BOOKS.
THE LITERATURE OF WAR.*
MB. COCKLE'S bibliography of military books is perfect in its kind. Simply arranged, admirably printed, and embellished with a valuable set of illustrations, it is a complete guide to the warlike literature of the world down to the year 1642. Nor is a bibliography the curious, dryasdust thing it may appear to the inexpert. In the first place, it is a labour-saving instrument of great worth. If learning may be defined as the art of knowing where to find facts, bibliographies might almost take the place of learning ; and, as Mr. Oman says in the preface, "none know so well the value of a good Bibliography as those who have had to work at the same time at two topics, one of which has and the other has not been dealt with by a com- petent bibliographer." But an intelligent catalogue has another quality : it admits the amateur into the forecourt of a subject, and even if he penetrate no further he may carry away with him a knowledge which, however superficial, is at least systematic.
Now, Mr. Cockle has catalogued and described one hundred and sixty-six military books published in England between the years 1489 and 1642. The most of them are of foreign inspiration, because the art of war was not followed in England with much independence between 1542, say, and 1642. Those Englishmen who fought, fought under the standards of France or Italy, and they brought back with them the tactics they had learned abroad. Therefore, in the enforced leisure of peace it was but natural that they should reduce the art of war to a science according to the rules observed in foreign countries. This is the more noteworthy because in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the English, supreme in the handling of the longbow, had their own school of war They followed their own tactics, which were trIumphant at Agincourt as they were triumphant at Poitiers, and our bitterest enemy could not charge us with borrowing from others the arm which then made us victors of the world. But Mr. Cockle's military literature does not begin until the longbow was falling in favour, for since the active soldier commonly leaves it to others to chronicle and analyse his victory, we have no scientific record of the tactics employed by the generals who won their battles with the aid of our primitive artillery. In fact, long before our litera- ture begins the arquebus had begun to threaten the long- bow, and it was only our sturdy conservatism that preserved the famous dothyard shaft in the very presence of gun- powder. But the arquebus did not instantly have its way. Clothyard shafts were fired against the Armada, although they were as palpable anachronisms as the bows and arrows wherewith China a few years since confronted the modern rifles of Japan. Moreover, Sir John Smythe was still ready to plead the cause of the longbow as late as 1590, and to protest with what force he could against the theories adduced by Sir Roger Williams. These two writers, indeed, may be taken to represent fairly enough the old and the new echooL Sir John champions, with a fine ingenuity, "the excellencie, sufficiencie, and wonderful effects of Archers," while Sir Roger's argument may be said to have put an end to the use of the longbow.
Sir John Smythe objects to the arquebus because it is less effective than the longbow, and the argument might appear sound to the conservative of to-day. The history of military criticism is singularly uniform. The deadlier the weapon, the less effective it has seemed to its contemporaries, and with reason. War is a game of dunning as well as of slaughter, and a murderous weapon compels surrender withoUt much bloodshed. When a long-range gun commands a height held by five hUndred of the enemy, the five hundred lay down their • d Bibliography of Sagifeh Miltary Books up to 1619 and of Contemporary Foreign Wort,. By 11. J. D. Cockle. With an Introductory Note by Charles Oman, LA., F.S.A. London: Slutplan, Marshall, and Co. 130s.)
arms the more readily because they know that physical bravery can achieve nothing against superior mechanism. They have done all that men dare do, and they realise full well that "who dares do more is none." In feet, they are like a cricketer whose wicket has been knocked over. They do not Insist that their heads should be broken before they leave the wicket. But this argument did not appeal to Sir John Smythe, who merely saw that less lives were sacrificed to modern weapons, and therefore believed that modern weapons were less effective. He plainly sets it down that all firearms are inferior to the longbow, and of firearms he prefers the more ancient model. .Arquebuses, for instance, "by many miscalled calivers, though as good fifty years ago as at the time of writing," axe, in his opinion, "better than muskets ; which, being of greater length and height of bullet, were heavier, and moreover required to be fired from rests, a neces- sity which precluded their employment in skirmishes." But not only were the new weapons difficult of employment, they produced but a paltry effect. "All the imperfections," says he, "In the loading of harquebus and musquet are the causes that upon many great skirmishes that have been verie hot, and continued many hours with new supplies on every side, it bath often happened, that in discharging on both sides many thousands of bullets within three, four, or five scores, and nearer, there hath not been on both sides slain and hurt with bullets thirty men." So in the recently finished war, in which both sides used repeating-rifles and smokeless powder, the losses have been less than in the old days when muzzle-loaders afforded a better chance of hand-to-hand fighting. Indeed, it may be said that in warfare losses vary inversely with the deadliness of the weapons.
But the ancient controversy of the longbow apart," our military literature was, as Mr. Cockle says, a " parasite " in its first period. Even Sir John Smythe, champion though he was of ancient practices, had seen service chiefly in the Nether- lands, and like his colleagues, was apt to look at the science of war through the eyes of foreign experts. Perhaps we may make an exception in favour of W. N. Archer's Double Armed Man, which also applauded the achievements of our British bowmen, and which attempted to prove the superiority of the combined bow and pike over all weapons. And W. N. Archer did not attempt to hedge. Though he wrote in 1625, when the controversy was finished and done with, he did not scruple to declare that " Bartholdus Swart, the Franciscan Fryer, with his most devilish Inven- tion of Gunpowder, is the most damnable, and from hell itself invented." But the most of the books are, as we have said, of foreign inspiration, and their one definite lesson is that while strategy is perpetually the same, tactics change with the changing weapons. And thus Mr. Cockle brings his catalogue down to 1642, in which year Cromwell made his "New Model," and England once again gave to the world a set of tactics which shaped the art of war as boldly as the handling of the clothyard shaft had shaped it three centuries earlier.
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