louis the Twelfth took the improvement of his foot-soldiers seriously in hand and increased the number of the companies, or bands as they were called, that had been begun by the bands of Picardy. The number of these bands, permanent and temporary, demanded the appointment of an officer who should be intermediary between the general and the captains of independent companies. About the year 1524 such an officer was established with the new title of colonel,[64] and the companies placed under his command were said, in French, to be under his regiment. The word soon grew to be used in a collective sense, and such and such companies under Colonel A.'s regiment became known simply as Colonel A.'s regiment. The colonel had a company of his own, but having no leisure to attend to it made it over to a captain, who was called the colonel's lieutenant or lieutenant-colonel. Another company was commanded by the sergeant-major, the word sergeant, which we met with first at the very beginning, having come into use in France with a new meaning in the year 1485. As already mentioned in speaking of the landsknechts, the name of sergeant became for some reason bound up with the functions of drill, and the sergeant-major was to the regiment what the sergeant was to the company. He was therefore the only officer who remained on his horse in action, his duties compelling him continually to gallop from company to company for the correction of bad formation, and for the ordering of ranks and files. It will be seen that the sergeant-major, or as we now call him major, originally did the work which is now performed in England by the adjutant.