The advance in échelon of columns was not the only form employed by the Confederates. At Laupen the centre or ‘gewaltshaufen’ moved forward and opened the fight before the wings were engaged. At the combat of Frastenz in 1499, on the other hand, the wings commenced the onset, while the centre was refused, and only came up to complete the overthrow. Even the traditional array in three masses was sometimes discarded for a different formation. At Sempach the men of the Forest Cantons were drawn up in a single ‘wedge’ (Keil). This order was not, as might be expected from its name, triangular, but merely a column of more than ordinary depth in proportion to its frontage. Its object was to break a hostile line of unusual firmness by a concentrated shock delivered against its centre. In 1468, during the fighting which preceded the siege of Waldshut, the whole Confederate army moved out to meet the Austrian cavalry in a great hollow square, in the midst of which were placed the banners with their escort of halberdiers. When such a body was attacked, the men faced outwards to receive the onset of the horsemen; this they called ‘forming the hedgehog[83].’ So steady were they that, with very inferior numbers, they could face the most energetic charge: in the Swabian war of 1498, six hundred men of Zurich, caught in the open plain by a thousand imperial men-at-arms, ‘formed a hedgehog, and drove off the enemy with ease and much jesting[84].’ Macchiavelli[85] speaks of another Swiss order of battle, which he calls ‘the Cross:’ ‘between the arms of which they place their musketeers, to shelter them from the first shock of the hostile column.’ His description, however, is anything but explicit, and we can find no trace of any formation of the kind in any recorded engagement. (3) _Development of Swiss Military Supremacy._