The cohors milliaria was commanded by a military tribune, the | others by tribunes or prœpositi; the rank of centurio was thus confined to subalterns. The admission of liberated or non-liberated slaves, natives of the provinces, and all sorts | of people into the legions, became the rule; Roman citizenship being required for the prae- torians in Italy only, and even there this was abandoned in later times. The Roman nation-ality of the army was thus very soon drowned ! in the influx of barbaric and semi-barbaric, Romanized and non-Romanized elements; the officers alone maintained the Roman character. This deterioration of the elements composing the army very soon reacted upon its armament and tactics. The heavy breastplate and pi-lum were thrown aside; the toilsome system of drill, which had formed the conquerors of the world, was neglected; camp-followers and luxuries became necessary to the army, and the impedimen ta (train of baggage) increased as strength and endurance decreased. As had been the case in Greece, the decline was marked by neglect of the heavy line infantry, by a foolish fancy for all sorts of light armament, and by the adoption of barbaric equipments and tactics.

Thus we find innumerable classifications of light troops (auxiliatores, exculeatores, jaculatores, excursatores, prcecursatores, scutati, funditores, halistarli, tragularii), armed with all sorts of projectiles; and we are told by Vegetius that the cavalry had been improved in imitation of the Goths, Alans, and Huns. Finally, all distinction of equipment and armament between Romans and barbarians ceased, and the Germans, physically and morally superior, marched over the bodies of the un-Romanized legions. The conquest of the West by the Germans thus was opposed by but a small remnant, a dim tradition of the ancient Roman tactics; but even this small remnant was now destroyed. - The whole of the middle ages is as barren a period for the development of tactics as for that of any other science. The feudal system, though in its very origin a military organization, was essentially opposed to discipline. Rebellions and secessions of large vassals, with their contingents, were of regular occurrence. The distribution of orders to the chiefs turned generally into a tumultuous council of war, which rendered all extensive operations impossible. Wars, therefore, were seldom directed on decisive points; struggles for the possession of a single locality filled up entire campaigns.

The only operations of magnitude occurring in all this period (passing over the confused times from the 6th to the 12th century) are the expeditions of the German emperors against Italy, and the crusades, the one as resultless as the other. - The infantry of the middle ages, composed of the feudal retainers and part of the peasantry, was chiefly composed of pikemen, and mostly contemptible. It was great sport for the knights, covered with iron, to ride singly into this unprotected rabble, and lay about them with a will. A portion of the infantry was armed on the continent of Europe with the crossbow, while in England the longbow became the national weapon of the peasantry. This longbow was a very formidable weapon, and secured the superiority of the English over the French at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt. Easily protected against rain, which rendered the crossbow unserviceable at times, it projected its arrow to distances above 200 yards, or not much less than the effective range of the old smooth-bore musket. The arrow penetrated a one-inch board, and would even pass through a breastplate.

Thus it long maintained its place even against the first small firearms, especially as six arrows could be shot off while the musket of that epoch could be loaded and fired once; and as late as the end of the 16th century Queen Elizabeth attempted to reintroduce the national longbow as a weapon of war. It was especially effective against cavalry; the arrows, even if the armor of the men-at-arms was proof against them, wounded or killed the horses, and the unhorsed knights were thereby disabled, and generally made prisoners. The archers acted either in skirmishing order or in line. - Cavalry was the decisive arm of the middle ages. The knights in full armor formed the first elfective body of heavy cavalry, charg-ing in regular formation, which we meet with in history; for Alexander's cataphracti, though they decided the day at Arbela, were so much an exception that we hear nothing more of them after that day. The only progress, then, which the middle ages bequeathed to us, was the creation of a cavalry, from which our modern mounted service descends. And yet, what a clumsy thing this cavalry was, is proved by the one fact that during the whole middle ages the cavalry was the heavy, slow-moving arm, while all light service and quick movements were executed by infantry.

The knights, however, did not always tight in close order. They preferred duels with single opponents, or spurring their horses into the midst of the hostile infantry; thus the mode of fighting out a battle was carried back to the Homeric times. When they did act in close order, they charged either in line (one deep, the more lightly armed esquires forming the second rank) or in deep column. Such a charge was undertaken, as a rule, against the knights (men-at-arms) only of the opposing army; upon its infantry it would have been wasted. The horses, heavily laden with their own as well as their riders armor, could run but slowly and for short distances. During the crusades, therefore, and in the wars with the Mongolians in Poland and Silesia, this immovable cavalry was constantly tired out, and finally worsted by the active light horsemen of the East. In the Austrian and Burgundian wars against Switzerland, the men-at-arms, entangled in difficult ground, had to dismount and form a phalanx even more immovable than that of Macedon; in mountain defiles, rocks and stumps of trees were hurled down upon them, in consequence of which the phalanx lost its tactical order, and was scattered by a resolute attack.