A HISTORY OF THE ART OF WAR.*
IT is thirteen years since Mr. Oman printed his Lothian Essay on " The Art of War," and be has clearly laboured to some purpose during the interval. The earlier work was a clever sketch, in which the influence of Mr. H. B. George could be traced ; but it was not free from serious mistakes. Mr. Oman has now reconsidered his positions, re-examined and multiplied his authorities, walked over his battlefields, and courageously abandoned whatever he found wrong in the original work. The research displayed in countless citations from contemporary records can be but a tithe of the in- credible labour involved in the production of this massive volume. From beginning to end it is marked by his- torical scholarship, familiarity with sources, clear vision of tactical development, and admirable lucidity of exposition. In arrangement and general effect, it could hardly be better. Its vigorous descriptions hold the reader's attention chained. Using to the fall the contemporary accounts, yet reading them in the light of a trained historical imagination, Mr. Oman's battles are real fights, and their vivid details bear the stamp of genuineness which we miss in some of the rhetorical battle-pieces which seem to captivate modern patriots. Many chapters of the book have the fascination of romance, with the added charm of veracity.
Mr. Oman has chosen, for no stated reason, to plunge straight in medias res. His History is to fill four volumes, of
• A Mittory of the Art of War: the Middle Aoer, front the Fourth to the Fourteenth onitury. By (Marino Oman, M.A., Fellow of All Soule, Oxford, With Maps, Plane, and illustrations. London Methuen and Co. [21e.] which this is the second. The first will treat of classical war- fare, we hope not to the exclusion of the ancient Eastern Empires and the campaigns of Egypt and Assyria; the third will carry the history through the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; and the fourth will comprise the wars of the eighteenth century and the Napoleonic period, ending with the battle of Waterloo. We have no desire to complain of the premature publication of Vol. II. before Vol. L The period here included, from the decay of the Roman legion to the triumph of the longbow, is in some ways the most in- teresting in the whole history of European warfare. It is the history of the rise and fall of the cavalry fallacy. At the battle of Adrianople, A.D. 378, the Gothic horsemen for the first time showed how heavy infantry could be utterly de- feated by heavy cavalry. It was the first great cavalry victory, and the death-blow to the reputation of the famous legion. From that time onwards we find an increasing tendency to rely on the mounted arm, and the development of feudalism fostered the tendency. It became an axiom of military science that the prowess of the knight or mounted man-at-arms was the one essential element in a battle, and the due co-ordination of missile and shock, foot and horse, was wholly lost sight of. The Scottish ware taught the English the fallacy of this trust in cavalry alone. Bannock- burn was an object-lesson not easily forgotten. Dupplin Muir (as Mr. J. E. Morris acutely pointed out for the first time) and Halidon Hill proved that it had been thoroughly understood, and CI ecy and Poictiers conveyed the lesson to the feudal arrays of the Continent. The tremendous power of the good English yew and yard was an important element in the change; but the main moral of the whole history is that, given reasonable equality of strength and proper generalship, no cavalry force could possibly defeat an army composed of the two arms, any more than infantry without cavalry sup- port could withstand a capable general who combined the archer and the trooper.
Of the latter we had an example at Hastings, where the English line stood firm against the repeated charges of William's horse, until at last the shower of arrows (though only from the short bow) broke them up. "The knights, if unsupported by the bowmen, might have surged for ever against the impregnable breastworks." (Mr. Oman, we observe, accepts the "palisade," though he carefully avoids the term, infandum. nomen ! and sus- sautes " a fence of crossed woodwork" or "wattled breastworks.") "The archers, unsupported by the knighta could easily have been driven off the field by a general charge. United by the skilful hand of William, they were invincible." Henceforward the feudal horseman became supreme, until it was discovered that against a proper combination of bills and bows, or of cavalry and archers, he was at a disadvantage. So, in the Third Crusade, the battle of Hittin showed the weakness of the knights when deserted by the infantry, whilst the victory of Arsuf demonstrated that Saladin's horsemen could effect nothing against steady infantry sup- ported by heavy cavalry.
It is much easier to admire than to criticise this important. and most interesting work. Of its general scheme and arrangement there can, we think, be nothing but cordial praise; and the fact that it ends rather abruptly and awkwardly is explained in the preface as a concession to the exigencies of space ; a volume of over six hundred and. sixty pages is long enough, though no reader, we are sure,. will find it too long. To examine it in detail would require a. specialist for each section, and in a work extending over so vast a field and embracing such a multitude of minute facts, citations, and statistics, there is no doubt every probability of minor slips and errors. The omission that will probably strike most readers at once is that naval warfare is wholly ignored. The Art of War, so far as Mr. Oman expounds it, is practised on land. Another lacuna occurs in the very slight notice of the Flemings. Bottvines, of course, is described; but a bare mention of Courtray, and none at all of Casel, will seein to the student of infantry battles curiously inadequate. From the pay-lists at the Record Office Mr. Oman might have gleaned. something more satisfactory on the subject of the strength of the English armies. To print Rymer's figures is merely to say that so many men were summoned. The question is really how many actually came to the colours. Another question is to how many counties were the writs of summons issued.. Numerous as are Mr. Oman's footnotes, we could wish for many more references, as it is often by no means clear from what source a statement is directly derived. We should like, too, a more critical comparison of the relative value of authorities.
One of the most interesting and admirable sections of the -work treats of the Crusades. The introductory chapters on the policy, and on the geographical mistakes, and consequent disasters, of these expeditions, show real grasp and insight, and there is little but praise due to the general treatment of the campaigns. Mr. Oman is, perhaps, less at home when he gets into Palestine than when he deals with the country which his Byzantine studies have made pecu- liarly familiar to him, and in minor details his Crusading -chapters supply materials for a tolerable list of corrigenda in future editions. The Crusade of Louis and Conrad, for -example, did not take place in 1148-49 (p. 241), nor their siege of Damascus in 1149 (p. 258). The Frankish garrison did not " defend " Cairo "against the Turks and Syrians of Shirkuh" (p.260); they beat a retreat ; nor were there at that time "Syrians "in the invading army. Michaud's Bibliothegue -des Croisades is not an authority to cite, when later and more complete French translations from the Arabic exist. NI:w- ed-din died in 1174, not "1172," and was succeeded by one son, not "sons." The suggestion that Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch escaped Saladin by the effect of the Third Crusade is hypothetical. It is possible that his previous failure to take any of them might not have deterred him from further efforts : but it was his death (in 1193 not "1192 "), not Richard's moderate successes, that left the coast Christian for another century. Philip of Fr nice certainly had no part, after Acre, in recovering 'most of the coast-towns of Palestine" (p. 261). The "Emir Baghi-Sagan " ought to be Yaghisiyan (p. 279), " Il-Borsoki " for El-Bursuki .(p. 254) is in mistaken analogy with Il-Ghazi; " Birket-el- Hamadan " (p. 307, note) is correctly given in the map -as Birket Ramadan. The account of the battle of Arsuf is excellent, but Mr. Oman overestimates its effect. Baha-ed-din, who was present, distinctly states that Saladin -drew up his army before the walls of Arsuf and challenged Richard to a second trial of strength the day after the great battle, but the Christians would not come forth. The -destruction of fortresses by the Saracens was a military pre- caution, not a sign of panic.
The famous battle of Hittin or Tiberias, which sealed the fate of the Latin Kingdom, is described and criticised with much ability. Like many writers, however, Mr. Oman has gone astray in the chronology. The date "June 4th"
p. 326 is, of course, a misprint, but the battle was fought on Saturday, not Friday, and tLe march from Saffuria (or Saffuriyeh, not " Saffaria ") was on Friday, not Thursday. Mr. Oman's chief authority for the battle, the De Expugnatione Terrae San ctae per Saladinum Libellus, which he oddly cites as "Ralph of Coggeshall," itself gives feria sexta as the day of the march, and there is no doubt that the next day, the day of the battle, was -July 4th, which was a Saturday. It is so given by Imad- -ed-din, who was present, and by Ibn-el-Athir. Baha-ed-din, it is true, gives Friday, but he was not present, and he had a mania for making battles happen on the day of prayer. Ernoul, who was doubtless in the following of his master Balian of Ibelin in the van of the army, distinctly states that it was "le semedi, fu fieste Saint Martin le Boullant, devant aoust," and the feast of St. Martin's Translation was July 4th ; but Mr. Oman inexplicably ignores Ernoul throughout the chapter. There is a good deal assumed in the account of the actual battle. There is no evidence, for instance, that Guy, in swerving off the direct road to Tibezias, was aiming at the nearest water. It is quite as likely that he found it im- possible to expose his flank to the Saracens on the hills, and preferred a front attack ; or more probably he found the road strongly held by the enemy. Nor is there any authority for the statement that the infantry turned off the road "to the right" and climbed the Horn of Hittin. They climbed one of the many hills, but where it was we have no means of knowing. It was on Hittin that the last stand of the Knights took place, and as they were separated from the infantry, accord- ing to Mr. Oman and the Libellus, it is on the face of it ctnlikely that both climbed the same hill. The story of Ray- mond of Tripoli's leaving the field., as here amplified from the
Libellus, ought to have been compared with Ernoul, who was presumably in Raymond's command, and who gives a quite different version. It is not "the Moslem chroniclers" alone who say that the Saracens opened out and let the charge pass through their ranks; the same is said by Ernoul The shout of "Sauve qui pent" (" Qui potest transire," &c.), here put into Raymond's mouth as an order to his men, was (according to Mr. Oman's own authority, the Libellus de Expugnatione, p. 226) raised by the men themselves, but not until they were completely cut off from the King's battle, and had seen the ruin of the infantry ; and the final words of the speech (here omitted), "Sed et fuga quidem jam periit a nobis," show that it was no order from the commander. In quoting his authority, Mr. Oman sometimes shows signs of haste; in the footnote, p. 327, for instance, the phrase is " Atqne veloci cursu °acumen excelsi montis," where he gives " et " and " montes."
The battle of Acre is related chiefly from the Dineranum Regis Ricardi, with additions from the Arabic chronicles. By reading a good deal "between the lines," Mr. Oman makes a wonderfully clear and brilliant narrative of it, but there are still obscure points in the engagement. How was it, if only the two central divisions charged Saladin's camp, that the Count of Bar, who was in the left division near the sea, found himself triumphantly in Saladin's tent? How did the Saracen right wing manage to join the centre (as Baba- ed-din, who was on the field, says it did) if it was "hotly engaged" with the Templars on its own ground? The part taken by the Christian left wing is less clear than Mr. Oman would have it, and there is nothing about the sally of the garrison in the Oriental writers. It may have happened all the same. Conrad was not yet " brother-in-law " to Guy ; and El-Melik el-Dhafir was Saladin's son, not "nephew." In the account of the campaign of St. Louis, it should have been mentioned that the canal of Ashmum (not Ashmoun ") probably branched off further north from Mansura than it does now. The Mamelukes of that time, moreover, were for the most part Turks, not " Circassians."
A word must be said in praise of the numerous plans of battle-fields. The crusading plans are excellent, and so indeed are nearly all. Those of Bannockburn and Crecy show marked improvement upon those he printed in his earlier work, when he had not visited the fields. We are still inclined, however, to prefer the plan of Bannockburn given in Sir Herbert Maxwell's Life of Bruce. Mr. Oman's seems to suggest that the English cavalry ploughed right through Milton bog. In the Crecy plan he copies Mr. George's idea of the herse, but scarcely discusses this debated term at all in the text. The French ought surely to be placed less far north, con- sidering that their first attack must have been by the Fontaine road near the Maye, since the brunt of the attack was borne by Prince Edward's division, the English right. We are also unable to distinguish in the plan the two terraces on which the English were stationed.
Such oversights, and even downright mistakes, are pardon- able enough in a volume of so large scope and infinite detail. We point them out, not in depreciation of a great and laborious, we had almost said monumental, work, worthy of all admiration, but in the confidence that Mr. Oman, as a thorough student, will welcome any criticism that tends to make his valuable history minutely accurate ab judo ungui bus usgue ad verticem summon.
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