But there is also a marked distinction between the conduct of the battles of the houses of York and Lancaster, and those of the Stuarts and the Parliament of England in the next civil war. Up to Bosworth, armies raised at a convenient feudal centre advanced, when “mobilised,” against another army collected in a similar way at another place convenient for the faction to which it belonged. They met as soon as they were ready. They selected no “position for defence,” a primary tactical law for a weaker force, which by so doing enlisted on its side the elements afforded by such a selection. This was chiefly due to the fact that the bulk of each army was still cavalry, but the other “arms” were increasing in number and value, though still not fully appreciated by the mounted men. The two battles of St. Albans and the fight at Barnet fully show this. In both of the former the combatants met _en plein face_. The one was making for London, the other stopped him. In the second battle the Lancastrians tried to check the opponent, and failed in preventing his advance, both armies in which mounted troops predominated. There was nothing but a mutual offensive, the system that was at the basis of feudal tactics, and which crystallised in the personal battle between knight and knight in the lists. Strategy in its best sense was not, neither were tactics, for tactics mean the development of a means of equalising the deficiency of one side in numbers, arms, or morale. So long as a battle depended on personal prowess, the personal fighting power, or even the personal domestic influence of a leader, so long were battles often a mere matter of chance. When Warwick fell, Barnet was lost. The next civil war changed this: neither the death of Falkland nor that of Carnarvon at Newbury affected the fight seriously in one single degree. Finally, as a rule throughout all these days armies moved in order to subsist, and supply trains were rare. Thus true strategy was barely in existence yet, but shock tactics in battle were just beginning to give way to the fire tactics of bow and musket. As regards supplies in the Wars of the Roses, it must be remembered that, as in later times, notoriously in the Peninsula, when the armies had at times to collect the enemy’s shot and bullets, the weapons of either side were interchangeable.