During the sixteenth century, foot soldiers began to be called _Infantry_ (French _Infanterie_), after the practice of the Italian _Condottieri_, who used to call their soldiers their “lads,” as English officers have always had a habit of doing. They used the word _Fanti_, from Latin _Infans_, a child who could not talk (_in_, _not_, and _fari_, _speak_). Similarly, Blücher addressed his men on their toilsome march to Waterloo as “meine Kinder” (“my children”), and Americans talk of their soldiers as “the boys.” The rise of Infantry from its position of abject inferiority to the mounted men-at-arms may be dated from the fourteenth century, when English archers overthrew the chivalry of France at Cressy and Poictiers, and Swiss halberdiers that of Austria at Morgarten and Sempach. In the next century the Swiss phalanxes (who had now replaced their halberds by pikes) defeated the Burgundian Horse at Morat and Nancy, thus assuring the independence of their country. About the same time the Hussite peasants of Bohemia, effectively organized by their great leader, John Zisca, were holding their own against the horsemen of Austria. Towards the end of the fifteenth century a new type of Infantry arose in the Suabian Landsknechts (country fellows), an appellation corrupted into “Lance Knights” in England, and “Lansquenets” in France. They imitated and improved on the organization and tactics of their neighbours, the Swiss, and soon began to rival them as Infantry. THE HALBERD AND PIKE Like the Swiss, the Landsknechts were armed with the long pike. The halberd, discarded during the fifteenth century, was a formidable weapon, with its triple combination of pike head for thrusting, axe blade for striking, and crook to drag the horseman down. But its eight-foot shaft was not so effective against a charge of Horse as a hedge of eighteen-foot spikes, with butts on the ground, in the hands of half-a-dozen ranks, one behind the other. The pike now became the general arm of Infantry, and only finally disappeared in 1700. THE FIREARM Modern Infantry, however, knows not the pike, and may be said to have really originated when firearms were first carried by foot soldiers. Of these weapons the first was the _arquebus_ (_arc-bouche_, or _bow with a mouth_), a short tube carried in a small log or stick, the _stock_ (German for _stick_). The charge was fired from the breast by applying, to a hole called the vent, the lighted end of a _match_, or rope steeped in saltpetre so as to smoulder. In the fifteenth century we find the arquebus made longer, and of smaller bore, and the stock shaped so as to fire from the shoulder. It was then provided with a cock to hold the match, and bring it down at the side of the barrel on a pan filled with a priming of powder, which fired the charge through a side vent.