The Evolution of Arms and Armor. 175 



cavalry, projecting ten feet beyond their horses' heads, 

 again and again bore down in battle all the massive jno- 

 tective defenses that their opponents were panoplied with. 

 The best steel-plate armor of the Middle Ages, forged with 

 marvelous skill, and completely covering the person, was 

 no match for the arrows, live feet long, of the English yoe- 

 man, hitting the target every time an eighth of a mile off, 

 and on the victorious fields of Creey, Poitiers and Agin- 

 court shooting down their mailed opponents at the distance 

 of two hundred yards '' as readily as if they were naked 

 men." If now and then the strength of the armor caught 

 up with that of the arms, as at a battle in Italy during 

 the latter part of the loth century, where they were so 

 nearly matched that the two opposing armies fought fero- 

 ciously for seven hours without having a man killed or 

 wounded on either side, it was only at the very next battle 

 to have a new assailing weapon introduced to maintain the 

 old supremacy, as, in this case, musketry at the battle of 

 Pavia,* before which all the gorgeous panoply of chivalry 

 went down as completely as the fields of bearded grain 

 before the driving summer hail. Waterloo was the last 

 great fight in which bodily armor was used, Napoleon's 

 cavalry wearing it, and up to that time with some success ; 

 but in the charges there made his iron-sheathed cuirassiers 

 went down like rows of pins before the quick-moving Eng- 

 lish horse dashing in upon them with only naked swords 

 and naked hands. The contest now is between massive 

 forts and steel-clad ships, with ever thicker and thicker 

 plates, on the one side, and mathematically-aimed mortars 

 and steel-wrought rams and cannon, and projectiles them- 

 selves shot-loaded, cannon fired from cannon, with ever 

 more and more size and force, on the other. But with mortars 

 dropping shells from above at the rate of one a minute into 

 forts three or four miles away, and torpedo-boats creeping 



* Beekman ; questioned, however, by Buckle and others. Mortars and can- 

 non lor gunpowder were invented nnich earlier, but being made in part of wood 

 and even of leather were of little account. I'avia was, perhaps the first battle 

 at which troops in large numbers were armed with the more efficient musket. 

 It took even then a quarter of an hour to load and fire one, a striking contrast 

 with our sixty-shot-a-minute repeating rifies. The use of the mortar was dis- 

 covered by accident, a clumsy fellow making powder in tlie common household 

 utensil, allowing it to explode and knock him across tlie room. The same objec- 

 tion was urged at fir-t against the use of all firearms, and even of cross-bf)ws, 

 that is now mnde against dynamite-bombs, they were too democratic and too 

 equalizing for honorable war. Chevalier Bayard "is said to have exclaimed with 

 reference to them, " ("est tmr hotitp qii'itn /lomrnr tie rceiir unit pxpos^ a prrir 

 pnr Kiip misrrnhlp fr)q>ip)irllr." And it is a singular fact that he, tlie hero of 

 a hundred knightly battles, met his own death at last by a stone shot from an 

 arquebus. 



