Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/304

280 280 ITALIAN WARS. PART tumbled from his horse, and being unable to rise, . I':. from the weight of his armour, was suffocated in the mud ! Thus war became disarmed of its ter- rors. Courage was no longer essential in a soldier ; and the Italian, made effeminate, if not timid, was incapable of encountering the adventurous daring and severe discipline of the northern warrior. ^' The Swiss The astonishino; success of the French was still iiuiintry. " more imputable to the free use and admirable or- ganization of their infantry, whose strength lay in the Swiss mercenaries. Machiavelli ascribes the misfortunes of his nation chiefly to its exclusive reliance on cavalry. ^^ This service, during the whole of the middle ages, was considered among the European nations the most important; the horse being styled by way of eminence " the battle." The memorable conflict of Charles the Bold with the Swiss mountaineers, however, in which the latter broke in pieces the celebrated Burgundian ordonnance, constituting the finest body of chivalry of the age, demonstrated the capacity of infantry ; and the Italian wars, in which we are now engaged, at length fully reestablished its ancient superiority. The Swiss were formed into battalions varying from three to eight thousand men each. They wore little defensive armour, and their principal weapon was the pike, eighteen feet long. Formed into these solid battalions, which, bristling with spears all around, received the technical appellation 31 Du Bos, Histoirc - Arte dclla Gucrra, lib. 2. vein, Istorie Fiorentine, lib. 5. —