INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 3 



observed, and to secure this they would see the necessity 

 of electing one or more chiefs to whom strict obedience 

 should be accorded. As numbers increased, subdivisions 

 in command would be made, and the rules regulating the 

 method of discipline and fighting would become more 

 numerous and complicated. 



At this period in the history of war it is evident that 

 strength, activity, and endurance, combined with skill 

 in the use of weapons, w^erc the great qualifications for a 

 soldier, and that the skilled warrior who had the greatest 

 amount of endurance was likely to be the most successful. 

 He therefore, who, encumbered with defensive armour, had 

 a long distance to march before coming to close quarters 

 with his adversary was at the disadvantage of being partly 

 out of breath at the commencement of the conflict. 

 This has in all probability been the cause of the first 

 employment of the horse in war. It has soon been 

 perceived that the soldier who could be carried without 

 fatigue and placed fresh upon the spot where he would 

 be obliged to exert every energy in deadly conflict, 

 would have a great advantasje in a hand-to-hand strusjgle 

 over one who had been obliged to march heavily laden 

 for a long distance. This evidently led to the invention 

 of chariots of war. 



Some waiters have held that chariots were invented 

 for the sake of the advantage gained to the warrior by 

 his being elevated or dominating over his opponent. 

 The earliest records, how^ever, prove clearly that such 

 could not have been the intention, as the chariots were 

 used simply to carry the most distinguished chiefs to 

 meet the enemy. On approaching the foe, the warrior, 

 after throwing his projectile weapons, alighted to engage 

 in a hand-to hand combat, while the charioteer turned 

 the chariot for flight, and waited near with his horses' 

 heads facing the camp. The warrior, if wounded or 

 hardly pressed, could then conveniently retreat to his 

 chariot, which was open to the rear, and low to the 

 ground, and leap in and be carried to the safety of his 

 own lines. 



Had the idea of dominating over the enemy been 



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