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CAVALRY 143 every fugitive who detached himself from it. The loss of the Romans was considerable, and Publius Scipio himself was wounded. At the Trebia, Hannibal succeeded in enticing the Ro- mans to cross that river, so as to fight with this barrier in their rear. No sooner was this accomplished than he advanced with all his troops against them and forced them to battle. The Romans, like the Carthaginians, had their infantry in the centre; but opposite to the wings of the Roman army, formed by cavalry, Hannibal placed his elephants, making use of his cavalry to outflank and overlap both wings of his opponents. At the very outset of the battle, the Roman cavalry, thus turned and out- numbered, was completely defeated ; but the Roman infantry drove back the Carthaginian centre and gained ground. The victorious Car- thaginian horse now attacked them in front and flank ; they compelled them to desist from advancing, but could not break them. Hanni- bal, however, knowing the solidity of the Ro- man legion, had sent 1,000 horsemen and 1,000 picked foot soldiers under his brother Mago by a roundabout way to their rear. These fresh troops now fell upon them and succeeded in breaking the second line ; but the first line, 10,000 men, closed up, and in a compact body forced their way through the enemy, and march- ed down the river toward Placentia, where they crossed it unmolested. In the battle of Cannae (216 B. 0.), the Romans had 80,000 in- fantry and 6,000 cavalry; the Carthaginians, 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry. The cav- alry of Latium formed the Roman right wing, leaning on the river Aufidus ; that of the allied Italians stood on the left, while the infantry formed the centre. Hannibal, too, placed his infantry in the centre, the Gallic and Spanish levies again forming the wings, while between them, a little further back, stood his African infantry, now equipped and organized on the Roman system. Of his cavalry, he placed the Numidians on the right wing, where the open plain permitted them, by their superior mobil- ity and rapidity, to evade the charges of the Italian heavy horse opposed to them; while the whole of the heavy cavalry, under Hasdru- bal, was stationed on the left, close to the river. On the Roman left, the Numidians gave the Italian cavalry plenty to do. In the centre, the Roman infantry soon drove back the Gauls and Spaniards, and then formed into a wedge-shaped column in order to attack the African infantry. These, however, wheeled in- ard, and charging the compact infantry in line, roke its impetus; and there the battle now became a standing fight. But Hasdrubal's heavy horse had in the mean time prepared the defeat of the Romans. Having furiously charg- ed the Roman cavalry of the right wing, they dispersed them after a stout resistance, passed, like Alexander at Arbela, behind the Roman centre, fell upon the rear of the Italian cavalry, broke it completely, and, leaving it an easy prey to the Numidians, formed for a grand charge 164 VOL. iv. 10 on the flanks and rear of the Roman infantry. This was decisive. The unwieldy mass, at- tacked on all sides, gave way, opened out, was broken, and succumbed. Never was there such complete destruction of an army. The Romans lost 70,000 men; of their cavalry, only 70 men escaped. The Carthaginians lost not quite 6,000, three eighths of whom belonged to the Gallic contingents, which had to bear the brunt of the first attack of the legions. Of Hasdrubal's 6,000 regular horse, which had won the whole of the battle, not more than 200 men were killed and wounded. The Ro- man cavalry of later times was not much bet- ter than that of the Punic wars. It was attached to the legions in small bodies, never forming an independent arm. Besides this legionary cav- alry, there were in Caesar's time Spanish, Gal- lic, and German mercenary horsemen, all of them more or less irregular. No cavalry serv- ing with the Romans ever performed anything worthy of mention ; and so neglected and in- effective was this arm, that the Parthian ir- regulars of Khorasan remained extremely for- midable to Roman armies. In the eastern half of the empire, however, the ancient passion for horses and horsemanship retained its sway; and Byzantium remained, up to its conquest by the Turks, the great horse mart and riding academy of Europe. Accordingly, we .find that during the momentary revival of the By- zantine empire under Justinian, its cavalry was on a comparatively respectable footing; and in the battle of Capua, in A. D. 552, the eunuch Narses is reported to have defeated the Teutonic invaders of Italy principally by means of this arm. The establishment, in all coun- tries of western Europe, of a conquering aris- tocracy of Teutonic origin, led to a new era in the history of cavalry. The nobility took everywhere to the mounted service, under the designation of men-at-arms, forming a body of horse of the heaviest description, in which not only the riders but also the horses were cov- ered with defensive armor. The first battle at which such cavalry appeared was that of Poi- tiers (732), where Charles Martel beat back the torrent of Arab invasion. The Frankish knighthood, under Eudes, duke of Aquitania, broke through the Moorish ranks and took their camp. But such a body was not fit for pursuit; and the Arabs accordingly, under shelter of their indefatigable irregular horse, retired unmolested into Spain. From this bat- tle dates a series of wars in which the massive but unwieldy regular cavalry of the West fought the agile irregulars of the East with varied success. The German knighthood meas- ured swords, during nearly the whole of the 10th century, with the wild Hungarian horse- men, and totally defeated them by their close array at Merseburg in 933, and at the Lech in 955. The Spanish chivalry for several cen- turies fought the Moorish invaders of their country, and ultimately conquered them. But when the occidental " heavies " transferred the