30 Mr. W. S. L. Szyrma on the Relation of the 
■were ranged almost in the Roman mode, by tens, and fifties, and 
centuries, each under its own captain. The army was divided into 
brigades, each brigade containing two regiments. Seeing the evils 
of heavy cuirasses the Polish knights wore light armour, with wings 
to frighten the enemies' horses, and were thence called Hussars. 
Placed on the frontiers of Christendom, Poland had rarely rest 
from foreign invasion. When the kingdom was first formed wild 
tribes surrounded it on every side. Those of Aryan origin were 
soon civilized, but the Turanian hordes proved more dangerous. 
Those tribes that had defied the might of Persia, and crushed the 
majesty of Rome, again from their Northern Hives threatened the 
destruction of Europe's growing civilization. The two most critical 
eras of medieval development, the Thirteenth and Fifteenth 
centuries, the former the era distinguished by our greatest architec- 
tural works, and by scholastic philosophy, the latter by the formation 
of modern literature and the revival of arts and letters, both were 
threatened by an invasion of the Tartars and the Turks. Both 
torrents were warded off by the martial aristocracy of Poland. The 
desolating hosts were driven back. The Poles felt themselves the 
bulwarks of Christendom, and of the European race against the 
nomades of Asia. 
Before the Ottoman Turks had wasted Eastern Europe, Lithuania 
had strengthened the Polish monarchy. Already Little and part of 
Great Russia were annexed, and the Ruthenians were secured in 
religious and political liberty. Under their own dukes freedom had 
often flourished, and perhaps the ancient institutions of the 
Five Russias were hardly less free than among the Anglo Saxons. 
Intestine discord and Tartar invasion brought them under the 
Jagiellons, and the beneficent sway of the Polish kings amalgamated 
the Eastern and Western Slavonians. 
Except in her never being a bulwark of Christendom, the history 
of Bohemia is similar to that of Poland. Ancient annals, veiled in 
deepest obscurity, a gradual amalgamation of warlike tribes about a 
