ABSTRACT
For the first hundred and fifty years of their military career the Swiss were so fortunate as never to meet either with a great master of the Art of War, or with any new form of tactical efficiency which could rival their own phalanx. It was still with the feudal knight or with the motley and undisciplined infantry of the Middle Ages that they had to deal. Their tactics had been framed precisely for successful conflict with such forces, and continued to preserve an ascendancy over them. The burghers and nobles of Swabia, the Austrian noblesse which followed Leopold or Maximilian of Hapsburg, the mercenary bands of the dukes of Milan, and the free-lances of the Armagnacs were none of them exponents of a new system, and served in turn to demonstrate the superiority of that of the Confederates.
