[91] Sismondi, who writes entirely from Swiss sources as to this fight, gives a very different impression from Machiavelli. The later cites Arbedo as the best known check received by the Swiss, and puts their loss down at several thousands (Arte de Guerra, tr. Farneworth, p. 33). Müller evidently tries to minimise the check; but we may judge from our knowledge of Swiss character how great must have been the pressure required to make a Confederate officer think of surrender. Forty-four members of the Cantonal councils of Lucern fell in the fight: ‘The contingent of Lucern had crossed the lake of the four Cantons in ten large barges, when setting out on this expedition: it returned in two!’ These facts, acknowledged by the Swiss themselves, seem to show that the figure of 400 men for their loss is placed absurdly low. [92] From a Lucern ‘Raths-Protocoll’ of 1422, ‘Da es den Eidgenossen nicht so wohl ergangen seie,’ etc. [93] Yet even the Duke said, that ‘Against the Swiss it will never do to march unprepared.’ Panagirola, quoted by Kirk, vol. iii. [94] ‘If we attack Romont,’ said Ulrich Kätzy at the Swiss council of war, ‘while we are beating him the duke will have time and opportunity to escape; let us go round the hills against the main-body, and when that is routed, we shall have the rest without a stroke.’ This showed real tactical skill. [95] Machiavelli, Arte de Guerra, book ii. [96] Frundsberg, the old captain of landsknechts, gives a cool and businesslike account of these shocks, ‘Wo unter den langen Wehren etliche Glieder zu grund gehen, werden die Personen, so dahinter stehen, etwas zaghaft,’ etc. [97] The two-handed sword had almost entirely, and the ‘morning-star’ and ‘Lucern hammer’ quite, disappeared from use by the end of the fifteenth century. [98] Machiavelli, Arte de Guerra, book ii. p. 34. [99] It is a curious fact that Chaka, one of Cetywayo’s predecessors as king of the Zulus, set himself to solve this problem. He took a hundred men and armed them with the shield and the ‘short assegai,’ a thrusting weapon resembling a sword rather than a spear in its use. He then set them to fight another hundred furnished with the shield and the ‘long assegai,’ the slender javelin which had previously been the weapon of his tribe. The wielders of the shorter weapon won with ease, and the king thereupon ordered its adoption throughout the Zulu army. It was this change which originally gave the Zulus their superiority over their neighbours. [100] Machiavelli, Arte de Guerra, book ii. [101] See Sismondi’s Italian History, vol. ix. p. 213. [102] E.g. by the diminutive archer who crouches under a thegn’s shield, like Teucer protected by Ajax. [103] Giraldus Cambrensis, Itin. Cambriæ, c. 3, speaks of the Welsh bowmen as being able to send an arrow through an oak door four fingers thick. The people of Gwent (Monmouth and Glamorgan) were reckoned the best archers. Those of North Wales were always spearmen, not archers.