h of
the great discrepancies in numbers always observable between an
expeditionary force and its opponents, as it does for the superior
excellence of the raiding tens against the raided hundreds.

But if we consider only the trained force of foot-men in an army of the
fourteenth century, we discover that contrast between the Plantagenet and
the Valois equipment with which I desire to conclude. England had
developed the long-bow. It is a point which has been vastly
overemphasised, but which it would be unscholarly and uncritical to pass
over in silence. A missile weapon had been produced and perfected by the
Welsh, the art of it had spread over the west country; and it was to prove
itself of value superior to any other missile weapon in the field
throughout the fourteenth and even into the early fifteenth centuries.
Outside these islands it was imperfectly understood as a weapon, and its
lesson but imperfectly learnt. When it was replaced by firearms, the
British Islands and their population dropped out of the running in land
armament for two hundred years. The long-bow was not sufficiently superior
to other weapons to impress itself dramatically and at once upon the
consciousness of Europe. It remained special, local, national, but, if men
could only have known it, a decisive element of superiority up to the
breakdown of the Plantagenet tradition of government and of Plantagenet
society.

I have described in the writing of Crecy how superior was its rate of
delivery always, and often its range, to other missile weapons of the
time. We must also remember that capital factor in warfare, lost with the
Romans, recovered with the Middle Ages, which may be called the
instruction of infantry.

The strength of an armed body consists in its cohesion. When the whole
body is in peril, each individual member of it wants to get away. To
prevent him from getting away is the whole object of discipline and
military training. Each standing firm (or falling where he stands)
preserves the unity, and therefore the efficacy, of the whole. A few
yielding at the critical point (and the critical point is usually also the
point where men most desire to yield) destroy the efficacy of nine times
their number. Now, one of the things that frighten an individual man on
foot most is another man galloping at him upon a horse. If many men gallop
upon him so bunched on many horses, the effect is, to say the least of it,
striking. If any one doubts th