

232 



A HISTORY OF CAVALRY. [period hi. 



,i ■! 



defenceless Swiss with immense loss, 15,000 being killed, 

 and the remainder taken prisoners.* 



To secure invulni.'rubility, the cavalry of the end of 

 the fifteenth century an<l tlie l)eginning of the sixteenth, 

 had so overloaded themselves with armour as to deprive 

 them of all rapidity of movement, and to render them 

 almost incapable of injuring their opponents. Machia- 

 velli appreciated fully the disadvantages of this system. 

 He says : " I am not of opinion, however, that we ought 

 to depend any more upon cavalry, in general, than they 

 did in former times, for we have often seen them shame- 

 fully beaten of late by infantry." And he quotes in 

 support of his view the uselessness of the cataphracti 

 in the army of Tigranes, at the battle of Tigranocerta, 

 where they were so overloaded with defensive armour as 

 to be hardly able to see, much less to annoy the enemy, 

 and if unhorsed were unable to get up again, or use their 

 arms. In his History of Florence he gives several 

 instances showing that history had repeated itself, and 

 that cavalry men of his day, when unhorsed, had been 

 suffocated in the mud through inability to rise. 



He then gives his ideas as to the proper uses of 

 cavalry in the following words : "It is right, however, 

 to have some cavalry to support and assist infantry, but 

 not to look upon them as the main force of an army, for 

 they are highly necessary, to reconnoitre, to scour roads, 

 to make incursions, and lay waste an enemy's country, 

 to beat up their quarters, to keep them in continual 

 alarm, and to cut off their convoys ; but in field battles, 

 which commonly decide the fate of nations, and for 

 which armies are chiefly designed, they are fitter to 

 pursue an enemy that is routed and flying than anything 

 else." 2 It is remarkable that a man like Machiavelli, a 

 politician and a writer, but not a soldier, should have 

 had such correct ideas upon the art of war when its 

 principles were so little known. We have referred at 

 some length to his writings here, as he seems to be the 

 fir^t scientific writer on the art of war of modern times, 



' Machiavelli, Art of War, iv. 58. 



2 Ibid. 62. 



