Wallace's "schiltrons," to use the Scottish name for his great clumps of spearmen, were in truth an important advance in the art of war; and though they were not in fact a novelty, they were no doubt a real invention on his part, for it is scarcely conceivable that he should ever have heard of the Macedonian phalanx. The natural formation for men armed with spears is close together, in line, the ranks being drawn up one behind the other, two, four or more deep. Such a line can hold its own against attacks in front, and can advance: but if it is once broken it can be destroyed, and it is almost helpless if its flank is turned. This was substantially the sole order of battle during the palmy days of Greece. Philip of Macedon improved upon it by forming the phalanx, a solid square of pikemen, who faced outwards in case of need, and could not therefore be taken in flank. The phalanx moved slowly, and hardly at all over rough ground; and it obviously had no power of vigorous attack. Hence in its turn it was beaten by the Roman legionaries, who threw their heavy _pila_ from a short distance, and then charged sword in hand. With the fall of the Roman Empire the military art, like all others, had suffered eclipse in western Europe; and though the Anglo-Danes with their axes and shields had reproduced in some sense the Roman tactics, yet from the day of Hastings, when they went down before the feudal horsemen of the Normans, the mailed chivalry had been everywhere dominant. The political preponderance of the feudal nobility was partly cause, partly effect, of their military supremacy. They alone could procure, for themselves and their following, the armour which rendered them almost invulnerable to the ill-armed foot-soldier: the contempt they felt for the villein and the trader seemed justified by the facility with which they could slaughter the lower classes in the field. Slowly the pike reappeared on the scene, in the hands of peoples who were not over-ridden entirely by feudalism, and who had to defend themselves against men-at-arms. It is Wallace's most undoubted title to fame, if not his highest glory, that he was the first to organise plebeian spearmen afresh, not indeed for victory,[16] but with success as against mailed horsemen only. It was the combination of archers with the men-at-arms which won Falkirk for king Edward, just as the same combination had won Hastings for William the Norman. The great difference lay in the fact that in times wholly feudal the credit of the victory of Hastings went entirely to the knights, whereas Edward I. was wiser: from the day of Falkirk onwards the archers became more and more the mainstay of an English army.