"HAVING concluded your remarks, at our last sitting, on the armament and composition of the cavalry and infantry during the second half of the sixteenth century, I would now, my guide and master,' entreat that you pursue the discourse into a more general view of the organization of armies during the same period."

"It will behove you then to make some explicit enumeration of the course through which you desire that we conduct the discussion: for the field of research is wide, and we are like to wander bewildered in its mazes, unless we proceed upon method."

"Under your favour, I would therefore suggest that we commence with a slight examination of the means by which the command of armies was administered, or, in other terms, of the STAFF establishments of the age before us. Next, of the ordnance and other field equipments of armies; and lastly, of the general state of discipline and tactics."

"In considering the first head of your subject, we may appropriately take up the inquiry from the point where we last broke off: as regarding the composition of the infantry; for to the new array which was now given to bodies of this arm, may be referred the rise, first of a REGIMENTAL, and from thence of a GENERAL STAFF. In the rudeness of the earlier tactics, when the independent bands of foot were merely collected into large masses for the hour of combat, the distinct appointment of officers to regulate their unwieldy array seems to have been altogether unknown. But as soon as the practice obtained of uniting several ensigns or bands under the special command of a colonel, the necessity, or advantage at least, of giving the leader a general assistant was felt; and hence arose the institution of the office of sergente-major, as it was termed in our French armies: who, though his title has fallen in your latter times upon a far inferior rank, and into a more humble designation, was then selected for his skill and experience among the most ancient captains of tried service. He stood, in fact, distinct from the captains and lieutenants of bands-or company-officers as you would call them-and was assigned as a general-staff adjunct to the colonel."

"But though the compound title of serjeant-major has now descended in our service, Chevalier, upon the chief noncommissioned officer of a battalion, yet, with the omission of the first word, the memory of the original institution is still preserved in the duties of the major of a regiment. Montluc, I think, is the earliest writer who mentions the sergente-major?"

"The institution of the same office, which, in the Italian nomenclature of the Spanish service, was known as the sergente d'un terzo, might, I opine, be traced up to rather an earlier epoch than your example; and considering that the strength of the original regiments

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corresponded to that of brigades or divisions of later service, its functions had more analogy to those of your modern brigade-major."

"In that sense, too, it must have been very early used in our English service: for in the pay-roll of the troops serving in the Spanish campaign of St. Quentins in 1557, to which I before referred, though the division of four thousand infantry was not regimented, a serjeant-major' appears as the second officer in the train of the captain-general of the footmen.'”

"But passing from a question rather of words than things, there can be no doubt that the origin of a regimental staff may in effect be referred to this office. The lieutenant-colonel and serjeant-major were both given as assistants to the colonel, and commanded under him." "And to the extension of the same appointment and duties, may be farther traced the first germs of a GENERAL STAFF?"

"To the serjeant-major-general, at least, were shortly assigned the same functions for the whole army, both in the French and the Spanish services, which the serjeant-major performed in the regiment or terzo. The nature of these duties is clearly denoted by Strada, with his usual accuracy of expression, when he latinizes the title of the latter officer as 'instructor legionis'-the arrayer of a regiment."

"The serjeant-major-general (or afterwards major-general) was therefore the arrayer of the army: or, in our modern British term, the ADJUTANT-GENERAL?

Obviously and of his office Davila has taken occasion to observe, that it is one which for its great importance is never conferred upon any but such persons as have acquired the highest credit and reputation by their long experience and approved behaviour upon remarkable occasions, and consequently both knew, and are known by, every one.' But it is rather in an institution of earlier date that we must seek, to follow your phrase, the germ of a general staff: the appointment of mestres-de-camp, whose special duties were to regulate the marches, positions, quartering, and encamping of the infantry; as with a slight change of name (in the French service at least, and in Montluc's days) it was the business of the marechal-de-camp to perform the same service for the cavalry; and of the maistre-d'artillerie for that arm. Montluc requires of these three officers, in common, the qualities of experience, vigilance, and activity: il faut qu'ils ayent le pied, la main, et l'esprit prompt, et tousjours l'œil au guet, car de leur providence despend le salut de l'armée;' and he identifies their functions by insisting on the necessity of a good combination among them: 'ainsi de ces trois personnes, après le chef de l'armée, sort le gain ou la perte des battailles.'

"In fact, then, these officers composed what we should call in our British service the QUARTER-MASTER-GENERAL's department."

"The same and in the Spanish service you have an example, at the close of Montluc's time, of the union of their functions under one great officer by the title of camp-master-general, or mastro-di-campo-generale, as the Italian version of Strada has it-in the person of Chiappino Vitelli, as already cited. The duties which devolved upon him, in regulating the marches and quartering of Alva's army on its route from Italy into the Low Countries, point him out as the quarter-mastergeneral; for we are told that Gabriel Serbelloni, the master of the

artillery, with other officers, and some companies of soldiers and artificers, were sent on before, with orders from Vitelli, to form depôts of provisions, to examine and improve the roads, and to prepare quarters for the army on its march.""

"Yet, I observe, that in the contemporary Italian version of Strada the colonels of terzi are called 'mastri di campo,' a designation answering therefore to that of a brigadier, and not an officer of the special staff; and in that sense it must have afterwards passed into use in the French service also before the epoch in which the title was graced by the Chevalier de Folard: as, with a slight variation, the term of marechal-del-campo still corresponds, in the Spanish and Portuguese armies, with the British rank of a brigadier or major-general."

"It is not always easy-and neither is it important-to explain the transmutations of fashion which our titles of command have undergone at various periods. But, by the few fragments which are extant from the Commentaries of the first Marechal de Biron, you will find that during our civil wars the important staff functions of arraying the divisions, as well of foot as of horse, for the march and the battle were discharged by officers with the general title of marechaux-de-camp; and you may learn from Puysegur that, before my own time, the marechaux and mestres de camp having become the commanders of brigades, had been succeeded in their original duties on the special staff as camp-masters-general by the marechal-general-de-logis, or quartermaster-general, and his assistants."

"Yet another difficulty, Chevalier: in the same passage of Strada, he observes, that to the other great field officers, was added a commissary general of the horse- equitatûs universi commissarius'-an appointment lately instituted in Italy, which Alva now first brought into the Low Countries. I have nowhere found any explanation of its nature, although in a roll of the army employed by our Charles I. in Scotland in 1639, as printed by Grose, there is included for the horse a serjeant-major or commissary-general.'

"The general commissario della cavallaria' was probably the chief of the staff for that arm; and as such Giorgio Basta, according to Davila, commanded the light cavalry, in the absence of its general, during Parma's French expedition. The office, or designation at least, which originated in the Spanish armies, appears to have been almost confined for some time to their service, from whence, as you may learn from the Commentaries of your distinguished countryman Vere, it was adopted in the Dutch army under Prince Maurice, and more slowly in other services. But the important post of camp or quarter-mastergeneral became common in every army of the age; and without vainly seeking to explain all minor anomalies, the notices which we have gleaned from these various contemporary sources, may suffice to fix the origin and formation of a staff, under its two most important divisions, in all European armies, at this memorable epoch of warfare. In so far the inquiry is surely not without its interest. Those, indeed, there perhaps are, to whom it may sound trivial thus to rescue from oblivion the mere details of service which belonged to a by-gone age: but if you would really trace the history of warfare, it is only from such particulars that you can deduce with precision the rise and progress of the science to modern times."

"As an auxiliary, or dependant branch of the military staff, there may here, Chevalier, also be noticed, the creation of that important civil department in the service of armies, which is charged with the supply of the most indispensable of all munitions of war: or, as the worthy Sir James Turner doth entitle it, provant.”

"The first organization of a regular commissariat may, I agree with you, be referred to the epoch before us. Not that armed hordes in the most barbarous ages, and in the rudest state of the art, could ever have been subsisted without some arrangement for collecting provisions : but I think that, in the annals of modern warfare, it is not before the last half of the sixteenth century that any efforts can be discerned, as a matter of systematic preparation, to constitute and charge a distinct body of civil officers with the subsistence of armies. During our French civil wars, considerable progress had evidently been made in creating this department; for Biron, in the passage before quoted, speaks familiarly of 'le commissaire-general des vivres et les siens,' and numbers among the duties of marechal-de-camp the issuing of the necessary orders to that chief functionary of the commissariat and his assistants. And to that very able, though unfortunate commander, the Admiral de Coligny, Mezerai expressly attributes the careful establishment of a degree of regularity in this branch of service which has been little excelled in your more modern times. Thus Coligny is said to have taken great pains to engage persons of intelligence and probity as commissaries; notwithstanding the want of money, which often crippled the Huguenot operations, and the reverses which dissipated their levies, he contrived, whenever he showed an army in the field, to have it attended by a regular train of provision-waggons, which were usually filled by contributions levied on the open towns of the Catholic party: besides such carriages he employed horses of burthen for expeditionary service; and so extensively were these commissariat arrangements diffused through his forces, that when the cavalry were dispersed in quarters a baker was attached to every cornet of horse. On the disastrous defeat of the Admiral's army at Moncountour, you will observe in Davila, that no less than nine hundred waggons laden with provisions fell into the hands of the victors: a corroboration both of the account here cited, which ascribes such arrangements to Coligny for the subsistence of his troops, and also of its unusual extent, since the military historian thought the largeness of the captured train worthy of note. But when the Prince of Parma appeared on the stage of warfare, only a few years later, we find his operations distinguished by the same systematic attention to the provisioning of his troops; and there is nothing more strikingly observable in the history of his campaigns, as related both by Strada and Davila, than the order with which the collection of supplies preceded and attended every expedition.

"With respect to the warlike matériel of the age before us, of which we are next to speak, it may, I believe, in the first place, be said that less change had been effected since the Italian wars in the composition and equipment of artillery, than in any other branch of service. It has even been observed, that no army in these French or Low Countries wars possessed a train at all comparable, either in the number of pieces or the completeness of their equipage, to those which

our Charles VIII. and Francis I. had displayed in Italy, almost a century earlier, and with the elaborate description of which their astonished contemporaries have furnished us. It appears at least certain, that the number of guns which armies now brought into the field had rather diminished than otherwise; and writers of my country have endeavoured to account for the fact in the exhaustion both of matériel and money during the Civil Wars. The reduction in the quantity of field artillery, however, was not confined to the French armies, and had equally taken place in cases where the influence of the same causes cannot be imagined. It is therefore probable that the large and cumbrous trains of the last age had been reduced from experience of the impediments which they opposed to celerity of operations. Thus, in the Duke of Parma's first expedition into France, his army, computed at above 3000 horse and 18,000 foot, was attended only by twenty pieces of cannon; and this appears to have been the ordinary propor tion of artillery throughout the war in the Netherlands. In the campaign of 1602 in that country, Prince Maurice's army of 23,000 men was attended by a train of only 'twelve demi-cannons and three field peeces;' and the Spanish army, which rather outnumbered him, is said in general terms to have had no more than 'eighteen peeces of

ordnance."

"This proportion was probably rather above that of the age in general for in an estimate for the levying of a 'Royall army of 25,000 foot and 5000 horse,' under our James I., as printed by Grose, twenty pieces of cannon are thought a sufficient train."

"In our native armies, however, in the French civil wars the quantity of artillery was certainly much smaller: for some accounts state the number of guns at the battle of Ivry at six only in the King's army and four in that of the League; and at Coutras, Sully, who himself directed Henry's artillery with great effect, and could not mistake its amount, states expressly that it consisted of no more than three pieces. It was Sully, in fact, who, after witnessing this poverty of the royal train, became, on the settlement of the kingdom, the restorer, or rather the true creator, of our French ordnance service. As grandmaster of the artillery, only twenty years after the battle of Coutras, he was able to report to Henry IV. that he had filled the royal arsenals with four hundred pieces of cannon, in four different calibres, provided with carriages, caissons, and all other equipments of the train for the whole number."

"Notwithstanding the deficiency of ordnance in your French civil wars, the earliest example of the employment of cannon in conjunction with cavalry is, I apprehend, Chevalier, to be found in the course of these campaigns; and there is a curious passage in Davila which may be characterised as an anticipation of the use of horse artillery. At the affair of Arques in 1589, the encounter,' says the historian, 'was ended by a new, and until that time unheard-of device: for the King (Henry IV.) having sent the Baron de Biron into the middle of the field with a large squadron of horse, and the Duke de Mayenne (who commanded the army of the League), being surprised at their boldness in advancing so far, and thinking they had rashly overshot themselves, sent two considerable bodies of horse to charge them: at the arrival of which the King's forces suddenly opening to the right and left with